Dr. B.R. Aneja

Life in a Hi-Tech Burrow

After having finished his work at the internet,
Mr.  Rejuvebot peeped out through the peep-hole in the door;
Viewed the pall of acidulous smog on the Metropolis
And felt safe within his burrow.
He heaved a measured sigh out of his synthetic lungs
And asked his fleshy-fibred She-robot called Mona Lisa to enliven him.
As desired, she massaged him, swabbed his body with a perfume and
Adjusted his heart beats and the insulin level.
On time, his dinner was spooned out to him in a capsule.
Mr. Rejuvebot had yet to go miles before Mona Lisa would lull him to sleep.
At the flicker of his eye, the screen flashed
And the chip behind his neck tallied the graphs.
Then he did some shopping through the mobile
And had a glimpse of the ancient art.
But when he was having a furtive look at the porn,
Mona Lisa snorted and snuffed it out.
The She-robot knew well that he was too brittle to relish juicy thoughts.
Now Mr. Rejuvebot craved for Nature;
He turned to a flowerpot and caressed the only flower left there.
The pot had proved worth the water it consumed.
The sole flower was sheer poetry, a rare Wordsworthian luxury!
Soon his mobile rang and he found himself in a business conference;
Thereafter, he attended a social gathering of his la-di-da friends.
His day was not yet over, though he was feeling exhausted.
It was important to be well abreast of the latest election results.
However, the trend gave a nasty jerk to his mitral valve.
Mona Lisa’s glassy eyes were already fixed on him.
The She-robot lost no time.
The cell-sized robotic surgeon, Mona Lisa’s distant cousin,
With nanometer needle, was pressed into service.
An SOS was flashed to the nearest Heart Institute in Space,
Stereoscopic surgery through a satellite did a wonderful job.
Waves, rays and antibodies synchronized,
And within minutes, the signal of “Quite Well” beeped.
Mr. Rejuvebot beamed his thanks and
Corners of Mona Lisa’s cheeks curved upwards.
Mr. Rejuvebot checked the age of the fleshy bag he was in:
“Two hundred and ten!”
Then he consulted his biological clock and mused,
“Was he at the bottom of the barrel?”
His telomere gauge still showed “forty years plus” in the balance.
He signalled his jukebox to skylark his evening;
And within the hologrammatic cube, volumetrically appeared
His wife, happy but a bit stiff;
She had left this planet three decades back
To make room for a bit of freshness here.
Mona Lisa was alluring but was doubly removed from reality.
“How loving and how unselfish his wife had been!”
In the ocean of time, she still existed in some other universe.
But Alas! she had left him alone.
It was no use brooding over the meaning of life.
It had always left him melancholic.
But the distance from despondency to cheerfulness was just a switch away.
To snap out of his melancholy,
He flicked a finger at the Mood Box for a waft of cheerfulness.
Anon, the musical fragrance enlivened his face.
“Brain! Heart! Was there anything else except chemicals?
As for the mind, was it anything except software?
A link between soul and the fleshy brain, perhaps.
But whose finger was writing the Script of Life?
Had the spiritual chip been loaded with a programme?”
Mr. Rejuvebot was lost in the dense fog.
His mind again lurched to philosophy.
Why was he afraid of actually what he was?
“If Soul is unborn, then it must be eternal.
Death is nothing except going back to the realm of the First Cause.
Is the Universe a huge Organism evolving from subtle to gross or vice versa?
Nothing can be bigger than the Supreme , nor can anything be smaller.
All dimensions begin and stop with His will.
Or is Creation passing through expansion and contraction in a cyclic order?”
Mr. Rejuvebot tried to grasp the nucleus of the Whole
But appeared to be reaching nowhere.
He visualized the layers of darkness and he visualized the layers of light;
Both appeared to be fleeing from each other
And yet converging at One Point!
“Is my foot, my hand, my nose, my eye, ‘Me’?
If not, then where lies the real Rejuvebot?
Is life only combination of cells sans a kernel?
What’s it that animates and governs the dead matter and how?
Isn’t each atom a thought aware of itself,
A part of the Universal Consciousness?”
Would he ever be able to wriggle himself out of the confusing depths?
Was he searching without what was already within?
The thought electrified the neurons of his brain
But the flash was again intercepted by the white dark.
He had been permitted to get preserved his cells for his replica.
It was safer to depend upon his DNA
Than to depend upon the invisible Soul.
He couldn’t suffer to be reduced to ashes forever.
But wasn’t his DNA itself divine and spiritual?
Even his ashes would be so.
But he must rise from one of his clones; money was no problem.
He must rise like Phoenix…again from …
Mr. Rejuvebot started dozing fitfully.
Mona Lisa whispered “Good Night!” to him and
As programmed, she lulled him to sleep on time.

