I believe in the Creator. I believe the Creator is Pure Energy. According to me, the first manifestation of that energy is the form of Goddess Kali. For if there is a Creator, then that Creator holds the power of destruction or transformation or change. Thus for me, the Creator is formless but The One who is responsible for all change and all transformation has a form and that form is Mother Kali.

What pleases Kali the most? Pure love. When the individual destroys all false ego, stops all shadow dancing with himself/ herself, annihilates everything but pure love for The One, that makes Kali smile and dance and embrace the seeker.

The only way to go about this is to begin the journey within. Still the mind, the heart and all thoughts, either by being completely in the moment, through chants, becoming one with the breath or in any manner that makes you still from within. The journey inward then commences, which eventually will lead to the warm embrace of The One.

Of course each one of us has his/her own interpretation of Creation and who the Creator is; I guess in our own way we shall be right and partially away from the real picture.

But whichever religion or ideology you and I profess to follow or believe, the fact remains that if we believe in a power beyond the beyond, then everything has come forth from that power. If everything has come forth from it, then that power resides in each and every one of us. If you and I are created by The One, then we imbibe within us The One. It maybe in a very dormant state or miniaturized state and not in that same dynamic magnitude, but each one of us has to have within us all that the Creator embodies or the same Divine Presence.

Somewhere in the by-lanes of our journey, some time in our many lifetimes, we have gravitated to the external, thus slowly shifting the Divine One further away from us. The Divine One is eternal but internal. In the form of the Spirit. The Spark from that Great Flame. And the more we go external, the dimmer this light shines within, till a time comes when the dust of the external buries this light within to a mere flicker.

Whatever I have learnt through channeling, prayers, reflection, hallucination, call it what you will, I have realized that heaven, hell, purgatory all lie within each one of us.

We will gravitate towards what we choose and what we give priority to. Eventually, whatever our priority is in this lifetime or the next, some time in our journey, we shall be granted the realization of that priority. Thus the sages have told us time and again to be wary of what one truly desires, as just as sure as the morning dew, the thunder after the lightening, the decaying of the body or the purity of the fire, our wishes shall be granted no matter how profound or trivial, holy or debased, wise or absolutely insane.

One night, Agastya Rishi, that great sage, for some reason appeared in my dream and with a smile said, ‘The Goddess Eternal, The One who is always in meditation, The One that Shiva Himself calls Bhagwati, The One who is forever in meditation, who is in the form of a peaceful Goddess Kali, resides in each one of us. The Guru or the Master takes each one to Her. These are the two eternal truths. But for this to happen, the first step is to want to take this inward journey more than anything else. Then leave all to the Guru and the Goddess.’

I have rambled on a bit through these chapters that you have, for want of better things to do or pure unadulterated desperation, decided to read. If a sentence, a phrase or a word makes sense and helps you to go within and embrace that Divine Spark, which enables you to move towards the Eternal Flame, it would be because you took that first step towards going back to the Source. A place where eventually all of us would not only reside within The One but also maybe realize that we all are one. But all this starts with the first step, which is with the belief that the True One resides within each one of us and is waiting for each one to start the divine communication.

It reminds me of this sage who once told another sage, ‘We are stuck on this darn freezing mountain top without food, water, smoke and worst of all, the blasted phone charger. Now the only way to survive is to follow all the hogwash we have been preaching about connecting with the God and Goddess within, and hope that somebody up there or within us can hear our cry for help.’

Be blessed always.

This excerpt has been taken from Ruzbeh N. Bharucha’s new book The Musk Syndrome.

A devotee of Sai Baba of Shirdi, Ruzbeh is one of the most influential spiritual writers of our times. A former journalist, he is the author of fifteen books, including the bestselling The Fakir trilogy, which has been translated into several languages.