Recently, I've been blessed enough to look up at the night sky from a point of view that had previously eluded me. In all fairness, I'd never had access to a telescope with a 14" aperture and a computerised equatorial mount. But, from a lonely little town, in the midst of the Great Karoo, I looked through a lens that would make very real, just how unreal a world I find myself in. When one becomes two, becomes two thousand, becomes one again...which eyes to believe when when my own gainsay?
To believe in the eyes of men - many men? Science, so to speak. To theorize, reason about, and experiment. To refute everything, until proven, disproven, and proven again. To stow away the mystique of consciousness, in favor of only what can be known for sure. Because, for sure, something can be known - something can be known...right? Wrong. For, when one follows the path of only what can be proved, one arrives at a dead end, a dead end which sends you back from wence you came. And, circulus in probando, you'll return to a starting point that's a fallacy. So, as many men reason about the mysteries of the starry night, many men will scratch it's furry head when logic eats its own tail - again, and again, and again. The spiral of reason is certain only in one claim - and that is, that it is certain in none. But then, what to make of the illusions that mine own eyes serve up? Is the star one, or two, or many? Is the ground beneath me solid, or as desolate as the faraway sky? What am I to grasp to, when I have no hands to grasp?
Perhaps...perhaps I'm best off closing mine eyes. Looking inwards, because outwards cannot be trusted. As the lids shut close, and memories of the outer world grow distant. So physical scenes no longer to be seen, so physical sounds no longer to be heard. So too, the sites behind my lids grow more vivid, so too the voices in my head give rise. So much so, that I now find myself moving through a whole new realm. Waves of color, reminiscent of the northern lights, speak, not to me, but through me. And as this new reality rears it's head, so too does the uncertainty that lies within. Because, as time moves forward, decisions must be made. And, in making decisions, which colors to give credit, which voices to trust? Then, too, this reality starts to crumble. Like stained glass embelishing a humble church - cracked into a thousand pieces, then broken and fallen to the ground. To attempt to pick up is only to risk getting cut, with no hope of restoring the pretty picture that was before. But which then? Which eyes to believe, when my own flutter open - casting doubt over doubt.
It is only when I look intensly at one thing, that the answer becomes clear. Clear as day, yet dark as night. In the eyes of another, is what I'm to believe in. Themselves wandering about a different world...spiralling, attempting to fathom the unfathomable. But, it is when they lock - lock into mine, and mine into theirs, that the truth is revealed. Like opal, the black is deep and the void unending...yet, like opal, the colors too, are there to be seen. All of them, crystal clear...not in absence of the void, but part of it, one with it. With this stellar collision, comes the only undeniable truth. The truth without reason. The truth in another. Oneself in another. Oneself. One.
And then the stare is broken. An unavoidable, non-synchronous, blink - yanking back, with a sharp and instant jerk, a reality in which the only truth is that there is no truth. But the only truth, cannot be forgotton. Until next time, opal eyes.
"The waves of hatred-night can easily be dissolved in the sea of oneness-love."
- Sri Chinmoy