Perplexity Poem by Mystic Qalandar

A perplexity has taken hold of me:
Am I driving my existence,
or is existence driving me?
I ask in the dark—
where breath comes and goes
without permission,
where the heart beats its own rhythm.

The sages say:
the body is a village,
the intellect its headman,
consciousness the farmer,
the senses his helpers,
the self—a secret hidden in soil.

But I find that farmer within myself:
who tills, sows, waters, reaps,
and from that harvest runs the cycle of life.

Perhaps the cycle is a weaving
of one single secret:
body, intellect, consciousness, senses, self.

My soul is not a ghost in the machine—
it is the flame in the lamp.

To mistake the lamp for the light,
the vessel for the source—
perhaps this is the first slip.

Consciousness, intellect—
wrapping around meaning;
awareness—
light falling upon these wrappings;
the soul—
depth no wrapping can cover.

Is any one of these my complete introduction?
When the outer garment falls, what remains?
The same that was before my name,
before the body, before awareness of being?

Or are 'before' and 'after'
just measures of the mind,
which cannot think outside of time?

Body says: hunger, fatigue, decay.
Intellect says: logic, will, possibility.
Soul says: beyond all this, a secret of connection.
Awareness says quietly: I am watching.

Each true in its place,
none the complete truth.

The error is not in layers existing—
it is in taking one layer for the whole,
a reflection for the original,
claiming the entire sky
through a single window.

How do I resolve this?
Through argument? Debate?
An answer that turns
one confusion into another?

No—the path passes through awakening.

Let the body remain the body—
a temple of elements, a trust from nature.
Let the intellect remain the intellect—
a lamp for guidance, not for rule.
Let the soul remain the soul—
that depth before which the head bows.
Let awareness remain awareness—
a mirror holding nothing,
claiming no reflection as its own,
imprisoning itself in none.

Perhaps here the question's grip loosens.

I am neither merely driver
nor merely driven.
I am that act of selfhood
where will and helplessness,
effort and surrender, meet.

The play in which soul and matter,
seeming separate,
become two faces of one secret.
Scattering and forming,
opening and closing—
manifestations of one reality.

As above, so below—
every direction a sign of that One.

Perhaps that One beholds
its own view through my eyes;
perhaps I am one window of its witnessing.

But this is a hint, not a claim—
what I bind in words
always remains beyond words.

Now the question takes new form:
without my body,
what becomes of soul, intellect, awareness?
Will they remain? In what form? Relation?
With what consciousness?

I do not know.

I only feel this:
the secret of existence is vaster
than the borders of my body.

That which sprang from the Source—
does its bond ever break?
Is annihilation merely change of form?
Is being lost merely the verdict of our gaze?

This life with body is focused on a point:
the senses,
the chain of memories,
the limited 'I.'

What lies beyond—I do not know.
The possible, before the Necessary,
admits its own neediness;
partial reason, beyond its limit,
can only point, not grasp.

Where every thing
depends for its existence on Him,
incarnation or union
is perhaps the wrong name for relations.

The Divine Essence fits no body,
nor can multiplicity divide His unity.

The soul recognizes its bond
in the echo of 'Be':
coming into being, a gift;
enduring, a gift.

Awareness remains an open question:
does it appear with the body?
Does some aspect transcend bodily existence?

I render no verdict
on annihilation or survival.
I only know:
that which sees,
that by which I think,
that through which I question
my own being—
all are engravings of that same secret.
This secret does not open completely.

I am in waiting—
and this waiting is itself a threshold.
No answer comes,
because perhaps an answer
is not a thing to be taken in hand.

The answer is transformation
of the seer;
a shift in perspective,
a stepping back
from one's own concept of self,
and in that silence,
seeing one's being anew.

So I wait with the whole of my being.
I breathe, I live, I think, I do, I become, I make.

And amid all this, a silence
opposes no action,
stands in the background of every action.

In that stillness
soul, intellect, awareness arise,
show their colors, shimmer—
then return again into silence.

This confusion is no longer mere confusion;
it is a doorway, a gate of deliverance—
where deliverance lies not in finding some new answer,
but in learning to live freely with the question.

And I—
neither body, nor intellect;
neither merely senses, nor only consciousness.

I am a momentary expression of that flow
whose beginning lies beyond memory,
whose end beyond imagining.

I cannot stop it,
nor forge some permanent path
apart from it.

I only flow with it—
awake, silent,
bowed in surrender
before this incomprehensible secret
of my own being.

— MyKoul