Order is chaos
There is a beautiful Zen story:
A disciple goes to a Zen master and asks, 'Master, please explain to me how you started, how you traveled the path, how you attained the ultimate experience.'
The master says, 'When I started, mountain was a mountain, river was a river and tree was a tree. When I was traveling, mountain was not a mountain, river was not a river and tree was not a tree. Again, when I attained, mountain is a mountain, river is a river and tree is a tree.'
Before achieving, even though you think you are extraordinary, you are ordinary. After achieving, even though you are extraordinary, you understand you are ordinary.
You are not just a simple body. You are not just a microcosm. You are the macrocosm in miniature form. You realize you are the ultimate, endless ocean of potential energy just like the universe. Only when you realize the cosmic consciousness in your body, the macrocosm in your microcosm, you will really become orderly, you will really learn how to be orderly without reducing your energy. As long as you try to become orderly, you will only suppress your energy, and you will also be suppressing everyone else.
First, when you realize the order in the chaos, you will become a spiritual being, you will experience love and bliss. When you realize the chaos in the order, you will become a compassionate being. When you realize the order in the chaos, you will experience the experience part of love, bliss. When you realize the chaos in the order, you will express the expression part of love which is compassion.
Seer-seen-seeing
We see two things in the process of 'seeing' – the seer and the seen object. Actually, what is happening in the process of seeing? (Though the example of eyes is taken here, it applies for all the senses.)
From the seer, consciousness takes a jump continuously to the seen, because it is not able to relax into the seer itself. Because of its restlessness, it gives life to the seen.
The continuous jump that happens between the seer and seen – from the seer to the seen, from the seen to the seer, again from the seer to the seen and again from the seen to the seer – is what is SEEING.
When the seer is not completely in bliss within himself, he starts becoming restless – and jumps. When he jumps, he gives life to the seen. Because he gives life to the seen, the process of jumping becomes SEEING.
There are two ways to drop this process of seeing. Either the seer or the seen has to drop for the process of seeing to stop.
When the seen is renounced, it loses its power over the seer. There is no point in jumping because there is nothing to be seen. When there is no place to jump, the seer relaxes in the seer himself, then seeing does not happen. When seeing is not there, the seer is enlightened.
A person who stops this jump by dropping the 'seen' is a renouncer, a sannyasi. He takes away all his desire to see things, to believe that any of the sense objects hold value for him. The seen becomes unexciting, and the jumping stops. He becomes enlightened through renouncing. This is true self-knowledge – gnana.
Seen dissolves Seer relaxes in seer
In the path of gnana, the seer experiences detachment and a complete witnessing of life. In this way he tries to discover Reality. The main objective is the development of a sharp and pure intelligence through which Reality can be experienced.
On the other hand, when the seer himself drops, what remains is the seen, and again the jumping between the seer and the seen stops. Reality is seen. The seer becomes enlightened through devotion or bhakti.
When the identity of the seer drops, dissolves into the seen, deep devotion to Existence happens! Everything becomes an exciting manifestation of Existence for him! His identity is no longer there. He merges into Existence itself. That is why enlightened saints like Meerabai from Bharat, who went on the path of bhakti, were in a trance all the time, merged into the god consciousness, forgetting their own identity. Meerabai just sang praises of god and walked around on the streets, with no self-consciousness whatsoever.
So, in some way, either the seer or the seen has to drop. Only then the jumping between the seer and the seen will stop. When the jumping stops, the process of seeing also stops.
Whether you are stuck with the seer or with the seen, get completely stuck – and you are enlightened! If you are jumping between the seer and the seen, not relaxed in either, you are under the illusion of a separate existence of the seer and seen. This jumping is what manifests as your individual seeing.
When the frequency of the seen is more than the seer, the seer can be changed or manipulated by the seen. When the frequency of the seer is more than the seen, the seen can be changed or manipulated by the seer.
Collective Consciousness
We are not disconnected and separate islands as we think. Maybe in the physical layer, we all seem like individual islands. But whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not, whether we want it or not, we are all interlinked by the collective consciousness.
It is like this: if the food is poisoned, only the person who eats it will suffer, not everyone. In this sense, you can think of yourself as an individual. But as you move towards the subtler levels of Existence, you can see our interconnectedness more clearly. For example, if the air is poisoned, whoever is breathing it will suffer, even if they are a long distance from each other. This connection is at the breath level. This means that in the subtler energy layers, the distance between us is reduced.
