In this sub series of the journey of the Pilgrim, he sits at his feet and earns his teachings from his Guru. The article in the series Talks with Guru are subjective in nature with the teacher spontaneously responding to inquiries into non-duality through a series of queries the seriously inquisitive beginner puts across.
Much has already been said, written, understood & explained of that which cannot be expressed, verbalized, comprehended and compounded – this existence and the nature of the universe. Some say it is One, some say it is Many. Some say it existed forever while some say it was born and will die, maybe to be re-born again.
Artists and shamans have expressed this inexplicable in their art. The painting here is by Wassily Kandinsky titled the “Deepened Impulse (Vertiefte Regung)” as his rendition of the universe. The painting below is titled “The Creation of The World and The Expulsion From Paradise” by painter Giovanni Di Paolo, seen in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Scala, Florence.
The human mind is capable of immense imagination and this imagination originates from immense power and also provides immense power. Imagination is the power, the energy that we all perceive in this dynamic universe. Word confuse. So artists escape this confusion by spilling the power within into the universe without.
It seems that the universe is very curious. The vibration that the earliest known meditators have mentioned in the Kybalion or the Tablets of Toth seems to express this curiosity through numerous manifestations, we humans being one of its kind. There is no reasoning behind this curiosity, there is neither pre-meditation nor any repentance of its actions. There is simply movement.
The Buddhists have put this intellectually as the relative view and the absolute view. Relative view is the opinion, imagination & experience from an individual’s perspective, where as the absolute view is only an imagination. At the absolute level, this curiosity of the universe manifests as the presence, while the individual view sees this as one’s consciousness.
It all goes into a completely imaginative world from here. The mind credits this awareness in the account of a fictitious entity called the “I”, which various psychoanalysts call the “Id” & the “Ego”. Our intellect, which is also a product of the chemicals within, evaluates this awareness as our experience.
We are not separate from the universe. Anywhere and anytime the universe manifests itself, it manifests as a whole. The whole universe if within and without. Neurosciences have proved that when a child is born, a lot more neurons in all parts of the brain are active. With growth, with education & objective knowledge, we learn the art of fight or flight, and slowly only certain areas of the brain works more frequently than others, some neurons continue to live while many others die out. This forms another fictitious entity called the “character” which stereotypes our “personality” into this or that.
Yet, the mind is curious & continues to find ways to express their universality though music, literature & art. However, when we imagine from our individual perspective, it will always fall short of the reality. Humans have been curious about and desperately pursue perfection, an impossibility until the part merges with the whole. And when that happens, there is no further pursuit of perfection, what is left behind is the curiosity.
Various grades of manifestations come together to create this movement, this curiosity and this mind. Our philosophers have termed these grades as “elements” comprising of space, air, fire, water & earth. Science has proved that all these are various forms of energy – the universe is a big playground of energies.
This universal curiosity is without intellect, without memory, without experience. It exists and manifests as presence. It cannot be given, or taken, cannot be grown or put down. The universe is the result of this curiosity, just like we are. When this curiosity becomes choiceless, we call it birth, life & mind.