* My stream of consciousness got mapped in my mandalas

I was in a small town in Bengal for a cousin’s engagement ceremony when the country went into lockdown mode. With no full-time job, the prospect of living amid coconut and papaya trees, away from the health hazards of Delhi, seemed attractive. I also thought I would finish some pending writing and research work in the solitude of a terraced room in my uncle’s house.

But as the days passed by, the project didn’t move forward an inch. Instead, I found myself drawing concentric circles and filling them with flower petals and leaf patterns.

What I was pursuing with maniacal frenzy is known as mandala (Sanskrit for circle). Geometrically patterned mandalas are used for performing religious rituals in many Eastern spiritual traditions. Rangoli and alpana are examples of mandala art. Tibetan Buddhist monks draw exquisite mandalasusing coloured sand during rituals for their deities, only to dismantle them after the ceremony — signifying transience.

My obsession with the art form had no spiritual purpose. I first saw a mandala a few years ago on the cover of a book on tantra. The colours and the geometrical symmetry fascinated me. During the lockdown, I stumbled on a mandala making video on an artist’s page I follow. Merely watching it had a therapeutic effect on me, inspiring me to grab a pen and paper and replicate the process.

I think I initially took it up merely to escape what is known as survivor’s guilt — a symptom experienced by soldiers on the war field when they escape death even as their compatriots are killed. Helplessly watching famished migrants walking home and dying on the way, while we were secure in our air-conditioned rooms with a stocked-up fridge, did something similar to many of us. Also, the economic slump, news of friends losing their jobs and acquaintances back in Delhi testing positive made me insecure about my own work prospects and the health of my elderly parents. Under normal circumstances, I would have used the Netflix-and-chill formula to escape these troubling thoughts. But poor internet connectivity closed that door for me. And I am thankful it did, for I focused on my circles.

Although the patterns in a mandala are similar to those in traditional art such as Madhubani and Warli, folk art, unlike the former, seeks to tell a story in images. Because of its emphasis on geometry and symmetry, mandala is also different from Zentangle, another therapeutic art exercise.

Practitioners begin with simple patterns and then move to more complex designs. But even the simplest of patterns can give us a spectacular mandala if made with precision and patience. With rigorous practice, my strokes became steadier. Sometimes, I worked on patterns late into the night. A pen and a doodle pad became a permanent fixture in my hands. While watching television, or talking on phone, I would keep perfecting new patterns.

As I became more comfortable drawing these patterns, I would slip into moments of deep contemplation, reviewing the decisions I’d made in my life — in my career, family relationships and so on — even while I filled in the circles with meticulous care. My stream of consciousness got mapped in my mandalas.

But this wasn’t the usual exercise in self-blaming or a harsh self-assessment. The activity helped me gain a “meta awareness” of my behavioural and thinking patterns, my hot buttons and my needs. It led to a long overdue internal dialogue without self-loathing. If was as if my strokes were guiding me to the centre of my being. My devotion to making mandalas had successfully created inside me what therapists and activists have been demanding from institutions — a safe space.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who extensively used mandalas in his clinical practice, left behind rich written material analysing the patterns he had drawn during a rather difficult phase in his life following his break with the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961), he writes, “With the help of these drawings I could observe my psychic transformations from day to day...”

In 1918-19, when Jung was stationed in French Switzerland as the commandant of a British war prisoners’ camp, he understood what drawing mandalas was doing to him. He wrote: “There is no linear evolution, there is only a circumambulation of the self. The insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.”

Neuroscience explains the calming effect of mandalas, too. When you engage in an activity that doesn’t demand much of your cognitive resources, such as, say, folding clothes or cutting vegetables, or, with some practice, even mandala making, the brain falls into a “default mode” — a term coined by American radiologist and neuroscientist Marcus Raichle in 2001. The brain parts that form the default mode network help in forging connections in our autobiographical memories, giving us a window to witness our journey, even though in retrospect. The insights that we may get from such a free-flowing and effortless exercise can be life-changing. It helped me arrive at some of the most profound conclusions about myself.

This is not to say mandalas permanently delete the problems in our life. It is merely a tool of self-exploration — like psychotherapy, meditation or dhrupad singing. The fact that it is easy to master and rather affordable makes it accessible to anyone willing to have a dialogue with the self. And see the self emerge, bit by bit.

Somi Das is a writer, journalist and art practitioner based in Delhi