Exploring the Mind Without Getting Lost

I am terrified of writing what might be called obscene. I fear ending up like those who were punished or imprisoned for crossing lines they perhaps did not fully understand at the time.

Yet there is a strange irony here: the only way to truly fulfill oneself is to be completely oneself — especially in those long, honest stretches of writing where the mind pours out without censorship. That is the frightening part. You are trying to be yourself, and that very attempt feels like a test.

Freewriting, however, is not the same as indulging in obscenity. It requires a certain aloofness — a witnessing stance. Freewriting is similar to meditation. In meditation, when the mind wanders, you gently return to the breath. In writing, when thoughts drift into chaos or excess, you return to awareness. Without that return, one risks losing balance. People sometimes speak of the “dangers” of meditation — that the mind can become overwhelmed — but that does not mean one should avoid meditation. It is a necessity of human existence.

The energy within us has to be explored and traced back to its source. If we do not turn inward and understand this energy, our human birth feels incomplete. We keep running, searching for something outside, never finding rest — just as the Buddha told Angulimala, who ran endlessly until he finally stopped and turned inward.

In freewriting, unpleasant or dark thoughts can arise from the subconscious. The key is to be careful not to identify with them or get attached. The process should be like meditation — you observe what comes up and let it pass. If someone clings to the material or takes it as truth, freewriting can become destabilizing, just as meditation done incorrectly can lead to psychological difficulty. The tool itself is not the problem. The responsibility lies with the individual to stay aware, grounded, and detached while using it consciously.

So the path is not suppression, nor reckless indulgence, but awareness. To create, to write, to meditate — all require returning again and again to a center. That return is what keeps freedom from turning into chaos, and expression from turning into self-destruction.

Story: Replacement Value (continued)

 

The first night he wrote past midnight, no one noticed.

That surprised him.

In his imagination, rebellion always came with dramatic music — slammed doors, confrontations, declarations. Instead, the house slept. The ceiling fan turned with its tired, faithful rhythm. A dog barked somewhere far away, then gave up.

Raghav felt like a man who had quietly stepped out of a queue he had been standing in for twenty years.

No announcement. No resistance. Just… one step sideways.

---

The next morning his mother called.

“Did you book the blood test?”

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“You always say that.”

He almost said, I am not your unfinished project.
But he didn’t. Not because he was afraid — because he was tired of the script.

“Hmm,” he replied instead.

Something new had entered him: he no longer needed her to understand him for him to exist.

That was strangely freeing.

---

Later that day, his wife told him, “I paid the insurance premium.”

“Okay,” he said.

A pause.

He realized he wasn’t angry. Just aware. Like noticing furniture had been rearranged long ago and you’d only now registered it.

She looked at him, slightly puzzled. “You don’t want to see the receipt?”

“No, it’s fine.”

Another pause. Something passed between them — not distance, not closeness. Recognition that a silent contract had expired.

---

That evening, Raghav went for a walk.

He didn’t usually notice the neighborhood. It had always been background — like elevator music in the story of his responsibilities.

But now he saw:

A boy trying to teach a smaller one how to ride a cycle, running behind, holding the seat, letting go secretly.

An old man watering plants with exaggerated care, as if the leaves might bruise.

A woman arguing loudly on the phone, then suddenly laughing.

Everyone inside their own urgent, private universe.

No one scanning for Raghav.

No one evaluating his posture, his choices, his unwritten thoughts.

The relief was almost physical.

---

That night he wrote about his father.

Not the idealized version from rituals. The real one. The impatience. The quiet pride. The way he used to cough before entering a room, as if announcing his presence to the air itself.

He wrote:

We think we are pillars in each other’s lives. But we are more like passing weather. Intense, influential, then absorbed into memory’s climate.

He stopped typing and stared at the sentence.

It didn’t make him sad.

It made him gentle.

If everyone was temporary weather, maybe the point wasn’t permanence. Maybe it was how you felt when the rain was falling.

