Jasjit,

My sympathies for the testosterone :)

Eagerly waiting to read about it more.

i have a feeing that we begin to think of learning about something only when we begin to lose that something. i could not be more true when i say that i have hardly ever thought of this 't' thing, big or small...may be i am approaching that age that an essay has crossed my path...i cant say..

harb

Dear Jasjit,

nice piece. I doubled up with laughter on reading the higher arc psychology...:)

I remember it was an issue in school...in the common toilet...but it puzzles me...were we as boys in school, probably 4th to 5th class concious of our sexuality?

but again I went through Maya's post in the early archives and probably think that we did.

the common statement which one encounters in youth is "it is all in the hormones".

a determined man is said to have loads of testesterone, but there might be an equally or more determined woman...what drives her then?...

very interesting piece you have posted...

eagerly looking forward for the next one in line.

Good Morning Aachi

Yes the arc and the pureed testes had me in splits too. I'm not sure that for young boys its a sexuality thing at that age, it is however the wonder of discovering the potential and antics of the organ perhaps, all quite innocent and fun like.
And indeed we are going to find out how the Big T works in determined women.

Good Morning Harb

i'm sure you never pondered on the Big T, perhaps all the other imponderables in your childhood were so massive there was little room for trivia. And somewhere this is sexualized trivia where peers bring in all kinds of magical tales about maculinity, the magical sperm etc etc. Your situation lso protected you at some level from a lot of 'generic' socialization/sexualization too I think.

sweet what you right about losing, age and the timeliness of the 'essay' but there is something very fascinating which begins to happen with T levels going down for all man after fifty. It's really not about losing but gaining something quite fascinating. will be writing about that in my next pieces.

if the first statement is any indication, i must be extinct...hence, unqualified for any perspectives on the issue...maybe those hormones are no longer secreting the way they used to once...determination is farthest from my life now as i just drift through moments...intersting and informative read though...

harb, while one gets general drifts to dialogues, guess there must be more to it...

Sundar just because testosterone does not come into our mind as a word does not mean that we are not being influenced by it. All of us are men and women alike.

Interesting article Jasjit....so ridiculous this whole search for the 'magic' of masculinity. But at the same time so understandable too. Cant wait for the next piece

love
Anusheh

agree with you anusheh....sorry if the article indicated otherwise...

Jasjit hilarious post. Makes me wonder what people would be pounding and grounding if they decide to know the 'magic' of femininity?

Hey Jasjit,

Thats some mind-boggling info!!!! Awesome!

Makes me feel sorry for testesterone though....

jasjit, your post brought to my mind the second part of The Story of My Birth. i have named it Askewed Childhood. here it is...seems it will resonate with much of what you have written about my not being socializing etc.

Askewed Childhood

With the passage of time, Harbhajan, the baby with the peculiar black spot on his left forearm, the same as that of the Lasan Wallah Sant, grew up into a very healthy boy. Bubbling with abundance of energy he surpassed his peers in almost all games. Particularly fond of wrestling, he would often request his friends to wrestle two with him at a time.

But one could also see an unmistakable ring of melancholy around him. A part of him always seemed to be lost into something - perhaps into his own self.

The followers of the late saint, who thought of him as their new messiah, often came to see him. They would bow their heads before him, rub their foreheads on the black spot and weep over it in the memory of their departed guru. Harbhajan would look at all this in amazement and scarcely hidden joy: amazement, for he did not understand it all, joy, for it gave him an ego-inflating sense of being somebody special.

Slowly, the persona of the saint began to get the better of Harbhajan’s bubbling, playful, natural self. Seeing that his mother and other neighborhood women were at their most amazed and happy when they saw the followers of the late saint bowing before him and thus putting the persona of a saint on him, he slowly began to playact the role of a saint on his own.

He had by now known that the so-called religious people - and the saints to him were just the most religious of them - often sat with their eyes shut, “doing meditation” as his mother had told him, and often read religious books. He had also seen, mostly from the pictures of the so-called holy men, that their eyes had peculiar half-asleep looks even while they were apparently fully awake. As he had come to know from his mother it was because they were absorbed in the remembrance of God.

He did not understand anything of it. But he began to imitate those holy men whenever and in whatever way he could. He would take a religious book from his mother's trunk, put it on some small wooden bench or 'chowki', sit behind it and feign reading it. He would see from the corners of his eyes the overly pleased looks of his mother and others around while he would be doing so. Sometimes he would just sit with his eyes shut like those holy men. He made sure that his mother would find him sitting like this though apparently he sat at some secluded place in the house. He would try to give his eyes that half-asleep look he had seen on the face of those holy men even in his routine living.

