Thanksgiving - Vishnu's unseen hand

In the USA, “giving thanks” goes back to when the European pilgrims arrived in what was a wild and untamed land. They created the celebration at Harvest season, symbol of abundance, to express gratefulness for surviving through the first harsh winter that decimated many of them.

I feel very grateful for my parents, for my ancestors, and for those pilgrims who gave us the example of overcoming their fears to make new lives in unchartered territories. It resonates in a special way as Kamala and I pursue our Journey. I feel deeply grateful for the elements that so generously allow us to thrive on earth. And I am grateful for being given this precious, beautiful and rich experience of human life.

Our species has this unique ability to live life consciously and reflect on it; to have a conscious, spiritual experience of our existence. The flipside is that this same mind that provides our ability to reflect also traps us in our ego, to the detriment of our emotional and transcendental experience of life. This craving ego tends to develop the mundane and materialistic aspects of life as though they should occupy the center stage of our entire time here.

But to live life at its full capacity we can also explore and nourish the sublime and subtle reality of existence. It happens inevitably to all of us, every time we encounter loss, when we put our lives into perspective, whether for a few seconds or entire years. We reassess the importance and meaning of our lives, and feel more appreciative of the blessings we are granted. We also often have a better sense of our emotional being.

Landing and railing I fell over

For the past few days I’ve been thinking along these lines, while staying at Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakkal (http://www.aryavaidyasala.com/), a 100 year old Ayurvedic institution in Kerala, for a one month treatment mainly focused on my back.

On Saturday November 22nd 2008, 7:04 am could have very well been the last minute of my life.

View from the railing to the floor below

As I was waiting with fellow students for yoga class on the 7th floor, at 7:05 I made a 15 foot backward free fall from the low railing I was leaning against, and landed on the marble staircase one story below. Passing out before falling, I fell like a bag, soft and flexible, and survived without bone breakage, brain or vertebral damage whatsoever.

Panoramic of fall trajectory

With some 25 stitches on my head, a couple on my right elbow and a minuscule hairpin fracture and stitches on my left knee -not to mention three very small bruises for my entire body- no one here understands how I survived with so little injury, let alone having avoided paralysis and death. In India, where the presence of the divine accompanies every step of life, people naturally understand the Mystery and name it; but we have all been surprised at how unmistakably it manifested itself in this case.

Heading out in the ambulance

Would there be a parallel between the abandonment of my unconscious body, dropping uncontrolled on the marble steps 5 yards below, coming out practically unharmed, and the power of Surrender? Would surrendering generally be a safer course of action than our typical control-driven behaviors? In this tangible example, is there any doubt that I would have been broken in several pieces had I reacted consciously to the plunge, stiffening myself in an instinctive though totally irrelevant attempt to control the fall?

How do these same principles affect our beliefs and behaviors, our ability to attain our goals and realize our dreams? Could we apply this notion of Surrender to areas of our life where doubts and fears may be driving our agitated and anxious need to control? Would just setting the course and pursuing the required actions, while at the same time faithfully abandoning ourselves be more effective to produce results?

What unknown and unexpected dynamics would unfold, should I adopt such a trusting attitude as the one my body took, deprived of any intervention of the conscious mind and willful ego? What is the bottom-line productivity of effort, compared to that of the path of least resistance? So many questions are arising, as though the doors to an ignored and hidden world of elemental wisdom and knowledge had opened; from this one, concrete experience: that my body could have snapped into pieces and barely got bruised.

Wheeled across the hospital grounds, moved to CIT scan

After getting dressed for yoga practice I headed up the two flights of stairs to our early morning class, finding other people waiting on the landing in front of the classroom. Other mornings I would wait standing but that day I felt I needed to sit down. The few chairs were occupied and when I contemplated the 2 ½ foot high railing, a discreet inner voice clearly said “don’t do that”. But my mind ignored it. Listening to that soft voice of my intuition is something I can still work on… As I leaned my rear on the railing, I said to myself “I need to take a good, deep breath”, which I did. Just before passing out.

Kamala was in our room on the 5th floor and heard a big crash, thinking it was demolition work that had been going on for a few days on our floor. She looked into the hallway; someone else was poking their head out to see if it was on the 5th floor, but not seeing or hearing anything, both went back to their occupations. Minutes later Katharina, a German friend, came to get her.

We spent the day and night at the nearby Almas hospital, going from ER to X-Ray, to CIT brain and vertebral column scan, from there back to ER for stitching, to MRI neck scan, before heading to a room four hours after arriving, finally drinking a couple of the best cups of hot chai I’ve had in my life!