---

Days passed.

He still helped when asked. Paid bills. Attended family functions. Nodded at conversations.

Externally, nothing revolutionary happened.

Internally, a quiet revolution continued.

He had stopped negotiating with imaginary judges.

He noticed he spoke less, but when he did, it was simpler. No hidden sales pitch. No need to prove reasonableness.

Once, at a gathering, his sister made a remark about his “lack of planning.”

He smiled.

She waited for defense.

None came.

The comment fell like a stone into a well with no echo.

For the first time, he saw confusion on her face.

He had stepped out of the game without informing the other players.

---

One afternoon, his wife stood at his study door.

“You’ve been writing a lot,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What about?”

He considered lying. Minimizing. Translating.

Then he said, “About how I actually feel.”

She didn’t ask more. She nodded slowly, as if filing this under “things to understand later.”

That was enough.

Understanding didn’t have to be immediate to be real.

---

Weeks later, Raghav realized something subtle.

He no longer wanted to shock anyone. Or confess dramatically. Or escape.

He just wanted alignment.

To not smile when he felt hollow.
To not agree when he disagreed.
To not shrink his inner world to fit others’ comfort.

Not rebellion.

Congruence.

---

One night, as he closed his laptop, he felt a quiet certainty.

People would forget him one day. Yes.

But they had also never fully known him.

And now, finally, at least one person did.

Him.

The house was silent. The fan turned. Somewhere, a pressure cooker whistled in a distant kitchen.

Life moving.

He switched off the light and walked to bed, not as a central figure, not as a forgotten one.

Just as a man who had stopped abandoning himself.

And for the first time in years, that felt like enough.

Story: Replacement Value

Raghav had the strange feeling that if he vanished on Tuesday, by next Tuesday the house would still run on schedule.

Milk would boil over at 6:40 a.m.
The pressure cooker would whistle.
The neighbor’s scooter would cough to life.
His chair at the dining table would not even look empty — just pushed in.

This thought didn’t arrive as sadness. It arrived like accounting.

He was sitting at his desk, staring at a blank document he had opened three hours ago. The cursor blinked patiently, as if it had nowhere else to be.

He had been afraid of that blinking line once. Afraid of what might come out if he stopped filtering himself. Afraid his mother would somehow sense it from another city. Afraid his wife would read it and see a stranger. Afraid words could be crimes.

Now he laughed quietly.

Nobody was watching.
Nobody ever had.

---

His mother still called every morning.

“Did you take the tablets?”
“Don’t skip the tests.”
“You never listen.”

Then, during family gatherings, she would say, “He never thinks ahead,” in the same tone she used for bad weather. His sister would add little footnotes to the story of his incompetence. Everyone nodded. Case closed.

Raghav used to try defending himself. Then explaining. Then joking. Now he simply drank his tea and watched the performance like theatre he had seen too many times.

Care, he had realized, did not automatically come with respect.

---

His wife was not cruel. That almost made it harder.

She informed him of decisions. School fees. Repairs. Travel plans.

Not consulted. Informed.

He had once left a promising position in Mumbai when she was pregnant. It had felt obvious at the time. Necessary. Human. Later he turned down out-of-town assignments. Stability mattered, he told himself.

No one had asked him to.

No one had thanked him either.

The house was efficient. Functional. Like a well-run office where he had become an outdated department.

---

The cursor kept blinking.

A wild thought entered his head: What if I just write the truth? The ugliest, strangest, most unapproved parts?

He imagined scandal. Judgment. Moral outrage.

Then he imagined something else: silence.

People were busy surviving their own stories. No one had the time to police his inner life.

The fear that had followed him since childhood — that invisible committee of relatives, teachers, neighbors — dissolved like mist under sunlight.

He was unsupervised.

---

That realization did not make him reckless. It made him calm.

If nobody was really keeping score, he could stop performing.

