A Glimpse Of The Transpersonal Poem by Chandramohan Bhandari

He left his home
To explore the world
To lose himself - and to find
Meaning of his being
And to unwind the knots
That often baffled him.

Knots - captivating patterns
Prejudices, biases
Social, cultural, sexual and beyond
Frequently obstructed his vision
‘Those unlike us
Often find themselves
At the receiving end.'

A land
Known for embracing diversity
Why is it?
We could not celebrate
Each and every identity
Be that biological, cultural
Social or otherwise.

To seek answers to his queries
He chose to travel
Exploring the world out there
And the world within
A dual travel that suited him best.

An instinctual wanderer
Reliving the nomadic life
Any travel was for him an event
In space, as also in time
A transportation
Of both the body and the mind.

As he travelled
The world out there
Emerged as a mirror
Reflected him in
Innumerable imprints of his own.
Born in Bengal
He could as well have
Surfaced in Portugal
He could not forget
His ancestral home
In distant past
African Middle Awash
"We all were there, no doubt
Destined to migrate
To distant regions
And thus create, nurture
And define
Separate identities
Patterns and prejudices
Social, cultural and beyond."

He was born again
With every new revelation
Embracing the Darwinian notion
The Bonobo chimpanzee
Standing on two legs
Somehow acquired language
Re-born in the human form
It was a great revelation to know
Bonobo and Humans shared genes
Around Ninety eight out of a hundred.

‘Who am I', he queried
No fixed image came to his sight
What he could find
Was not a fixed identity
A wavelike fusion of persona
A multi-faceted amphibian
Occupying deep recesses of his mind.

He had left his home as a person
To lose himself
By the time he returned
Found himself transformed
What emerged was
A fusion, a wavy superposition
All shades of the humankind.

He sensed the transformation
He was not the same anymore
A greater surprise was in store
When he got back home
He was greeted by
The neighbour next door
Almost isolated by most
His queer voice
That used to appear strange
Now he felt completely at home
Held him in a warm embrace
All prejudices gone
The fusion-superposition
Included all humans of all shades
He could as well have been ‘him'
Or someone else from among ‘them'
He could transcend the artificial barriers
Of self and its captivating norms.

He was happy
For the revelation
For himself and for the neighbour next door
And felt a bit closer to the state of bliss
He never experienced before.