Clare Rosenfield
When a child watches someone “hide” a seed under the soil and cover it with heavy earth and some water, he thinks it is gone. He cannot imagine that such a small seed could push its way out from its apparent hiding place and reappear. But when you see someone plant a seed, you know that it is no going to disappear and die.
What is it that makes you know that the seed will grow? And what is the child lacking which causes him to think that it has vanished? Experience. Experience gives you the power to know that within the seed there is something, which has so much energy that it can break the soil and come out. Lacking that experiential knowledge a child does not yet have the vision of the one who knows.
There is a similar difference between a person with vision and one without. At the sight of what some people call an ending or “death,” the wise person feels no insecurity because he perceives the cycle of eternity in each process of change. Those without vision, like the inexperienced child, see everything as coming to an end. “Let me enjoy everything right now“, they say, “for when I am gone, it is for good, and all will be buried in a graveyard.” Those who harbor such fears of finality are not at peace.
As long as we have concept of “All is lost!” so long shall we have sadness and tears. Rather than create sadness when a person departs, let us see in this light when person has gone, he or she may have gone from your eyes, from your circle, but not from the universe. The person has gone from the form, but not from the essence. When we understand this truth, we enlarge our vision and say: “What is lost? Only the form! A gold ornament may be broken or melted down, but the gold is safe. A new ornament can be made out of it; only its form will be different!“
Let us realize that we are all on a sojourn to complete, fulfill, or undo something. We are all on a mission. It is an experience, not an intellectual lesson. Feel deeply within you that a loved one who is no longer with you has gone to continue his mission, to complete the work he was carrying on in this life. The relation you had with him will evolve. Go on sending loving vibrations to him. Your vibrations will become wings but not your tears.
Now let us envision the continuity of eternity in each seed, in each form. Let us see the same thing in us. The form becomes broken or decomposed, but there is something in the center of all the forms - something which is changeless. That something is sentient energy.
When we can see the expression of this energy in a seed, in even so tiny a seed as the sesame seed, we can observe its power. Its sprout is so vibrant with strength that it can break the heavy earth. It is so intent on growing that it can push through the dead insentient harsh matter covering it and throw it off. Why? Because it has living sentient life.
If we become aware of this powerful sentient energy in us, of this growing life process which we all are, we will be able to cast off the load of matter, which weighs us down.
If you get that insight, your life will be changed - buoyant and flowing. Why? Because you will realize that in this last stage of your evolution, in your human existence, you are in touch with your reality. You are seeing your eternal nature. You are contacting your self.
When you know this in your experience, not only in a mental or conceptual way, then you will shed all fears and anxieties. Like the person who moves from house to house according to the season, you will know that wherever you are, in a different country, climate, planet, abode, situation, or birth, you have not "gone" anywhere; you only make a change of house, a change of form.
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Now what you call ‘I’ is merely a name. As a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, ‘I’ is a form. As an angry or a happy ‘I’, it is an emotional ‘I’. When you say: ‘I am going to do as I did yesterday,’ that ‘I’ belongs to a time period. None of these ‘I's’ is you. They are hundreds of names reflecting in hundreds of broken mirrors, the mirrors of moods and labels - rich, poor, angry, depressed, happy, sad, high, low. ‘I’ mirrors are not your real qualities; they are conditions. Pleasures and pains, ups and downs are transient; they come and go.
When we enter into an experiential level, we know that sentient energy passes through stages of life. What we call girl, old lady, sick person, dying person are all stages seen in the mirror. Why have we not yet seen ourselves in our eternal nature? Because of karmas; we have not distinguished our true nature from conditions and stages and mirrors. We continue to identify ourselves with the transient roles we play.
Real experience comes when you are able to disengage yourself from all conditions, from all forms of insentient energy, and see yourself as sentient atman. Real meditation starts from the moment you say: "This is sentient energy and this is I. This energy cannot be abolished or destroyed."
This is the "I" which has no ego. The mirror "I’s" were conditions of insentient moments and you were identifying with those temporary conditions. Now you see that just because the "house" is "old" it does not mean that the "indweller" is "old." Now you can visualize yourself as sentient dwelling in the "houses" of insentient, or as sentient wearing the "clothes" of insentient.
