FLIGHT TO ECSTASY

                                           FLIGHT TO ECSTASY

     

          She had no parents. No brother or sister or relatives. In her childhood, she believed that she had fallen from the sky. But later she knew that human beings do not fall from the sky. Maybe, it was from somewhere else, she convinced herself.

       It is not only the want of relatives that made her an orphan. She was deaf and dumb and so sound and speech were also not related to her. She knew only day and night and there was nothing called time in her mind. Being timeless, she was ageless too. She hardly saw the sun, since she always walked with a stoop and sat with her face towards the earth. But she always sat looking at the moon whenever it was there.

      And she had no home and slept below a small tree with very large leaves at a deserted area outside the town, after begging and getting a little food from some hotel. Even during heavy rain and lighting, she peacefully slept at that place.

      She never begged for or accepted money and believed that whoever gave her something to eat, were somehow related to her.

      It was a moonlit night. She was sitting below her small tree. There was nobody in the vicinity. She was looking at the moon thinking that she might have fallen from the moon since it was looking kindly at her.

      Suddenly, she saw two bright objects coming towards her from the sky. They were like two beautiful faces. They reached down and placed themselves on both sides of her. They were trying to communicate with her. And she understood them. They were explaining the beauty of their place. The communication was directly to her mind making her see the beauty herself. After some time, they disappeared.

      She looked at the tree, which was her only bondage. It was moving its head slowly. It was permitting her to do something, she was sure.

      Then she thought of the beautiful world which the two faces had projected in her mind. She had no doubt that it was somewhere near the moon. And she longed for a pair of wings to fly up and reach there. And thinking of that visit, she fell asleep.

       From the deep sleep, something awakened her. And she saw two leaves of the tree falling. They fell on both sides of her. And in the light wind, they moved to her and stuck on both sides of her body like a pair of wings.

       She got up immediately. The two wings were there on her body. Now she had only to know how to fly.

       Then the wings began to move themselves. Both wings fluttered. And she began to rise upwards. Towards the moon. She felt that something fell down from her and a hitherto unknown peace took hold of her.

        It was only after a few days that people saw the small tree, which had fallen down about a week before. And below it was the corpse of a girl, which lay there like a useless, dirty, decayed piece of dress.

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( Just as a man casts off worn out clothes and puts on new ones, so also the embodied self casts off its worn out bodies and enters others which are new. (Bhagavat Gita, Chapter 2 verse 22.) __________________________________________________________

KRISHNA

Note: It is an effort to understand Death in the light of Indian Philosophy. When all bondage cease, a soul gets salvation (absolute bliss) they say.