WHERE THE OWL HOOTS NOT NOR THE COCK CROWS---IN THE DEPTH OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR [EDITED]

WHERE THE OWL HOOTS NOT NOR THE COCK CROWS---IN THE DEPTH OF THE MIDNIGHT HOUR [EDITED]

When past the mid-night hour the screen shifts a little, I behold the stillness of a reality behind the facade of unceasing change---silent, calm, unruffled stillness without a whirl or a bubble, deep conscious existence, an unconnected, parallel background reality that defies description save in tranquil memory. And yet the page opens in the depth of consciousness in the deep of the nocturnal hour. What a silent revelation! What profundity of perception, integrated, total! Seems then I am alone since eternity without possibility of company. Clear perception of an integrated ethereal space where there is not a dot nor mark, plain wholeness, how to express in tangible changeable terms that which is the Beyond. This phenomenal universe then melts away revealing that which is the stillness of Truth. When I now try to express, oh, how language deflects the intended meaning and covers it up all! Perhaps, it may only be kindled in sympathetic souls, the purport of this verbal intent of a consciousness and an existence so unlike this manifold world, so separate, as if hanging alone by itself, self-brooding, consciousness turned back upon itself, unsplit, yet fully conscious, unanalytic, yet knowing, a strange unitary understanding, seamless, total! There no thoughts reach for they have been resolved into their integral base and have so lost their very entity. It is a timeless zone or, should I say, a realm where the flow of time is so faint perhaps that the ordinary dissolves and the Real is perceived through the fine mist of Maya. But it is a revealing mist, very fine distorting Reality, true, but removing the grosser facade of external Nature in all its moving and mystifying, refracting, dispersing, deluding self. The revelation is but incomplete, yet it is a powerful indicator of the deeper status of things till at the deepest there is a strange disconnect, a quantum leap, so to say, into the realm of the Infinite.

Reality is not what it seems. Reality is fundamentally different from the appearance we call Phenomena. But it is hidden or, should I say, obscured from vision by the incessant flow of thoughts which are the derivatives of integral consciousness that transcends this ceaseless fractured flow. Neurobiologists may disagree with these affirmations of mine, dumping them as so many misinterpretations of psychic phenomena capable of neural explanation, hallucinations of the heated brain, the scientifically untrained mind's superstitious averment, and I hold their thesis in high regard knowing that they are the product of the best minds over centuries of scientific evolution but I still cannot subscribe to their summary dismissal of these claims of the divine without adequate scrutiny or the adoption of the right means and methods for doing so. For this is a terrain that lies as of now beyond the domain of the physical sciences and therefore demands investigation using the right tools. Even as distant celestial bodies are explored through the telescope, miniscule matter investigated using the microscope, so must these perceptions of the human mind at an altitude be investigated using, if I may coin a term, the 'introscope'. By 'introscope' I mean the introspective analytical mind that sifts the spiritual grain from the material chaff and arrives at spiritual realisation. Sages and saints down the ages have vouched for their spiritual experiences and these were men of character whose lives were blemishless and based on truth and who brought about beneficent changes in human society giving civilisation purpose and meaning beyond the mundane. But age-old religious affirmations, codified creeds and archaic spiritual myths are all breaking down under the sledgehammer blows of reason and it is right that they should seek their quick cremation in the fire of scientific knowledge. Like the fire of the Inquisition which burnt saint and savant alike, let not, however, this time over, a second such fire be lit which shall consume the best of human culture in the form of its brightest discoveries of the Self of man and the spiritual ground of phenomena. Let reason go as far as it can but let reason temper reason and let not wild assertions of over-zealous scientists be misconstrued as the real findings of reason, for men, scientific or otherwise, are so often perverse in their denunciations and carry personal agenda, preconceptions and prejudices so very delusive that arrogance of material knowledge abrogates sublime realisations of the Spirit even as Church power annulled scientific truths in the Dark Ages.

So it is that while so-called spiritual assertions of the bygone ages may have been in error in many places and, indeed, ancient myths about gods and goddesses are very much so if absorbed literally despite protestations about their so-called historicity and their allegorical implications ever shifting in interpretation in the light of the findings of modern science to which these upholders of archaic myths resort to fulfil their bogus philosophy, and in this I am not particularising any specific religious tradition but am generally reporting about religious tradition down the ages worldwide, it is equally true that much of mythology contains germs of the sublime truths of life and the transcendence beyond and the evolving culture of man which to discard wholesale in the name of surface reason would be as primitive an act as the most heinous crimes of the burning down of the ancient library of Alexandria and the destruction of civilisation by tyrants down the ages. 

