Aham Bramhasmi (I AM GOD) By : Saikumar My primitive stomach was sending signals that I needed to feed.

I was patiently waiting for the tiny floating creature to swim closer to my mouth so that I could snap it up. I had been floating around for a while in the open sea waters scavenging for scraps of dead meat of other creatures bigger than me, which in turn were hunted and killed by still larger and agile creatures. This gamut of hunting and being hunted and being eaten up was a process that has been going on for eternity and will continue to be so. The ocean got darker and murkier as the light from above could never cut through. I was limited to float about in the upper realms and could never go deeper as my protective outer hard shell would implode due to the pressure. I was but just another creature in the process of evolution as life evolved from the primordial soup of the basic elements of the earth, the carbons the amino acids and the proteins. Creatures evolved .Some adapted, others died giving back the proteins to others to continue. My own life began as tiny plankton which managed to escape becoming food for other creatures. As I grew I developed the hard outer shell, which protected my soft innards from the elements of nature. As I grew in size continually I grew a new shell covering the previous one. And I shifted my soft body into it. The process went on and on. As life kept evolving a time would come when some of the creatures moved on to the land from the sea. My story would be linked to one such creature, which identified itself as human later on when there was no life in me. Time space and units of life are but only relative in nature. But as the humans fix everything in terms of these meaningless terms, for now I will have to rely on these very concepts to continue my story. The earth was still evolving just as I was. It has been only a few billion years from the time it got detached from the fiery star which the humans called the sun. The earth still majorly in a liquid stage was still in a state of turmoil and the plates it developed on its cooled down surface were still in motion as they would continue to be for a long time to come. I as a body had no sense of hearing but the cells constituting my body could sense the rumbling movement of these plates. Meanwhile I continued to grow and it was time for me to move my body into the new chamber that got created. Through the primitive singular ocular organ I possessed I could make out a tiny Crustacean as the humans would call this creature swimming by above me. To me it was food. I quickly jetted out the water stored in my inner empty shell and got lighter and propelled myself upward and quickly snapped it up. My kind have been around for billions of years, varying in size from few inches to two meters in diameter. Yes we were shaped like flat discs. We were slowly dying out and soon are to be extinct. The drastic climatic changes on the Earths surface, was one of the causes. Gigantic creatures that ruled the earth, the humans called them dinosaurs were also dying out for these very reasons. Food was getting scarce and one fine day I gave up living and my body slowly sank down to the bottom on the sea bed. I was quickly covered by the deposits of fine silty sediments. Soon began the process of transformation of a lowly creature into something that was to live again, a totally different life. The physical and chemical conditions very much necessary for this transformation existed. There was a dearth of organic matter and oxygen, and the sediments deposited were rich in phosphates and iron sulphides. As each cell of my body got decayed and the organic matter that they were made of, were gradually replaced by the phosphates and iron sulphides, thereby my physical body structure was preserved in its original form down to the cell level. Now I was transformed into a fossil hard enough to withstand the testing times ahead.

Meanwhile the Earths ever changing process of rearranging its continents continued. The tectonic plate which the humans latter named as the Indo-Australian plate, moved closer and closer to the Eurasian plate. The Tethys Sea in between them got shallower, and eventually rose above the sea level. Such was the power of the tectonic movement that the thick sedimentary rock layers got wrinkled up and got transformed into the mighty Himalayan mountain range. As I was embedded in these very sedimentary beds I was literally elevated from the depths of the oceans to the heights of the Himalayas. Simultaneously another process of the nature was in action. The waters pouring down from the skies formed their own path in the form of rivers to flow back again to the sea. The young playful river during its course of flow cut through the mountains sides. I was once again disturbed from my deep slumber in the sedimentary beds by the sound and smell of water. It was definitely different from the one that nurtured me and finally put me to sleep. One fine day I was unceremoniously dislodged from my resting place and tumbled down stream by the pristine cold waters of the river. The humans called this river Gandaki. For another million years I was washed reverently by Gandaki, alternatively forcefully and gently depending on the season. As a result I looked resplendently divine. Shining dark in colour with streaks of gold in places, depending on the mineralization process from long time ago, the phosphates gave me the dark colour but the golden streaks were attributed to the golden yellow pyrite. There I lay patiently for the next phase of my life that was to come. Meanwhile the Earth was growing too, as a unit of life. Yes Earth itself was unit of life, just as I as a creature was a unit of life. I was but a collection of millions of cells, individually they were units of life collectively them made me. Each cell lived and died and more cells were created so that I could be sustained as a unit of life. The cells within me were in turn made up of elements which were made up of ions like the electrons, protons, neutrons and they were in turn made of god particles which in turn are up of pure energy. The Earth itself was just a part of the solar system, which in turn was part of the galaxy, which was a part of the milkyway. It goes on and on till we reach the pure energy again. The pure energy is what we cannot define and simply call it GOD. So it is only a tiny fraction of the energy which temporarily gets converted to mass. And we are part of this energy in the form of mass. Meanwhile life forms on earth evolved to the stage wherein all the Reptilian dinosaurs died out, and now was the age of the Mammalian rule. The humans were now being the top of the food chain. They evolved to the present form and were spread out on to all the continents on the earth. The humans were not satisfied with merely living their lives out like the other animals because they had the little extra compared to the other life forms, they could think abstractly and ponder over their very meaning of their lives. They tried to understand what they were and the very purpose of their existence. They all understood one thing in common that there was some mysterious force behind their existence. They called him GOD. One such group of humans, were from the land presently called India. I will restrict myself to this group as my story continues among these groups of humans. These humans like the others were initially were bewildered about the forces of nature and their very existence. During different times some of the learned persons came up with the concept of Sarva Dharma which simply meant the way of living. The less learned among them could not grip this very abstract concept of The way of living they needed something more concrete and substantial to believe in. and thus was created the image of god, cast in their own form as a human. They called this god

