Reading a quality article is my wish. I continuously search for it day in and day out.
Thanks to @deepakmnadiger i could read three wonderful articles. I will provide the link below and suggest readers to visit and read these articles. These articles were accessed in @deepakmnadiger twitter handle.
The article displays power of words and beauty of imagination by the three writers:
Sections of the article from The Nataraja and Epilepsy is reproduced here for generating interest in the readers:
Apasmara is generally translated as “ignorance” in English descriptions of the Nataraja statue. But look closer at its etymology – from the Sanskrit roots “apa”, meaning negation, and “smara”, meaning memory or recollection (as in Smarana and Smriti).
Here’s where the fascinating part starts. Apasmara is also the Sanskrit term for epilepsy, the medical term for what we call “fits” or seizures.
Apasmara was one of the eight mahagada, or dreadful diseases, in Ayurveda, and, in my opinion, for good reason.
The reason a seizure is so striking is that for its duration, you see the animal that hides behind the human.
The healthy brain maintains a neat, manicured appearance, like the well-mowed lawns you see in wealthy American suburbs. It hides most of its functioning from public view, like a pretty girl who will never admit to digging her nose.
In a seizing patient, though, the pretence breaks down. The purdah parts, and for a brief interlude you see the raw power of the brain. The feeling you get watching it is difficult to describe – it is a combination of terrifying fear and stunned admiration. Perhaps the word ‘awe’ comes closest to describing it.
The scales fall from your eyes, and you see that you, your patient, the nurses, everyone you’ve ever known is nothing but a bag of flesh and bones under the dictatorial command of the nervous system. Your hand moves because your brain’s motor cortex makes it. Your bowels stay continent because there are neurons that ensure they stay that way. Your eyes swivel to follow a moving cricket ball because at the back of your brain is a complicated network that controls every little twitch they make with millimeter precision.
Here is where I began to appreciate the beauty of the philosophical tradition named Kashmiri Shaivism, and its concept of Pratyabhijna. Pratyabhijna means recognition. As in re-cognition – remembering something which you already knew but had temporarily forgotten. And what you have forgotten, according to Kashmiri Shaivism, is the knowledge of the self. In their philosophy, your inner consciousness or self is of the nature of Shiva. Their concept of divinity was the conscious self within each of us, which was identical with the universe as it existed.
In essence, my interpretation of the Nataraja would be that it is telling us that most “unawakened” people are living their entire lives as though in a continuous seizure. Ever forgetful, caught up in the machinations and worries and ruminations of everyday life.
Nataraja stands within you, in the hall of your consciousness, holding down Apasmara, the embodiment of your forgetfulness. Nataraja’s grace is meant to save you from forgetting your true nature, so you may come out of the seizure-like condition that is the fate of most people’s daily lives.
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