Here is a saucepan of porridge. As it heats bubbles rise, pop and blop on the surface. For a moment a crater appears, but it then subsides into the mass that is the porridge. Another bubble pops and blops, and subsides, and another and another.
Here is an ocean. On the surface a wave forms, swells, rolls and subsides back into the ocean. Another happens here, and here and here, all waves arising, forming, swelling, rolling, subsiding.
Perhaps each porridge bubble bursting on the surface thinks, I am something, an individual entity, and here in the porridge pot there are others a bit like me but different.
Or perhaps each wave thinks, I am a something, an individual entity, and here with me there are many like me, but different. They are others.
Imagine that. Imagine if you tried to tell each individual porridge bubble or wave that they were not separate but the same, that they are the porridge, or the ocean.
With the vantage point we have from the porridge and the ocean it is easy for us to see that the bubble and the wave are not separate from the porridge and the ocean, so much so that the suggestion that they are seems laughable.
Yet you and I are the same, and yet we find it very difficult to see that we are the same, just little emanations, here, and there, of the one Consciousness. This is the great discovery of non-dual Awakening. There is no separation between anything, it only seems so because we are caught up in a separateness of functionality we sometimes label as ego. Or call it
I-ness.
This is no baseless postulation, or insubstantial philosophical musing. There are many who have fallen out of the illusion of separateness, sometimes accidentally, sometimes having made themselves accident prone through their spiritual practices. It is more common than you might think to have had such experiences, even momentarily or for just a little while, of recognising that everything is non-separate, and how the ego simply functions as a tool. It is an unforgettable experience, it changes how you see things, even if the tenacity of identification with the I-dentity reasserts itself, it no longer enjoys a total eclipse of Oneness. Once you've seen it, you cannot really un-see it. You know it, even while you are forgetting, and re-identifying with being a separate
I.
A little more uncommon is the experience of waking up to that realisation permanently when the person permanently sees through the functionality of the
I and fully feels the flow of one consciousness in everything. We call those people Awakened.
Our bubbles and waves are also metaphors for everything that is coming and going in our experience, be it a sensation, a feeling, emotions or thoughts. They too arise, unfold, perhaps they stay awhile, but then they subside, back into that from whence they came, that One Consciousness. Recognise that and you are already well on the path to recognising everything.
This Vedic verse (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) prays for that recognition, that awakening:
Om asato mā sad gamaya,
tamaso mā jyotir gamaya,
mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ gamaya,
Om shanti~ shanti~ shanti hi~~
Om - Lead me from un-truth to Truth
Lead me from darkness to Light
Lead me from death to Immortality
Om peace, peace peace
In the non-dual interpretation, the un-truth, the darkness and death is our forgetting our True Nature. As that One Consciousness, though the body may die, that One Consciousness that we are, manifesting in apparent mortal multiplicity, is in fact immortal.
