The Astral Body ...

This happened a day after, my father had spelled out some meditation techniques. I don’t remember exactly, how the conversation drifted from one topic to the other. It perhaps began with the discussion on my insomnia. No matter how tired I am - I’m awake throughout the night. I manage to sleep around 6 am for a couple of hours - till the time my mom screams yells and wakes me up.

As a kid, I remember, when my dad meditated, just before going to bed and I bugged him to tell me a story - sometimes complaining, I was not sleepy, he apprised me, to observe my breath. "This is the key of meditation.. mind is a bundle of thoughts.. witness your breath…it’ll unrestraint your mind and sleep gonna embrace you." But I can’t free my mind with thoughts .. in fact I cant – I cant concentrate on anything .

I contrived to persuade a friend of mine – his brother is a doctor .. and he promised to get me some sleeping pills. Overprotective that he is – he discerned he would hand me only 5 pills every month. This arrangement had slipped outta my head like sanity – but since a long time he had been supplying the pills regularly. I never took them but hoarded them. They are addictive – I’m told, and I already had, more than one addiction, to take care of.

On the said night .. I was drunk .. groping the charms of a life gone by, wanting to free myself from the spell of certain conversations that kept hovering around me. Weary and teary, I could not focus and found myself in a dilapidated dream, in which events repeated themselves. Aftershocks of frustrated desires were swaying my blue-curtained bed as I twisted, turned and tried to cling on to something ..that wasn’t even offered. I’d taken a warm shower, had just finished reading a book by Osho and had on my softest nightclothes. I’d wept in order to empty myself of self-pity and remorse, burnt incense and had taken every pain to secure serenity in my room. I was now.. striving to gather the best years of my life and finally resorting to concentrating on breath, I comprehended, nothing worked and I was failing as usual.

Ergo .. I looked for the pills. My mind was jumbled with thoughts. I’d been nursing a sterile desire .. I had so little in my life ..hopelessness inundated me again. I’d read something about it just a moment back .. "with the object, misery exists; with the desire, the miserable mind; with the demand, with the complaining mind, the hell." dang .. I gobbled a pill. I wanted a curt regression .. nothing happened . . "you are so much engrossed with the object, that’s why you cannot look within.." I swallowed another one.. "Always, you have been surrounded by darkness. With the awareness moving inwards, there is light, and in that light you come to know there has been no darkness" …n then one more .. more n more. Sleep .. still eluded me. Exhausted by this hard work, feeling dizzy but still not sleepy .. I endeavored to concentrate on my breath again ..

It worked this time. I was floating in an invisible sea, warm, ecstatic, silent ..there was beauty, balance .. harmony .. it was a dreamless .. comfortable sleep. I assumed the daylight was breaking in .. coz I heard my mother’s voice. Invariably, she wakes me up with a cup of tea and I don’t like drinking tea without brushing my teeth. The taste of nicotine from the endless cigarettes I’d smoked, the previous night, in my search of sleep ..is stale in my mouth when I get up ..

Half-sleepy, I headed for the washroom. My mouth felt scorched with tobacco smoke .. I started brushing.. rinsing and splashing water on my face ..

When I entered my room again – wiping my face … I was shocked ..
I saw myself on the bed .. still sleeping …
I dropped the towel on the floor n started shivering. How was it possible? The figure lying in front of me .. on the bed .. was indeed me ..

My father, a determined man with puritanical sensibilities had said, sleep is some kind of unconscious meditation, while meditation is a conscious sleep. I was certainly not meditating. I was only struggling to follow a technique and was hoping .. it could put me to sleep. I whacked my brains harder n harder. I was vaguely thrilled when he had mentioned "Astral Body and Astral Travel." Astral body is a tool of the self, to perceive other frequency realities, one more form of our consciousness, just like our physical body. It can come 'out' of the body of the ‘meditator’ and then one can see her/his own 'physical body.' It makes one understand that we are not just body and mind, we actualize we are unlimited and have other dimensions. It was amusing - how could I come out of my body with this fragmented knowledge and no practice? I elicited taking pills after pills. How many did I take? I had lost count .. It suddenly occurred to me that it could kill a person. Did I die in my sleep?

Quiet in contrast, my "physical body" lying on the bed was free from intangible thoughts and manifold sensations. My robust face was calm, my long straight glistering hair was spread on the blue pillow like a stringed musical instrument. My left leg was visible under the slit of the rainbow colored wrap-around .. the solitary silver anklet that I wore in my left feet .. was glittering .. Aah whatta waste of beauty and youth.. I wanted to live I knew that now, but everything else was unclear.. I was sitting beside myself .. and was mourning my death!!
I could not bear the site of myself .. so quiet and helpless ...

With an expression of deliberately controlled hysteria on my face.. I walked passed the living room .. latched the main entrance of my apartment n went outside. I sat on the bench in the lawn brooding under the russet colors of early November sky. I sat there for a brief time and listened to the world around me in the silence of the morning. This silence roared in my ears .. in my eyes and in my heart. I realized I no longer belonged there ..I had no place there .. I was dead..

I strolled.. amongst the apartment buildings faltering their upper storeys across the way as if in conspiracy against the sky. I stumbled morosely in the sunrays striking off in aqueous light, few voices around me of people taking their morning walk and walking their dogs. I wanted reassurances from them .. but there was none to offer me that. It was tough to stand alone and think where I stood and even tougher to contemplate where I was going. I was barefooted .. but nothing was hurting me .. the pebbles .. the concrete .. everything was normal .. I wondered- what would people conclude if they saw me .. dressed in a Technicolor outfit .. sauntering without slippers. I hoped they thought, I was an ultra ‘hep’ woman .. and it was some latest fashion. Or an artist who had discovered the trick to emulate Hussein, and was about to paint a horse sexier than John Abraham!

I completely forgot that I’d died in my sleep last night. My emotions were cool now, as if insulated of. My feet took their own direction and I was home beside my "corpse" again .. I was now estimating all my friends, acquaintances, relatives. It was queer how you met and passed souls thus and a few of them left sweetness with you… you passed one another n parted.. it might as well be forever and yet there remained the touch of sweetness and of pain. Who all would mourn my death ?
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I can overhear my parents talking in the other room .. My mother has finally decided she gonna wake me up and is brewing tea. They are going to discover in a few moment … I’m no more. Another exciting thought has just crossed my mind... everything is over.. everything is finished .. gone .. but nothing has finished ..nothing is done.. and I must go on.. I’m dressing up to attend my funeral .. errr .. cremation…

TO BE CONTINUED.

PS – Pure imagination! I’m back.. alive and kicking .. Gonna keep updating my blog .. that would now contain – the tales of my new life ;)