Can You Sense The Universal Consciousness?
I want you to take a moment and close your eyes (after reading this part), imagine what it feels like for the tree to take in cardon dioxide as its life sustaining force, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere. Can you feel being a bull frog, making the deep croaking sound from your throat, feeling the way that would protrude outward? Can you feel like a hummingbird and how it would feel to move through the air so adeptly? How about tomato plants? Can you imagine pushing roots deep into the soil, pulling in nutrients, and the movement of water and nutrients through your system. Can you feel that plant as the sun comes out and it begins to absorb its life sustaining energy? How about after a long day in the Arizona sun, when it feels parched; or after a long cloudy period under the Oregon sky when the sun finally comes out and shines warmly? I bet you can feel this inner process when you focus on it. You can experience the essence of all life in whatever form it inhabits.
This life consciousness, embedded in differing vessels, has differing external capacities. This human vessel has a speech capacity that other animal vessels do not. The dog has a smell capacity that others do not. The differing vessels change the active consciousness and capabilities. This is true even human to human, we each bring different body and mind types, with differing strengths and weaknesses. The vessels are all different and yet we can recognize the binding force of life- that which is permanent through all life expressions (existence), not transient like our particular (trait) expression. We see in another’s eyes that they are like you, in some quintessential aspect we are made of the same essence. Haven’t you ever looked into an animal’s eyes and known that the sameness is looking back at you. It is not in a brain that will think the same thoughts as you, but you recognize life meeting life. You can sense the presence within each life vessel, and upon death the exit of that presence in that vessel.
Where do we lose this knowledge that we already have? This ability, as humans, to feel into each life potential and understand its living essence. In this way, we are the keepers and caretakers of the earth, because we have the capacity to recognize the subtle and underlying intelligence that is life. Human life, unlike other vessels, have the unique opportunity to realize our true selves- the singular energy which is “isness”, or the universal consciousness which permeates everything in existence. Yet we miss it by being wrapped up in these smaller identities; we trade the grandest existence for 15 minutes of individualization/personal fame.
This self you call “I” is wrapped up in numerous smaller identities, the most potent being this body you are in. Most people are completely identified with their body and this mentality creates the I-Them reality we currently live in. I-Them will always result in competition, comparison, ambition and war. How can anything else occur when there is something that is self and something that is not-self? It is this mentality that allows us to recklessly take from the earth and harm its inhabitants, which it considers all “not me”.
Next, we have identities related to relationships and roles, wife, son, doctor, artist etc believing we are actually these things instead of simply playing these roles. Isn’t the mother of one also a daughter to another and a boss to yet another? Which is she? Do any of those titles actually encompass her?
Then there is excessive identification with the mind. This identity is a difficult pattern to break because it tends to create compulsivity to stay in the mind and believe its own thoughts. Here we become identified with beliefs, religions, political opinions etc. These are all coming from the mind which, like the body, is also not the true Self. Truth is the creator of the mind; the mind is incapable of grasping it. A larger consciousness (or holon) will always “include and transcend” the previous consciousness (Ken Wilber). The smaller consciousness cannot fathom itself as only a part of an even larger whole. Like a cell to an organ, it cannot imagine the nature of or even the existence of the organ! The mind is but a component not the totality.
Many small truths can be held within larger realities; these smaller personal truths begin to break down as one goes to higher perspectives of understanding. The question of ultimate reality will only arise in those ready for such exploration. If we are still busy enjoying the objects and merits of the external world, we may not yet be interested in such lofty questions. Yet, that immutable Truth, that ultimate and supreme reality, which encompasses all other truths, permeates every aspect of our lives. There is the life force, life-intelligence, coursing through every atom of the universe. It is so pervasive, so subtle, we forget to stop and see it.
Every cell in your body knows what it is doing. Every plant, micro-organism, fungi and bacteria know what it is doing. The birds know where to fly and when, the bees know how to buzz in such a way as to open the precious pollen. Each creature is endowed with a subtle intelligence which we recognize as inherent to life. Yet as human being we suddenly attribute this intelligence to ourselves and say, “my intelligence”. Why? Where did you get it from? How did you create it? Can you destroy it? Or did you just show up here in consciousness with this intelligence already intact?
One can easily see that this experience being had, through this human vessel, is simply a singular experience of life, embedded with intelligence- the source of which we cannot identify. Yet there are clues to this larger existence, in the same way a cell may start to theorize it may be part of an organ or an organ would look for patterns and clues that it may be part of the body- there are repeating patterns of this intelligence which point to its nature.
These pattens in nature are reflected repeatedly in every system and science. I am sure we have all seen the stump of a tree and recognized its sameness as our human fingerprint, or its branches to the pictures of our lungs. We have maybe seen a picture of a nebula and realized the similarity with the pattern of our eyes, or a snail shell and then learned about the workings of the cochlea in the inner ear. The human brain and its messaging neurons look very similar to the underground network of plants communicating with one another, as also a neuron and a seedling share a shape pattern. Each organism has intake and excretion, a way of taking in sustenance, turning part of it into its own body and releasing the waste. You see this in every area of life.
Have you seen the orbital patterns made by the movement of the planets tracked over time? It creates these beautiful, organized and complex geometry right above us. There are beautiful patterns in every leaf, and in the growth process from seedling through decay. There truly is no beginning and no end, there simply are different forms, but the intelligence behind it all is one.
Human existence is the great opportunity to fully realize this (beyond mind) and to live as the one transcendental being we truly are. Thich Naht Hahn, the Buddhist monk attributed with
bringing mindfulness to the western world, often regarded the tree as the universe and his very own self. He would say things like as long as you are present in your breath I am there with you. Anandamayi Ma, a great Indian saint, would often say she is one with the divine being, and to know That is to know her.
Similarly, Sri Ramakrishna, an enlightened monk, said towards the end of his life that his devotees were too attached to this form of his body, and that his consciousness and presence would not change with the detachment of this bodily
existence.
This is just to point out the many great beings who have truly embodied, beyond any cognition, this singular truth of our oneness with the spirit that is life (manifest and unmanifest). I am sure you can think of similar realizations from the saints and wise ones of every human culture as this realization pervades.
Many Mantras end with Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om. Shanti translating to peace. The deeper understanding of Shanti is a state of consciousness where each aspect of life, the animals, plants, sky, humans, water etc all work together in harmony, in recognition of this singular beautiful existence.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om,
With Love,
Galeet
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