BOOM...err...rang!!!

Just the other day I was discussing the theory of Yoga in general and Karma in specific with black_beetle. We both concurred on Karma being akin to a boomerang. And yesterday, I watched what probably is one of the most telling commentaries on Karma ever filmed - Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange. And while the peerless Syd Barrett invigorates my intellect with his Madcap Laughs, I'll try to pen my thoughts on the boomerang theory vis-a-vis Kubrick's masterpiece. Warning : This may contain spoilers.

Let me first introduce you to the boomerang theory. Karma is nothing but action, or if you care about a sudden Einstienesque spurt in my cerebrum, the lack of it. I say lack of action since that constitutes a plethora of activities in itself. And since the human mind is accustomed to great quantums of action even when we're in the deepest of slumber, lack of action would entail a huge amount of energies spent to restrain the boundless flight of the human mind. Hence, hereforth, when I refer to action, it'll also imply the lack of it. Moving forward, every action of ours comes back to us. Just like a boomerang. And to an untrained soul, it sometimes becomes too much to handle. And this happens when the living entity (the body, soul and intellect) starts getting hit from all sides with boomerangs he's himself thrown at some time in the past. And then there are the numerous boomerang it throws in self-defense. That's just the start of the chain reaction. And this is where Yogis are born. A yogi is a trained soul, ie. a soul in sync with its intellect. A yogi is someone who is in control of the boomerangs he throws. So when he throws one, he knows when and how its going to come back at him. This allows him to be prepared to catch it on its return and avoid hurt to the living entity. Now, I don't mean that yogis won't ever make mistakes. But for them, the mistakes are strong learning experiences and they'll take care not to throw a certain boomerang in a certain way if it has hurt them in the past. Guess that was the boomerang theory in a nutshell. I agree that this by itself might not be enough for a complete understanding of the theory, but my scope is much larger here and I'll try and address any specific issues through comments on this post.

Now, the movie. Its a first person narrative of Alexander DeLarge, a degenerate of the top order and his journey through the cycle of reform. We see various facets of Alex in the first few minutes. The only son to a naive and hardworking pair of parents; a nasty teenager with a complete lack of compassion; a spoilt brat with a love for worldly effects; a nocturnal animal who indulges in lawless activities to satiate his hormones; a dagger wielding leader of a gang of similar hoodlums and last, but not the least, an ardent fan of as he himself would put it, "lovely Ludwig van". He's tricked by his own gang and ends up getting 14 years in the bin for murder. This begins a medley of different colours of reforms he undergoes. Starting with the tough prison life, where he finds comfort in the bible (though not in a way one would imagine him to). Then on to being a subject for a revolutionary medical concept, brainwashing criminals into vegetables, for whom the very thought of sex and violence gets nauseating and revolting. The "cured" Alex is released and he finds his brainwashed state conflicting with his instincts. That's when the boomerangs start hitting him. They hit him real hard. And he sees life coming a full circle. Reeling from the boomerang hits, he finds himself at the mercy of a reactionary professor, one of his old victims. This begins the return of the most viciously thrown boomerang depicted in the movie - also the next phase of his reform - an exercise at exploiting his brainwashed state to drive him to suicide. The climax shows Alex in a hospital, recovering from a botched suicide bid. And we see him really "cured". At home with his instincts. A cynical footnote screaming out the hypocrisy of the establishment is thrown in for good measure. But the most hard hitting part of the movie is the last line - "I was cured, all right". Cured he was, because he regained his strongest power. The power to choose, the power to throw the boomerang he wants to. And IMO, that's the cure a majority of humankind needs today.