Ideas come during meditation, even though it is not a time for thinking. I keep see-sawing back and forth between the desire to understand in a rational way that can be explained to others, and the desire to experience. I know that the received wisdom is not to get involved in rational thought during meditation, that concepts are a hindrance rather than a help, but I do not think this is quite correct. Thought, language and experience are so interwoven that I do not think they can be so arbitrarily separated. Nor is the separator between subliminal and conscious experience impermeable. There is a constant seepage into consciousness, of which one is aware, but the moment the searchlight of direct awareness is turned on it it vanishes. In this way the Jesus Prayer keeps saying itself throughout the day, and it is not just a mere repetition of words.
What I want to get on and talk about is the fact that I am the centre of the universe. Each person is the centre, not just of his/her universe but, of THE UNIVERSE. Everything is seen from the perspective of the centre and the centre is I. This is a fact of experience even though I know it is not true, even though I know that I am a temporary, infinitesimal speck in a cosmos vast beyond all imagining. Only what touches me has meaning for me. The birth and death of stars, the collisions of galaxies, the extermination of species, the awesome power of a supernova and the cold silence of space – none of these have any meaning for me unless I am touched by them. Nor do the billions of lives, the trillions of human dramas, joys and tragedies about which I know nothing. Yet each life is the centre of the universe, warmed by the same sun.
If only what touches my life has meaning for me and if there are billions of others who could say the same thing; if there are billions of lives, each in its private bubble of meaning, how can one find ultimate meaning? Is there ultimate meaning? The problem is the bubble, the bubble of our individuality. We can only see from inside our individual bubbles. There is no other perspective. From inside the bubble we cannot reach out and make contact. Only if the bubble pops can I be merged with the whole. But the skin of the bubble is my individuality. It is my universe and I am at its centre. It is my only protection against dissolution. Once it is pierced I will be emptied out. Will I then cease to be? Is this what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Whoever would save his life must lose it.’ Is this what is meant by anatman? The individual self, protected inside the bubble of his conscious awareness, is unaware of true reality, is unaware of what/who he really is. This morning, just for a fleeting moment, I had a vision of what it would be like for the bubble to burst. The emptying out and merging would not be to lose but to gain.