A summary of a talk, held at the Jivamukti Yoga Centre
in London mid August 2012, based on a 'Rumi' poem.
Once your enquiry takes you further into the depth of
the universal teachings, you gradually will come to the conclusion that
meditation & philosophy can’t be separated. Together, they can be seen as the two different sides of a coin.
Philosophy gives meaning to meditation and satisfies
the mind and intellect, whilst meditation gives life to philosophy and
transforms the substance, of which true knowledge is made of, into actual
experience.
Higher knowledge is constantly surrounding us
everywhere we go, whether we are receptive to it or not is irrelevant. It meets
us in specific forms of influences that are acting on us in our life. This
particular knowledge can’t be found in mind created life, which nowadays penetrates
through almost every corner of this world as well as what lies beyond our limited world of perception.
This higher knowledge we are talking about, is mainly
transmitted through the fine arts & sciences of this world, safely
contained and disguised within architecture, philosophy, literature, as well as
nature, religion & poetry.
The more abstract ideas of universal teachings that
lay beyond the understanding of our conceptual mind and intellect, are often
embedded within the powerful influence of poetry. They are mainly directed
towards our heart and aim to awaken our finer emotions that connect us with the
transformative force of meaning.
Poetry points towards something eternal and can
induce a state of self-remembering in us.
If we truly want to absorb these ideas and be
nourished by the meaning of poetry we have to keep the door to our hearts wide
open.
“Out beyond wrongdoings and right
doings
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
'Rumi'
‘Between
wrong doings and right doings’
that form the horizontal line of life, including past, present and future,
there is a centre point or a middle, represented as a fulcrum called ‘neutral’,
which can take us above our two dimensional way of perception that is mainly
active on this horizontal plain in life.
Here - our mind rules in form of a ‘Me’, as subject
and everything else, or ‘Them’ as the object, manifesting the ever-changing
external world of our experiences.
As a consequence, this leads to the appearance of
forces that oppose each other in form of ‘yes or no’, ‘positive or negative’,
active or passive, as well as good or bad etc. Those forces are comprising the 'law of opposition'.
So, the meaning behind ‘wrongdoings or right doings’ is revealing the teachings
& methods that re-connect us with, as well as facilitates us to further
develop a strong sounding conscience that is alive and not deeply buried by our
countless contradictions. Those colliding contradictions form part of the
divisions within the ‘Self’, which separate us from all that is noble and
divine in us.
This gives rise to the realization that we can’t
become more conscious without an alive, clear and fully developed conscience.
And the methods that will take us towards this objective are applied
‘self-study’ & facilitated ‘self-enquiry’.
If we choose to stay in a linear state of perception,
or are simply not interested or receptive to the transmission of knowledge that
is continuously surrounding us, pointing towards a way out of those powerful
laws that are constantly acting on us, we will keep bouncing back and forth
within the dynamics of those forces in external life, as well as in our
internal world. This means that the possibilities to change, transform or
further evolve will diminish more and more the older we get, and in time we
will become completely immersed by the vale of ‘blissful denial’ that will stay
with us to the day we will die.
So, a third force is required to take us out of this
linear state of perception, and the teaching that will lead us to this specific
force can be found within the meaning of the word ‘doings’.
‘Doings’, are governed by an active force that can take us
into opposite directions, depending on the positive or negative charge of our
intentions once we apply the idea of scale to them. Everything around us and
everything within us contains the idea of scale. For example, the scale of our
emotions, or the scale of our house, or the scale of a mountain range.
So this active force within doings can take us
towards right-, as well as towards wrongdoings and the moment we find the
equilibrium between both of them, a triad comes into manifestation in the form
of an interval in which the possibility of change appears. If change does not
manifest during this interval, then at least something else can happen that
lies outside the limitations and confinements of
different opposing forces and their linear ways of perception.
We have two futures according to the universal
teachings, one in time & one in scale. Additionally we have two bodies, our
physical body and our psychological body.
As we all know, our physical body moves along the
horizontal line of life, hence in time, whilst our psychological body can rise
up and down a vertical line known as the vertical scale or the ‘scale of
eternity’.
The teachings of this vertical scale, which is
literally infinite can be found within the meaning of the words of ‘out beyond’, which contains the
teaching of ‘self-observation’.
To be able to observe our selves, we have to remove
ourselves to create enough distance and space, by which we can truly see what
lies in front of us. We then can see both ends of the pendulum simultaneously
and can allow both ends to simply ‘be’. Hence ‘out’ symbolises a neutral place or state that lies above
the horizontal line in which things can be seen from their actual ‘Isness’
point of view and can be put into a greater perspective. Whilst ‘beyond’ symbolises the
neutralizing force, that can transcend the dynamic of wrongdoings and right
doings into a new proposition that lies above all doings, as well as positive
or negative connotations.
Within the meaning of ‘there is a field’ we will come across the teaching that man
is a self-evolving organism and can further evolve his consciousness &
state of being by means of conscious effort.
‘There is a field’, might give rise to the question
what actually happens on a field? A field is an environment on which something
can grow like the seeds in the ground can germinate and sprout to further grow
and develop into crops. Instinctively the sprout is attracted to the sun and by
absorbing and assimilating the sunlight it grows and flourishes on all levels.
Similarly, once we can see beyond the limitations of
our mind created life, and once the meaning of the finer influences have had a
chance to penetrate through the outer layers of our personality and make us
look inwards to perceive our internal world of experiences by means of
self-study & self-enquiry.
In time we will realize our internal world to be a
large a field within that holds the seed of our inherent potential of further
growth and evolution. Initially this field requires a tremendous amount of work
and constant care and it will cause us a lot of hardship, friction and
resistance.
There are many weeds to be eradicated that try to
prevent the seed from blossoming, and there is a lot of sticky clay as well, in
which we get stuck again and again, slowing our work down. Additionally there
are tough weather conditions comprised of storms, fog and floods that are
holding us up to complete the work and succeed with our objective.
With a bit of patience and a sufficient amount of
conscious effort, as well as help from others, we will slowly get there.
The more we grow within, the stronger the inner longing
becomes. And the more its inherent magnetic pull like qualities take us further
into the divided nature of our self, the more our heart is thriving for union.
‘I’ll
meet you there’, symbolises the
pure nature of real ‘I’, in which the divided nature of ourselves meets the undivided
nature of our internal being. We now have come to a place of peace &
silence within that vast field of our internal world, in which we are entirely
on our own. Stripped & freed of everything we believed ourselves to be, we might
be carried away by the universal pulse of consciousness right through the heart
of our awareness towards the unchanging nature within, when they see fit.