The Cyberman

With the discovery of the top quark,
By growing organs on the inorganic matter,
And by implanting a chip in the nervous system,
Man seems to be determined to dethrone God
From His seat of awe and mystery.
The Silicon Mind gifted with electronic telepathy
Will be able to peep through the pall of Death;
Communicate with the minds preserved by eternity
And converse with the old buddies.
It will read each mind and unravel each mystery.
All thoughts buried deep or floating in the space
Will be the commonwealth of humanity.
Privacy will be pirated for a passing fancy;
Obscenity will flash nude;
The Chip will receive, read and react;
And it will also fight the proxy wars.
Emotions and experiences will be duplicated;
Virtual tours will be made in the mind.

One person will be at several places at one time.
Landscapes with their aromatic symphony
Will always be within the reach of mental signals.
Like the `rishis’ of the past and imaginary heroes of today,
Man will, in astral form, undertake cosmical journeys
And have celestial revelations as and when desired.
The blind will see, the deaf will hear,
And the dumb will chatter, yet humanity will suffer from
Unheard maladies and tragic events.
Good and evil, cause and effect, sin, suffering and destiny,
Role of the Soul in inflating and deflating the clay,
Will have to be defined afresh.
The dawn of the dangerously flamboyant new world is at hand;
Man is closing in upon the missing link
Between the spiritual and the material world;
But then science and religion will have to pal up
To deflect the impending disaster; praise be to God
For allowing His clay to probe into the mystery of the cosmos.

Et tu, Su! Be Bliss, Adieu!

My invisible communicators
That left their earthly existence unsung,
Finding no Mozart to quench their passion,
Nor a Hyde-Lees to symbolize them in some vision,
Nor any Harris to materialize them from his ectoplasm,
Rap at my humble fancies and goad me
Into venting their muffled sensibilities,
Which they had spun round them,
And couldn’t shed while spiralling up.
I’m no spirit-rapper though, nor a clairvoyant,
Yet my human sympathies yield to their ephemeral urges,
And I let their sticky impressions infuse my mind
For emitting the flavour to their taste.
Thus far, my convexity is lined with their concavity.
My secret messengers pulsating with etheric substance,
But with no guiding beam for eternal peace,
Visit me off and on and leave behind messages,
Personal in context but universal in appeal.
The neophytes that were waylaid by the hounds of fate,
While fondling a roadside flower,
Vex me more than the old entities
That have rinsed out their sea of passion.
Lamp does not flicker in a windless place,
Nor can it shine in a smoky glass.
It’s only the illusioned spirits that keep me shaking and waking,
At times, all through the night for instructional seances.
Now I feel a spine-chilling presence—who? Come up!

Though this rush of rustlings from across the gulf of death
Strains my poor nerves, yet I enjoy this interaction with them
Who are timing their beats to chime
In unison with the Supreme Monad.
Oh! What a taxing joy, what a vicarious suffering
To try to deliver a spirit of its drag and delusion!
Now who is thrilling me through the spine?
Some one in particular seems to be tapping my neurons.
Who is rippling the stream of my consciousness?
Oh, Et tu, Su! Among the host!
Welcome Su! How can I refuse a session with you?
I quite know of your tragic fate; it was all preordained;
Of earthly existence, death is the final taste.
Death never comes dressed in perfumes,
Nor life carries tassles of gold for all,
And your span was designed for a pall of gloom.
Brave soul, you fought long and fought well
Against the King of Terrors.
Kudos for the superb performance of your role!
When you cast off your cloak,
Its rustlings resounded through the globe.
But every wrong is redressed in silence.
As the karmic account has been cleared,
Now is your time for salvation.
You are above the necessity of reincarnation;
Shed all the earthly trappings now and
Peel off the illusory layers around you and be free.

