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Without giving it much thought, I began to cool myself down by counting to
one hundred in Bengali. I found a quiet place in my home, sat in a natural,
comfortable position with my feet on the floor and my spine straight, and
began to focus on the rhythm of each count. Ac (one) . . . dui (two) . . . tin
(three) . . . char (four) . . . punch (five).
By the time I’d done a few rounds, I had crossed a threshold, though I was
no more aware of the crossing than I am of the moment when sleep comes at
night. Simply by attending to the act of silently counting I had dispelled
superfluous thoughts and entered a meditative state, making a leap from one
level of consciousness to another. After the end of meditation, I was so full of
energy that I felt if I jumped I would probably land on the moon! When the
time came for me to return to work, things had become manageable, for I was
perceiving them from a different perspective, one that was not so close to my
anxious core. Believe me, it took all of my restraint not to run through the
office shouting, “Eureka!”
This ecstatic feeling, of course, wasn’t my discovery, though it will
always feel like a revelation to one experiencing it for the first time. Mystics
throughout the ages have known this feeling, and my Indian forebears
described it colorfully (and fittingly) as “bubbling from the inside.” It is the
great, divine calm that ensues when one has dimmed down the organs of
sensory perception enough to feel reconnected to the ground of being, and it
is remarkably accessible. The software is pre-installed.
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