Takshak is a handsome, sexy, intelligent, and charismatic monarch who rules a great ancient civilization patterned on the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. In his early days, Takshak’s father, the powerful Maharaja Shaardul, was a conceited and churlish man; and yet he was wise enough to allow his arrogance to be tamed by the divine fire of the High Tantrika Inanna. Saved from a horrible end, he instead evolved into a superb leader who brought great prosperity and happiness into the lives of his people.
Unfortunately, Takshak, despite being trained in the magic and mystery of Tantra by the best, despite exceptional riches of personality and material assets, chose the dark side. He too was given the amazing opportunity to raise his consciousness with the aid of a brilliant Tantrika, but he preferred the seemingly easy shortcuts of drugs and easy women. Falling into the hands of a mesmerizing foreign sorceress, who herself was ensnared by evil entities, he crashed headlong into disaster, murdering all those who stood in his way, and finally bringing his great civilization down with him. Sound familiar?
Here is an excerpt from the penultimate chapter of Whip, when the dying Takshak tracks his errant priestess down and begs her to save him from the demon:
The fire rumbled, disturbed by her dangerous thoughts, even as the demon stared back at her through Takshak’s yellow eyes—voracious, cunning, insidious. She recoiled, coming to her senses—this demon had fed on Takshak from his youth, growing stronger the sicker the Maharaja had become; it could well destroy her. There was only so much the fire could combat while her spirit was still encased in human flesh.
Though no breath of wind stirred, the torches left behind by the guardsmen flickered and died. In the pale silver of moonlight, an ethereal being appeared before Takshak. Ishvari uttered a soft cry of wonder, for she knew her to be Mahadevi in her guise as goddess of death, immortal consort of Yama, lord of the underworld. The lovely apparition touched Takshak on his third eye and he groaned as he glimpsed the hell realms to which he was bound. Then she was gone and silence crashed like thunder about Ishvari’s ears. She fell to her knees, weeping soundlessly for Takshak. Leave now, her soul whispered urgently. Head for the jungle!
“Guards!” Takshak screeched weakly, pounding on the sides of his palanquin, and Ishvari slid down the rock and raced along the banks of the river, towards the dark shape of the jungle.
Time is only a human construct; if we study history with a discerning eye, we might see the same old insidious patterns emerging. The substratum of all beings is pure existence, awareness and bliss, but if we let the ego triumph over our Spirit, and feed it with denial and rage, the demons enter and take over; soon there is no human left, only a sad puppet, who, when he or she inevitably ages and dies, carries with him the bad seeds of terrible karmas into future lives. And this, in a nutshell, is the tedious saga of samsara or relative reality, an endless spinning wheel that perpetuates misery and delusion.
Genocidal dictators, callous world leaders who give a damn for the agony they unleash on innocent women and children when they order the bombing of foreign cities (even as they relish rich chocolate cake!); men and women who put their own needs and desires for gratification above the common decency of caring for others, and who choose the dark shutters of secrecy over the bright innocence of transparency; all those who refuse to see the cosmos as One, rather than as something born to serve their needs alone—these are all possessed by negative entities, for our true nature is love.
Call me naïve or foolish, but I know, based on personal experience, and from watching the lives of many, that these humans have been usurped by malicious and malevolent entities whose prime goal is to feed on the one thing they must have in order to thrive—which is human prana, or life essence. Worse still, since they operate on the invisible energetic level, they can move from human to human, and it is not difficult for them to spread from one sick host through the whole family, and then to the community. This can go on for generations, which is why our world is as sick as it is.
Consider this: We humans don’t have a problem believing that an invisible virus can knock us off our feet for weeks. I once caught Taiwanese flu in Manhattan and was out for the count for a fortnight; I was so weakened by this invisible virus that I had to literally crawl to the bathroom. I thought I was going to die, but not for an instant did I doubt that something tiny and unseen could have done this to my strong body. Nor did those who knew I was down with a hideous form of flu. So why then do we have such a problem understanding that other such malevolent entities can infiltrate our spirits and wreak unimaginable havoc?
I wrote Whip because I was appalled by how many, in East and West, had misunderstood and distorted the ancient pure teachings on Tantra, which, in essence, simply means the transmutation of darkness into light. You might want to read it for yourself: https://miraprabhu.wordpress.com/mira-prabhu-all-links/ and arrive at your own conclusions.