Vishnu. As time went by they created myths and lore about their god. Vishnu was adorned with a circular discuss called the Sudarshan chakra, among other paraphernalia such as mace, conch, and lotus. He wore this discuss on his forefinger as a weapon that he used to cut down the evil and demons. Many among these humans still debate on if the ancient seers saw these stones and formulated the looks of gods or the gods preserved their own personal attributes in these stones as a timeless album. Imagine having stones carrying marks that resemble the 'Sudarshan Chakra' or the discus which rests on the index finger of Lord Vishnu. Coming back to my story, one fine day I was discovered lying in all my resplendent glory in the shallow waters of the Gandaki River by a shepherd boy. News of my discovery spread and reached the ears of a king from a distant land far away in the plains. I was with all due ceremony and pomp, carried to the temple dedicated to Vishnu and installed in the sanctum sanatorium as the Shaligram symbolic representation of the Vishnu himself. Some humans known as the paleontologists gave me a scientific name The Ammonite because my body resembled the horn of another animal that evolved latter on. The person was represented with these horns and was called Aamon and hence the name Ammonite. Strange that apart from the human form from among all the types of fossils available I was the chosen one to represent the god himself. Was it the quirk of nature that I resembled the Sudharsan Chakra? Or is it a symbolic representation by the ancient wisdom that realized that all creatures big and small are but a manifestation of god or the supreme energy itself, I wonder. It has been ages now that I am washed daily with water and reverently prayed to, in the temple of Jagannath in Puri a coastal city in Eastern part of the Land known as India. I also happen to be biggest and heaviest Saligram to be installed in any temple. As time went by the humans created more and more new religions and new gods. Each group claiming their own god to be the true god. This resulted in violent conflicts amongst the humans. The humans became the malignant cancerous cells in the Earths body, which could eventually cause the demise of all life on Earth. I dont know what further fate awaits me, as the temple I am installed in, has already been attacked scores of times so far. But for now I am the Ammonite, I am the Saligram. I AM GOD. Notes: 1) According to Hindu tradition, the Shaligram stone is the shelter for a small insect known as the vajrakeeta (Diamond Insect) that drills through this stone and lives inside it. Down south this insect is referred to as PonVandu (Golden Bee). This has the capabilities to Fly and Swim and lived high in the Himalayan Mountains, but never seen by any human to date. The Hindus have found it easier to focus on anthropomorphic icons. 2) Tulsi, also known as Holy Basil is closely associated with the origins of Shila worship. Once in anger Sarasvati cursed Lakshmi. Sarasvati's curse changed Lakshmi into a tulsi plant and forced her to live on earth forever. Vishnu, however, intervened and modified the curse, saying that Lakshmi would remain on earth as tulsi until the river Gandaki flowed from her body. In the meantime, He would wait by the riverside in the form of a stone to take her back to His abode. This stone was the Shaligram Shila, which thus remained on earth as a representative of Vishnu. The Shila Deities and the tulsi plant are thus always worshipped together as Vishnu and Lakshmi.

3) In medieval Europe, fossilised ammonites were thought to be petrified coiled snakes, and were called "snakestones" or, more commonly in medieval England, "serpentstones". They were considered to be evidence for the actions of saints, such as Hilda of Whitby, and Saint Patrick, and were held to have healing or oracular powers. Traders would occasionally carve the head of a snake onto the empty, wide end of the ammonite fossil, and then sell them to the public. In other cases, the snake's head would be simply painted on. Probably the origin of the miraculous powers of ammonites, originated in the pagan idolatry culture of the East, carried out to the west during the course of history.