There are only two kinds of people in the world – mystics and mistakes. If you are seeing life just the way it is, you are a mystic in the world’s eyes. If there are big errors in your perception, you are a mistake considering yourself to be normal.

This may sound insensitive, but if you genuinely want to know, the sooner you do away with all the nonsense in you, the better it is.

If your perception is changing at different times of your life, clearly what you did yesterday or how you saw life yesterday was a mistake. What you are doing now seems to be the right thing to you, but this can change anytime. What you do today may seem like a mistake tomorrow, and what you do tomorrow will might seem to be the right thing. So, there is a mistake in the way we perceive life. When this gets corrected, people think you are a mystic because you are beginning to perceive life in a way that you cannot fit in logic; it is way beyond logic. Logic is just a small part of your life – you can never fit life into it. You can fit logic into your life but never life into logic.

If your experience of life transcends the limitations of sense perception, you are known as a mystic. You experience life in a way that others do not know; you make things happen in a way that they cannot understand, so they call you a mystic – they are admitting that they are mistakes.

There is nothing wrong in being a mistake, but not realising the mistake is the biggest mistake. When you were in the womb, you had eyes, but could not see. You had ears, but probably could not hear – else you would know how it was inside.

At birth, your sense organs naturally opened up for survival. For anything that is beyond survival to open up, it needs striving. As a baby, if you were left all alone in a forest and if something edible arrived in front of you, would you stuff it into your ears? No, you would know where to put it. But would you know how to read, write, to speak a language? That takes some striving. Today, language comes easily to you because of striving.

What is beyond survival does not open up for you unless you strive. All religions and spiritual traditions started off as just this striving. Over time, however, transmitting it through generations things get ritualised and the context is somehow lost. Every religion started off as human striving to know, to experience, to create well-being. If you think you are absolutely right on everything, you become fanatical. If you know that you are a mistake, then you are a potential mystic.

When the survival process is constantly getting more complicated, there is not much room for many to strive to know the truth, to know the basic nature of our own existence. In the last century, in our excitement over achievers who accomplished things that were not possible earlier, we have gone berserk.

Technology is not only about gadgetry but about arranging our lives in a way that the survival process is handled effortlessly and there is time and space to explore other aspects and dimensions – which would not be possible if we were fully occupied with survival. Now for the most part, survival is so organized.

Therefore, invest time and resources to build infrastructure for deeper exploration of yourself. That is where ultimate well-being is, and ultimate liberation.

Power-packed nine days...

The beginning is always associated with feminine energy. While time is considered male, space is always regarded as being feminine and the whole universe is a combination of both time and space. You came into the world with the mother as your creator. The Navratri or nine holy nights in Hindu tradition - that began this year on March 16 - signifies new beginnings. The season is one that celebrates the New Year variously as Gudi Padwa, Ugadi and Navroz, soon after the Moon enters the first part of Aries.

Mahakaal or time is always male energy, but since space is feminine, the beginning of time is viewed as something that celebrates the latter. The nine days of Navratri are marked as days special to the Divine Mother.

Significance of nine

The universe is made of multiples of three - 3, 6 and 9. It takes three forces to make the universe stable. Every atom has neutron, electron and proton - three things to make it stable. We have three stages of consciousness - waking, sleeping and dreaming. Rajas, tamas and satva are three qualities of Prakriti or nature. Multiple of the numeral three is nine, and therefore the first three days of Navratri are devoted to tamas, the next three days are reserved for rajas and the last three days are set aside for satva. The celebration begins with tamas.

The unborn baby remains in the mother's womb for nine months and nine days. The baby is secure and comfortable inside, and does not have to do anything. Everything is taken care of. The birth of the baby and the coming of the spirit create vibrancy, energy and enthusiasm. Similarly, the nine days of Navratri reveal the importance of the inward journey which is essential for outward expression. You sow the seed deep into the soil and then it sprouts and grows to become a tree. In the same way, the nine days of Navratri present an opportunity for all to go within and then emerge, ready to create. That is why on the tenth day of Sharad Navratri before winter sets in, we celebrate Vijaya Dashmi as a day of victory and new beginnings.

Three devis, four navratris

The first three days are tamo guna pradhan, then the next three are rajjo guna pradhan and the last three days are satva guna pradhan. That is, the first three days are devoted to Kali, the destroyer of the existing system; the next three days are devoted to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and last three days are devoted to Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge that springs from both destruction and creation.

