And still there is a beyond

I am myself. I exist here within the frame of my individuality, looking out at a world populated by others, each enclosed within their own selves. I reach out and touch them and they touch me, but we remain separate, isolated. I see a tree, a frog, a lake and observe their colors, shapes. I measure their distances and compare them to other others, mining their data, compiling their uniqueness. I walk around amid a throng of self-contained others, touching and then pulling apart, knocking into each other like billiard balls on a field of felt.

Then something breaches the fortress. An intruder scales the wall and sneaks past the guards. I look into the eyes of another, and I find that they are inside me. First my mother, then a beloved friend, a lover, a child. I notice the lines of self-definition blurring, or perhaps they were always a bit smudged in places. I look at the majestic ocean and its waves enter me, seamlessly joining the sea within. The impossible rays of a splendid sunset pierce me and mingle with the warm radiance of my own heart.

 

First I open to the being of one, the self of one. I feel my oneness with a beloved, or tree, a frog, a lake. And then the whole collective being rushes in. A small crack in the dam becomes a waterfall. I open to the cosmic consciousness, and experience the oneness of all creation, the seamless unity of life. All that is moving, pulsing, breathing and all that is unmoving, breathless: it all lives and knows and embraces me with what can only be called love. I am myself, and I am all, and we are one.

 

And still there is a beyond.

 

There is a reality from which, as the Taittiriya Upanishad puts it, words return defeated, a reality that cannot be grasped by the mind. This is the reality of ananda, endless delight of being, which dispels all fear, all doubt. Touching this reality, we drop our small worries about past thoughts or deeds, our hand wringing about what we could or should have done. Instead we offer all our past actions, our deeds and misdeeds, to our own soul.

 

Against the backdrop of this reality, more transcendent even than the cosmic consciousness, than the collective awareness of the entire universe, "the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture". And this encompassing reality embraces existence like a radiant Mother holding Her beloved child. Or else it simply tolerates the moving, churning, whirling creation, the spiraling galaxies and surging ocean, the brilliant sunsets and shattering earthquakes. Or, perhaps, this reality glories in its own perfection and polices its borders, rejecting the riffraff of our confused duality, or mixed multiplicity. Maybe the pure spirit stands alone, eternally free and flawless, in a pose of kaivalya, aware of the mess of creation, but "reject[ing] it from its infinitude".

  

"And still there is a beyond.

            "For on the other side of the cosmic consciousness there is, attainable to us, a consciousness yet more transcendent, — transcendent not only of the ego, but of the Cosmos itself, — against which the universe seems to stand out like a petty picture against an immeasurable background. That supports the universal activity, — or perhaps only tolerates it; It embraces Life with Its vastness, — or else rejects it from Its infinitude." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine)

- Matthew Andrews (AVI USA)

Keywords: Transcendental consciousness, Cosmic consciousness, Spiritual experience, Reality