I look at my face in the mirror. I can't seem to relate to it. It looks sad and weary - with what I do not know. My right eye seems smaller and heavier than the left. I try to look at my face in the mirror more closely and suddenly lose all focus. And my vision, for one instant, goes behind the image I was looking at and falls onto the shadow behind it. A swift but infinite moment passes and I look at my face again. It doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem that "it" is "I."



Then I look at my mind, and it too seems unreal, transitory, and "not me." I close my eyes and try to see what happens. Nothing but vast blankness, of no color - but on trying to perceive any color I see all colors. Whence do these promptings come? - to see this - to do this - and how mechanically I follow them. I become blind. I become blind to this game constantly being played in my head by me. It is none other than "me" who is at it, though I think I am the observer. I want to see, I try to see, but a vast heaviness overweighs me. I sense there is a door, but in that vast blankness, I see no door.

I have experienced few moments - no, they were not of time - rather out of time - of mindfulness, unity, seeing; but only for infinitesimally short durations. Then, the door gets closed and passes out of my memory, leaving no impression that I can carry in my mind. It is beyond the mind. I know not what this door is, where it comes from, where it goes or whether it is a door at all. The moment I try to pursue it, hold it, recognize it - it closes, erasing all memory of knowing and recognizing. I want to recognize it, but how can I recognize it if I have not known it, how will I know when "it is?" That is my dilemma.

I often have this waking dream, which is not exactly in my conscious mind, but is somewhere in the background. I dream that I'm at the bottom of a sea, a river, a stream, or what you will. I'm there, in the depths, perhaps somewhere in the middle, and I want to reach the surface but somehow I'm unable. I have this sense of wanting to reach the surface but I don't even know whether there is a surface, or if it is just an infinite never-ending mass. I don't want to assume anything. After all, it might just be my fancy. So I'm there, trying desperately, moving my limbs, trying to swim upwards, without knowing the direction, towards that surface.

I hardly make any progress at all. The more I try, the more I stay there - just where I am. Again, I feel this heavy weight upon me, on my senses, my mind - this weight of the mass of water about me, which makes the whole thing even more difficult for me. I desperately want to perceive the surface, get on top of it and feel the fresh air, the light, and freedom from this heaviness. The more desperate I become, the more I move within it, the more I become engulfed in it. Sometimes, the surface comes closer, uninvited, unrecognized and then disappears again. It is like a mirage that a traveler weary from thirst sees in a desert.

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The above extract has been taken from the short story, "The Thinker", featured in the book - , by Ashutosh Ghildiyal