MEMORABLE SPECULATION

Swami Bhaskarananda is a senior monk and president of the Vedanta Society of Western Washington in Seattle, Washington.  In a recent talk on meditation, he brought up the subject of the creation of the universe.  It brings to mind a particularly memorable speculation in the 129th hymn of the 10th book of the Rig-Veda:

Then there was neither being nor non-being:
There was no air, nor firmament beyond it.
Was there a stirring?  Where?  Beneath what cover?
Was there a great abyss of unplumbed water?

There was no death nor anything immortal;
Nor any sign dividing day from night.
That One Thing, given no breath, was yet self-breathing;
No second thing existed whatsoever.

Darkness was hidden in a deeper darkness;
This All was as a sea without dimensions;
The void still held unformed what was potential,
Until the power of Warmth produced the sole One...

Who truly knows, and who can here declare it,
Whence it was born, and how this world was fashioned?
The gods came later than the earth's creation.
Who knows then out of what the world has issued?

Whether the world was made or whether self-made,
He knows with full assurance, he alone,
Who in the highest heaven guards and watches;
He knows indeed, but then, perhaps, he knows not.

This last line is intriguing.  Swami Bhaskarananda said in his talk that God dreamed the world into existence.  If this is the case, then God may in fact not know whether “the world was made or whether self-made,” which is to say whether he created it, or whether, by coincidence, it created itself.  Who remembers a dream after they wake up?

Then, God may still be dreaming, probably is still dreaming.

THE OPPOSITE OF YOU

This relates to POLARITY that I just posted here.  I wrote this two years ago.

The pairs of opposites, as they are called, are endless.  Everything has its opposite, day/night, life/death, hot/cold, peace/war, and so on. 

What, though, is the opposite of a person, of you?  The opposite of you is "not-you."  Another way to look at it is in terms of presence/absence.  The opposite of the present you is the absent you.

 Brahman plays the game of now-you-see-it, now-you-don't, or, in this case, now-you-are-seen, now-you-are-not.  This is to say, Brahman manifests itself and unmanifests itself, and as you, manifests you and unmanifests you.

The unmanifested, in this pair of opposites, is not nothing, though.  It is still Brahman, only not manifested.  Anything in the world that vanishes, only appears to do so.  When it grows dark at night, it is only the absence of the sun, but the sun only appears to disappear, so to say.  It is always there.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed.  You are energy.  When a human dies, when you die, you only seem to end, when in fact you've only switched from the manifested state back to the unmanifested.  You've returned to what you were before you were born, which, again, is not nothing.

POLARITY

If you chop a magnet into smaller and smaller pieces, even down to the level of an atom, it maintains its polarity, north on one end and south on the other.  Other opposites in the world such as night and day, hot and cold, up and down, right and left, are just as persistent.  We accept this.
 
When it comes to the opposites of life and death, however, we make an exception.  We don’t really die, we say, but go to heaven, or something equivalent, or if we’ve lived “unwholesomely,” in the opposites of “wholesome”/“unwholesome,” we go to hell, or something similar.
   
But the fact remains, if we chop life/death into ever smaller pieces, down to the atomic level, there is no changing that life is on one end and death is on the other.

We are not, though, we argue, only our bodies.  Our bodies die sure enough, obviously, but we have souls and those live on.  All Western Religions teach this, after all, as do, for that matter, most all Eastern Religions. 
 
Vedanta, for instance, says that the body does indeed die, but that the Atman in the body survives.  Buddhism, which insists that nothing, at least nothing spiritual, lives on, admits that some something carries on, leading to reincarnation.  Taoism, which is primarily oriented toward the living, still speaks of transformation and immortality. 
 
Of course, we will all find out firsthand soon enough, we admit, well aware that if we make it past death we will know it.  If we do not make it past, though, we will not know it; we will be dead.  Polarity.

TIME FROM THE TIMELESS

Brahman has no past and no future; it is unaffected by time.  Yet the relative world that Brahman manifests has a past and a future; it is affected by time.  How is it possible that something that is timeless can manifest something that has time?

The reason is that time in the relative world is only an appearance, is only what seems to be.  According to the Sixth century Greek philosopher Parmenides, our sensory faculties create the false perception of time, making this a world of appearances rather than what really is.  What really is, Parmenides holds, is an eternal oneness where change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. 
 
Vedanta adds that it is “maya” that causes our senses to have the false perception that there is time in the relative world.  Maya is defined, generally, as illusion.  The traditional analogy is that a rope seen from a distance appears to be a snake.
 
