within...

i am a rock... i am an island...
and rocks feel no pain...and an island never cries...*

the truth of it all is there is one.. a truth...

an objective reality... a singularity... and it exists paradoxically and simultaneously and effortlessly in the last place you'd expect the perfect manifestation of it..

and therefore, to be truly free is also possible...

yes, we do live in a complex web of social order and acceptability... so to be truly free you must truly be alone.. where your actions have no reactions.. where there is no causality.. no hint of judgement... and that's only in one place...

your own mind..

there is only one person inside your head... know this.. your masques are not for you.. you know they're masques... that's the very nature of them.. they're for them.. all of them.. you know who you are.. in corners and dark lonely walks home you know what you want and how.. in wisps of fantasy you'll never articulate.. you know.. in deeds of freedom you try and express this... fleetingly...

yet there are also infinite possibilites to that existance... and that is the absolute marvel of it all...

within... where you are emperor and sinner.. where time and space collapses into a little pile of immaterialism.. where you are yourself and not...

within... where you can go a hundred places and through time.. where you can smell the fresh air of cities never visited and live lives never lived in times gone by and times yet to come and be heroes in epics never written... where all that separates babylon and bombay is a thought... where sounds are as real as real can be... where music is omnipresent... where anything is possible.. if god does truly exist she exists as your own consciousness... nothing more nothing less.

within... where there are no constraints or obstacles except those that you create.. where the most buried of emotions..and deeds can come to you anytime and consume you... where you can laugh and cry and care and not.. without reason or justification.. where justification is a myth and reason a slave of you..

within... they travel the most that travel inwards.. outward pleasure and pain and success and all these meaningless yardsticks are just that.. meaningless... fleeting glimpses of that which you already have within...

within... where you can be all people, just yourslef and your own personal deity... where there is nothing but you...

na deen hai na duniya na insaan na bhagvan sirf main.. sirf main...**

yet we go through our entire lives fighting this very concept.. we quote quantum theory and the idea that there is no individuality... that all else is only as it is because of everything else.. that enactment in its very nature makes you part of the whole.. we abhor individual genius and we tag miserable tags... we hail individual achievment yes.. but only within the context of a larger set... we despise those who are at peace with themselves and have abandoned the ego... those that have realised that the key is not to scale the highest mountain but build your own...

we seek chaos to define us.. we reach out for this sense of the butterfly effect and believe in this intermingling infinite web of connecting ether... we yearn to enact our part in this play... but we don't need to..

we go through our lives fighting this very instinct.. we use people.. situations and feelings and relationships, we grasp tightly onto associations and seek to be defined by being part of something larger, not one.. but two.. or three or seven billion... we try... to shield ourselves from this eventuality... this objective reality... this truth... and we fail miserably...

and we don't spend enough time on that which can save us.. in any situation.. instantly...

where all things must end.. where life begins and maybe... just maybe ends.. maybe...

within...

*cf: I Am A Rock, Simon & Garfunkel
**cf: Raju Swami in Vijay Anand's Guide