Just being so...

How will a stone know that it’s a stone? It knows how to ‘be’ a stone, that’s why it exists. From the tiniest to the biggest, from the moving to the unmoving, from the dust to a flower, everything knows how to ‘be’. In fact, the things considered as insentient by us know it perfectly well how to ‘be’. The atomic arrangement in them knows how to be a stone. But there is a tendency in the element of just 'being so' to 'become something' and that drives this multilayered flux from ‘being’ to ‘becoming’ ranging from galaxies to a dew drop.

At their essential core, ‘just being so’ and ‘becoming something’ are part of the same game; in fact the same thing. A stone looks just a stone, but it's becoming something as well at the same time. The process is very subtle. And what is consciousness? This is the force of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ itself. The debate is endless and the question will stay unresolved till eternity as long as we are compartmentalizing matter, energy and consciousness as separate entities. That’s a very funny convenience we create. But what else is this existence apart from the limitless potential to create? Mother creation is just an open-ended freeway of timeless and spaceless possibilities.

Coming back to the question of consciousness. If you segregate one fundamental entity into three different categories, like here in matter, energy and consciousness, you have infinite possibilities to create logic, analysis, hypothesis or any other output of mind-work. That’s our logical creation only. It hardly deals with the essential commonality between matter, energy and consciousness. It but serves a purpose. This categorization of the same unity into fragmented elements gives rise to fabulous brainwork in the form of science, religion, ethics, moral codes, education and culture—everything belonging to the blissful and agonizing maya that we create. Who can stop the little children from making castles, dolls, dogs, toys, sepoys from the same mud and clay? They are free to play and take it very seriously and believe their creations to be quite different from each other. But does that make any difference to the mud being just mud? The entire profession of consciousness scientists will turn redundant the moment we put up the little toys of energy, matter and consciousness into the dustbin and mesh them together to make them the undifferentiated clay.

This creation, this game, this play of energy, this churning of matter, this storm of consciousness is helpless in ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. It goes on. And all of us are entitled to erect smart structures of nations, religions, gods, deities, science, cars, planes, relationships, smiles, tears, everything. So keep ‘becoming’ all you ‘beings’. And once you ‘become’, again try just to ‘be’. It keeps us busy like every particle around us is madly busy in spinning. All this is just a tiny storm in the teacup, a little ripple in a tiny corner of the universe or multiverse, whatever you name it. And this play and expansion is so funny as to take itself very-very seriously and churn out wonders, new shapes and phenomena at every point of its expansion. But all this is the same primordial dust playing with itself, making different looking entities: consciousness trying to be conscious of itself. A sort of self-driving motive for its journey; a never-ending journey.

If you are trying to be conscious of something outside yourself, the journey can’t be endless and later or sooner you will stop. But here consciousness is following its own tail, trying to be conscious of itself, like a cat chasing its tail in a circle, unleashing a blizzard of happenings. And that creates newer and newer avenues for latest versions. I hope you remember the ancestors of little house lizards were once mighty dinosaurs. All this maya is simply infinity trying to be limited and make a meaning of its meaninglessness through laws and generalization. And we carry the same tendency of the cosmic entity’s fundamental quest. We are a little ounce of universe chasing its tail, spinning on its axis to find some meaning of all this spinning around. From the so-called best to the worst, we finally convince ourselves that that’s the real meaning. But that again is a solace, a conditioning of our mind to accept something that seems to give us some respite from the mad circling around in pursuance of our own tails.

Whatever meaning you create, whatever toy you make, it hardly matters to the primordial clay. But yes, the clay toys that we create through individual and collective organizational set up in the form of nations, organizations, religion, faith, gods, deities, bureaucracy everything, that’s merely an acceptance, an agreement to behold the validity of our creation. It has no bearing on the fundamental mud and clay, the cosmic pool of consciousness, we are all wallowing in. I have repeatedly used the word ‘consciousness’ because we have all agreed to define it as such. So spin your webs well. Create your realities. Dance on the floor quite energetically. Contort yourself in your dancing as much as you want, move and shake in your own weird ways. Only caution, try not to trample others toes as you go dancing.

During the dynamic meditation sessions at an Osho ashram, people would let loose their inner emotions through crying, laughing, rolling on the floor, shouting or singing. Some would roar like lions and I would be scared that they might bury their molars in someone’s throat. I was particularly scared for one old tauji who usually turned into the cutest goat after every dynamic meditation session. He would crawl on all fours and move around bleating. That was when I got apprehensive that the lions in the group might pounce upon him for their dinner. Jokes apart, the cute tauji had every right to become a goat as long as he took care of not trotting out of the hall and enter the garden for grazing on well-tendered flowers.