Science is an attempt of the human mind to grapple with the puzzle of existence by empirical means while religion is the same endeavour to unravel the mystery of existence by the exploration of the mind itself through introspection. Seen in that light, religion and science are not antagonistic in their mission. Rather they are the complementary aspects of the quest of man to arrive at a fundamental understanding of Reality. As such, mutual respect can foster a more holistic approach towards the comprehension of the riddle of existence than mutual denunciation can. Great truths of the subjective world have been discovered by sages and saints and equally grand truths of objective reality have been discovered by scientists, and these truths, though seemingly contradictory, are but interpretations from two different standpoints of a single Reality that is not partitioned as men have through their divisive modes reduced them to. Nature is whole and integrated, free of the trappings of the human mind in its present state of evolution and sees no conflict between the spiritual and the material, for essentially they are the same---the finer and the grosser states of a unified entity. These artificial distinctions of the subjective and the objective world are constructs of the human mind and have no bearing on the functioning of Nature beyond the deflections caused by the conscious mind in the observation of particle behaviour, and, therefore, they have their domain strictly confined within the spectrum of consciousness, thereby leaving the vast field of the superconscious and the subconscious as uncharted zones over which presumptuous pronouncements cannot be passed off as reasonable rationalisation. Since this is the scenario, it stands to reason to have camaraderie of spirit rather than ideological acrimony if humanity is to arrive at comprehension of the core truth which is the harmony of all forces and therefore is to be approached in a harmonious way, if at all.

Revelations abound in millions of lives in greater or smaller degree and this keeps the cycle of life rolling. Discoveries are not the domain solely of scientists but each soul is a conduit of the Divine and may perceive truth in whatever minuscule form even in the thoroughfare of life and much more so if one is devoted to the pursuit of truth. All these then become cultural enhancements and conglomerate to build civilisation.

Harmony is the key and is ever the basis for advancement of humanity towards final fruition in the discovery of the underlying oneness of things, be it approached from the material scientific standpoint or from the spiritual standpoint, for it is oneness that all are seeking, however unconsciously they may do so. When Einstein explored the universe, he did so to find out the ultimate basis of phenomena, the Unified Field Theory that would explain it all. Today's cosmologists are attempting to find the Theory of Everything in their bid to unravel the cosmic mystery and harmonise the apparently contradictory theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The concept of the 'singularity' in astrophysics, the black hole, the Big Bang and the Big Crunch are all portentous of human knowledge steadily advancing towards the discovery of the oneness of existence, a fact which the Vedic Rishis ages ago had discovered through their introspective vision, the Self which is the ground of all that exists. Atman = Brahman was the equation they discovered and in trumpet voice declared before the wide world. The forests retreats of the Rishis and their Himalayan caves resonated to the celestial vibration of Om which is the first manifestation of the unmanifest Reality. The waters of the Ganga, the Sindhu and the Saraswati carried along their current the sublime message of the Upanishads, the symphony of the soul. The One had dispersed into the many and the many were rushing on to oneness. The dewdrops had split sun rays into rainbow colours and the colours were conspiring to resolve into their unitary solar status.

All through Nature this game is on, the One manifesting as the many and the many tending to resolve into the One. This contrary phenomenon in Nature, the disintegrating mode and the integrating mode, the tendency to fly apart and the reverse tendency to gravitate inward keeps the universe oscillating from cycle to cycle. These contrary modes work in opposition to each other and thereby bring about the grand interplay of cosmic forces and create the ripple we call life. So let science and religion co-exist as comrades-in-arms as humans battle to demystify creation and discover the basis of life.

And, yet, in the dark deep of the cosmos a voice beckons us, ushering us on to some unknown end. Whither do we rush on? Wherefrom the voice comes? Is it from deep within us? And, yet, the screen shifts, the curtain lifts a little, revealing a stillness that is tranquil, a silence that is conscious. Who are we? I wonder, I wonder.

Written by Sugata Bose