The images of flowing water have kept surfacing in my mind since the last few days. My earliest memory is from my childhood when I sat by a swiftly flowing river watching my father swim. Afterward he would hold me as I made my feeble attempts to “swim,” which was nothing more than wildly splashing my hands and feet in water.
When I grew up I got the opportunity to see the flow of the sacred Ganges not only near her source in the Himalayas, but also in other key spots including Hardwar, Prayag, Kashi, and Kolkata. For more than two decades now I have grown used to seeing from my window the Charles River flow gently throughout the year, except for a few weeks in winter when its flow is masked by a layer of ice. It is not just water that flows, but air “flows” too. The blowing wind is really the air flowing from the higher to the lower pressure areas.
The flow is not only outside but inside me as well. The blood flows through the veins and arteries inside my body. The sensations that are carried throughout my nervous system are a kind of flow as well. Memories of the past and thoughts about the future flow through the recesses in my mind.
Life itself can be seen as a flow. Time flows as I age. Days, months and years flow by with tireless regularity and it feels like I am being carried along with the flow. I would like to stand still, not move, and watch the flow—but being still is tough, flowing with the current is easy. The practice of “being the witness” is nothing but the practice of staying still and refusing to join the flow of life.
The body is a part of the flow and so is the mind. No one can stop their march. Do I want to be carried away to wherever the body and the mind lead me? If I leave myself at their mercy, the inevitable end can only be death and destruction—the way all material things end, composition followed by decomposition. The only way to stop and declare my independence is to consciously detach myself from the body and the mind.
When I no longer identify with the body and the mind, I become aware of what I always am, but what I seldom seem to remember—my true self, the Ātman. Paradoxically, it is easy to become someone else and difficult to be my true self. Whatever is easy, though, is generally not worth having. Whatever is worth having is generally not easy—but not impossible either.
Detaching myself from the body and the mind is easier to wish than to practice. The creative impulse surging within me won’t allow it. I don’t have the privilege to stop, to get out of the mad rush and be a witness, giving myself the space to watch my body and mind being carried away in the flow of life. I cannot stop the creative force flowing within me and seeking expression, but I can direct it along any channel of my choice.
We all have the power to decide the manner in which our creative energies are expended. Nature largely gets this done on the biological plane and ensures the perpetuation of the species. But creativity is not limited to biology. The mind and the intellect contribute a lot more to creation than the body does. The creative juices flow within all of us and we find different outlets for them.
Artists use the creative force to produce works of art, whether it is a musical piece, a sculpture, a painting, a movie, or a play. Writers express their creativity through their books and essays. Intellectuals use the creative force to initiate new ways of thinking, which makes reimagining the past, the present or the future possible. Architects do it through novel structural designs, and engineers accomplish their tasks through innovative processes. Scientists express their creativity through their inventions and explorers do it through their discoveries. Spiritual seekers use the creative force to do any or all of the above, but as an instrument to realize their spiritual goal. Every one of us can be potentially creative in whatever we do, if we do it with a fresh mind, as if we were doing it for the first time.
When the creative force has run its course for a while, it mellows and it softens. That makes it easier to turn the force back to the source of all creativity—God, who is known and thought of variously in different traditions, the divine source from whom everything emerges, in whom everything rests, and to whom everything returns in the end. Meditation is a way of reversing the flow of creativity back to the source of creation. It needs effort to beat back the obstacles on the way. Swimming upstream is tougher than swimming downstream.
If the unconscious flow toward the perishable world is powered by worldly desires, the conscious flow toward the Imperishable is powered by an indomitable human will, which refuses to give up against all odds. When purity, patience and perseverance team up with the will to uncover the Real, the struggle soon reaches a tipping point. It is then—but no one knows exactly when, or how, or even why—another force, stronger than anything we have ever imagined, takes over. It doesn’t originate from anything we have known before. So we simply call it divine grace. When grace descends, the obstacles disappear, the flow becomes uninterrupted, like oil poured from one vessel into another. The river flows back into the ocean. The river is no more. Only the ocean is.
Only the ocean is. Forget the image of water. Don’t think of the waves now. The “ocean” here is a metaphor or a symbol for one, infinite, undivided, immovable, and unchanging reality. The flowing has ended. Now there is nothing to do, for everything has been done. There is now nowhere to go, for I am everywhere. There is now no one to meet, for I am everyone. I always was, I always am, I will always be.