He typed a sentence. Then another. Honest ones. Not impressive. Not noble. Just real.

He wrote about resentment without disguising it as virtue. About love that felt like duty. About duty that turned into invisibility. About how people move on, not because they are cruel, but because life is a conveyor belt that never stops.

He wrote about his father, who had once been the gravitational center of the house. Now a photograph, occasionally dusted.

Replacement value, Raghav thought. Everything has it.

Except maybe moments of truth while you’re still breathing.

---

From the kitchen came the sound of vessels clinking. His wife was talking on the phone, laughing. Life proceeding, efficiently.

For the first time, the sound did not sting.

They would move on one day. That was not betrayal. That was biology.

But today, at this desk, in this chair, he was finally not moving around himself.

The cursor blinked again.

He kept writing.

Not to matter forever.

Just to exist honestly now.

....(Contd.)

---

The Forlorn Wind: Navigating the Subconscious Desert

 

The Setting: Julian is sitting in a café, staring at a crumpled piece of paper Elias just handed him. The text is jagged, filled with dark imagery of "pitiable psychiatric donuts" and "liquid fire." Julian looks up, visibly unsettled.

Julian: Elias... this is dark. I mean, "the land of the forlorn soul," "obscene desires," "useless shit"? If I didn't know you, I’d be calling for a welfare check. This sounds like someone at the absolute end of their rope. Are you okay?

Elias: (Calmly sipping tea) I’m actually doing great. Yoga was good this morning, and the house is quiet.

Julian: (Genuinely confused) Then where did this come from? It reads like a scream from a basement. You talk about being "meant to be put to sleep." It’s terrifying.

Elias: It’s freewriting, Julian. It’s what happens when I let the pen move without the "conscious me" standing over it like a guard. Most people see unpleasantness like this and immediately try to sweep it under the carpet. They ignore it, they distract themselves, or they medicate it away. I used to do that, too. I couldn't even look at the darkness.

Julian: But why look at it if you're feeling fine? Why dig this up?

Elias: Because it’s already there. We all grew up subject to the whims and emotional disturbances of our elders. As children, we had no voice, no power. We swallowed their anger, their sadness, their inconsistencies. That energy doesn't just vanish; it goes into the subconscious and stays there, unhealed, because we were never allowed to let it out.

Julian: So this paper... this isn't how you feel now?

Elias: It’s a historical record. It’s the "liquid fire" that emanates when the soul finally breathes after being stifled for decades. My guru taught me that you can’t fight these emotions. If you fight them, you give them strength. You have to acknowledge them, embrace them, and let them flow through you.

Julian: But it’s so visceral. "A desert of paltry desires." It feels like you're judging yourself.

Elias: That’s the point of the questioning technique. When that "pitiable" voice comes out, I don't run from it. I look at it and ask, "Is this me, or is this just an old echo?" By witnessing it without judgment—the way my guru embraced everyone who came to them—the darkness loses its grip. It subsides.

Julian: I think most people are afraid that if they look at that "shitty faced" part of themselves, they’ll get stuck there.

Elias: You only get stuck if you resist. When I let it flow onto the paper, it leaves my body. I can feel the pain of others—bereavement, loss, disease—because I’m no longer using all my energy to keep my own basement door locked. I’ve accepted whatever is coming because I’ve finally stopped being afraid of what’s already inside.

Julian: (Looking back at the paper with less fear) So the "precarious existence" isn't a threat. It’s just... the truth.

Elias: Exactly. The wind only howls if you build a wall for it to hit. If you’re open, it’s just air moving.

Julian: But why is the wind so loud for everyone else? Everyone seems so... overdrawn.

Elias: Because they’re searching for the "quiet" in all the wrong places. They think peace is something you find outside—in food, work, movies, or travel. But as masters like Thich Nhat Hanh or Sadhguru teach, you can’t run away from life. Wherever you go, your mind follows you.

