The Eye

 Thinking of our own consciousness

Imagine the countryside at night. It has been raining, but the clouds have cleared, revealing the moon. A few cows saunter by in the pale light. They leave footprints in the soft earth,

 

and as water fills the indentations, they form a series of tiny pools with the moon reflected in each one. There appear to be many moons, yet anyone who looks up at the sky understands that they are all simply reflections of the one moon. The feeling that ‘I know that I exist,’ our individual consciousness, is known as the Atman in Samskrta. Materialists argue that consciousness is a product of chemical processes, but no scientist on Earth has been able to explain this. Yogis long ago realized that the entire universe is a thought projection of Cosmic Consciousness; what we call ‘reality,’ from the perspective of the creator, is thought. Our individual minds reflect this Cosmic Consciousness, making us aware of our own existence. Like the moons reflected in the water, my ‘I’ feeling, and your ‘I’ feeling are reflections of the same Cosmic ‘I.’ The experience of this pure ‘I’ feeling, independent of any thought, is the goal of our meditation.

But how can we concentrate on pure consciousness, on something that is infinite? The only thing that the eye cannot see is the eye itself; in the case of the mind, it is the ‘I’ that cannot see the ‘I.’ How can the mind reach that which is beyond the mind, out of which the mind arises? This is the meditator’s dilemma.