Thoughts, Actions, Results
Another dawn, and the world around me has come alive once again. Where was it when I had drifted from waking to deep sleep state transiting through a realm of dreams? How long and how far does the world exist, including all of us and the phenomena all around us? Between day and night and day again, it all exists in Time which is an immaculate, indivisible, infinite dimension within and all around us.
Wordsworth had once rued the lack of time to pause and stare at life. Looking at life, we find existence manifest in two fascinating, intertwined and intriguing dimensions. Whether viewed from collective or individual points of view, the edifice of existence spans two columns — an outer manifest and the nebulous inner one. The ‘outer’ world gets perceived within the dimension of Time, but how about the inner one? Does our inner world manifest itself within the same parameters or confines as the outer?
Our outer world is what we are born into, but the inner is the one we are born with. Our inner world has been our constant companion all through our existence, before and after our birth. It keeps our company into the tangible outer world and beyond it as well. The ‘inner’ is our being, and the ‘outer’ our becoming. The results and the process of our actions undertaken in the outer world leave their indelible impressions on the inner one. Here the thoughts mature and get processed into further actions as the opportunities or occasions arise. This cycle continues ad infinitum until the identity conundrum of the doer of actions and the enjoyer of their results gets solved. How does this appear? This enigma presents itself when we interpret, portray and accept our corporeal existence as the real one and start believing our visible, material self as the only evident, substantial aspect of our existence. This belief leads us to perceive ourselves as both the doers of actions and receivers of their results. All these actions and their consequences leave behind their footprints on the sands in our inner worlds. Subsequently, these only get sown as seeds for further actions.
All actions result from thoughts, but where do the thoughts come from?
Where and how do the waves arise in an ocean? Is a wave always a part of the deepest of the depths of the ocean? Or do the waves manifest just a disturbance in its more superficial realms?
Thoughts are waves, and universal consciousness is the ocean in which they arise. We are islands at times and lagoons at others; sometimes long stretches of sandy beaches or just a bend in the land or rough rocky terrain at others. Arising waves anoint us, and the retreating ones leave wavy patterns, shells etc., in exchange for the footprints. Once in a while, a tsunami-like wave arises from its cavernous depth and carries us away back to the ocean. So long as the planet Earth, the substrate of all oceans, continues to exist, the waves, the tides and tsunamis continue to arise. Whether as islands or rocks or beaches, we continue to witness them, experience them and marvel at them. Aeons have passed with each dawn following dusk, waves following breeze, wind, moon and even volcanic eruptions at the ocean floor — the cycle keeps on repeating itself — on the same substratum, the planet Earth which keeps on rotating around itself and revolving around the Sun.
This cyclical play of thoughts and actions has continued since eternity, supported by this immaculate, immutable, indescribable, invisible, universal consciousness.
The roles that we get to enact in this play vary with time and place. More often than not, we tend to forge such intense bonds with these roles that the essence of our existence, the reality of our identity, gets consumed by them. We find ourselves irretrievably overwhelmed by the emotions and feelings arising out of this association. Being inherently imperfect, the relativity of these relationships makes us lose track of absoluteness in life. Since it seems that there is no breaking free from this cyclical perpetuity of thoughts, actions and the results thereof, is there no way out? Are we that helpless? Have we been condemned to living in a dark, blind alley? No, certainly not. The remedy out of this widespread despair and its resultant personal and societal anarchy lies in realising that we are the actors and the spectators simultaneously in the play of life. We must strive to perform and witness at the same time our roles in this play without getting attached to the part which we get to enact from time to time. The concurrent performance as an actor and witness is particularly a challenging one yet not impossible. We must aspire to gain awareness of our reality as indestructible transcendental beings distinct from the visible mundane forms and then go about in life without getting buffeted by any kinds of storms that may arise around and within us.
