Loving a Criminal

As Swamiji says, our thoughts are like bubbles; millions of bubbles that pop up confuse me, tire me but often gives me a  pleasure in sense gratification and sometimes it feels as if I am just a slave to my mind like some Ratatouille grabbing my hair and controlling me totally, and it cooks a mess to which I have no control over. It’s like my mind is having the steering wheel of my life’s truck and like everyone, I too have some load. I feel helplessly drawn to this swing of many phases ranging between a laughing, happy kid to a dejected lover, then to a criminal, then to a spy and building up scenarios go hand in hand, things add in, I think even more rather overthink more and ultimately my mind tells me that I am a brilliant student or some Einstein in a lab with colorful solutions. Add magic to it, it becomes potions. I become evil, I become good and I don’t know why. 

Am I out of my mind or that everybody is caught up in this web? Is this ‘samsara’ everyone is talking about and the control over the mind is also a part of spiritual progress? Well, I’ll ponder about it later.

Today too, like any given day, my mind decided to walk away from my academics, brought scenes flashing to me and my restless intellect helped it to connect dots which eventually gave rise to a realization or an emotion which would be the topic of my unnecessary pondering again. What happened is that last night, I watched a video of Sadhguruji, where he tells that when a person dies, the soul is guided by tendencies as there is no physical intelligence to guide it. These tendencies can be of happiness, fear, bliss etc. The point is, the tendencies of the soul would multiply several bounds leaving it to feel immense pain or immense happiness or something else depending individually. While letting out this information, he chose not to tell certain things as the public viewers can have wild imagination given to misinterpretation, so this is what I understood from his video.

I watched this video yesterday, at the age of 23 and it’s the time when I understood what I have been hearing since childhood- Everyone is alike. The ‘innocent’ and the ‘culprit’ or the ‘criminal’ is what the society decides to call them as, are the same too. Take for example, a human kills a human. Both of them suffer in great pain. One’s soul will be there in utmost unease and pain due to sudden death and pending karma to burn, this soul will be driven by tendency for a long period of time to burn up the karma that could have been burnt in just a few years while in a physical body. The killer on the other hand, credits something really horrible to his karmic account. Both become the recievers of sadness and pain simultaneously and hence, it makes me understand what collective karma is and why Swamiji focuses so much on kindness and love and also its importance in the bigger picture.

I am sorry for this statement as I may have presented a very narrow view of Swamiji. It’s like I know him and I don’t know him at all. Swmaiji himself is like a vast ocean and as far as I am concerned and what my mind permits, I can only speak about my own understanding.

Coming back to the array of my thoughts, I remembered an Instagram post that I came across with just a few months back. I liked it and it got lost below the huge collection of every minute posts that Instagram offers to overwhelm the users with newness every time you refresh. It was about a remote African Tribe (I don’t remember the tribe’s name) where whenever a person commits some crime like theft or burglary, the villagers of that tribe would surround the culprit, and one by one, they would tell him about his good deeds. How he or she helped once, made someone smile, good memories or words of motivation, the villagers would give positivity to the criminal and this would affect the person positively, they would be filled by love and would often never repeat those actions, not out of fear, but out of gratefulness.

Now, I don’t know the authenticity of that post, but this was a post that is stuck in my mind clearly. Isn’t such a system wonderful? A bit more kindness and a bit more love can bring about a wonderful change to this world and the world beyond this too. But again, another voice says, “This is just a little excuse for criminals.” In yet another YouTube video, a man who had served his sentence in a jail says, “The court sentenced us for a few years, the society sentenced us for a lifesentence.” Him walking out of the jail didn’t make his term get over but some extension of the guilt is present even outside the jail. Does anyone deserve to live a life where guilt constantly eats up the soul? Does any person deserve so much of public contempt that he is never given a chance to live life fully again? Isn’t the way of those tribals worth giving a try? Now, it’s up to you how you would take it.

I say it again, these are my thoughts that connected dots and I am given to folly. I do have a critical eye and a harsh analysis and I am very well aware of the fact that I am no one to talk about such a profound topic without a bit of knowledge of what the beautiful gurus offer to us and give to us. I humbly seek for forgiveness as my mind is limited and theirs is infinite.

Pranaam to his holy feel.🙏

Source, YouTube:

1. How Soul Enters New Body? (Channel- Sadhguru)

2. Former Offenders Talk About Their Lives in Prison. (Channel- Our Grandfather Story)