The Fumbling Fairy, all have to leave this world,
And have to leave it alone.
Death admits no love, no oblations.
There’s eternal warmth in your frozen glory.
Once you, with a boundless will,
Submitted to my chaste exhortations
While I charioted you through the meshes of passions.
Now in requital, I hand over to you the strings of my fancies,
Pull at them till you regain your composure.
The Unwetted Lotus, sleep is the little death,
And death is the little sleep.
Both constantly remind us of our incorporeity,
And both are a necessity for revivification;
The enlightened ones naturally attain liberation.
The Divinely Chiselled, what is non-existent can never exist,
And what exists can never cease to be.
Come out of your veil to be the Infinite.
Shake off the trammels of the phenomenal world.
The Immortal One, Soul can’t be regimented by cause and effect;
Look, He who dwells in all dwells in you.
You are not a soul; you are the Soul;
Will your Self across the oceans of Time.
The Unmanifest, you do not exist, you are the Existence.
You are not the manifestation of a law, you are the Law.
The Enlightened One, now as you have cast off your slough,
Shove off to the realm of no return.
Pervade the whole universe, be Bliss! Adieu!

Retrogressive Growth

Will man ever emerge out of his prejudices and absurdities,
His lust , ego, his fears and fallacies?
His unholy crusades against his own brothers,
His beastly battles for power and pelf
Present no rosy prospects despite his hyperbolic ethics.
In El Dorado only the monsters of greed reign;
Should any prophet condescend to a second coming
He will be tormented and crucified again.
Lo! Gandhi is in shreds for his too rich a bequest!

This microcosm with the potential of the whole,
Dreaming to explore the inaccessible, clings to the shadows.
Genetics may grow eyes on the wings of a fly,
And may lend Janus-like head to man,
But can it assure peace and harmony?
Can the silicon mind teach goodwill and grace
To the Homo sapiens against cut-throat competition?
Can science and theology replace
The instinct for grabbing with the simple spirit
Of giving, to end wars, suffering and starvation?
How much wisdom lies in the floating mass of information?
Has man discovered new means just to meet the primeval ends?

However magnificient may look man’s creation,
But it’s infinitely small and absurdly lop-sided
As compared to the mighty and harmonious flow of Nature.
From bone-shakers to satellites, from sun-dial
To split second chiming quartz,
From hieroglyphics to processing reams of data in nanoseconds,
From semaphore to superhighway in the space,
From witchcraft to laser therapy,
From Anubis to eugenics, from anthropoids to
Genetically engineered progeny,

Man has travelled a lot but has travelled with blinkers;
As to the culture of the spirit, he is still aboriginal,
The like of the missing link, bigot up to the hilt.
To which category of civilization the massacre of Auschwitz falls?
Who is to blame for the storms and stresses in the sea of amenities?
“All is relative”, will this excuse suffice?
Is man growing retrogressively and is he reverting to type?
What precepts is he leaving behind for his offspring to emulate?
When will he emancipate his free spirit from
The subjugation of his instincts?
How sublimely unaware he is of the repercussions of
Spoon-feeding and sensual fantasies!
How ignorant the lord of creation is of the essence of things,
Despite his discovery of the top quark!
Spiritual civilization is still a Utopia!

The suffering humanity is anxiously waiting for its deliverer.
When will the earth recuperate?
When will righteousness manifest itself to preserve equilibrium?
When will the deadened human spirit regenerate?
Can’t man resolve to refrain from atomizing his own kind?
Has he become a soulless chip?
When will he learn to curb state crimes?
How long will he go on sterilizing the mother earth?
How long will he go on choking the fountain of life?
Man leaps and falls, but nature evolves.
When will man stop ravaging and bleeding nature?

In the kitchen of the globe all is not burnt to a cinder yet.
This “middleness personified” deserves to be celebrated still
For his half-hearted efforts to sweep up the dead leaves,
For his dim desire to synthesize divergence into a global culture,
For the potentiality of the awakening commonality,
Notwithstanding the rapists of the system,
And sophisticated criminalization of power.