Finally in a room and on a bed, my first cup of chai!
~~~~
Since then I've been slowly recovering, sitting in bed with a straightened left leg and a good dose of upper back and neck pain. Though my very good physical condition has played a role in my body's response to the fall, I feel I have been intimately touched by the grace of the divine. In my other accidents, that each could have been far worse than they were, I felt grateful with a renewed appetite for living. This time I have felt as held in the hands of life’s own mystery, with the realization of how life as such can be amazingly preserved.

People believe in protections, from ancestors, from talismans, from good deeds, prayers or rituals; above these rests a universal force enabling for life to be sustained. We often see the catastrophes rather than the protecting hand behind the daily survival of so many.

In the Hindu pantheon, the trinity is represented by Brahman -the creator, Vishnu -the preserver and Shiva -the destructor/regenerator. How the universal power of preservation, symbolized by Vishnu, is able to maintain healthy human life in circumstances like mine is part of the great Mystery. When I extrapolate this situation to the world at large, I realize how life is actually able to be sustained on earth in so many ways despite many opportunities for it to cease.

Seventi Sebastian, ER nurse, Kamala and room nurses

I was surrounded by staff from the Kottakkal Ayurvedic center; two of the massage therapists, JayKrishnanan and PramodKumar, as well as one of the senior managers, Ravi, accompanied every step of the emergency process, making sure everything was tended to, helping to move my body from one stretcher to another or just staying by our side to assist in every possible way. This friendly, warm support meant a great deal to Kamala and I and they were providing it so naturally, spontaneously, efficiently, without hyper-sensitivity, pity, pretense or agitation.

Kamala monitoring move, Dr RajanPrashant

After spending the night and next morning in observation, I was released. We were both relieved to get back to Arya Vaidya Sala and our room, that Kamala had customized the day after we arrived with the various lightweight cotton cloths we had purchased since January for exactly this purpose. She had hung and laid on different surfaces the colorful checkered sarongs from Thailand, sheer dotti from Chennai and Rajpur, “rickshaw driver” towels from Varanasi, small block print sheets from the Khadi shop in Mylapore and a sheer handloom sari from Haridwar that we flung over the mosquito net frame above our beds, making it look and feel like a canopy.

On our return many of the patients we had briefly met in the 5 days prior to the accident checked in on me and have since been coming to visit us regularly. We now have made friends with Germans, Austrians and a number of Indians who live here in India, in the UK, Canada or the US. As the clientele is mainly middle-upper class, we have the opportunity to get acquainted with educated, English speaking Indians of similar social classes to ours, conversely to most of the Indians we’ve made friends with while travelling: chai or ironing shop owners, waiters, tailors or rickshaw drivers.



It has also been very comforting to feel the presence and care of the staff. Even P.K. Warrier himself, chief physician and managing trustee since 1954, and nephew of the founder, has come to visit a couple of times. Though my main treatment has been interrupted to allow time for initial recovery, today I received my first hot herbal oil application to reduce upper- back and neck pain.

30 hours after the fall, waiting to get back "home"

In my last blog I wrote: “…Perhaps is it time for a deeper journey… one that confronts us with our deeper selves, with our desires and our fears….a time to integrate our philosophical and spiritual learning, by putting equanimity, perspective, insight and clarity into practice. On the spot….” ...watch out what you write for!

At some point during our journey, I had also thought of possibly shaving my head , perhaps after some meaningful spiritual experience should it present itself…
Little did I know it would come to me in this form... On the spot!

I decided to cut my curly locks two days ago and Kamala proceeded to give me a new look. It’s more aesthetic than a shaved top slowly growing back with longer hair in the back and on the sides! As she proceeded, I realized it was purifying me, cleansing me of some past, perhaps out-moded identities, reactualizing my relationship to my Self.

As this experience has been coming to my awareness through deep and silent emotions, it tells me this is beyond the mental constructs we humans tend to create to surround ourselves with representations and meaning. It has been a direct and tangible insight into the potential one on one union with the divine that we will experience the day we die. I feel reborn, with a renewed perspective on the amazing possibilities of life.

To be alive and healthy after this and to experience this direct relationship with the Mystery is the blessing of my very, very special Thanksgiving 2008.
Grateful, alive and unbroken


I feel grateful for the people I love, for my wonderful family and for my amazing partner, Kamala.

I am grateful for the life that has not only been given to me but has been preserved right here in front of my eyes, an ultimate lesson of living.

As I sit on my bed, recovering and in relative pain, I feel a fresh sense of being bubble up through my senses and my mind. I feel like making this life as beautiful and meaningful as it can be.

And the recipe may be to simply surrender to it, as my body-Teacher taught me a few days ago.
Wishing you a true Thanks Giving,