Spiritual Pastime: My Unfolding Voyage 41

The idea of spirits- both good and evil, made an early introduction.to me in the childhood days. Besides, there was the stories of Aladin and his lamp, the ghosht in the bottle and the like. In the secondary school, for four years, the classes started with a prayer to God and his son and the holy ghosh / sprit. But as we grew up, these faded away. It had become clear spritualism was for certain aged people  trying to establish contact with God to ensure that thier spirit get properly taken care off after their physical death.
But enjoying the freedom of spirit was becoming a new pastime for us during the college days.

Since most weekdays we came back home from college too late to play soccer or hockey during summer and volleball or cricket during winter (we did not have flood lights in playgrounds those days, except for badminton games at certain places), an hours or so around sunset would go roaming and gossiping and sometimes sitting in the grass in the sprwaling soccer grond ad singing Rabindra Sageet. Two or three of us in the group could sing and others were happy listening. The songs were mostly love or God worship related. We probably understood very little of the real meaning of the lyrics of the devitioal or prayer songs. But the tune was attractive enough. We would sing loud enough  and our spirits woulf fly in freedom danching in the soundwaves that we created. Bubul was one of the singers (he is no more). He used to sing a few songs like (Kante Aamaar Soor Ke deelo, deelo bhoolaaye', 'Hey, Nabeenaa '). Our favorite songs were 'Aalo Aammar Aalo Ogo', 'A e Aakashe Aamaar Mooktee'. Sometimes we used to sing in chorus. Occasionally, some one who could sing a Hindi film songs of Md.Raffi or Hemant Kumar would join us. The music would enthrall our spirits.

Such spiritual boost also occurred when we arranged picnics at farmhouses on the highway or group wholeday trips to temples.  Our picnics were dry of course: nice late breakfast with eggs, samosas and loaves of bread followed by  good tasty lunch with fish, vegetable curry and mutton curry with sweets and otrher dishes. Of couse there was an evening snacks before we were on our way back home, but no liquid spirits yet.
 Once we went to Dakshineswar in a group, submitted our offerings and prayers to Goddess Kali at Dwakhineswar temple, roamed around the  trees under which Sri Ramakrishna would have spend days on meditation, hired a small boat to ferry us across the Ganges (Hooghly) River to Belur Math and Temple of the Sri Ramakrishna Mission set up by Swami Vivekananda. Spirit-enchanting trips  soon would lead us to organize annual Kali Puja under the banner of our school-day club Kishore Sangha. As usual I would be the Genral Secretary doing nothing except conducting meetings, typin out the official letters and notices and signing them and the control the bank account. The Treasuer, the Puja Secretary and the Cultural Secretary would do all the legowrk along with their respective member. On the Kali Puja night we would all be awake through out as the priest would conduct the worship ritual proceedings and some of the mebers would offer their blood at the alter of the Goddess.

Spiritualism had to be backed by readings as well. I read through two volumes of Bharater Sadhaks (Great Saints of India) narrating the life of about two - three dozen of saintly sadhaks (who follow a particular Sadhana, or a way of life designed to realize the goal of one's ultimate ideal, whether it is merging with God or Brahman or realization of one's personal deity: as long as one has yet to reach the goal, they are a Sadhaka, while one who has reached the goal is called a Siddha Sadhaka). These saints were from various traditions or schools from Hindu Vashnavites (worshippers of Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally Rama and Krishna, as the original and supreme God, addressed Narayana, Krishna, Basudeba or more often "Vishnu": the worship of Vishnu echoes monotheism in its devotion, but, as still under the pantheistic umbrella of Hinduism, makes reference to other Hindu deities, such as that Shiva, as the greatest devotee of their god Vishnu. to Faqurs ( A Hindu or Muslim Sufi  mendicant who does not preach any religion but is in love with God, especially one who performs feats of magic or endurance) and to Hindu Tantriks (followers of Tantra beliefs and practices based on the principle that the universe experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of Shakti, the divine energy of the Godhead that creates and maintains that universe and therefore seek to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways so as to achieve liberation from ignorance and rebirth: this also influence Buddhist and Jains). All these saints appeared men of great powers acquired through devotion and yogic meditation. Their lives appeared mystical and novel but did not enthuse me to follow the methods they had practised to become such great men.

It was around this time we got exposed to more mystical experiments to deal with sprits. Khokan (Pinaki), then a first year Science undergraduate student and son of our tenant of a flat in our Gurudham residence ground floor, suggested that we try with Planchettee to interact with spirits. We came to know that it is not so easy to get spirits to come to visit us for a chat and sometimes some evil spirits could come unsolicited and create problems. There were lot of reasons to fear doing an exercisennnn with Planchettee (A small triangular board supported by two casters and a vertical pencil that, when lightly touched by the fingertips, is said to spell out subconscious or supernatural messages). We did not have such a board and so we had to use a variant. But after lot of discussions among us, Khokan, my younger brother Suku and I settled down on a summer afternoon in our second-floor prayer room, stting down on the three sides of our carrom board, with a carrom coin the middle and the Entire English Alphabet A to Z and numbers 0 to 9 written in ink on small square pieces of thick paper arranged nicely along the four bands of  pairs of straight lines where the striker was usually placed for the fingers to thrust the striker to hit at the coins. An incense stick burnt to provide an aroma for the pleasure of the spirit. Three of us touched the edge of the coin at the center of the carrom board ai if our arms allowing the fingers to rest on the coin. silently kept on inviting the spirit that we had come to know would easily respond, the spirit of Matahari (or, Margaretha Geertruida "Grietje" Zelle, a Frisian (Dutch) exotic dancer and courtesan: during World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral. and as a Dutch subject, Matahari was able to travelled between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain. Once when interviewed by British intelligence officers, she admitted to working as an agent for French military intelligence, although the latter would not confirm her story. On 13 February, 1917 she was arrested in her room at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris, accused of spying for Germany and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers, was found guilty on trial and executed by firing squad on 15 October, 1917, at the age of 41).

Within minutes she would arrive and after exchanging pleasantaries she would start answering questions. We would ask questions only about our future and she would give us her predictions by making the coin move towards different alphabets with our fingers still on the coin. We tried various combinations to test whether the the resultant force of three fingers moved the coin or the coin moved on its own. We could not establish that the movement of the coins was the result of one or more of our minds' desire to move the coin in front of specific alphabets in the sequence to form words of our choice. We even asked us to answer questions that we did not ask but was being asked by one of us who had left the room and went downstairs to write down his question while two others were engaged with the conversation of Matahari. Each time she had corrdtly told us the question that our third member away from the session wrote down in the first floor without our knowledge. And, she gave the answers. Whether the answers she gave proved correct or not would be known later. And I do not rember all the questions we had asked. All that I rembers is that the predictions of a very short-term nature (with a couple of days or so) turned out to be correct. Among the predictions she made for which we would have to wait for one to 18  months, two I could recall later: Khokan had asked both the questions. First was how would my Economics honors result be in Part I (results were due in less than fiur weeks' time) and the second was what would be my Economics honors result be in Part II. She gave her prediction for the first question promptly but when the second question was asked by Khokan she wavered and did not give us a firm answer. We had a few sessions with her, before our spirtual pastime of this nature ended.