There are actually four sets of Navratris coinciding with the four seasons, as the whole of Creation goes through a kind of transformation with each changing season. Of the four Navratris, two are more important. The current one, known as Chaitra Navratri, marks the change from winter to spring, and the Sharad Navratri that occurs usually in October, marks the shift from autumn to spring. In the south, Sharad Navratri is considered to have greater significance as seasonal variations are not as marked as they are in the north - the south experiences a prolonged warm season and so the current Chaitra Navratri is not prominently observed there. Navratri is not only a time of fasting and prayer, it is also a time to exhibit cultural excellence. So every household in South India displays statues and figures of deities and sacred objects - these are normally arranged neatly on a stand with odd-numbered step-shelves. Sprouted lentil-based snacks and other dishes are served to visitors and this is a time to meet friends and relatives.

Sowing the seed

All festivals begin with beejaropan, the sowing of seeds. This is an ancient practice. In all our festivals, we have always been concerned with the environment and have revered water and seeds. We have a tradition of planting nine different seeds during Navratri. It also shows the importance of planting multi crops so that agriculture is sustainable, as opposed to mono-crop or single crop cultivation. Earlier, there was a tradition among farmers to sow multi crops, so that if one crop failed, there would be other crops they could rely on. Also multi crops will not deplete the nutrients in soil unlike single crop plantations.

The river of life (Getty Images)

I don’t know if on your walks you have noticed a long, narrow pool beside the river. Some fishermen must have dug it, and it is not connected with the river. The river is flowing steadily, deep and wide, but the pool is heavy with scum because it is not connected with the life of the river, and there are no fish in it. It is a stagnant pool, and the deep river, full of life and vitality, flows swiftly along.

Now, don’t you think human beings are like that? They dig a little pool for themselves away from the swift current of life, and in that little pool they stagnate, die; and this stagnation, this decay we call existence. That is, we all want a state of permanency; we want certain desires to last forever, we want pleasures to have no end. We dig a little hole and barricade ourselves in it with our families, with our ambitions, our cultures, our fears, our gods, our various forms of worship, and there we die, letting life go by – that life which is impermanent, constantly changing, which is so swift, which has such enormous depths, such extraordinary vitality and beauty.

Have you not noticed that if you sit quietly on the bank of the river you hear its song – the lapping of the water, the sound of the current going by? There is always a sense of movement, an extraordinary movement towards the wider and the deeper. In the little pool, there is no movement at all; its water is stagnant ... This is what most of us want: little stagnant pools of existence away from life. We say that our pool existence is right, and we have invented a philosophy to justify it; we have developed social, political, economic, and religious theories in support of it, and we don’t want to be disturbed because what we are after is a sense of permanency.

To seek permanency means wanting that which is pleasurable to continue indefinitely, and wanting that which is not pleasurable to end as quickly as possible. We want the name that we bear to be known and to continue through family, through property. We want a sense of permanency in our relationships, in our activities, which means that we are seeking a lasting, continuous life in the stagnant pool; we don’t want any real changes there, so we have built a society which guarantees us the permanency of property, of name, of fame...

Life is like the river: endlessly moving on, ever seeking, exploring, pushing, overflowing its banks, penetrating every crevice with its water. But the mind won’t allow that to happen to itself. The mind sees that it's dangerous, risky to live in a state of impermanency, insecurity, so it builds a wall around itself ...

Religion is the feeling of goodness, that love which is like the river, living, moving everlastingly. In that state ... there is no longer any search at all, and this ending of search is the beginning of something totally different. The search for God, for truth, the feeling of being completely good – not the cultivation of goodness, of humility, but the seeking out of something beyond the inventions and tricks of the mind, which means having a feeling for that something, living in it, being it – that is true religion. But you can do that only when you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life.

Excerpt from JK’s Think on These Things.

(Talk: Jiddu Krishnamurti)

In English we have only one word for time, but the ancient Greeks used two distinct words for this concept: ‘chronos’ and ‘kairos’. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, time as before and after, the latter signifies a time in-between, or a moment of undetermined period of time in which something special happens.

We understand chronos as quantitative; a deliberate march from one thing to the next. Time in this sense is dimensional, measurable; it can be ‘‘accounted for’’. Kairos, less driven – though it may be purposeful in its own way – is significant rather than dimensional, and so it is qualitative. In chronos-time you might ask: ‘‘What time is it?’’ but in kairos-time you ask: ‘‘What is time for?’’

Chronos, the time of clock and calendar, is associated with words like early, late, on time, right away. So it is no surprise that Chronos was portrayed as a minor god, gaunt and ravenous, wild-eyed with hunger.

While measurement is one of the distinguishing characteristics of chronos, a key reason that kairos-time cannot be measured is because it is always a ‘now’. How can one measure ‘now’, or count the ‘nows’ in a lifetime or even a day? Kairos is time as a gift, time we often do not recognise while we are experiencing it, but only afterwards.

