Download PDF - Stillness Speaks

seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.”(7)On seeing the non-dual Self, the underlying reality, one wakes up fromthe dream of life.A street drunk woke up one bright morning with a terrible hangoverand searched his pockets for change. Not even enough for a cup of coffee!The day was hot, the pavement gooey under his feet. Rubbing his eyes andlooking around, he spied a quarter near a drink machine in front of aconvenience store. Figuring someone must have dropped it when buying acoke, he happily thought, "There's my morning cup of coffee!" Rushingover, he reached down to pick it up, but it was only a coke bottle cap pressedin the warm pavement and worn shiny by the tires of passing cars.Just as the apparent quarter borrows its luster from the real brightnessof the bottlecap, the shiny and attractive world of the senses seems anindependent self-sustaining reality, but its attractiveness is borrowed from theSelf, luminous Consciousness. When the bottlecap is seen for what it is, thequarter vanishes, because it's only in the mind. In meditation and/or atintense life interfaces, our personal view is often superseded by Self’scausing our apparent reality and all its limitations to disappear."Like waves in the ocean,the worlds arise, live, and dissolve inthe Supreme Self, the substanceand cause of everything."(8)At times we’ve all looked at the inner and outer worlds with wonderand awe. Their beauty, like the beauty of this verse, is impossible to dismiss.Where do they come from? The author likens them to waves and the Self toan ocean. The waves are nothing but the ocean, though seemingly separateentities. According to Vedanta the whole material universe is merely a finitewave in Consciousness. Out of Consciousness it emerges, sustains itself fora few trillion years and subsides back into It. Though it appears solidbecause we are perceiving it through material instruments, the senses, it isactually formless Spirit.As above so below. We can't see the physical universe pass through acomplete cycle, but observing our own inner universe can give us an idea ofthe process of creation. In the limitlessness of sleep a dream arises, plays19