This is going to be one of the toughest blogs for me to write. Last week, I had a divine experience. It was beyond normal sensory perceptions, beyond words, beyond dreams, beyond imagination, beyond conventional logic of the left-brain and feelings of the right-brain. It is a challenge to frame such experience within the boundaries of the words, give it a name, paint it with any brush or any color, visualize it with any vivid lines, or remember it with any smells.
In any case, let me try to write.
I must have been on this trail at least 30-40 times this summer in Pinckney Recreation Area in South-East Michigan as a part of my 2021 Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hike training. This has been my own 7-8 hours of personal time in nature. I do not connect to the cell phone or carry a watch. I do not take any photos. I do not even listen to the music. In all these repeated hikes, it has been my body, my soul, and my mind in tune with nature. There is no interference from the world, no disturbance of modern life. It is pure, everyday bliss!
I just let my mind wander off in whatever thoughts that come to my mind. It could be mundane, crazy, or weird current affairs in the world, kids, ripe avocado from grocery store, boring story that I wrote few weeks ago, schoolmates, my father’s death from few years ago, stupid jokes on social media, COVID-19 and everything else under the sun. Of course, the mind travels very fast from one random topic to another in rapid succession, and “I” helplessly can only watch this flashy movie as a weird, third person.
But invariably, every five minutes my mind comes back to the magic show of the nature around me. Thick forest with many shades of green still provides the canvas on which wildflowers with equally magical names bloom. Flashy yellow Black-Eyed Susan tries to coexist with delicate, white Daisy Fleabane. Suddenly, a bunch of bright and purple Rosy Strife flowers or quick squirrels rushing off on forest beds covered with dry leaves startle me to my senses. Dry, brownish spread of pine needles on the dusty trail creates a dark impression on my mind. That rare, mild breeze is only felt as a rustling at the top of the trees. Occasionally, a drop of sweat rolling on the tip of my nose reminds me of my clothes drenched in sweat. Gnats keep circling in front of my eyeballs. Buzzing of mosquitoes near my ears reminds me of an out-of-tune singer from the first round of “American Idol”. With rhythmic tapping of my trekking poles, I keep feeling like a baby in my mother’s womb.
In the last three months of this summer, however, forest has quietly changed. Hectic chaos of springtime regeneration is now slowing down. Bright plumage of birds is turning dull. I rarely see the yellow lightning flash of American Goldfinch or yellow warblers now in July. Shrill Blue Jays do not pierce the silence of the forest. I still eagerly look forward to those wooden bridges overlooking the lakes. But the water lilies floating on the lakes have slowly disappeared, along with the memories of similar looking lotuses found in India, my country of birth.
This was what living, breathing, pulsating trail felt like for me on this Friday as well. My usual walk continued until I reached my favorite wooden bridge of the Crooked Lake after about two hours. I took a deep breath, inhaled that open air on the lake, rested my hands on the railings and let my body loosen up. But it was a different day. The Great Blue Heron was standing still at its regular spot in the lake. Water had absolutely no ripples. For once, Tufted Titmouse were not singing their usual “Peter, Peter” call on top of their voices. There was absolutely no breeze whatsoever. My deep breathing was my only constant companion. And suddenly I felt it.
I felt that quiet emptiness. Complete lack of any senses. A zero, a void space, a total absence of thoughts. A space between the left and the right brain. My eyes were wide open. But that tapestry of the lake and its surroundings was non-existent. Everything was very quiet. This must have lasted only for a couple of minutes. But that feeling of emptiness was overwhelming. Tears were rolling on my bearded cheeks. But I sensed neither sorrow nor happiness. I had no idea what it was!
And then I felt confused. I even felt slightly embarrassed with my tears. I was overwhelmed. The whole incidence probably felt like a total BS. But this experience of nothing was real. Did I have a moment of low blood pressure? Well, I was very alert through this time. Was I fatigued? Certainly not, as I walked comfortably for five more hours after crossing the bridge. Was I dehydrated? I drank like a camel just half an hour before arriving at the lake. This was certainly a different experience. I came home, said nothing to Anjali (my wife) and remained confused and perplexed. It was a restless sleep on Friday night.
And then …. the world conspired to help me to understand my experience of emptiness.
First, on Saturday morning, I saw a social media forward from my friend. He sent a story from the recent memoir of Sanford (Sandy) Greenburg, college roommate of Art Garfunkel. These roommates made a vow that they will help each other in need, and unfortunately, within four months of taking a vow, Sandy suddenly became blind. The story was about how Garfunkel lifted Sandy “out of the grave”. Sandy later became a very successful businessman. The memoir said that the “darkness” felt by Garfunkel through his closest roommate’s blindness is the poignant opening line of the famous song “Sound of Silence”. And in the next few minutes, I was hearing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” for the first time in my life.
