Desperately seeking network

One of the every first thing that marked my entry in to Goa, apart from getting welcomed by Annie's dogs by their enthusiastically wagging tails and approving licks all over my face, was my search for the network.

I immediately took out the phone and roamed around the house. I looked like a freedom fighter, desperately looking for the network from one corner to another in the house and out side, with the hoisted phone. I failed to get it in the balcony, in any of the rooms, near the window in the dining hall where it’s more popular for getting network. Neither in the kitchen nor in the garden out side! And this was nothing new. My last visits to this place, when I failed to get network, resulted in putting the blame on my old, second hand, less than basic model phone. I used to retire assuming that perhaps it the inability of my phone to detect even the minutest of signal strengths. But now, that was not the case. With my almost new, sturdy and more than basic phone I was expecting not to face the problem any more since all the other phones in the house receive strong signal strength with out any hassles.

Why me then? The questioning got the better of me and I became more introspective. Searching for network I found my self searching for the self. I felt like on of those mystics who transcend the physical space within and outside their body to find that network of self. So I sat down to meditate and ask my self ‘Who am I’, ‘What is my purpose in life’, ‘What am I doing here’ etc. Hoping that by answering these questions I will get closer to the self and hence the network. I sat under the tree, near the windows, in the rooms, any where and every where I felt I could get closer to the superior energy.

With the phone in my hand and determination on my mind I set out to seek. Annie and Anjali, oblivious of this new found search of mine, continued with their daily chores. But I continued in my own silent way determined to seek the network.

And finally my prayers began to be answered, in measured quantities though .I felt closer and closer to my self and seemed to find answers to eternal questions that kept mystics occupied for centuries. I was happy that with much lesser effort of criss crossing the country bare foot and finally retiring to the cold environs of Himalayas to seek, I was getting close. I felt blessed, I felt elated and there was a sudden surge of rejuvenation in me. I felt the energy and could make the connection. What a great experience it was and the perfect time to open an eye and look at the phone to check if all the soul searching experiment was helping me get any network.

I cannot explain the level of happiness and excitement when my phone by some magical account was showing two faint bars of network connectivity out of five. My effort was paying of and led me to conclude that there was definitely some certain connection between soul searching and network searching. The display of the bars was a testimony of that. I was still reeling under the celebration of my discovery when I found that my distraction was getting me away from the connection. The 'whatever little bars' I had painstakingly gathered had withered away. I had lost touch with my self and therefore with the network.

I wondered it’s so much easier to find network in big cities. I guess we city bred are closer to God and our selves in big cities. God comes to us easily there and I wonder then why do hundreds try and retire to forests to seek answers and God. Ha! Disillusioned people!

Any ways, I shut my eyes again and prayed even harder. Don’t ask me how I did that or what does it mean to pray harder but I did. I tried to plunge in to the deeper depths of my subconscious and float in timelessness of within.

Right! The time had stopped, so did the air, the physical space, logic, reasoning, every thing and I found my self sucked in to this unfamiliarly known vacuum. It was even more heightened experience than the earlier one and I was basking in the happiness of having felt at least 2% of what great seekers like Shri Vivekananda ,Shri Aurobindo , to name a few from recent past must have felt like.

I felt like God, I felt connected and a strange oneness with him. I realized this is what must have prompted Gautam Buddha and Mahaveera to renounce their worldly pleasures and became great seekers.

I decided to return to this experience once again but after only having checked its effect on my network .Thankfully I wasn’t so overwhelmed that couldn’t open an eye.

I was amply rewarded. All five bars out of five! I was on the ‘Right path’. The harder I searched for my self the more network I found. I was sure of the connection now. But with in seconds the bars flickered and disappeared. I had once again a lost connection with my self and my network and therefore plunged in the darkness of ignorance.

I realized I couldn’t do both the things simultaneously. And hence concluded that’s why the great mystics did one thing at a time. Either they chose to search for the soul or the network. And as the history tells us they chose to stay with the soul searching.

And here was my call. Either I depended on the feeble transmission tower and wait for the flickering network like all futile human beings or transcend my self in to a seeker, as I had just tasted, to find the greater network.

I chose to stay with the first one as I had loads of work to finish and calls to make, determined to come back to soul searching some time in my life or go back to Mumbai where God comes to me easily.