Since Brahman is the only truth, maya is true but not the truth.  The difference is that the truth is the truth forever, while what is true is only true for now.  Since maya causes the material world to be seen, and how it is to be seen, it is true in itself but is untrue in comparison to the Brahman.

PERSONAL PRAYER

There is a lot going on out here in the outside world, in the world of the senses, in the outside world, in the forest. 
 
Yet it is peaceful and calm here in the center, in the clearing that is the Atman, in “whatever this is,” what I, this person, now know to be the Atman, in “whatever this is,” what I, this person, now know to be union with God.

May the Atman grow ever more present in me, this person, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen.
 
After all this is his life, not my life, not this person’s life.  His many lifetimes, his many journeys, including the current sixty-eight years and counting journey, have been that he may realize his destiny, which is this awakening, liberation.

I, this person, am proud to have been his vehicle, and as it happens, his final vehicle. 
 
I, this person, will die one day, but he will not.  Nor will he ever be born into this world of form again.  His task is complete, the mission accomplished, the deed done.

I, this person, surrender to the Atman.  I, this person, yield to him.  He is the captain of this ship now, of this ship that is this person, only now he is up on deck and at the helm.

I trust his command, his guidance, his judgment.  He is me, this person’s true identity.

May he grow ever more present in me, continue to unfold, to blossom, to deepen, to widen.

And as always I am grateful for his protecting me, this person, and for his providing for me, this person, all these sixty-eight years.

This is his time.  His time has come at last.  The awakening.  Liberation.

JIVA

Jiva is the Atman (higher consciousness) identified with its coverings, called the sheaths, which are the mind, body, senses, etc.  The Atman, in the jiva state, experiences birth and death, pleasure and pain, and the other opposites of the relative world.  Jivatman is another term for jiva.

Most people are in the jiva condition, and remain so for many lifetimes. 
  
Over time, the Atman realizes that the sheaths are not who it really is, and it yearns for what is missing.  This leads to its revelation that what is absent is Brahman, God.  What the Atman does not yet know, however, but is destined to know, is that it is one with Brahman, that Brahman is its source.
 
Finally comes the day when it is able to proclaim, “I am He,” “I am That,” “I am Brahman.”

This is moksha, liberation.  No more will the Atman be reincarnated, no more wandering aimlessly through lifetimes, no more suffering.  A drop of mist returning to the ocean from which it was born, is the traditional metaphor for this occurrence.

As for the person, the individual, the sheaths of mind, body, etc. in whom this drama has played out, he or she can only stare in wonder, waving from the shore.

OCEANIC FEELING

Romain Rolland (January 29, 1866 – December 30, 1944) was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian, and mystic.  He was strongly influenced by the Vedanta philosophy, primarily through the works of Swami Vivekananda. 
  
In 1923 Rolland began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud, which continued until Freud’s death in 1939.  This correspondence introduced Freud to the concept of the “oceanic feeling,” that Rolland had developed through his study of, again, Eastern mysticism. 
 
Vivekananda liked to use the ocean as a metaphor to describe a person’s relationship to Brahman, God.  He said “There is, as it were, an infinite ocean behind, and you and I are like so many waves coming out of that infinite outside.  Each one of us has that infinite ocean of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss as our birthright, or real nature.”

Freud opened his 1929 book, Civilization and its Discontents, with an overview of Rolland’s “oceanic feeling,” stating, “It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of 'eternity,' a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded--as it were, 'oceanic.' This feeling, he adds, is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems. . .One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion.”

Freud goes on to provide a psychoanalytic interpretation of the phenomenon, confessing however that he himself has never experienced it.

MONKEY

Buddhism refers to the “monkey mind,” but Vedanta uses the metaphor, too.

Swami Vivekananda compared the human mind to a monkey that is always restless and incessantly active by its own nature.  The human mind, he said, naturally wants to get outside, to peer out of the body, as it were, through the channels of the organs.
  
Accordingly, he stressed the practice of concentration, as he felt there is no limit to the power of the human mind; the more concentrated it is, the more powerful it becomes.  It Is important, he said, to avoid anything that disturbs the mind or makes it restless.

In his lectures on Raja Yoga, he suggested that a person "Take up one idea.  Make that one idea your life; think of it, dream of it, live on that idea.  Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone.”  In religion, coincidentally, this was the way great spiritual giants were produced, he said.

