DISCLAIMER: There was no spell check feature on the blog on this PC for SOME reason,, therefore, it will be spellchecked later. Yes, I make mistakes, as most people do, which is why we have spell checkers in the first place, there are probably lots of typos too, if your going to be squeemish about it, then wait until this disclaimer disapears.....
-Thank you for your cooperation.
I find it quite hillarious that a great number of people come to India on some sort of spirtual journey, seeking guidence from one Guru or Yogi, or what have you. Travel guides, travelers, and websites alike warn that there are "fake guru" who take advantage of their students. It seems that wives, wallets, and assholes are all fair game, and the student believes that he has to give these things up in order to fullfil his spiritual journey or whatever.
When one comes to India one's senses are assaulted with millions of sights, sounds, and other things that one has never experienced in ones life. For example, one might be taking a stroll down the streets of Calcutta or Bombay, and see people urinating or deficating in the street in full view of the public. On the railroad tracks at trainstations are large piles of human feces from countless wretched people who did not have the common courtesy to wait until the train was out of the station before they used the toilet, which is actually just a hole in the bottom of the train.
If you have any illusions about Sadu, let me clear them up right now. They are the empitome of a hashhead. The biggest concern in any community of Sadu is to find out how many chillums they can stuff and smoke before they pass out. Now, I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but, many travelers seem to think that all Sadu are magicians, when in fact, very few of them are. Simply dressing in scintelating rags, and carry the trident of Shiva, does not make one a magician anymore then donning the garb of a warrior and carrying a sword makes one a warrior. Having said that, I like and respect most of the Sadu that I have met, though I have yet to meet a magician or any Sadu with any kind of power what so ever. Most of them seem barely able to move from point a to point b, and I often give them bannanas or other forms of sustainance.
People come to this place and seclude themselves in asharms and meditation camps away from all of the bone crushing poverty and putrid squallor that is spread all over this subcontinent like a 3,000 year old sauce of garbage, refuse, swill, and other putrid concontions that one can only begin to imagine. In these places, away from the real culture and condition of this vast dump, they go on their spiritual journey's of enlightenment, and come out talking about how great and spritual this place is, when they could have easily found a comptent guide at home to build up their self esteem, if they needed that. But, whatever, to each his own, I just find it quite amusing.
I've heard several descriptions of India. All of them start with a state of shock at the quality of life, or lack thereof, and how they thought they were in hell, and how they secluded themselves in their guesthouses for days and just watched the dance of the dead unfold around them. Then, it continues into how they discovered some spiritual vibe, and how when the people cheat them, they have the audacity to tell them to calm down, and how amazing it is, and how there is something else. In my opinion, be it ever so humble, that a bunch of horse shit.
The people know how to talk, they know how to cheat, because they've been practicing it for so long. You are just another white wallet comming through, and the grifters are just trying to see how many ruppies they can get from you before you depart the land that God forgot. I see nothing spirtiual in that, unless you've never been conned before, and don't know the feeling, in which case, its great training so that you know to keep your wits about you in the future. Of course, the game is cat and mouse, and there will always be new cons, new angles, and new things to look out for, so one cannot trust anyone or anything that one did not bring with oneself, and even then some people lose themselves here, so you should observe those you are traveling with, yourself included, very carefully.
The "something else" that is so deep and spiritual and profound that nobody can seem to put their finger on, seems to be the fact that human beings can survive like this. They can swim in and drink from the Ganges river, where dead bodies of cows, goats, and human beings float past, and your likely to find a few bodies in the streets as well among the refuse and piles of feces. It is a miracle that so many people are able to live in these kinds of conditions, and its frightening that the "free world" is not all that disimilar from this place. A good war would put any "developed country" right into the same situation that these people find themselves in, and we can only thank our lucky stars that we were born where we were.
Day to day, minute to minute, it is a constant test of self control, awareness, and strength. One is always being challenged, one is always being tested, and evaluated. Of course, there are worse and more violent places, but, this place is unlike any other that I have ever been. One must not give up even one milimeter of ground. If someone gets sideways with you, then you have to find a way to frighten him enough to stand down. Using physical violence is not something that I would advise, but, indirect intimidation can work wonders here. The right glare, the right stance, or the right tone of voice, any of these can let the person your dealing with know that you were not put here to eat his shit, and that he should piss off immediately.
Last night, when securing accomodation, I had some street bum chasing me with business cards and trying to jump into my taxi and take me to a hotel, after I got rid of him, and the taxi driver, I tried to check in, when this bum, the taxi driver, and another bum came in all claiming to be the person who introduced me to this hotel when I knew about it already from the guidebook! I let the manager know that, and he explained that they still had to pay these bums off to leave them alone, and that cost is ultimately passed on to me the customer. So, then these bums are all fighting over the 25 ruppie (50 cent) comission, and trying to get me to take sides. After making it clear that I didnt' want to be part of any reindeer games, I got to my room. Then, after I had checked out, one of the staff got sideways and snatched soemthing out of my hand while I was writing on it.
Then, the manager was telling me to calm down. I made it very clear, that I was only staying in this hotel because all teh others were booked, and I did NOT pay 650 ruppies (a high price for a hotel in India) to eat some bitch boy's shit. After threatening to take the matter up with the owner, the boy was forced to appologize. I only wanted to scare the boy. I wouldn't really have taken his job from him, he might have to sleep in the streets like so many others here, and even though I did not show any sympathy or sensitvity towards him, I would not want to put him in that position. But, the character of these people is despicable. As soon as I go to the bathroom, the boys come and try to make problems with my gf, or if I am sleeping on teh train, they sit really close to her, after I have the seats change, amazingly enough, there is a foot of space between him and the next Indian man.
