Don't think about this or anything else.

I went to the Lakshadweep Islands. A series of several tiny islands out in the middle of the Arabian Sea…

I took a overnight boat which was like half-cruise ship and half freighter…The rooms were really nice but there wasn’t much else to it than that…The decks were great for watching the sunset, which was epic but I spent most of my time talking to various Indian people and just staring at the open water while listening to music.

I noticed the ocean doesn’t really have any definition to it. You can’t really distinguish between different parts of it. It just sort of is. It overpowers your attempts to label and rationalize it and you sit there, staring, and find yourself not thinking but totally aware and it’s a wonderful stillness despite the movement of the waves. Its like a big womping vibration calmly splattering over itself if that’s possible…I observe—no thought needed.

I meet a twenty five year old fisherman from the Islands (Kadmat specifically) named Shabeer. 100% of Lakshadweep’s population is Muslim. 5,000 people live on the 8 km island of Kadmat. I talk to various Indian people and avoid Westerners…for some reason people of a similar culture make me more uncomfortable…feel free to psychoanalyze that statement all you want…I think it starts and ends with irrationality…patience…anyway, the night grows on and I find myself playing cards on the lower class deck lounge room with Shabeer and some other Indian guy who doesn’t speak any English and who is a welder…We take a break after a few hands and Shabeer offers me some of the radioactive mouth waste commonly referred to as Beetlenut…I accept, figuring I should try the stuff at least once to see what all the hype is about…I’ve seen what it does to teeth though and its not something I’m planning on making a habit out of…It actually tasted kinda alright and didn’t look like what I thought it would. It comes in this brightly colored package with a skull and cross bones next to a scorpion on it (so that tells you right away, “jee, I’d sure like to put this in my mouth and chew on it multiple times a day for an extended period of time) …or not…Anyway, it tastes sort of minty and its like powdery little chalky white balls of some sort of nut from a tree or something along those lines…I don’t really get a buzz from it and I suppose that’s because I was chewing it wrong or spitting it out too quickly since the stuff is supposed to be mad powerful…almost like speed or something…but whatever, maybe I’ll try again next time, judging by the way it turns your mouth into a toxic cesspool I don’t think I’m missing much…however, I’ve secretly always wanted a mangled jaw and to be bleeding from the gums 24/7...I see dolphins on numerous occasions playfully swimming near the boat, hoping out of the water, and that also reminds me that I saw a snake during my trip on the backwaters in Kerala…that was kew.

We arrive in Kadmat island the next day, check into our rooms, go to the beach to swim. The water is layered in different shades of blue due to the coral, splotches of grass and crystal white sand…Its like aqua light blue, then patches of dark blue, followed by a slightly darker aqua blue, then pitch dark blue and you have all seen this place before…It’s pretty much the place where computer wallpaper comes from…That stereotypical image of the deserted island that comes pre-packaged on every computer desktop—yeah, that’s Lakshadweep. Its paradise, its perfect…The TV station, Nickelodeon (what the fuck does that word mean, anyway? Nickelodeon? I’ve never thought that before…weird to think about) anyway, so Nickelodeon used to advertise these commercials for this product that was supposed to be fun but probably sucked and caused Chlamydia or Ebola or something along those lines called “Floam!”, which was this moldy, squishy dog-shit looking material that came in several artificial colors and could be warped into all kinds of wacky shit that the kids in the commercials seemed to piss their pants over while they screamed and jumped around “Floam!” sandcastles… a sense of humor…Well, the sand at Lakshadweep, due to the coral composite that washes up on shore, feels like how I imagine “Floam!” would feel…I’ve never had the luxury to have the official Nickelodeon Floam experience first hand so I can’t totally say but the sand at Lakshadweep probably rivals it…Its squishy, clumpy, moldy not too soft or hard and its like the best feeling on your feet you could ever imagine…It stood out to me right away and I bent down and you can see the tiny chunks of eroded coral that washed up on shore…it of course,

I should mention there are only like 50 of us (tourists) here too. This isn’t a big tourist place. A lot of tourists come here—but not a lot at once. The government has made it strict as hell to visit the area and you need special permits to visit the island due to the untouched coral ecosystems that surround the area. Anyone can go, its easy, but you have to go through this government run tourist company called SPORTS. They only allow a few people to go at a time…It feels like you have the place to yourself, its pretty epic and I recommend coming here if you get the chance for sure.

