"Hyetal". Spring of Makaria . Attica, Greece | image by petroskoublis.com
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Everything is a flow, a constant one, coherent, continuous, perfect. A stream that never remains the same, yet so complete that it never changes. There are no specified borders to limit the stream's movement, as it flows undisturbed, immeasurable, without applying to any dimension. Movement and stillness coexist, free of direction and position, a unique force manifesting a single concept that escapes the proportions of our bodies but reaches the heart of our consciousness. It's only the scale of our body that prevents us from perceiving both movement and stillness as a single unity, but our consciousness can reach further than that if it's allowed to exceed the limits of our bodies. In fact, it's destined to. This stream is freely manifested everywhere around us and its essence remains effortlessly perceptible, for its movement is perceived as stillness when we find ourselves in perfect balance. Infinity is movement and stillness occurring together, simultaneously, in an undivided, perfectly inseparable way.
There is a revealing verse in the Hermetica, a collection of texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. There, in the second speech addressing Asclepius, we can find these words of an intuitive vision. They enclose into one single phrase the existential core of every primary religion and, surprisingly to the modern day reader, the insight of today's subatomic science.
Πᾶσα οὖν κίνησις ἐν στάσει καὶ ὑπὸ στάσεως κινεῖται,
ἡ οὖν κίνησις τοῦ κόσμου καὶ παντὸς δὲ ζῴου ὑλικοῦ
οὐχ ὑπὸ τῶν κατ' ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματος συμβαίνει γίνεσθαι,
ἀλλ' ὑπὸ τῶν ἐντὸς εἰς τὸ κατ' ἐκτός, τῶν νοητῶν, ἤτοι
ψυχῆς ἢ πνεύματος, ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς ἀσωμάτου
All movement, then, is stillness and remains still while in movement.
The motion of the cosmos and this of every material object or animal,
is not caused by things exterior to the body, but by things interior,
such things as soul, or spirit, or some other thing incorporeal.
Everything is a flow, without a form, infinite, and this includes ourselves. Our consciousness is shapeless and inner balance can be achieved only when the shapeless is preserved. When we're identifying ourselves with an idea we actually force our consciousness to acquire a certain shape. This restriction disturbs the natural flow inside us and inevitably entraps our mind into a single, limited dimension. Every identification is fundamentally illusive, since it defies the constant flow of things. The word person comes from the Latin word persona, which means mask. Accepting this mask as an identity is a pathogen paradox, since it means that we become both the observers and the observees, both the subject and the object, both ourselves and the other. It's good to remember that even our name, it can be useful to others when they wish to address us, but it has no real use to our own selves.
Identifying ourselves with an idea, the events of our past, the prospect of our future or, more commonly, our body, is not only unsubstantial but also a burden. As futile as trying to describe the form of a river or the shape of sea.
Take the singing of a blackbird for example, as it sounds through the open window. The blackbird is the source and we are the recipients. It is easy to draw a line and mark the spots across its length. We would place the blackbird on one end and us on the on the other. Two spots without physical dimensions connected by a line. But where exactly does the blackbird stop and where do we start? The blackbird's singing acquires its sound only after the vibrations created inside our ears send the message to our brain. Moreover, the bird acquires its shape only if we are familiar with how blackbirds look and sound like. Everything is happening inside us, space, time, form, every aspect is unfolded inside our own mind. We are the recipients but we are also the blackbird and its singing.
Already in the early fifth century BC, Parmenides of Elea, the pre-Socratic philosopher and founder of the Eleatic school, in his work "On Nature", had seen the path that unfolds for our consciousness to follow.
Μόνος δ΄ ἔτι µῦθος ὁδοῖο
λείπεται ὡς ἔστιν· ταύτῃ δ΄ ἐπὶ σήµατ΄ ἔασι
πολλὰ µάλ΄, ὡς ἀγένητον ἐὸν καὶ ἀνώλεθρόν ἐστιν,
ἔστι γὰρ οὐλοµελές τε καὶ ἀτρεµὲς ἠδ΄ ἀτέλεστον·
οὐδέ ποτ΄ ἦν οὐδ΄ ἔσται, ἐπεὶ νῦν ἔστιν ὁµοῦ πᾶν,
ἕν, συνεχές
One path only is left for us to speak of, that it is.
On this path there are a multitude of indications
that what is, is uncreated and imperishable,
whole, complete, immovable and without end.
Nor was it ever, nor will it be;
for now it is, all at once, a continuous one.
Our body is a tool for our consciousness to gather experiences. And if this tool is limited by nature, it opens the door for our consciousness to reach the illimitable, the infinite, the One.
For us to become the infinity we are.
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