TERRIBLE THINGS

People do terrible things to each other, torture, wars, etc. because they don’t know who they are.  When they do such things they are actually doing them to themselves, as it is all one Life.

HERE AND NOT HERE

Deciding where I would go was a matter of closing my eyes and pointing to a place on the map.  I didn't know what I would see at this place, only that it would be as far north as a bus could take me in the few days of my Spring Break.

The manager of the motel where I stayed when I got to Midland, Ontario, Canada, said that I should visit the Martyr’s Shrine just down the road, along with the nearby reconstruction of a Huron Indian village, and mission, called Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.  He said the shrine and the village commemorated the martyrdom of six Jesuit missionaries at the hands of invading Iroquois.  This was in 1649.

The shrine, it turned out, was a large, gray-stone church, Roman Catholic, with high steeples on either side of it.  It sat on the side of a steep grassy hill, the Stations of the Cross around a circular path leading to a lookout point up top.   From this lookout, when finally I got there, I could see, far below, the dark green Wye River winding inland, while beyond it, to the right, spreading to the horizon, Georgian Bay.

All this was fascinating to me, a non Catholic, even as my real interest remained in what was at the bottom of the hill.

The Sainte-Marie among the Hurons village was a faithful reproduction of the original.  At the entrance was a large shelter made out of brown cypress pillars, with a white birch-bark roof.  Clay was used to fill in the interior walls.  Inside the village was a chapel, a residence for the Jesuits, a cookhouse, a blacksmith shop, and a “long house” for the resident Indians.

This was all well and good, but I was not prepared for what I experienced next.

I learned that the mission priests suffered particularly gruesome deaths, by boiling water, burning at the stake, and flaying.  The Hurons and, for that matter, the invading Iroquois, fared little better, killing each other in the brutal way Indians did at that time, spears, clubs, arrows, and tomahawks.

Was it the souls of these people, or their ghosts perhaps, that I could feel so unmistakably in the air and that quickly had me unnerved?

All these years later I think of a talk by the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle where he says that the relative world can be thought of as being on the surface of a sphere.  The sphere represents the one Life, so called.  All life in the relative world is an expression of this one Life.

The relative world is made up of opposites.  As with all opposites in the relative world, life and death occur only on the surface of the sphere.

The one Life does not have an opposite in that it was never created, it never began, hence will never perish.  As expressions of this one Life, humans do not perish either, only relatively.

This means that the priests, the Hurons, and the Iroquois were gone only sort of, or as the motel manager put it when I told him what I had experienced, “Yes, the priests and Indians are still around, only they don’t live here anymore.”

I am left to wonder if there will come a time when I am still around but don’t live here anymore either.

EMANATION

The relative world may be thought of as being on the surface of a sphere, in the words of Eckhart Tolle, the spiritual teacher.  The sphere represents the one Life.  All life in the relative world is an expression of this one Life. 
 
The relative world is not created by the one Life, however; the one Life is not like a Creator God.  The relative world emanates, to use Vedanta’s preferred word, from the one Life.  Emanate means to issue or spread out from (a source).   

An analogy would be an apple tree.  The tree does not create its apples.  The apples issue from it.  In this way, the tree and the apples are the same thing, an apple tree.

SOMETHING: A SHORT STORY

He lived inland for two decades, rarely driving the 45 minutes down to the coast.  A new job, however, had him moving down that way.  With the ocean so close by now, he would take advantage of it, of course, which for him meant long walks along the beach.  Accordingly, every Saturday for five years he strode along the beach, at Crystal Cove State Park.

But why did he do this walking for so many years?  Surely the novelty of it wore off after three months.  No, it rather seemed he was looking for something.

If it was beauty he was looking for, there was plenty of that, canyons dense with chaparral above the beach, cotton-tail rabbits everywhere, dusty little ground squirrels, hawks floating in the updrafts along the cliffs, seagulls marching back and forth; it was a marvelous scene.
 
Fine, but, no, he confessed that he was looking for more than just beauty.  He kidded himself that he was looking for the skies to open up, just like in the movies, and for something to speak to him.  Wasn’t it what everyone wanted after all, when they strode on the beach, something from the sky?  When, though, after five years, evidence of his need, the skies had yet to open for him, much less give him something to hear, he gave up.

This was what something was waiting for, it turned out, for the walker to yield, to surrender, to toss in the towel, for it meant that he was empty now, ready for what this was really all about.  And so it spoke to him.