I had never heard of this iconic, one of the most famous American songs. I must be a culturally starved moron. In India, I had never heard of even one English song before going to college. In fact, I barely passed my English exam in tenth grade. I knew my mother tongue Marathi well. But I was still catching up with my pathetic English in college by barely reading Children’s books by Enid Blyton. And then for next 35 years, I was pursuing education in science, raising family, making a living, and chasing a stupid corporate career.
But today, I was lucky. I did not know the melancholy of the song, did not know the so-called message of extreme capitalism and consumerism. The song for me was about the sound of silence, about people’s inability to communicate experiences of extreme experiences – emptiness of nature beyond beauty that became my universe for those fleeting couple of minutes. In the middle of chaotic planet earth, I had found the ultimate experience, the emptiness, through the Sound of Silence.
Then in the afternoon, in a weekly discourse on Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita (in old Sanskrit language) and on one of its finest interpretations, Dnyaneshwari (in Marathi language), Datta was explaining Chapter 11, in which Lord Krishna visually demonstrates the entire universe to his warrior disciple Arjuna on the battleground to inspire him to fight the war with evil relatives and friends. Arjuna could not comprehend the complex universe. That universe had billions of galaxies, infinite oceans and unlimited space filled with silence. It was beyond Arjuna’s imagination, beyond recognition of his senses.
तेंव्हा मनासी मनपण न स्फुरे! बुद्धी आपणपें न सांवरे! इंद्रियांचे रश्मी माघारे! हृदयवरी भरले!!११:१९१!! (Arjun’s mind could not operate, his intellect became unbalanced, and senses withdrew (11:191) )
Scared Arjuna then told Lord Krishna to bring back that tangible, simple, easy-to-understand imagery of the universe that he (Arjuna) could relate to. While Datta was explaining this drama, it suddenly dawned upon me. In those two minutes on the lake, was I experiencing the intangible “feel” of the not-so-easy-to-understand aspect of nature? Did I slip into the emptiness of silence from my day-to-day tangible experiences of dazzling forest with hundreds of green shades, chirping Wood Peewees, yellow Meadow Parsnip flowers, and dry leaves on the forest floor? Who knows?
I was not so sure. Principles, philosophies, and scriptures of any religion continue to raise the conventional alarm of a skeptic in me. My ego of scientific and academic training still interferes with my surrender to such thoughts. Millions of Hindus learn Gita. Do they experience such extraordinary emptiness, even for a few seconds? I was not convinced. I was still not sure about what happened to me on the lake.
So, I guess, the world was also not done with helping me out. That Saturday evening, I received an internet link from my friend Mandar to a 90-minute interview of Mahesh Elkunchwar, Marathi playwright and writer from central India. Elkunchwar talked about many topics, such as the origin of the words as explained in ancient Indian thought processes, four layers of expressions, and various types of experiences. He explained that one should go beyond all knowledge, myriad books, and multitudes of religions, and start living the life. Most of the time, in such living, we only recognize our senses through the outer layers of expressions. But one may reach that elusive inner most layer of experience beyond expression through sustained, sensitive living. Then one can “feel” the enormous ocean of silence beyond human knowledge. It has no color or shape. It is live, it is smart. Surrendering to such silence is the ultimate truth.
Holy cow! Is that what I went through in those two minutes? Did nature touch my inner-most layer of expression? Does this kind of weird epiphany happen to others? From three completely independent incidences, I guess, it may have been. Will anybody understand such coincidences? Well, Anjali, my wife and soulmate, understood. A couple of my close friends understood.
The world did conspire to help me to understand my experience of emptiness. Not sure how far it succeeded.
Friends, I am not a creative fellow like Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel. I am not a nature philosopher like Henry David Thoreau. I am not a spiritual guru or swami or evangelist or a rabbi, or a priest. What the heck, I do not even have a defined faith as of now. But I love nature. I have a complete faith in nature, I believe in nature and I can be one with nature. When Anjali asked me about why I want to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in one go by myself, I had told her that I want to “submit” to the nature and natural forces on a sustained basis. Is this a glimpse of what to expect on AT?
Is there any other thru hiker, who felt what I felt in those repeated, sustained hikes in Michigan?
Nitin (Dadhi) Anturkar, August 4, 2020
(I would like to thank Ghonge and Parameshwaran for their help in identifying birds, Datta for amazing weekly discourses, and Mandar for sending me Mahesh Elkunchwar interview in Marathi language)