You swim thirty yards out shore and instantly you’re surrounded by beautiful multi-colored coral and fish...two foot long Sea cucumbers, evil looking moral eels snapping their jaws, three foot parrot fish, swollen puffer fish, clown fish, sea anneameas (spelling?), schools of squid, a stingray, and tons of other rainbow colored things are scattered throughout the area…The coral looks literally untouched…The best I’ve ever seen.

You go past where the waves break and the water depth drops down to around 60-70 feet and the coral is beyond description. Its huge, its appears to have never been even looked at by human eyes let alone touched, every shape and color you can process plus a few you can’t or have just never seen before…I see two giant Eagle Rays bigger than my size floating by that look like space aliens, several green sea turtles about three and half feet in length and fish the size of my torso…Its really too much at times and it feels like I’m on another planet…You don’t need a boat to take you out here, you just swim out and its like WOAH! Look AT THAT! There is no time constraint and I was able to go out without a guide…At first I had a dude take me because being 60 feet of open water surrounded by fish I was paranoid about being eaten by a shark, sounds stupid but Shabeer showed me a picture on his phone of a tiger shark his boat caught that was easily 15 feet, not exaggerating…However, I later found out later that sharks don’t come out over here and Shabeer’s catch was like beyond rare…So, I went out on my own and it was well, its not something I can totally describe, it’s all just too much...This has to be one of the best coral reefs on the planet I would guess…The governments strict policy on it over the years has kept in amazing shape compared to other places, which have been raped by grabby tourists with fat fingers and fanny packs…

I go scuba diving the next day. I’ve never been before. I first go through the lagoon to get a feel for it. The first thing I noticed was my breath is being regulated and I’m not breathing how I usually do. Now, let me backtrack here. So Eckhart Tolle’s advice to be enlightened is to just be and observe mindfully whatever it is you’re experiencing without judgment or labeling. That’s all you need to do (actually it’s the opposite of doing) and you can be Buddha (you already are is the idea, just stop doing human thangs)…Just be awareness and silence the mind is pretty much the general idea of it. There is no time, no space, no self—you realize this by just being in the present moment and fully accepting it as it is. However, I noticed whenever I would just sit and be and not do anything, I stop breathing. This sounds bad but I noticed when I stop breathing I sort of get a little deeper into myself but then I’m like, I need to breath and I come back to my superficial state of mind…okay, is this supposed to happen?

A few days ago I was reading some of the teachings by Ramana Maharashi, whose Ashram was actually within a few hours away from where I was in Madurai (the state of Tamil Nadu) but I didn’t find that out until after I was back in Kerala…I almost skipped Lakshadweep to go back to the Ashram in Tamil Nadu but figured I was already back in Cochi, why not just go to Lakshadweep?…If I’m supposed to go to the ashram I would have gone, fate intervenes the way it does so whatever…Its all here and not there anyway…So I was looking at his teachings and he says there are two ways to be enlightened: self-enquiry, which can be summed up by this point, “The mind will merge only by Self-enquiry 'Who am I?' The thought 'Who am l?' will destroy all other thoughts and finally kill itself also”, Maharashi also said that breath control can shut the mind off as well…Mind control is all you need but breath work does the trick too. He’s referring specifically to pranyama but he also mentions that just by holding your breath the mind will stop grabbing at things beyond itself and turn itself inwards to the heart, the natural resting place, and this allows one to go into deeper realization…The mind can’t worry about banal things when its worried it might die…Stop breathing, you stop thinking and then you are just pure consciousness I guess is how it works…Rational thought prevents you from seeing truth. I found this out on my own but I didn’t realize it…So I was like, woah! That’s cool I noticed that before reading about it—made me feel it held that much more truth to it…Now, back to scuba diving…

In Scuba diving, the oxygen regulator or whatever you call it is controlling the rate of breath intakes and the flow of oxygen…Its not the normal speed or pace on land one is used to. I instantly felt this anxiety which eventually turned into a deep calm since breath and mind are linked…The slowing of breath led to a slowing of mind…I couldn’t talk since I had this black plug jammed into my jaw and the only noise since I was underwater was the sound of my own inhalation, exhalation, and the bubbles that followed. If I held my breath, it was dead silent (but alive), and my mind naturally went deeper inwards. In the meantime, I look around and I’m surrounded by exotic fish, bizarre plant life, and spectacular coral—if that isn’t meditative I don’t know what is, well maybe not meditative but at least peaceful which is similar…I instantly realize why people get addicted to scuba diving, it has to be the closest thing to being in outer space…

