Imagine that the world around you exists in a bubble in the middle of the ocean. The domed sky above you is the inner surface of the bubble, as is the peripheral view as it disappears to your left and right and the ground as it rises to join the sky in front of you.
At this moment, you have a particular view of the world in the bubble from one point on the inner surface. You can’t see behind you, so it’s as though your view in is through an opening in the bubble.
What is behind you? You can’t turn around to look because wherever you turn, the invisible opening is behind you. You are not that which can be observed; the subject cannot see the subject; the eye cannot see the eye.
That which is behind you is the same as that which is beyond the sky. It is the ocean. The world is in a bubble in middle of the ocean, remember? But it’s not an ocean of saltwater – it’s an ocean of infinite consciousness. Call it “Parashiva”.
The thin film that constitutes the bubble itself is “Shiva”, which is to say, your individual consciousness aware of your individual world. This is what is directly behind you – your Self, behind which is the infinite “Parashiva”. Everything that Shiva experiences in the bubble is “Shakti”. This is your world.
Once you become cognizant of this state of affairs, you soon discover that Shiva can move in one of two directions; backwards or forwards. You can back up to the noumenal Source or merge with the phenomenal Stream. You can unite with Parashiva or Shakti.
Both movements result in a nondual mystical experience, one “introvertive” and the other “extrovertive”. Merging individual Shiva consciousness back into universal Parashiva consciousness is experienced as ego-dissolution, or ego-death. Merging with Shakti is experienced as an egoless state of Zen.
Parashiva – Shiva – Shakti
Lord – I Am – Zen
That’s all very well, I hear you say, but haven’t we missed something important? What about the mind? What about our feelings, sensations, desires, habits, memory, will, understanding? What about the unconscious? What about the soul?
It’s as if the bubble has another smaller bubble floating around it, like a moon. This is the “Imaginal”, the soul-space where all the soul-stuff happens. Shiva shuttles back and forth between these two bubbles all the time.
All the time, that is, while time exists. When Shiva is merged with Parashiva in perfect unity (as the One) or with Shakti in perfect multiplicity (as the Many), there is no time, at least not in the way we ordinarily experience it, and there is no Imaginal.
Maybe some real life,
to refresh beginner’s mind
all over again.
Zezan Tam
bread of life 