Deflection is the fate of every movement.
This satyr with mongrel instincts, looking into the galaxies
Is groping without for the Light that dwells within.
This enigmatic sphinx, the resilient phoenix,
Condemned forever like Danaus’ offspring
To try to fill his sieve with pure water,
Deserves still a constellation in the spheres above.

None can wash away the consequences of evil deeds.
None can prevent the cause from producing its effect;
But when a sinner turns to God with contrition,
Isn’t there born a new cause for redemption?
The repentant tear wrung from a criminal
Flung the gate of Heaven open for a Peri.
God views a vice and virtue from cosmic angle.
Shadows also contribute to the perfection of the whole;
Let us thank God that thorns have flowers on their stems,
And good still preponderates over evil on this globe.

All is Eternal and Coeval with the Cosmos

Can existence investigate its cause and its purpose?
Can any entity be wiser than itself?
Can the creation ask the Creator,
“Why have Thee created me thus?’’
Can empirical knowledge discover
The essence of things ethereal?
Can a being exist beyond its point of cessation?
How should man solve the mysteries
That his mind can’t even conceive?
Despite all the progress man still seems baffled.
It’s not for aesthetic alone that the mantle of God
Is studded with glittering little stars;
Nor it’s merely to avoid a chance clashing
That the galaxies are kept asunder;
Nor the acnes on the face of the earth
Should fill the emotive flesh with despair.
When a nucleus ejects a fragment for balance,
The deluded eye perceives it as wasteful diffusion.
God is the Omnipotent Quark that disseminates;
Nothing flickers outside Him, nor anything terminates.
Who kindles the seed through the dark recesses?
Why the things that pass through senses, get refracted?
Pain and pleasure, vice and virtue, life and death,
Emit varied shades through prismatic intellect;
What in fact, is the “pre-established harmony”,
Seems interaction between the self and the not-self.

Soul radiates and mirrors the whole universe;
And yet without doors and windows shuts up itself.
God fills each monad to its “cluster”,
And still remains eternally Unmanifest.
All is eternal and coeval with the cosmos;
God is the Light of lights and pervades all.
Oh! What a brilliance that flickers through the fog!
To demystify life, how poor a medium words are!
The Unmanifest is the knowing subject in each being;
There’s none beside Him to comprehend Him.
He sustains and He monitors the whole world;
But none can behold the All-beholder.
He unveils the whole scenario quark by quark;
In Him is interwoven the whole universe.
Can the Whole exist without its constituents?
Isn’t He the fine spectacle that never ends?
He pulsates, fluxes and oscillates;
He bangs and exists in a steady state.
There’s nothing strange or paradoxical,
Through evolution, He fulfils His purpose
To penetrate the finitude of things eternal,
Let us be the flute under His celestial fingers.
Let us through selflessness and devotion,
Ascend to the realm of bliss and salvation.

Man Writes His Own Fate

The defeat of evil lies within evil;
Devil traps him who abuses his free will.
The seed takes its time to grow;
Just wait to reap what you sow.

Why man raises himself to skies
On the borrowed legs of vain pride?
Why his ego he plumes and preens,
Why he views his crimes through a screen?

Yet what pricks him under his crown,
Why his perceptions in wine he drowns?
Who records all his thoughts and sins
And who announces judgement from within?

What makes a tyrant pluck his hair
Which worst of his enemies couldn’t dare?
What compels him to beat his head,
And why does he weep in his bed?

The egoist repents and raves in private,
But in public he wears a different face.
He mocks at all the altruistic moves
And gets stuck in the selfish grooves.

But is it just a few chemicals in the brain
That make one humble and the other vain?
Who dictates the neurons and chooses the genes,
Who makes the atoms react as deemed?

If matter seems to you lifeless mass,
You must revise your physical laws;
Out of the subtle the gross evolves;
All the universe emanates from God.

It’s his own self that man shies to face
When for power and wealth he gets debased.
His self pricks and he fears it more
Than he fears any of his mighty foes.

God sees the truth but waits
For being’s inner self to prevail.
Each man writes his own fate
And is responsible for his state.

The misdeeds of the past pave the way
For miseries of present and the coming day.
Cause and effect are linked to each other;
The deed itself recoils upon the doer.

The witness within fetters the being
And weaves accordingly events and scenes;
None can annul the retribution;
Balance leads to transmigration.