The Infinite Expansion and the Infinite Depth
Lately I have been reflecting on a simple question:
What if the infinitely large and the infinitely small are not opposites?
What if they are two ways of approaching the same reality?
When I look at the ocean, I see waves appearing and disappearing. Each wave seems to have its own shape, identity and journey. Yet no wave is separate from the ocean.
The same is true of our lives.
We appear as individuals with our own thoughts, personalities and histories. Yet beneath these differences lies something far greater, a vast field of consciousness from which everything arises.
The traditions often describe this mystery through Vishnu and Shiva.
Vishnu is limitless expansion.
The all-pervading presence.
Like space itself, there is nowhere where it is not.
The galaxies, stars, planets, thoughts, memories and possibilities all arise within this immeasurable expanse.
Shiva is limitless depth.
The movement beyond time.
The return to the source.
The dimension where all names, forms and distinctions dissolve into silence.
One expands infinitely outward.
The other recedes infinitely inward.
Yet both arrive at the same destination.
The infinite.
As a child, I imagined infinity as something endlessly large. But spiritual inquiry revealed another possibility. Infinity is not only vastness. Infinity is also depth.
A circle can expand without limit.
A point can deepen without limit.
The circumference disappears into infinity.
The centre disappears into infinity.
The destination is the same.
Perhaps this is why the sages spoke of creation through vibration.
Before form, there is movement.
Before movement, there is potential.
Before the world appears, there is a subtle stirring within the unmanifest.
This is often symbolised as Nada, the primordial vibration.
From this vibration arises space.
Within space arise forms.
Within forms arise experiences.
Within experiences arise stories, identities and worlds.
Yet the vibration never leaves its source.
The cause remains hidden within the effect.
The effect is nothing more than the cause becoming visible.
The wave reveals the ocean.
The ocean expresses itself as the wave.
What we call creation is not something separate from its source.
It is the source appearing as expression.
The remarkable thing is that creation, sustenance and dissolution are occurring simultaneously.
A sound is disappearing the moment it is born.
A wave is returning to the ocean the moment it rises.
A life is changing the moment it begins.
We often imagine these as separate stages, but they are one continuous movement.
Creation.
Preservation.
Dissolution.
The entire cycle is present in every moment.
This insight also changes how I see individuality.
The mind is conditioned to compare.
This life against another life.
This success against another success.
This wave against another wave.
But comparison loses significance once we recognise that no two expressions are identical.
No two waves occupy the same space.
No two moments occupy the same time.
No two minds have travelled the exact same journey.
Every expression is unique because every expression is a distinct movement within the infinite.
Yoga Vasistha repeatedly points to this truth.
The individual mind arises from the cosmic mind.
It exists within the cosmic mind.
It eventually recognises itself as the cosmic mind.
Nothing has actually been separated.
Only forgetfulness creates the appearance of separation.
Sadhana is not the creation of something new.
It is the gradual removal of forgetfulness.
It is the remembrance of what has always been true.
Recently, in a dream, I experienced something difficult to describe.
There was simultaneously a sense of vast expansion and immense depth.
Neither contradicted the other.
The mind became extraordinarily still.
Thoughts no longer seemed important.
Nothing needed to be added.
Nothing needed to be removed.
In that silence, I saw that expansion and depth are merely different perspectives of the same reality.
Vishnu.
Shiva.
The infinite circumference.
The infinite centre.
The limitless expansion.
The limitless depth.
Not two truths.
One truth seen from two directions.
And perhaps that is what spiritual life ultimately reveals.
We are not trying to become something else.
We are not trying to reach somewhere new.
We are simply remembering the source from which we have never been separated.
The wave remembers the ocean.
The individual remembers the cosmic.
The finite remembers the infinite.
And in that remembrance, all comparisons come to rest.
One more insight keeps returning to me.
Vishnu and Shiva are often seen as distinct principles, but in experience they reveal themselves together.
The deeper the stillness, the greater the expansiveness.
The greater the expansiveness, the deeper the stillness.
The infinitely large and the infinitely small meet beyond the limits of the mind.
Like the horizon where the ocean appears to merge with the sky, they seem different only from a distance.
When seen clearly, they are not two.
Expansion and depth.
Space and silence.
Presence and dissolution.
Vishnu and Shiva.
One reality revealing itself through two doorways.