Kairos was therefore portrayed as the god of the fleeting moment. Such a precious moment must be grasped when it presents itself – and so the representation of this ‘god’ had a tuft of hair on the forehead for one to do just this, otherwise the moment is gone and cannot be grasped, and this is shown graphically by the back of head being bald!

In the imagery of archery, kairos refers to an imaginary narrow aperture through which the archer’s arrow must pass. In the art of weaving it relates to the ‘critical time’, when the weaver must draw the yarn through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp. So one might understand kairos to refer to a brief instant when an opening appears which must be availed of.

In certain religious circles, kairos is considered “God’s time”, involving a period of challenge, of disruption, where old rules, methods, traditions, habits, ways of thinking and doing business do not seem to work any more. In such cases, a chronos attitude would immediately suggest we ‘do more’ or ‘work harder’. A kairos approach, on the other hand, requires from us an attuning to mystery, to resonance, to inspiration; it involves a period of reflection, of surrender or letting go.

It is not that we need to choose one over the other, but that we need to become aware of and address the imbalance in our lives, where these days, we are more and more driven to favour Chronos. Purely chronos-time activities usually leave us exhausted, and kairos-time pursuits can bring in happiness and peace.

Madeline L’Engle, who wrote that childhood favorite A Wrinkle In Time, tells us that the saint in contemplation, lost to self in the mind of God is in kairos, as is the artist at work or the child at play, “totally thrown outside herself in the game ... ” In kairos we become what we are called to be as human beings – co-creating with God, touching on the wonder of creation.

While Chronos admittedly offers the promise of satisfaction after accomplishment, and we do need that in our lives, Kairos fulfils us when we do what we love, what is meaningful – and we need that even more.

The premium is on winning. Whatever you do, you have to win, whether it is learning to sing, dance or just play. We live in fearof losing. We ear it so much that often, we hear this being said to someone: “You’re such a loser!”

So what happens when you “lose”? Besides the fact that winning and losing are relative terms, it is really not so bad to lose once in a while. Sometimes, by losing, you could gain more, particularly when you live in a society where you are in constant touch with other people and are exposed to various situations. It is the one who loses, so to say, who actually keeps rolling. This is not to glorify losing, but to turn the focus to a balanced development rather than glorify the obsession to win always. 

Shiva and Parvati were playing dice. Each time Shiva rolled the dice, Parvati’s supporters squealed with joy while Shiva’s companions cried in anguish. Parvati won and Shiva lost. Once Shiva lost even the last piece of cloth he wore, to Parvati. “Why do you always lose?” asked the supporters of Shiva. They had implicit faith in his supremacy. Then how come he lost each time?

Shiva lost to win. It takes some reflection for this to sink in. In the beginning, all was one, the undifferentiated, motionless One. When it separated into two, the Purusha and the Prakriti, there was Creation, there was activity. According to mythology, Narada, the celestial bard came to the Ardhanareeswara – the androgynous two-in-one form of Shiva and Parvati -- and said he would teach an interesting game that would end the inertia and add spice to their life. 

He taught them the game of dice. When Shiva plays with Parvati it is the play of Purusha with Prakriti, inactivity with activity. The wager was a hug. If Shiva won, he would embrace Parvati. Beautiful as that sounds, people were worried because once again then Shiva would envelop Parvati in himself and return to the motionless inactive state of Ardhanareeswara. This would mean all activity would come to a standstill; it would be the end of the world. So it was crucial for Parvati to win, and for Shiva to lose so that activity continues without a break. In Parvati’s victory, the pursuit of pleasure would continue...Shiva would play another game and yet another to win and embrace. But in losing the game, he won the game of life, he preserved Creation. And Parvati would win again and so the cycle continues. 

Shiva’s followers however could only feel humiliation at defeat. They cried and entreated Shiva to work harder while Parvati’s entourage laughed. But the game continues, of winning and losing -- of Creation, Destruction, ad infinitum.

To keep activity going, to maintain harmony and balance, we have to experience both, winning and losing. This way, the cosmic play ensures that the cycle goes on. At a mundane level, the seesaw effect creates opportunities for all. When success and failure are experiences in turn, it helps us cultivate several perspectives, to lose gracefully as well as embrace achievements with deep humility. 

This is the secret of happy togetherness. In the androgynous form, too, there was togetherness, but of a static kind. There seemed no purpose, no outcome. When they split to become two distinct entities, they could let their creations flourish. And yet they stayed together enjoying the game they played. That is togetherness; where ‘otherness’ enhances the togetherness.

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