By 11.45 am on 22 February I decided to telephone my elder sister, Meera, to take care of the family matter in faith as being God's guidance as I now understood my email to Professor Robert Winston. I spoke to her at length about my latest email to my younger sister, and the welfare issues for my brother, my own condition here, belief in God, and that He was the one who had just indicated to me that I should telephone her. It turned out to be a pleasant chat during which I explained my recent conduct under pressure from Soumya, and other behaviour in the past as these may have seemed erratic to her. We agreed to let Soumya do what she pleases about my father's inheritance, including having all of it if she chooses, for wealth was not everything. We also discussed my brother. She enquired about how he had seemed to me when I saw him and I said, 'very peaceful'. I asked how she could go for so long without seeing him, and she said, 'I had to be very strong. I am not the same person as I was before.' She also referred to my brother as having an ocean of affection, and that she loved Soumya a great deal. I told my sister of my present job and how I was attempting to improve our financial condition with other job applications, and that much as I had considered doing so in the past I was not going to sleep anymore, for life was for making progress for which God will show the way. She asked me to pray to Lakshmi and Sri Krishna.
Shaw Trust, the Charity for helping disabled people back into employment, telephoned me for details of my job for I had responded to its previous letter to apply for a £200 Grant from the Government under a Job Start Facility in view of my job with Shell Wigmore. I told them I did not wish Shaw Trust to contact my employers or else I would withdraw my Application for the Grant. They promised this and sent me a Form on 23 February morning. As I filled in the Form I was unsure of taking this course in case some investigation would took place that could harm me such as my medical records being brought to the attention of Shell or future employers. A mistake made during filling up a particular section of the Form led me to abondon this application and I agreed with Rashmi that we should not take the risk for fear of losing my livelihood. Similarly, the Police Application Form resurfaced in the computer but as I started filling it in mistakes were made which led me to abandon the Form too.
The previous day during the shift at Shell Wigmore an incident took place in which a woman customer demanded a refund for a lemonade bottle she had purchased because she thought that the shop's price was too high, and then asked for her full money of £5.02 back (which I did give her) because as she said, 'I will not be spoken to like that' She also asked for the Manager to which I kept quiet. The incident worried me through the rest of the shift, so that by the end I decided that I must act to bring the matter to the attention of the Manager in a pre-emptive strike. I left a written message: May, Watch out for this lady customer. She may complain about me for pointing out to her that firstly, the price of Sprite was marked on the shelf, and secondly, she should enquire about the price of a good from the cashier before paying the money, as she did, not ask for a refund after the transaction has been completed. I gave her a full refund reluctantly so as not to delay the fuel customers. I hope I did the right thing, but do tell me if I was wrong.'
Even within this tiny incident I saw the Divine and the anti-God in action, playing a game or a war against each other to see if I might come out in the ascendency at long last which would prove that God was after all more powerful than the anti-God. I was aware that I was not the first person who had speculated on this point. With such an interpretation and a determination to continue with my renewed interest in living life I found that for my family's sake I had no choice but to retain a focus on the Divine so that it guided my behaviour and actions through these tough times, that is, I could not be a neutral observer for I had a family to support. In making such an analysis there was no sense of paranoia in my mind and I was not feeling or behaving psychotically in any way. I had simply and somewhat reluctantly come to the conclusion that herein lay the meaning of life. And after death our souls will go to God (so called Brahmaloka) or to the anti-God. The choice was for the individual: one either wished a feeling of serene divinity over oneself and lived a sin-free life, or lived to the gratification of one's senses guided by the anti-God: the questions of ones ambitions in life, patriotism, duty, non-violence (ahimsa), karma and dharma, etc were mere incidentals that fitted into this overriding jigsaw in some automatic way as part of the grand design of the Universal Being, that was the Monster.
