WAVES IN THE OCEAN

Knowledge being the essential nature of human beings, the understanding of life necessarily involves knowledge. Knowledge is of two kinds: Eternal and transient. The reports read in the daily newspapers are largely transient, sometimes of a persisting kind, but non-eternal and subject to change. We know that problems will be solved, but the restless phenomenal world will give rise to new problems. These are like the waves of the ocean, rising and subsiding. Between the rising of events and their reemergence, human understanding interprets them with the help of various branches of knowledge. Each discipline will interpret events according to its own nomenclature. Thus the world presents a matrix of often competing or conflicting ideologies which influence the life experience of individuals in different ways. Often people maintain their superficial differences and are unable to integrate the universal.

The key to integration is found within the human personality itself. Know yourself, as Socrates said. Self-analysis reveals two centres: the Self, or atma, the immortal essence, and the ego, the non-Self, which is the locus for the changing world, with gross physical objects, and subtle mind which operates by thinking, willing and feeling. At one pole there is the changeless Being, and at the other the ceaseless, continuously changing Becoming. The ocean offers a good analogy: The continuous movement of waves on the surface of the ocean represents Becoming, while the changeless ocean is Being. They are both one, and different at the same time. This is the paradox of life in which opposites come together. There is a coincidence of opposites. There is a Witness, and also the continuous stream of thoughts and events that are experienced. In this way one can distinguish the characteristics of the phenomenal world “outside” and the psychological interpretation “inside”. It is a cosmo-psychological functionalism. Science has been concerned with studying the outside world, the objective side, usually by delimiting their study into various fields, such as physics, chemistry, sociology, etc. Scientific knowledge is gained through observation, through experiments. Interdisciplinary subjects bridge the divide. Spirituality has been traditionally concerned with studying the inner world of consciousness by closing one’s eyes, shutting out the outside world, by meditation and self-exploration.

Today science has made great progress, consequently the outer world has made inroads into human consciousness uprooting contemplative values that nourish the deeper recesses of life. To reclaim the inner world we need to integrate both poles by absorbing them into the neutral Self at the core of manifestation. Instead of getting distracting by accumulating information, we should experience the wonder of being alive, with its spontaneity and joy. Both the outside world and the inside world are transformations of one’s consciousness. One has to feel the great wonder of one’s own consciousness that is continuously modulating as the world outside and the idea inside. We are participating in the cosmic manifestation of the Absolute. It is a great wonder that the manifestation outside can reciprocate one’s innermost dreams and desires.