He would do all this at the cost of his time for games and other childhood pranks. Slowly his natural inclination for such things began to diminish. Proportionately, his friends and playmates began to shun him. That began the ring of melancholy around him, which only increased with time. More so because simultaneously he began to think what being a saint really meant, and whether he really had something special in him. The sadness of the part of him which must have been missing the games and other natural childhood pranks further exaggerated the situation.

Meanwhile, he went to schools - first to the primary school and then to the high school. As in games, he surpassed his friends and peers in studies too, though often he just did not seem to care much about it. He got high marks with least apparent effort, high enough to deter his teachers to disturb him. But they knew and sometimes even said so that he could stand first in the region if he was a little more serious towards his studies. But he seemed to be interested only to the extent that his teachers would not be able to scold him, or complain to his father.

Interestingly, the persona of the saint took the better of him in another way in schools as well. He just did not know how but a reputation had developed around him in schools that whatever he will say will come to pass. To his amazement a couple of times such things had actually happened even in his full knowledge. And to cap it all, one day even the coach of the Volley Ball team of his school asked him to bless the team for victory. Not sure of what to say or do, Harbhajan had just smiled and shied away.

As time passed, his natural self got buried deeper and deeper into his psyche, just as that unmistakable ring of melancholy got darker and darker around him.

******

now jasjit you pl tell me what i am supposed to learn from this story, from everything connected with this story, from even why i write it here, in terms of my acceptance of my yin. which as i can understand from much of what is written here and there we yangs often deny. i want to embrace my faminity in full as well.

in fact, what the figure of shiva represents for me is this same union if yin and yang. i feel my body wrapped around me like 0 and i in full consciousness ensuing forth from and even with it it as 1. it is my depiction of full union of yin and yang. i do not see any parbati separate from me in this because i feel and even know that beyond the third phase of ego this two thing becomes one in the way i have depicted. of course, my body then expands to infinity in reality as it is further connected to the whole universe just as my i or 1 expands to infinity but then there is no differentiation.

perhaps in it are hidden advance intimations of the state of a coming bodhisattva person in the not so far future? perhaps he will be the reality of my dreams...

Dear Harb

I have hinted earlier to where the block lay especially when I compared it to J Krishnamurti's life. Let me be a little more specific. Roots of the karma come seeded in specific instances primarily as mum(yin) and Dad(yang) for understand that here we refer to them(yin/Yang) as the negative/positive poles (in the energy spcific matrix)only as that which facilitate the flow called life. Your mum yearned/prayed/obsessed to Lasan saint for a child(son obviously) and her desire became both your blessing and the baggage. This root must be understood CRITICALLy as the pattern you have to break/transcend. Because of her desire the child was trapped, she eulogized that trapping further, he played along to please her, inside a rage built up against what she had damned him to. Your Yin is suppressed under that rage(which I'm not sure you acknowledge towards her fully because largely we feel guilty). A conscious understanding/acceptance of all you anger towards her will free that child from her influence(even though it was karmic)and the residue of the melancholia will disappear. Only then will pure compassion and love flow towards her (and threfore your own Yin) and you will also feel fully connected to your family. The Yin will flow unabated, your left side will relax and all pain will disappear. There is some residual anger towards the saint too from that age and that is why I suggested visiting his place and ending all and recieving all is inimical to the next phase. the lightness that you will feel will flow from the heart and you will KNOW all is well. That is why amidst our discussions you had the 'surti uthadi mehsoos hoee'experience-windows into what lies ahead.

In terms of who you 'percieve' yourself in the inner state I will say there is a gap in the conscious awareness of Truth and the long journey of becoming it as pure awareness. This subtle refining needs attention and perseverance. So often our ability to soar at the level of consciousness, falsely feels like having arrived there too. Yes at the Yang level but as I have said earlier the heart my friend, is the last frontier. J krishnamurti stayed Yang(even after the non-duality experience there is a subtle stage of Yang) and a certain despair(almost nihilistic) echoed in his words right to the end. They were mental words not ones which sent the heart into ecstasy. The melancholy was evident in his eyes too. The great wonder is to rest and function from the core of the Anahata and that is the realm of the Bodhisattva. Before that much is incomplete if one wants to reach the highest point referred to in Zen as Spirit Peak. Many fall by the wayside Harb (even though they have transcended to great heights but only the subtlest eye can tell the difference)it is for that reason that Spirit Peak is also called Few House Mountain.

Just received your book. Thanx. have already begun reading.
Ananda Anandam

jasjit, thank you sooo much for all the energy you had to spend for me to answer my post. you know much. interesting that the book should arrive just when you have writen your post, for, it may contain my answers to some of your observations. not that those will be different, only the same perhaps in some other words.

harb

jasjit, it will be ok for me if i am at least ahead of sugar tasters though behind a bit of spirit peakers lol. though in my scheme of things all are on the line so really it does not make much difference.