Last weekend, I decided to read my brother Ram Sundaram's book “I Am Me” again. This book is a “flip book” that is a collection of ten pairs of short stories. The book is divided into two halves; once the reader reaches the middle, the book has to be flipped and the same set of ten short stories are repeated on the other side but, presented differently. One half focuses on reality and the other half on fantasy. The fantasy or the dreamscape represents the world as seen from the point of view of the individual nestled within the “atman” or the “collective” while the reality side represents the point of view of the collective or the “atman” within the individual. Whichever side a reader chooses to read the book from, it eventually meets in the middle, where one realises that the atman is within oneself while at the same time realising that one is but a part of the atman.
Through this book, Ram has forged Western Symbolism with Eastern Philosophy. In the format of the book, we can sense hints of Daharavidhya. The collective inside the atman is taken from the Daharavidhya. In the city called Brahmapuram (Individual body), there is a palace which is like a lotus. Inside this palace is the small Akasam called “daharakasam”. The daharakasam is as large as the space on the outside. The daharakasam contains everything that is contained by the large akasam. It contains both the heaven and the Earth within it. It has both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is in the world, and whatever has been or will be, everything is contained within it. In other words, to the realised soul, the collective as represented by everything in this world, the Universe is within oneself; hence the realised soul doesn’t feel any deficiencies nor does it perceive any differences.
The book's two sections can also be seen to silently explain the meaning of the name “Narayana”. The meaning of the name Narayana can be derived by using either tat purusha samasam or bahu brihi samasam. The meaning changes according to the samasam used but the meaning derived by using either of the samasam can only apply to Lord Narayana. In Bahubrihi samasam, the meaning changes to the one who has His ayanam in the narams (The individual in the collective). The importance is neither given to “naram” or “ayanam” in Bahubrihi but to omnipresence. Using Tat Purusha samasam one derives the meaning that He is the one in whom the narams or the jeevatmas rest (The collective in The individual). Once a person realises that Lord Narayana is their antaryami and at the same time they also understand that they are the sareeram of Lord Narayana, then one perceives correctly unity in diversity.
All differences vanish. This vanishing point is the middle of the book where the individual blends into the collective and vice versa. The factual reality we perceive every day is but a dream of one who has not realised that they the individual is part of the collective and vice versa. We live inside a bubble that artificially segregates us the individual from the collective population. The reality that deals with the entire population is eventually a dream painted with the brushstroke of ego, lies and fantasies of an entire population. Neither the individual nor the collective population realises that the “atman” is inside the individual making the collective population, a part of the individual and that the individual is also part of the collective population because the individual is really a part of the “atman”. True harmony is achieved when the boundaries of false ego melt and the individual learns not to discriminate from the collective and vice versa. This concept is beautifully represented by the cover image. The Image shows a tree reflected in the water with the words “I Am Me”. If one were to rotate the image by 180 degrees such that the reflected tree is on top, one would now read the title as “I Am We”.
This time when I read the book, I decided to start with the “fantasy” side. I chose to start with “The Hangman” because my mom had just finished reading it and wished to discuss it with me. This story on page 102 on the fantasy side of the book, starts with the narrator finding himself in the presence of death. He is in the realm between the living and the dead and is given a chance to return to the realm of the living if he can successfully play the game of “hangman”. The narrator finds himself between two walls; one behind him and the other in front of him while on either side of the narrator, he is enveloped by dark, open space. The wall behind the narrator represents the world of the living which he had just left behind and the wall facing him represents the possibility of returning to the world of the living and is the proverbial carrot dangling before him, the main motivation to answer correctly. The narrator’s fears are personified as death. The narrator finds himself enveloped on either side by the shapeless, wide-open dark space representing the narrator’s anxiety arising from the fear of the unknown world, in this case, his ignorance about life after death.
Though the atmosphere created by Ram is tense and foreboding, the humorous conversation between the narrator and death helps to lighten the mood. The story proceeds with the narrator’s struggle to guess the ten letters in the word correctly. The answer is the highlight and contains the message for us to take away. Ram has used his imagination to forge together the philosophies of the West and the East. In his use of symbolism, we find the hints of Western Philosophies which end with the messages from the East which are an echo of the ancient Upanishads. The conclusion of this story resonates with the message from the “antaryami brahmanam” of the Upanishad. The Universe as we see it, with the array of creatures, planets, galaxies, etc, cannot exist without the support of God; the “Individual” we must strive to realise. The Universe cannot function independently of Him; it is forever dependent on Him. To emphasise this ceaseless reliance on Him, the Universe is viewed as His body. The body in the above sense doesn’t refer to the type of body we are familiar with which has eyes, nose, limbs, etc, but, the body here refers to that which is under the control of God. The reference made to God as the Soul and the Universe, encompassing the matter along with the hosts of souls as the body is but, an analogy. We know that our body is supported by the soul within. The moment the soul leaves the body, it is unable to function, falls down and is reduced to a corpse. Our body depends on our soul. It cannot exist independently of our soul. In this same manner, the Universe made up of souls and matter is incapable of functioning independently of God. In this sense, He is the Individual within all of us. Once, He the individual is realised, the individual soul learns to put the “collective” before his own selfish desires. All the individual souls are identical to each other. As a result of this equality arising from their similarity, there is no room for discrimination based on caste, colour, creed, gender, etc. This is the message conveyed by this story which concludes when the narrator sees that his face is also the face of death.
