Image courtesy: Nuriyah Kagalwala

“See! This is the problem; you guys would never understand it. If I tell you that in my dream I saw Yanni on his deathbed, I knew that he was going to die the last time I met him, and I wanted to be the last person with him when he died.

“But I can explain it to you logically that…”

“You see where the problem is? At the most, what will you say: that I had a troubled childhood, that my dog, Yanni, was the only companion, that we were too close, and that I was only trying to fulfil a wish? You, with all your “psychological insights,” can only conjecture the textbook guidelines to understand a human mind. There is definitely more to it than this dry bookish explanation.”

“No amount of science, psychology, philosophy, religion, or ideology can ever set you free, for you are never bound!”

Take your individuality as the celestial body of the Earth. Repeated bombardment from space, the internal chemical reactions that it has conceived in her womb, and facing life-changing disasters and catastrophes She has nonetheless nourished each and every soul for as long as we have been able to measure. Individuality has a similar colour to it; despite all the external invasions and internal existential crises, it has gone on with its alchemical process of producing life and giving meaning to our mere existence.

There is something very unique about our species. The duplex nature of our being has given us two distinct mental identities. The conscious part of our mind remains facing the outside world. It is attached to the rationale and logic and loosely based on the experiential affairs of a few past generations. The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is like an omniscient ancestor sitting in perpetual meditation while keeping its third eye on our conscious self. We can turn to it for insights, creativity, and spiritual nourishment.

The subconscious communicates through symbols and archetypes that are stored in the ‘collective unconscious’, which is a dynamic reservoir of human consciousness. It is as if all the necessary information learned by our ancestors was compacted and passed to us down the line of the DNA. It is an eternal vocabulary of images, experiences, and evolutionary insights that are innate to human existence. This interconnected data of spiritual Eros speaks to us through symbolism, dreams, mythology, and subliminal experiences.

It is amusing to observe that, unlike our other cousin primate species, only ours has to go through the process of learning to adjust to the social structure. Of course, our cousin species have their own hierarchy and have to understand their place in it. For most of it, they need to learn how to survive and manage their basic instincts in their inner and outer groups. It is only we humans who have developed such a complex socio-cultural web that an individual in his developmental stage has to go through the strenuous task of going against the law of nature and grow out of its basic instincts.

With all the conditioning, partly as part of the family tradition and partly as the norm of the society he is born into. The child, when he reaches the age of ‘ego consciousness,” i.e., when he realises that he has an identity distinct from his carers, has two different realities in front of him. First is the reality of all the outstanding instincts—the ones that are yet to be tallied. This is the individualistic gap that has been created due to childhood upbringing. Second is the stereotypical reality, which is imposed on the child by all the external mediocre expectations of the mass at large.

The child is not mature, independent, or secure enough to be able to make an unbiased decision for himself; therefore, more often than not, he chooses to take part in the circus of second reality, thereby giving birth to his duality. This is the first step towards infectious individuality.

The later years of his development are only a measurement of his achievements against his age. He runs with a white flag in one hand to put it up against the milestone set up by society. This acceptance of mass reality is the stage at which his divide is total. He becomes a product of society. There are two beings existing in one individual.

The mass at large is nothing but a collection of such incompetent and impotent individuals. Mass becomes the wall for the “shadow” of the individual. The mass itself lives by the superficial ideals and policies of a depressed utopian world. There is an absence of creativity, novelty, and progress in the collection of mass.

The psychologists are too biassed in their approach to the process of individuation, as they believe that therapy is the only way to reach the individuation journey. The most important precondition to individuation is the realisation that there is a divide. The acknowledgment of the fact that there is a split in identity is the first step towards the process.

There have been cases where people have realised it outside the realm of therapy. When one shifts his focus from the external chaos to the inner carnival of creativity, intellect, or innocence, he will surely see the way out of duality. There are examples of transformations where therapists have connected their clients to the areas in which they had potential by diverting the force inward.

The end goal of the realisation is to switch off the dissimulation and grow into ‘in-dividuality,” which means there is no further possibility of divisibility of the self and only one whole remains.

I believe spirituality to be the perennial flow of the self through the timeline of collective human existence. Spirituality is the process of diverting all the forces of the running mind inward and experiencing multidimensional “spirit, which is the base of all the emotions and instincts in human beings. It is a process of accepting the subconscious in all its eccentricity, embracing its ancient language, and unravelling its subtle and mystical messages. Acknowledging that one exists beyond the realm of the mass and within the depths of an archaic civilization is spirituality.

We symbolically resemble the Devrish Sufis while attaining the process of individuation. Like the saints, we whirl on our own axis, working our hold on the centre tighter with each swirl. We draw chakras and mandalas, representing our whole selves and the wholeness of the universe we live in. Meditating on the ‘Bindu’ (centre dot) and abandoning all the baggage of past conditioning and the ego consciousness, and from that centre radiating an eternal enlightenment of a new foundation of the self and spreading through encirclement a vibrant diffusion Creating an aura of self-centeredness, awareness, and connection to a spiritual entitlement Here, the self becomes the measuring point of reality. We move in repetitive circles, representing in ourselves the imitation of the solar bodies moving around the sun.

In Sufism, there is a tradition of putting the god in the place of a lover and renouncing and immolating everything for that lover!

Where is this love? It is within!

Where is God? It is within!