Everything is Floating in Consciousness
By Srila Bhakti Rakshak Sridhara Dev-Goswami Maharaja.
Everything is an idea in the ocean of consciousness. Just as an iceberg floats in the salt ocean, so the fossil is floating in the conscious ocean. Ultimately, everything—whatever we can assert, whatever is within the world of our experience—is floating like an iceberg in the ocean of consciousness. This point can never be refuted.
I have had personal experience of this. When I was twenty-three, I had some deep and natural indifference to the world. At that time, I had an experience of the reality of consciousness. I felt the material world floating on consciousness just as cream floats on milk. Conscious reality is much deeper than the apparent reality of our present experience. The world of experience is like cream floating on milk which is the mind. This physical world is only the visible portion of reality floating over the mental world. I felt this myself. When there is a huge quantity of milk, the cream that floats over the milk and covers it is very meagre. In the same way, I could feel at that time that this physical world is only a meagre portion of reality, and that the subtle world, which is at present in the background, is far more vast. The mental world is a huge and vast reality, and the physical world is a small cover over that mental world.
Whatever can be perceived by the eye, the ear, the tongue, the nose, the skin—any of the external senses—is only a covering of reality. In Srimad Bhagavatam, Prahlad Maharaj says, na te viduh svartha-gatim hi Visnum durasaya ye bahir-artha-maninah. We are making too much of the covering of reality, we are devoting our minds to the external coating—bahir-artha-maninah—but we do not dive deep into the eternal substance. If only we were to dive deep into reality, there we would find Visnu. The most peaceful substance is within, but it is covered, just as milk is covered by cream, and we are making much of that cover. The real substance is within, just as fruit is covered by its skin. What we experience at present is the cover, the skin, and we are making much of that, ignoring the very substance which the cover is protecting.
The primary step in the search for truth is to penetrate the covering and find the knower within. And then begin our analysis. What is he? Is he an atom like an atomic particle of dust? Or is he a fantastic atom in the conscious plane? At first we must approach reality in this way. There is the knower and the unknown, the enquirer and the enquired.
Try to find yourself. Then gradually, you will come to know that you are the soul, the particle of consciousness within. And just as you are spirit covered by matter, the whole world is also like that; the spiritual reality within is covered. Upon realising your self as spirit soul, you will be able to see that everything is a part of consciousness. Within the world of consciousness, worlds of different sorts of experience are floating. In the conscious sea, the sun, the moon, trees, stones, human beings, our friends, and our enemies are all floating. As we approach the spiritual plane, we will find it to be nearer to our real self. And in this way, we will see that matter is far, far away, but the soul is near.
Try to conceive of reality along these lines. Soul, spirit, consciousness, is nearer to the soul, and you are a child of that soil. Matter is far, far away. But the interrupting planes are so close together that we don’t see the nature of spiritual reality. Just as if you put your hand over your eye, you can’t see the hand. But if the hand is only one foot away, we can see it very clearly. Sometimes what is very close, we cannot see. I may be able to see so many things, but I cannot see myself.
Although the Buddhists and other atheists argue that consciousness is a material thing, I say that there is no material thing. If I am to answer the question of whether or not consciousness is produced from matter, then I shall say that nothing is material. Whatever we feel is only a part of consciousness. Everything is an idea. We are concerned only with consciousness from the beginning to the end of our experience. Beyond that we cannot go. Everything is an idea: the stone, the tree, the house, the body—all are ideas. The plane of consciousness is very much closer to us than we perceive. And what is shown as a particular thing is far away. We are involved only with ideas. We can’t go outside that. Everything within our experience is a part of our mind.
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