From My Village to the World

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 When Nancy asked me to write about Guru Nitya’s influence on my life, I felt like I had a lot to say, and very little to say at the same time. The later feeling was because I never met him in person. I was nine years old during his Maha Samadhi. I encountered his works a decade later, around the time of completing my Bachelor’s degree. I was an Engineering graduate with a well-paying software job; however, I was not happy with the trajectory of my life. My parents, like many other small farming families in Indian villages, struggled immensely to send me to a good school and college. My education and job were the fruits of their life’s hardships, yet the very first bite of those fruits soured for me. I felt completely lost and quit my job. 

My family has been farming on the same land for centuries and they married within a few villages. I am the first person in that long chain to break away from the land, and eventually also marry outside of it. After years of reflection, I understand that my psyche was struggling to adapt to the foreign environment at work. I got modern scientific education in schools, but it never prepared me for the transition I was about to make. This is a story common among most Indians of my generation. At the least, it is a shock to our psyches. 

Personally, I found rescue in literature and philosophy as it helped me to learn about the human mind, nature and society. Even in philosophy the gulf was wide between the traditional Indian thought and Western thought. It was difficult to bridge the gap on my own; discovering Guru Nitya’s and Nataraja Guru’s works at this juncture was a treasure. The unitive philosophy first gave me an intellectual framework to assimilate various systems of knowledge—from Vedanta to Panpsychism—into one. 

I am writing this article a decade after my first visits to Narayana Gurukula in Fernhill, Portland and Bainbridge.  I vividly remember each of those first visits:  hiking up the hills in Ooty and Portland, taking the ferry to Bainbridge Island. I was welcomed with open arms in all three Gurukulas. The seeds of my inquisitive mind were nurtured with knowledge, affection and love. 

Over the years, I have studied and developed personal relationships with several of Guru Nitya’s students in India and America; they have helped me to put the knowledge into practice. It has helped me to expand my identity and embrace all beings. I am both a small boy who grew up in rural India and a global citizen. As the ancient Tamil Sangam poet said, “The world is my village and its people my kin.” Without Guru’s teaching, preserved and generously shared by his students, this transformation would not have been easy; it could very well have turned into a traumatic experience like my foray into the world of technology from land.