Greetings from Arunachala, Shiva in the form of a hill of fire and light, the epitome of infinite awareness and blazing light, who leads us surely from slavery to dark masters and towards the blissful luminescence of the Self!
Click the buttons below to SHARE if you liked this post.
Note: The REBLOG option is available only when viewing the post in full. Click on the post-title above if don’t see the REBLOG button below.
As a child in south India, I saw a man douse himself with kerosene, set himself on fire and walk past the gate of our home. I still don’t know why he did what he did; servants were buzzing about it for weeks afterward, but I could not bear to hear the details. What could be so terrible that a man would set his own body ablaze? That Burning Man never left my consciousness, for he had staggered past our home defiantly and I don’t recall hearing him scream.
Another reason I wrote Whip was to deal with a subject more or less taboo in my community of origin: sex. I grew up with a mother who flushed at the mere mention of the “s” word and talk of bodily functions evoked in her an intense discomfort. Her father had died when she was five, and she’d been brought up by her mother, a young widow who, by our custom, was neither allowed to remarry, nor work outside of home. While my little mother was given the best of material things, she lacked a close bond with her own grieving mother. So she reached out to the nuns at her school who warned her that men in general spelled trouble. Beautiful and melancholy, she was forcibly married off as a teenager and proceeded to bear many children. She did an astounding job of nurturing us, but I could always see the bewildered little girl whose life had drastically changed the day she lost her father.
To my critical eye, both Indian men and women—from the illiterate poor to the wealthy western-educated lot—have long lost their connection to this sacred wisdom. As a result, the balance between the sexes has gone radically awry and old female stereotypes of the sainted virgin versus the painted whore with nothing in-between persists. In general, there appears to be little room for pure friendship and respect between the sexes, the kind that can grow into a healthy, harmonious, symbiotic relationship. Perhaps this stream of consciousness ramble might explain why I nurtured Whip through many incarnations and personal ups and downs for close to twenty years. In the end, after going through hell and back, my protagonist finally awakens her own indwelling divinity; and that is what we all must do, at some point or the other in our infinite lives—for it is our birthright and our dharma. (To be continued in the next post).
The ascent of consciousness is from muladhara, the root chakra—heavy with the fiery energy of the Kundalini—all the way up the invisible chakras to the sahasrara, or thousand-petaled lotus of higher consciousness, hovering slightly above the crown of the skull—when the individual ego dissolves back into cosmic intelligence. Simply put, when male and female reunite, two become one; this wholeness dissolves the individual ego that causes all our suffering and can lead to a permanent state of bliss. This can be accomplished either singly (for every human possesses both male and female energies) or as a committed couple. It can take decades before one is ready to take on a mate—a fact which flies in the face of contemporary thinking that Tantra encourages sexual license and excess. Without a strong grounding in ethics and yoga, seeking liberation as a couple simply cannot work.
What becomes of fierce, beautiful and brilliant Ishvari? Guided by the advice of the royal astrologer, the Envoy of the Maharaja of Melukhha whisks her away to be trained for seven years by tantric monks. Despite her simmering anger against her mother, the lecherous priest and greedy landlord of her village, her ability to dazzle causes her to be elected to the role of High Tantrika. And so she is sent to serve as spiritual consort to Takshak, the corrupt and powerful monarch of Melukhha. But the stars in her almond eyes quickly dim when she realizes she is no more than a gorgeous bird trapped in the proverbial golden cage. Unable to deal with her emotions when her royal lover abandons her for an alien sorceress, she rebels in the worst of ways—and so brings down the wrath of the monarch on all who have cherished her. It is then that the teachings she has secretly spurned rise up again within her. The agony she experiences during her flight and the decades that follow awaken within her the great roaring kundalini fire….and she is set firmly again on the path to moksha or liberation. (To be continued in the next post).
I have since confirmed that pain does indeed open the petals of the human heart. If we don’t know what it is to suffer—to be alone for long stretches of time; to lose loved ones in tragic accidents; to be frightened out of our wits and broke in an expensive city; to be dangerously ill and friendless—how can we possibly empathize with others who also suffer? To understand all, as the old saying goes, is to forgive all. Why forgive? Because when we investigate the underlying fabric of reasons why people think, speak and act as they do, we begin to realize that in essence we are no different; that insidious sense of separation begins to dissolve and we become One. Indeed it is when we first comprehend the brilliant function of pain that we can finally move forward, with grace and confidence. (To be continued in the next post).