The ocean might as well be a different planet its such a contrast from dry land…No sound, zero gravity and strange colorful creatures floating all around you that resemble nothing you see on the dirt…definitely outer space…We see lobsters, giant clams, little furry things that suck themselves back into the coral when you touch them, a bloated puffer fish, a moral eel, and more fish than I can count. One of the first things that stood out to me was how unafraid the fish were when I was diving. They would come right up to me, I’d hold out my hand and they would chill right there deeply staring into me in an odd way…When you snorkel you tend to freak them out and they scatter at any movement you make—something about approaching them face to face rather than above makes you an equal and not a predator I guess. You aren’t intruding on their home, you’re a part of it.

Its an odd feeling, scuba diving—how you process time and space changes. You just kind of float around (you don’t really swim) and since you have oxygen, there is no concern for coming up to the surface like when you normally swim. I imagine free falling holds a similar atmosphere to it—the sense of timelessness and interconnectedness…

Its really altogether radically different from snorkeling. Its like, you really are one with the ocean when you dive…I noticed this more when I went snorkeling right after where I became concerned again on swimming, my body movements were more rigid, and because I was dependent on air from above the surface, my mind drifted upwards more, rather than the present moment at hand…Also, the waves crashing and water splashing above you is distracting…Floating silently in water without concern for oxygen or any fear—sort of like the womb state I would imagine.

I did an isolation tank back in Charlottesville over the winter. You lie down naked in this bathtub like chamber with a roof on it, no light, and float on the surface of heavily salted water while binaural beats get pumped through the water which alter your brainwaves from the alpha to the theta range, sending you into a deeper meditative state…Scuba diving has a similar effect you just sort of—exist, except when diving you have the backdrop of what feels like an alien world. You watch yourself since your mind isn’t running with all these thoughts and it made me feel like my life was a movie. Depersonalization—we are all chess pieces being played by a single hand—better to be the board than the King I’ve found…Just let go.

I didn’t fully realize the effect the dive had on me until I came up at the end. It was like, it had opened me up a lot and I felt more alive, colors seemed more vibrant to me, I felt more attuned to things going on around, I felt better, and I had some restoration in my faith that eternal peace of mind was actually possible given enough patience/effort…intense natural high…satori glimpse sort of…

I get out of the water and it reminded me of ego loss. This Indian guy asks me if it was my first dive after I get onto the dock, I say “yes” and he smiles and nods his head. I knew and I could see that he knew because my mind had been quelled, revealing it…but now that I think about it I don’t think he knew that he “knew”…if that makes any sense…The weirdest is when you know and you’re with someone else who also knows that they know…then its just like it knows…once again, if that makes any sense…mirrors reflect…

I tend to self-analyze a lot—as most people do—and so I’m posting this excerpt from an interview with Ram Dass that I liked a lot about the matter.

“Rebecca: You've compared the process of persistent self-analysis to playing with one's feces. Where do you think self-analysis can take us, and what are its limitations?

Ram Dass: It depends on your intention in having fecal play. It can be as a practice of mindfulness - in order to find a place of witnessing and seeing it for what it is. Then there is being in the drama and self-analysis can be just a way of exacerbating the drama and making your identity in the storyline more real.

Unfortunately this characterizes most of the dialogues between therapists and patients. Everybody is so caught in the stuff that they are just reinforcing caughtness even as they are trying to get you out of it. It's like rearranging furniture in the prison cell rather than trying to get out of prison.

But as an exercise in mindfulness, self-analysis can be very useful. It can help you to deal with the phenomena of your life as they rise. You notice them and the noticing gets stronger and stronger until you're not going into them so much. That's a stage, because you're still distant from them and then you have to come back in until you're in them and not in them at the same moment.

I think the fallacy is that if you're standing in one place, you can't be standing somewhere else. I think that freedom is being conscious on all levels simultaneously. Freedom is not standing anywhere. You have no perspective, and then you just adopt a perspective for a functional situation. The situation brings you into perspective at that moment, but you're not resting in perspective. Is that clear?”

This is the rest of the interview if you’re interested:

http://www.mavericksofthemind.com/ramdass.htm