Pratyaksha Narayan. Surya

A The world has a habit of crushing our dreams. When we are young, the future is a vast and exciting ocean of possibility. We can be anyone and do anything. All of the choices have yet to be made, and the path is yet to be walked. After all, there is no moment so full of hope as the one before the journey begins. 

But then, life happens. The doubters and cynics, the naysayers and bitter, grind us down. A dream is snatched and doused in the acrid sludge of “grow up” or “be realistic”. A dreamer becomes a drone, a child becomes an adult. The future, once an attractive expanse, now looks a dreary cage.

This is one of the many themes in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and it concerns our “Personal Legend”.

We all live by the narratives we construct. This narrative is the voice in our heads, but it’s also the eye that looks in. It’s the judging, appraising critic. For a lot of people, this narrative – these self-imposed labels – are relatively benign. We call ourselves “a cyclist”, “a football fan”, “a fantasy lover”, “a parent” and so on. At other times, this narrative is not so kind. For the depressed or anxious, this voice is one laced with self-loathing and disgust. 

But who we are today, is not who we always will be.

Our “Personal Legend” is the story of our lives yet to be told. It is the sum of all our ambition and hope. It’s the end goal at which we aim. But, somewhere in all the growing up, we sell our dreams for lies. As Coelho writes, “that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie”.

In The Alchemist, we meet a boy who has yet to construct his narrative. He does not yet have an idea of his “personal legend”. In short, the boy does not know what he wants to be.

This is no bad thing. When we stand at the liminal between being and becoming, we are as the gods. In the breathless moments when the coin spins in the air, our world is neither one thing nor another. We are everything, and nothing.

The Alchemist is a reminder to look out at what we *might be*. We can be anything we want to, and the world, with all her sneering and mocking, can’t stop you.

A ''He who is beyond time – is the un-nameable. A glowing ember moved round and round quickly enough appears as a glowing circle. When the movement ceases, the ember remains. Similarly, the ‘I am’ in movement creates the world. The ‘I am’ at peace becomes the Absolute.''

- Nisargadatta Maharaj

A Again and again you people take me back to Sholay. “Mausi, my friend, is wonderful—just that he is the most wretched one around! Mausi, my friend, has all the great qualities—just that he is a drunkard! Mausi drinking is no problem at all—drinking will drop the day he stops going to that whore!”

That’s how we are, right? “No, everything is alright—it’s just that I am living in hell!”

A "Habits," the Master replied, "can be changed in a day. They are nothing but concentration of the mind. You've been concentrating one way: Simply concentrate another way, and you'll completely overcome the habit." This was basically the same advice he had given to his early student, Jotin.

A The medullary center has two rays of energy, described in the Book of Revelation of the Bible as “a sharp two-edged sword” (Rev. 1:16). These twin currents, positive and negative, supply the two hands, the two feet, the two lungs, the dual-branched nervous system, the two eyes, two ears, the two sides of the tongue, and the two hemispheres of the brain. The brain stores the energy entering the body through the medulla oblongata. The energy then enters the spine, passes down it, and flows out into the nervous system. The dual currents in the medulla pass down the spine through the chakras to nourish the body. The energy flows outward through the chakras in various directions: From the bishuddha, or cervical center, it flows out in sixteen rays; from the anahata, the heart, or dorsal, center, it flows out in twelve rays; from the manipura, or navel (the lumbar) center, its rays number ten; from the swadisthana, or sacral center, six; and from the muladhara, or coccyx center, four.

In the initial state, the yogi’s meditative “job” is to withdraw his energy from the physical body into the spinal centers. At this point he sees, through the spiritual eye, his astral body with its subtle chakras. Beholding the astral body, he offers his ego—the central “element” of the astral body—up to its ideational origin of separate individuality in the causal or ideational body. Thence, reaffirming soul-consciousness wholly at last, he offers that separate identity up to Infinity to be dissolved in Cosmic consciousness.

Already at the causal level the soul cognizes all cosmic manifestation as a dream of God’s. To attain yogarudha, firm or complete union with Infinite Spirit, he must waken completely from the cosmic dream and realize himself as the one Self beyond all space, time, size, and any other limiting conditions: behind manifested existence itself.

A Hare Krishna,

Bhagavad-Gita definitely because the concepts of Buddhism are a subset of Bhagavad-Gita

Non violence, detachment from worldly life, Nirvana, equanimity everything is there Bhagavad Gita

But the other side of the coin is also there in Bhagavad-Gita

Attachment for God, Lord Krishna

Violence for protection of sanatana dharma

Pleasure of Bhakti yoga

Spiritual life beyond material life

Buddhism is simply negation of everything

Bhagavad Gita is negation plus affirmative action in service of Lord Krishna

As an eternal transcendental person we cannot be senseless forever

Bhagavad Gita teaches disengagement from material life and positive engagement in spiritual service for Lord Krishna

So definitely Bhagavan Krishna is the ultimate eternal transcendental goal of everything and Bhagavad Gita should be followed

By Bhakti yoga automatically a person becomes disengaged from worldly life

Jai Srila Prabhupada

A Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent

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