How
silent, crystal pure and still the Self! How wondrous, wild, chaotic and ephemeral the world projected as a veil, a mirage, a playful
reflection of the Self in a mirror of emptiness!
Where is the conflict? Where is the need to choose between Oneness within and duality
without? That ever-dissolving world-aura clothes this naked changeless
Radiance in shimmering garments. It is a charming paradox to be danced, not a problem to be solved.
The Self is basso continuo in a Gregorian hymn, chanting tone beneath
melodic variation. We meditate to ground our music in the under Om, then joyfully dance with a chorus of voices. And because This already pervades That, there is no compulsion to impose One on the Many. As the prior condition, before one breath is taken, unity back-lights and illuminates diversity. The Om that oscillates into every other note is the unstruck sound, the mother of harmony. Therefor nothing needs to be united. Nothing needs to be harmonized. Where is the work to perform?
Yoga may be the art of seeing unity in diversity, but it begins with the
science of not confounding the One with the Many. Space is formless and does not move. The mirage takes many shapes and undulates. They appear to be one, but are distinctly different in their essence. One is real. The other is illusion.
Any attempt to impose consistency on the ever-changing world, to impose order onto chaos, to impose the one onto the many, or reality upon illusion, is ignorance. All ideologies of the left or the right, and all institutions of religion, which attempt to change the nature of the world, result in fascism or fundamentalism, and simply increase the nescience of human sorrow.
The Self need not inform the world, because the Self is the formless essence of every form already. Those who live its sparkling clarity do not impose the Self on others, any more than the sky imposes its weight on hills and forests. The sky is weightless, embracing every storm or ray of sun, remaining untouched.
Is effort required to project one's image in a mirror?
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