Instinct warned me I’d gain nothing by fighting him. Still, I consulted a few lawyers, but every one of them asked for thousands of dollars upfront—money I did not have. Finally I talked to a tough lesbian lawyer. “Cut loose,” was her terse advice. “You’ll never pin this rascal down. Fight him in court, and you’ll lose everything, including your sanity.” I took her advice, and began life as a single, staying afloat by freelancing as an administrative temp on Wall Street and in Manhattan’s law firms. (To be continued in the next post).
As I moved into my teen years, I sought out friends who equally dreaded being thrust into the marriage market—to be assessed in terms of dowry, fair complexions, domestic skills, and the ability to please husband and in-laws. (While the practice of dowry has been illegal for decades now, women are harassed, even burned to death, if their families are unable to satiate greedy in-laws. In some cases, a man marries, gets a good dowry, kills his bride in collusion with his mother, and gets away with it, either by bribing the cops or by faking a credible accident—whereupon he goes bride-hunting again.)
Knowing I’d be blamed, I was reluctant to confide what had happened to anyone in my family. Who asked you to go there in the first place? I could hear my mother shriek. Weren’t you supposed to be sleeping? What? You jumped over the wall again? You are utterly shameless and deserve everything you get! You see? Already I was aware that in the world I inhabited, the female of the species would be the eternal scapegoat. Had I complained, a variation of that old song would have been sung: “Don’t blame me! She was wearing a red dress, and so I raped her.”
Like Rajput heroines of yore, Lakshmi was amazingly resilient. She managed to convince her father—in truth, a kind man who simply could not break free of the old ways—that she had “reformed”. Then, three years later, exactly a day past her twenty-first birthday, she simply disappeared from the house, leaving behind all the expensive gifts her parents had given her. A note sat on her bed: “You gave me everything material,” it read in true Bollywood style, “but not my heart’s desire.” Her father drove frantically over to Shaukat’s house. “Where’s that bastard?” he screamed in Hindi at the servant woman who stood by their gate. The old thing spat a stream of red betel juice over the wall. “Gone,” she announced with a shrug. “Nobody here. All gone Shaukat marriage.” More than a decade later, on my annual vacation from Manhattan, I bumped into Lakshmi’s brother on Commercial Street. “How are things with Lakshmi? I asked anxiously. “Fine,” he replied with a grin. “They have three kids—two boys and a girl. Dad relented and invited them home after their third baby. Now both our families are friends.” A fairy-tale ending? Yes, but then Lakshmi was patient and cunning and Shaukat never gave up—and perhaps the Muslims wanted to teach the proud Rajputs a lesson. Most such situations would have ended in depression, murder or suicide. (To be continued in the next post).
Our society was studded with double-standards that applied to every aspect of our lives, and yet most women seemed to have accepted their lot. Some were born docile and did not rebel against playing second, third or nth fiddle; others were born under a lucky star—their men were sympathetic and pliable and life was good; still others toed the line because they had no option: since they were not encouraged to fend for themselves, existence could be pure hell if they incurred male ire.
While my father wanted his children to become doctors and diplomats, he firmly believed in the institution of arranged marriage. This was ahated prospect that hung over my mutinous head like a sword of Damocles, and I’d grumble to my mother that there was little point in educating us if we were going to be shoved into marriage and forced to have one kid after another. “How can you decide who I should live with, sleep with, cook for the rest of my life?” “Be a good girl,” she’d warn. “If you’re lucky, your husband will let you do what you want. Love comes after, not before marriage.” The word “good” was thrown at us so often that I cringed to hear it. What about being an original, excellent, humane, exciting, creative, and liberal human being? As for bad girls, they were warned that the entire family would suffer on their account—after all, which decent family would permit their children to marry into a family that harbored a single bad seed? And so emotional blackmail was thrown into the simmering witches’ cauldron of double standards. (To be continued in the next post).
Several friends living in India have written to me saying they would so appreciate being able to buy my novels (Whip of the Wild God: A Novel of tantra in Ancient India and Krishna’s Counsel, the first two books in The Moksha Trilogy) in India. Well, it gives me great pleasure to announce that this is now possible!
Almost twenty years ago, my Manhattan-based literary agent planted in my consciousness the seed of a contemporary novel—and so began to flower the saga of a brilliant and rebellious Indian girl who grows up in 60s south India, and, against all odds, metamorphoses into a Spiritual Warrior when she is forced to go into mortal combat against a ruthless serial killer.
mira prabhu 