The Infinite Sky

 

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The Infinite Sky

During meditation invariably I find myself in a dark never-ending tunnel. This is not something which scares me, but rather it is very benign and the self begins dissolving in its darkness. This is just like putting a cube of salt in a glass of water, after sometime it disappears, but if you sip the water, the salt can be tasted. This is something similar, the self disappears but the bliss remains.

Swamiji keeps telling us that this is our last birth (small print says conditions apply) – and if we do our spiritual practice regularly, we will definitely reach the stage of no mind, voidness, dissolving into universal consciousness. So, when Buddha was asked, “Where will you go when you leave the body? Because this is your last birth you will not go to any womb again, so where will you be?” He says, “Taste existence and you will find me there. Just as salt dissolves in water, I will dissolve into the cosmos, and if you are capable of tasting it you will taste me.”

The existence is becoming more and more enlightened, because more and more enlightened people are disappearing into it. Humans are not falling, they are evolving. We can see the number of spiritual masters who are working on elevating the people’s consciousness today. More and more people are meditating and evolving day by day. Whenever one buddha again disappears into existence it is saltier. Of course, existence is vast and big, and a buddha howsoever big is again just a drop, but still that one drop changes the quality of the very existence.

So, one has to disappear into the depth. When one disappears then only is there depth. If one is, then it is just a pretension of depth; it cannot be real depth. Real depth cannot allow the ego to exist. Ego as such is the superficial. It is just as on the surface of the ocean there are waves, but if one goes deep there are no waves. There cannot be any waves because there is no wind. The ego is just on the surface of the mind – those waves and ripples and all that. Once we start entering deeper into our being all that disappears – the mind and the ego and the thoughts. And it is a bottomless abyss: it has no boundary to it. That is the meaning of the sky – endless, infinite, never-ending.

Sky is very symbolic in eastern mysticism - the greatest symbol there is. It means many things. One - it is always present, yet absent. It is present everywhere yet absent. Its very way of presence is being absent. It exists by not being. That’s how God exists. That’s why you cannot show where God is; that’s why you cannot pinpoint him. He is everywhere and nowhere… and that is the quality of the sky too. It is not just an accident that whenever people pray, they look at the sky. Unknowingly, they raise their eyes to the sky, because God is like the sky - present and yet utterly absent.

The sky contains all, and nothing contains the sky. God contains all, and nothing contains God. The sky penetrates everything and yet never interferes. It is a miracle! It penetrates without trespassing. It is so non-violent. It accepts all - the sinner and the saint, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. It makes no distinctions - it has no likes, no dislikes. It has no mind. It is simply open and available to all, whoever wants to partake of it. It makes no conditions. It is unconditionally everybody’s: man and woman, animals, birds, trees, rocks, stars and sun. It is available to all. It protects but it never patronises. It surrounds us from within and without… without ever touching us. And these are the qualities of God.

Black clouds come and go and the sky makes space available for them. White clouds come and go and the sky makes space for them with no distinction; it is choiceless. The acceptance is total. The sky exists in a state of suchness: whatever is the case, it is good. Clouds come and go; the sky remains, it abides.

It is eternal, it is timeless. It is always the same. It is the most ancient and yet as fresh as the dewdrops; it never becomes old. So, meditate on the sky, and whenever we have time just lie down on the ground, look at the sky.