I was introduced to Richard Bach through Jonathan Livingstone Seagull gifted by my father on the day I graduated from the National Defence Academy. The book helped ease my guilt on my non-conformal, iconoclastic and at times rebellious behaviour in the hallowed precincts of the premium defence establishment and probably set the tenor for the rest of my life.
I stayed with Richard Bach as I grew up – paid heed to the Messiah, was introduced to Leslie Parish and even wrote letters for the child-me like Richard in Running from Safety. However, the most important fallout of Richard’s dialectics was my quest for a soul mate – the single, all embracing, all compatible woman on earth with whom I would be sharing the rest of my life. And I was lucky – our love blossomed in letters espousing and exploring the postulations of Bach. Oh it was romantic! We agreed to marriage based on those letters before we actually met each other. It was – we believed – the conjugation of mind and soul with the benign figure of a smiling Richard Bach in the background.
We settled to a beautiful married life – shared our work, thoughts and philosophy; kind of grew up together. But as we grew, I started getting these wee little doubts – is this all? I mean, mankind has survived and evolved by its inbuilt desire to push the envelope, resist the status quo and desire more. Is there only one soul mate? How are soul mates decided? Who decides? How come soul mates are from opposite gender only? At this phase of my life, the real-life Richard separated from Leslie Parish and kind of destroyed the Illusion ………
Our growth – my soul mate’s and mine – was not limited to starry eyed romance. We postulated theories on almost everything – and wondered at the obvious inequality and unfairness of the world. Our earlier attempts at answering the questions of inequality was rooted in a rational world – people are privileged because they have worked harder and are more gifted. Any sane person can tell that this was absolutely humbug – how could two equally gifted and equally hardworking people get the same breaks in life if one was born a poor villager and the other the son of a rich industrialist?
Born and bred in the Orient, the belief in reincarnation and indestructibility of the soul has always been a half serious part of life. The more we thought, the more this rather irrational philosophy appealed to our intellect. If one were to accept the irrational belief that the soul is indestructible, that it chooses to be reincarnated for a specific purpose – the whole world starts to appear rational and everything can be explained.
Brian Weiss came into my life during a long sailing to Korea. I remember getting goose pimples reading him. It was almost eerie that someone across the globe was experimenting and collecting rational proof on the hypothesis of indestructibility of souls and reincarnation. Weiss reinforced our beliefs but threw up a host of questions on the earlier premise of a single, compatible, opposite gender soul mate! Not that I had come to love my wife any less but there had been a series of friendships post marriage with various people wherein I felt that special bond which defied logic. With this newfound reinforcement to my philosophy, I could surmise that these people were probably traveling with me through the eons in different forms, different relationship.
And then I went for a short training course where I met her. The bonding, the chemistry, the friendship was so strong that I was forced to admit that she was also a soul mate. Two soul mates ? Hello – isn’t that concept flawed? But my feelings defied conventional wisdom – she was definitely a soul mate.
I had been a fan of Paulo Coelho for a long long time. And Brida came along just at the time when I was grappling with this inner turmoil. The question which lingers in my mind is – am I using these authors and their works to justify my deeds and feelings or to understand my deeds and feelings?
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