It was my day off work so I went to the library to read up what had hitherto been written about the Universal Being and Brahman on the Internet, as this was where my search had led me to. There were varied concepts under Universal Being and the ancient Hindu understanding of the unknowable and mysterious Brahman, and on something known as consciousness. There seemed to be no written record on how sages had arrived at their conclusions on the Universal Being or the Brahman. I was not interested in metaphysical concepts, but only on the general human condition and particularly on what makes human beings behave the way they do in the present world, for which an analysis of mankind was essential as I had studied. On return home I felt serene and calm, but the mood changed as I worried about the incident at work yesterday with the lady customer and what my manager and employer will decide on the matter. Such was the nature of the day to day mental and physical suffering of mankind that I felt that monster was an apt description for the Universal Being.
However, after a meal outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken and we returned home I could not say that the entire mankind suffered mentally and physically like I had done. People were living away quite happily doing their own thing, actors acting, poets writing, soldiers fighting, lawyers arguing, teachers teaching, doctors treating patients, farmers farming, politicians plotting, etc. And at 10.00 pm as I wrote these words I felt serene again, in a bit of bliss even. So how could I call the Universal Being a Monster? After all the other day I had reflected on how interesting even the goings-on between our two families were: such situations and the major on-going world events kept the thoughtful people including writers and journalists suitably occupied mentally. Above all, people lived in suspense over their own fates, both the materialist seeking wealth, fame, power and legacy and the spiritualist seeking God or liberation. Wondering what would happen to them in the future provided the necessary motivation for existence for people at all points in the spectrum of the materialist to the spiritualist, that is, the reason to carry on living.
24 February 2007
In bed during the night I had a quiet nights sleep but with dreams and plenty of thoughts in the morning, with sex with Rashmi too by the morning. I got out of bed and motivated myself. Took Rupa to Abbey National and showed her how to deposit money into her new account that was opened for her by Rashmi. I said to her, life is about activities, and that it was never too late to make a fresh start, as I took her to trampolining still wondering what was in store for my shift later in the afternoon with regard to the note I had left for my Line Manager.
At home Rashmi asked me to look at the sink drainage unit which had always been a problem for us, necessating preventative treatments with sink clearance fluids with a wire rod from time to time that I did, and if that too failed we had to call the Dynarod people to clear it with their electric equipment. Seeing me writing she started at me asking if I was writing about the fact that she had just asked me to sort out the sink drain. I said to myself here it is the Evil spirit coming again and closed my ears and not responding. She then turned to me and said, 'do not walk away from me'. I then soothed her down and asked her what makes her go into these outbursts at me.' She replied, 'Fear. Fear of what might happen'. I said 'Do not live in fear.'
I went to work where the Manager said nothing about my incident with the lady and I did not raise the matter so as not to indicate any guilt. I had written what I did and had to wait for the response. The mind was restful through the shift, and I negotiated with another problem caused by the previous shift's cash, leaving another note for the Manager. The Zoroastrian Indian working at Sherlodge Garage came in for fuel and said that he had seen my application for the job. The work is tough though.' I said, 'What will happen is in the hands of the One above, to which he said, 'That is true'.
The next morning after waking up from more dreams of playing badminton, and of some goings-on with my deceased father, I was determined to continue with the fresh start and the finding that life was about activites. I started clearing the sink drainage unit which seemed to work very well so that I started thinking about God and whether it was the end of the game as it were; but suddenly the blockage worsened, and a pipe leak developed due to a rubber washer breaking at a joint. I cleared the water spilt and decided to go and check the tyre pressures on the car. Rashmi was still in bed being Sunday (after her usual all-night ironing session), and I explained to her that the sink-drainage unit is in total mess. She sprang out of bed and we tried to work out what to do. I drove to a garage and checked the tyre pressures, then decided to go to the hardware store where I bought spare washers and fixed the leakage on the pipe. We discussed what to do, including the possiblity that the Dynarod people would have to be called again if the blockage did not clear in a day or two's time. I came to update my memoirs, retitling it to 'The Need To Know', from 'Satisfying the Need to Know', and prepared for my PM shift. The sink drainage unit got cleared after a hour or two as I said to myself that perhaps there was nothing more to think about or search for, just go on living actively and productively, observing and recording.