Julian: So the mind is the problem?

Elias: No, the mind is a tool—perhaps the most powerful organ we have. But it’s an organ our education system completely ignores. We are taught to absorb information like sponges, but never taught how to manage the restless energy of the mind itself. Living each moment consciously is the only way to channel that energy. Without that consciousness, the mind is a wild power that can wreck a human life.

Julian: So the freewriting is your way of practicing that management?

Elias: Exactly. It’s taking the "liquid fire" and giving it a conscious channel. It’s moving from being a victim of the mind to being its caretaker.

---

The Conclusion: Embracing the Inventory

The dialogue between Elias and Julian reveals a hidden truth about the modern psyche: most of us are walking archives of unexpressed history. We spend our lives polishing the "conscious" self—the one that meditates, works, and loves—while the "forlorn soul" remains locked in the basement, speaking a language of liquid fire and angst.

By allowing that raw, unedited voice to flow onto the page without judgment, we aren't descending into madness; we are performing an act of radical hygiene. We are clearing the "subconscious storage" that was filled during the powerless years of childhood.

When we stop fighting the darkness and start witnessing it, the "precarious existence" transforms. It is no longer a threat to be feared, but a landscape to be explored. As we learn to embrace our own "useless shit" with the same unreserved compassion shown by the great masters, we find that the howling wind of the past finally runs out of breath. We are left not with bitterness, but with a profound, grounded quiet—and a heart finally open enough to hold the pain of the world.

---

The Hell Breaker: Emanations from the Cosmic Database

This session is a barrier-breaker. It is a shattering of every stereotype regarding sex, writing, and the illusion of the "self."

I am writing right now without knowing the literal meaning. Perhaps I don't need to. "The It" knows—and that is enough. What is "The It"? It is the collective storehouse of all human knowledge. A cosmic database containing every memory of the past, the future, and the eternal present continuous.

Gentle reader, do not ask for the logic behind these disjointed phrases. These are the grunts, growls, and screams of a subconscious that isn't entirely mine. It is a localized port into the collective consciousness.

The Geography of the Soul We exist as individual beings, yet we are fundamentally interconnected. Think of the Earth: it is a single, unified entity, yet it expresses itself through distinct landmasses, continents, and islands.

It is the same water everywhere, yet we have the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and the Dead Sea. Each has its own individual, special characteristics. Each is distinct.

The Necessity of the Chasm Humans are physically separate, and we feel that mental separation deeply. But there is a reason for this "hell" of isolation: without separation, neither conflict nor communication would be possible. We need the distance to create the spark. The seers and the mystics are right—there is a continuous stratum of connection between all beings, just as all land on Earth is one foundation. But we live on the islands so that we can learn how to reach for one another.

Finding the Bridge

If you are reading this and feeling isolated, remember: your "island" is an illusion of the surface. You may feel like a separate sea—perhaps you feel as salty and heavy as the Dead Sea, or as turbulent as the Red Sea—but you are made of the same water as the rest of us.

Your loneliness is not a vacuum; it is the space where communication begins. It is the chasm that makes the bridge necessary. We are all separate landmasses, but we share the same stone heart deep beneath the waves.

The "It" knows you. You are part of the database. You are never truly disconnected.

---

• 
  Which "Sea" are you today? Are you feeling the calm of the open ocean, the intensity of the Red Sea, or the stillness of the Dead Sea?

• How do you bridge the gap? When you feel isolated, what is the one thing—a word, a touch, a piece of art—that reminds you that you are connected to the whole?

Leave a comment below and let’s bridge the chasm together. Let the grunts and growls of your own subconscious be heard.

Almost

I first noticed her near the office café.

Our office complex was large enough to feel unreal—too many buildings, too many corridors, too many people moving in purposeful lines. Between the glass towers were artificial ponds, cafés, benches, and trees planted with the confidence of someone who believed in permanence.

