Book Review: Invisible Patterns

Have you ever felt that feeling of having done something before (deja vu), or dreams of an experience that cannot be explained away as an experience? Likes and dislikes, fears or affinities, that are inexplicable? Do you sometimes 'like' someone, or feel that you know someone very well, when infact you may be meeting them for the first time? Or 'dislike' someone, sometimes to the point where you cannot tolerate anything about them, even if they might not have done you any real harm?

Phenomena that science has attempted to explain, not very consistently or convincingly. For these lie in the realm of the unknown, where words like uncanny, co-incidence, extra-sensory, sixth sense, the nth dimension, etc., make more sense than the cold, hard reasoning of science.

Recently A was gifted this very interesting book by a friend, who is an incredibly wonderful person, and whose blog-posts always make me introspect, think, re-inspect my choices. To my shame, I do not always make the changes I need to make, but the seed gets sown in my subconscious, which keeps nurturing it. Some day, I hope, these will take root, and compel me to make those changes.

Pic courtesy The Hindu  

INVISIBLE PATTERNS
Written by Dr Shyamala Vatsa
Illustrated by J.K.Naren
Published by Fo'c'sle Publications
Ages: 10+  (my estimate)

Harsh is an ordinary 10-yr-old, who loves getting boisterous with his friends at school,  is a keen athlete, and loves messing around with his younger sister Sanjali, grandmother and his parents at home.

But sometimes, something strange happens. Almost unawares, he sees himself as someone else, at some other time, in another place, often with some of his dear ones in some other role. Perplexingly, these experiences differ totally in their time-place specifics every time.

Harsh is confused. What is it that he keeps seeing? Is it some kind of memory? If it is, how is it that he is not himself, Harsh, in these memories? How can he have memories of something that might have happened 100, 1000 or even more years ago, in a totally alien place? Events and places that have been read of only in his history / geography lessons? If it is just associations his mind has been making, how does it all seem so real, so vivid, as if it had really happened? And even more strangely, how is it that his sister can see the exact same things that he has been seeing?

So many questions. Wonderfully for him, his parents do not scoff at him, or put him off with "you must be imagining things!" They keep communication channels open, and try to explain things in a matter-of-fact way, using his everyday experiences. The explanations, of course, are consistent with their beliefs.

How there might be other souls around us, probably helping us along. How a soul may be born again, and experience different things.

How the Karma of the soul- that balance sheet of all the good and bad things it does- leads him to the next life-experience. How this seemingly out-of-our-control-path-of-destiny can be actually modified by us, channelised by us in the right direction by the use of  'free will.' By excercising our choice. Of not squandering our gifts. Of turning bad times into opportunities for change, possibly for the better.

How there may be many alternate worlds co-existing in the universe, at different times, in different places. As explained to him about alternate universes, wormholes, curved spacetime and time travel by a scientist friend of his father.

The book tries to explain the invisible patterns in the universe, that may be sensed more by minds that are open to the infinite possibilities, like those of children. It may be a more commonplace phenomena than we realise. Maybe most adults have lost this childlike quality of the mind, making our thinking more mundane. Leaving it to the 'exceptional' ones to pursue a path to ...one may call it enlightenment.

I found the book very interesting in that it attempted to put forth a very unusual topic- that of reincarnation and karma- in the format of a story for children. I am not really a believer in reincarnation- or, to put it more honestly, I'll say that I do not know if I believe in reincarnation. The ambiguity comes about because of the culture, the faith I have grown up with, which sets a lot of store by this theory. So I might be a closet believer after all, but not very comfortable with the idea that I might have been someone other than myself in another life. (If I do consider it sometimes, I believe I may have lived through WW2 and the Holocaust. I sometimes have an eerie sense of reality while reading about it!)

As a result, I have never broached the topic with A. I might need to do that before suddenly handing over this book to her, as I would like her to take the purpose of the book seriously. Which to my mind is the idea of the balancing of our good and bad behaviours, and that they have a bearing on the possibilities that may be open to us, and that even there, we can excercise our choice, our free will to direct the path we may take.

And, as I look at it, that needs quite a bit of courage. Which I am desperately in need of when I sometimes just let things be and take their own course.

THAT is what I value my friends for. For their ability to make me introspect.

A well written book, which takes the montessori route of going from the known to the unknown, and letting a child work out most things for himself /herself. Maybe a bit limited to the Hindu way of thinking, so it might be a bit unbelievable for others. Not unless they have a universalistic bent of mind.