Rajya is a Manipuri writer living in the United Kingdom. She writes in English. Recently, her book “Words Through A Soul-A Fool’s Journey” was published in the U.K. Rajya is a guide, a mentor, a teacher, a mystic and an artist. The following is an interview transcript with Rajya.
Excerpts from the interview below:
Lakshmi: Your book is very interesting. How did you come to write this book?
Rajya Lovelife: This book is about my own journey as I began to start on this journey on what people call a “spiritual journey” …15 years ago, I started to live consciously as it was induced by me suffering a lot with depression and anxiety and many other health issues such as I was diagnosed with hypothyroid and fibromyalgia. I was living in a lot of pain. I used to have acute migraine since I was 17-18 years old. As you can see that in our modern society today, when we have a health problem, we go to a doctor and I used to visit all these doctors because I didn’t know what else to do. And, nothing helped because all they did was give me medications to cure my conditions and I just felt worse and worse. Then it dawned on me that whatever I was doing was not working, the pain was not reducing. That’s when I decided to change my own life. I started with yoga as I happened to choose a deck of cards with yoga positions. (Rajya also reads tarot cards and believes in them) I started doing very simple movements since my body was still in a lot of pain. And, something opened up in me Lakshmi, which was for the first time, happening to me. I started meditating regularly and I started to feel energy… whatever questions I had in my life… I used to sit quietly and ask my inner self. I spent a lot of time alone and that helped me heal. Whatever answers came from within me, I started to write them down. That’s how I have compiled my knowledge and my learnings as poems and art in this new book. It felt like I was evolving. I didn’t do any course or anything like that in writing. I just surrendered to the guiding force in my life and I could write and finish this book. I got help from a professional reader as well. I got very helpful and important feedback from them as well. It was my personal journey from the pain I was going through and how I went through the process of healing myself. It’s almost like a memoir.
Lakshmi: I felt like, this book is similar to the writings of Ekhart Tolle. Many people feel that they do not want to read books of this genre, such as spiritual or self-help books. How do one read this book?
Rajya Lovelife: These books are important, more so now than ever before…humanity is going through a lot right now on this planet…it’s not just in Manipur but in the whole world right now…there is wars and there’s so much atrocity, so much crime. There’s internet crimes and frauds too. It is a very dark that we are living in right now. It is important to dive into these books because until we see the truth, we don’t know what’s going on. And that’s what we seek. We’re not going to come to into the path of light. And all these darkness we’re going through, all this human suffering, whether that’s personal suffering, whether that’s depression, whether that’s physical health issues, whatever it is, all these are factors at various levels, at various degrees, at various degrees, these are darkness at play. But how do we come to light? Regular people do not know how to navigate this. People don’t take it seriously and I think that the problem’s right there. In the modern world, we live very factually. We do not go look within; we do not go look deeper. This is not a religious book. I do not believe in any organized religions. There is knowledge in every religion but some religious practices have been keeping humanity in a controlled way for a very long time. We need to do away with organized religions and our systems of educations. That’s an old paradigm. We need connection but unfortunately, human connections are going towards technology these days. The connection is also going outwardly than inward. That’s what is in the book too. When we are connected to our true selves, we are connected to the entire universe and that is when the fear of the unknown will disappear.
Lakshmi: Why do you say that our education system needs to change?
Rajya Lovelife: The education nowadays is an outdated system. It’s about memorizing facts. You need to get good grades and after you finish school, you go to university and then look for a good job. And then run on the hamster wheel and that’s it. Now, that is just a survival mode. You are not thriving there. You don’t know who you are. Most people are so stressed and overwhelmed because survival mode is stressful. There is no difference between us and the hunter gatherers in the old days. The only thing changed is the scenery. No, we are not here just to procreate and survive. We have not been conscious for a long time.
Lakshmi: What does it mean to be “conscious”?
Rajya Lovelife: A conscious human being means he/she/they are conscious of everything; conscious of our thoughts; what am I thinking? What is it doing to me? Conscious of our emotions. What am I feeling? Fear? Joy? Conscious of our body. What is my body going through? Conscious of my life. Where am I going? Conscious of our living environment, our living space. So, it is basically being conscious of every aspect of our own being, of our own life, our thoughts, our emotions, our body, our space etc. Otherwise, if we are not conscious, we will fall into default programming in the sense that we are born, we grow up, we get a job, we get married, we procreate and we get old and we die. That’s a default mode. And we have a lot of distractions, you know, too many glitters-I call it glitters and bling. So much technology, so much time we spend on our screens, too much information etc. We just don’t know how to be conscious amidst all of these. We don not even ask ourselves how to start on this journey. And, that is why this book is written… so that we can remember who we are. Technology helps us, which is great but we must use it for that purpose only. But these must not control us. The desire to have more must not control us. The attachment to material things, the greed must not control us. We must remember the light that we are. We are here for a short while as a soul which is never ending. We have this human experience and then we go back to Light. Knowing that there is a source power, the source of all creation, the source of all knowledge, what it does is it opens up our limitedness. When we live in the default mode, we are really not connecting ourselves to that power. To connect to our own divinity is what consciousness means.
Lakshmi: Why is the word “Awakening” used here in the book? And how do we read this book?
Rajya Lovelife: It means that most human beings are asleep. Although, we may seem awake and living, our consciousness is asleep. If you look on the introduction page number 7, there is this sentence that says, “A fool’s journey”. See, I was that fool. Until I woke up, I did not realize what a fool I had been. I didn’t know anything. People usually believe that intellectual knowledge is wisdom but it is just acquired information. Real wisdom and intelligence come from the connection. Once you’re connected and you’re open to the wonders of this universe, that is when knowledge flows. And, that is why great people such as Einstein, for example, or Nikola Tesla, or great writers such as Artola and so many other great people have contributed wonderfully to this planet. So, this book goes through the nine stages of awakening. So, each human being will go through the pain, the solitude, and then you learn the lessons etc and at the end, it is about you being a powerful creator. This is the last stage when you realize that you can create your own life because you are not just a mere human but a fragment of the same energy source who created this entire universe. We are supposed to be thriving and living. This is how this book should be read.
Rajya Lovelife’s book is now available at various libraries in the United Kingdom such as The British Library, London; The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, The Library of Trinity College, Dublin and The National Library Wales. The copies of the book is also available on Amazon.
The writer is currently pursuing Masters in English Language and Literature from Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Bengaluru. She earlier interned at Bowel Cancer UK as a public relations assistant in London, and after receiving training as an English teacher under Via Lingua International in Istanbul