Every morning, we entered this place and became smaller versions of ourselves.

She was wearing a midi skirt and a t-shirt. Nothing unusual, but it looked out of place among the tucked-in shirts and lanyards. She seemed comfortable in her own body, as if she had woken up late and decided not to apologize to the world.

She sat far from me.

I did not move.

---

I saw her again weeks later in a shared auto to the metro station.

The auto was overcrowded. Bodies pressed together like misplaced luggage. The air smelled of sweat that had waited all day to be released.

I sat beside her.

There was no space. None of us were touching anyone by choice.

I wanted to stretch my arms but couldn’t. I looked at her, not sure what I was asking.

She nodded.

That was all.

When I raised my arms, our sides touched. Her skin was warm. The contact felt accidental, but it didn’t feel meaningless.

I stared straight ahead.

To my left, a man was scrolling through his phone, his face empty.

The world was continuing.

Something in me was not.

I thought she smiled.

I am still not sure.

---

Over the next year, I saw her three or four times.

Never when I expected.

Near the elevators. At a tea stall. Once, across the road.

Each time, we nodded.

That was the extent of our relationship.

I found her online. I wrote messages. Deleted them. Wrote again. Deleted again.

Eventually, I sent one.

She replied.

Two days later.

Then not again.

When she did reply, her messages were polite, brief, distant—like replies sent from a room I wasn’t allowed to enter.

I constructed versions of her in my head. All of them were wrong.

---

We went for coffee once.

It rained that evening. The café was nearly empty. A fan clicked somewhere overhead.

We talked about work, traffic, cities we had lived in, places we might never go.

She stirred her coffee for a long time without drinking it.

I drank mine too quickly.

Nothing important happened.

Which somehow made it important.

When we left, she said, “Let’s do this again.”

I nodded.

We never did.

---

Eventually, I met someone else.

Not because I stopped thinking about her. But because time is skilled at rearranging things.

This new woman replied to messages. She asked questions. She stayed.

Life became practical.

---

One evening, we were walking out of the metro station when I saw her.

She was standing near the railing, as if she had been placed there for no particular reason.

She saw me.

Then she saw the woman beside me.

She did not move.

She did not smile.

She did not look away.

She simply stood there.

Watching.

For a moment, I thought of walking toward her.

But I could not imagine the conversation.

So I stayed.

The woman beside me asked if I was okay.

I said yes.

When I looked again, she was still there.

Then she wasn’t.

---

That night, I lay awake longer than usual.

I did not feel sad.

I did not feel guilty.

I did not feel nostalgic.

I felt something else—something without a clear shape.

Like hearing music from another room and realizing you will never know the song.

Some things don’t end.

They just stop becoming possible.

---

The Beauty in the Debris

This life rolls on and on, in search of new meaning which ever evolves without staying in one place to be framed and kept static in a cabinet. That is what human beings keep trying to do all the time—pocket something or someone and make it their own, keep it for some future purpose or use or reference, not bothering about whether that person likes it or not.

And so on. The endless locomotive chugs on and on on the railroad tracks that forever reek of the echo of stinky human excreta existence, dried up and sticking to the piles of nails and stones that clamour and clatter around the track, soiled by time and weather. The planets hurtle through the sky and the trains hurtle through the tracks while life hurtles by. We hurtle on in our endless journeys only to be pulled up suddenly at an unknown, unthought-of location, to be reincarnate again in the core belief that we have gone too far in inquisitiveness.

I Am Not Murakami

I just discovered that I am not Murakami, and I never will be.

I am not sad. I am myself. Murakami is Murakami. I don’t need to be him. I am okay being me.

Even if the only thing I could do well was to take a broom and sweep this room clean, that would be worth it—being a human being. I am not trying to pretend to be a philosopher, though sometimes it may feel that way. I am just giving voice to my thoughts. 

My understandings come like a shaft of brilliant light in a dark room. I cannot help but see them as revelations.