Even more than the physical and breath levels, we are connected more closely at the mental level. When I say mental level, I mean the level of thoughts. Our thoughts affect not only us but also everyone around us and beyond. Your thoughts are more infectious than your cold. In fact, people may escape from your cold, but they cannot escape from your thoughts.
If an individual mind is polluted, not only the individual, but a much bigger group suffers. For example, if one person who has a disturbed mind sits as a leader of a city, the whole city will be affected by the decisions that he makes! His disturbed thinking will result in wrong decisions and hence will be harmful for the whole city.
Going a step further, if one corrupted visualization leads to a particular action, the action can have tremendous impact on a huge population, not just on that person with the corruption.
For example, take the case of the atom bomb. It is nothing but a 'visualization' of the nuclear theory! The basis of the nuclear bomb can be found in the famous formula E=mc2, that was discovered by the physicist, Albert Einstein. But corrupted visualization of this formula led to disturbance of the whole planet earth. We are all now threatened by this one theory, by this one invention. Today, planet earth has enough atomic weapons to burn itself hundreds of times, over and over again.
Just see this diagram here. I shall try to explain the truth on the basis of this diagram.
These seven circles represent the seven energy layers in us. The first layer is the physical body, the body that you can feel as your hands, legs etc. The second layer is the pranic body, the body in which your prana or life energy or breath circulates. Like this, there are seven energy layers that make up the total body, with the physical body being just one of those layers.
Now, in the physical layer, you, god and I can be represented as three different points in the circle. In the physical level, the distance between us is great.
If you go inward a little to the pranic level, the distance between us is reduced. If you go in deeper to the mental level, the distances are further reduced. When you go deeper and deeper, it finally merges into one. You can see that at the innermost point of all these layers, god, you, and I are one. There is no distance. That is the Truth even at the gross level! It is only your perception that causes you to think you are a separate entity. Once you become aware and realize that you are a part of the collective consciousness, that you don't have an individual identity, that you don't have a separate ego, you don't suffer.
If you have observed a school of fish swimming or a flock of birds flying together, you will see a fleeting synchronicity in their motion. There may be hundreds of birds flying together in a V-shaped formation, but when they have to change direction, they will all do so at the same time, with no confusion or time delay! Scientists have been trying to understand how this is possible. Even studies of insects and animals have shown that when faced with threats, their responses are so fast that they cannot be explained by normal methods of communication.
An interesting experiment was done to study the power of thought on dogs. The dog owners were asked to leave the house with no intention of going to any particular place. After leaving the house, they were given instructions to go to specific places and then at random times, they were asked to come back. It was found that at the time the owner started back home, almost always at the same time, the dog would go to the door and wait for the owner.
In the huge tsunami that rocked the Andaman and Nicobar islands of Bharat, it was found that before the tsunami hit the islands, all the animals, including the huge ones like elephants, had all moved to higher grounds, safely away from the ocean. There have been a number of accounts of animals and insects being aware of upcoming earthquakes minutes before the earthquake actually strikes. What is the difference between these animals and us? It is their connection with nature! Being in tune with nature enables them to sense nature's signals. In the case of humans, because of our false sense of identity and ego, we have lost touch with nature and have become insensitive to the direct signals of nature.
You can see so many instances in history where the same discovery was made at about the same time by people in different parts of the globe and by people who did not even know each other. The reason is that the ideas are floating in the collective consciousness. It is like this: there are hundreds of electromagnetic waves in the air but your television set picks up only the waves of the frequency to which it is tuned. Similarly, the minds that are ready and waiting for the floating ideas will tune in and convert that potentiality into reality!
Just as the universe gives us so many hints of its existence as one being, we can find hints from nature about the nature of reality. In a series of experiments in the 1920s, it was found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain was removed, the rat still retained its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to the surgery. The rat's brain actually showed 'holographic' memory. Scientists proposed that memories are encoded not in neurons, but in the patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the brain, similar to how a hologram is formed by various patterns of laser light crisscrossing each other. This might explain how the human brain can store up to ten billion bits of information in the brain, which is the small size of two fists!
The universe is a hologram and we are a part of that hologram. In a hologram, every single part of the hologram, even if split, reflects the totality of that hologram. Likewise, we too reflect the totality of the universe. The universe is not an assortment of living and dead matter. It is a huge interconnected Whole. You are very much connected to your fellow beings around you and the trees, animals, birds and rocks on earth, as well as the planets, stars and galaxies in the universe. Whether you perceive it or not depends on the plane of consciousness from which you perceive it all.