Their tactics are simple, childish, dispicable, and some of the most grotesque acts of self abasement I've ever seen in my life. They all say the same things, "Different quality, different price." "How much you pay?" "If I cheat you, you never see me again, why I cheat you?" The same bullshit gambits that a 2 year old child would be capable of performing if only he could speak.
On the flipside, these poor bastards are being raped by a system where the rich are extremely rich, and that is by western standards, not by Indian, and the poor are litterally sleeping in rats and human shit. They are very accepting and accomodating people, but, their ruling class has squeezed them almost to death, and its horrible what the ruling class has done to these people, and the poor bastards are trying to survive anyway that they can, and they often piss others off who cannot understand their condition. Its very sad and very disturbing. One cannot empathize too much, or one will be drowned in a sea of empathy and become uneffective. One must realize the suffering is happening, but, that it is not happening to them.
I try to give to the people who really need it, the ones who can't even walk properly, because their bodies are dying on them, the ones who are sleeping in the streets with cars racing past. I've tossed coins out of taxis to them, because they weren't bothering anyone, and just trying to eek out an existance. A cynic would say I do it to make myself feel better, and that is part of it, of course. However, I do it primarily because it does help. I do not have the power or the money to fix all of the problems in a world that I cannot even comprehend, but, I can do a little bit to try to ease the suffering of someone, and that is all that I can do. Its funny, because I thought that I had problems, and I am in the top 10% of the world even in my own financial problems.
It seems that size defeats our minds everytime, it is all about scale. I've never seen things on the scale that I am seeing them here, and it just sideswipes you. However, a lot of people blame the suffering of these people on the West, and on white people. This is also horse shit. In all of these countries is a powerful and rich ruling class who litteraly shit on their own people, much the same as in the west, but, in the west we will only accept a certain amount of shit before we will not stand for it. Here, the bullshit tollerance of these people is pushed to the limit, hence the many wars, insurgencies, rebel groups and terrorist groups. The problems here are the same as the problems everywhere else in the world, the only difference is the scale in which they occur, and the ways in which they are dealt with.
I find it funny that everyone has a finger to point at someone else. Much like Tony Montana in Scar Face, when he gave his drunken speach at the resturant. He says that we need people like him so that we can point our fucking fingers and say, "Thats the bad guy." What does that make us, good? He goes on to say, that we are not good, we just know how to hide, and he doesn't have that problem. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could say that the US was in control of everything, and that all the problems of the world came from them, or from Imperial European Powers, or the Jews, or the Communist Party, or the Aliens. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just point our fingers at anyone other than ourselves. When one is real with one's self, one does not have to look far to find the source of one's suffering. Of course, the actions of others do play a great role in this, and perhaps seclusion is an escape from it all, which is why they all run to the ashrams, or to the temples.
The more I see, the more convinced I become that I would rather grow a thick beard, get weird, and disapear into the mountains. I see nothing but a bunch of clowns down here, and so it has become obvious to me that I should continue training in the arts of survival and combat. That I should take up skills, that I should learn certain services that would get money from the rich, and that I should learn to become a self sustaining entity with as little reliance as possible on the economic, social, and political system which has not accomplished what it was supposed to do. The excuse for the prevailance of this system is all the wonderful toys that it creates. As Terrence McKenna said, this is rather like a medicine show, where if the juggler is good, the medicine must be even better. This is not a rational position to proceed upon.
I don't have the answers for all, but, as my life goes by one minute at a time, it seems that self reliance and independence of the system should be a goal. One has to achieve this independence in such a way that one does not break any of the systems rules, or one will find one's self in a place that is even worse than the system itself, they have various places for those who do not fit in, and I'm not only talking about prisons and mental hospitals, there are things far worse than that.
So far, the biggest thing that I've learned in my few days here is that I need more training. I need training that will allow me to surive with as little reliance on the established system as possible, and where I can extract money from the system to exchange for the goods and services that I would not be skilled enough to create. These skills must be skills that can be utilized anywhere on the planet, so that I can move freely on it, as the political situations allow. This may sound like a no brainer, but, most people's attempts to achieve this involving working for a boss, and being completely at their mercy, and spending their money on more shit that they don't need which further increases their dependence on the system. Their tax monies are then used to create more problems, and to contribute to the broken corportate culture and mismanagement of funds that continues to plauge humanity.
In some instances, these tax monies are used to commit crimes against humanity that must surely corrupt time itself with their sadistic wickedness. Of course, I am focusing on the negative, but, one must focus on the negative in some instances, or one will lose ones effectiveness. One cannot know light without darkness, and only by understanding the nature of both can one be a serious player in the cosmic dance. Financial independence on some scale is necessary to free one's self to do things that actually matter.
Chasing money and buying useless shit accomplishes nothing. I'm sure many have seen the T Shirt "He who dies with the most toys wins." This seems to be the battle cry of capitalists. I've always maintained that he who dies with the most toys still dies, and I see no logic in this collection of junk and taking it with you to the afterlife that was started in ancient Egypt. Look at where THOSE people are now, and what kind of life they live. It is my [un]secret opinion that unless we return to the wisdom of Thomas Paine, that we will share the fate of the other great capitalist empires. I am not speaking only of the US, I am speaking of the world, of all people.
What actually matters, and what is real is as many things as there are people, and even more than that. Each person decides for themselves, and each person decides their own level of involvement, whether they chose conciously, or it is chosen for them does not matter. Agreement is not a requisite of acceptance. Comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation. If you don't have a plan, then your part of someone else's.
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