The Universal Mind
I have a mind. We all have a mind. All humans have a mind and that is what makes us different from other animals, or so we thought. Then it was found that animals, birds and other living things have a mind too. In fact, even the trees and plants have a mind!! Great. The mind is what makes the living different from the non-living.
But, I often wonder, do the non-living things also have a mind? The rocks, the rivers, the mountains, the wind, the fire, the sky ….. all the elements – do they have a mind of their own? It would be easy to say NO. But if you observe their behavior closely you would be tempted to say that yes, they have a mind of their own. And in fact, their mind is superior to the much-vaunted human mind. How?
Because their mind is much closer to the universal mind, the mind that is the source of all the minds. Our over-hyped ‘human intelligence’ has taken us far away from that universal mind. The more ‘intelligent’ we became the further away from this universal mind we went.
Look at all the other living beings. They are happy being just the way they are. They don’t bother to create an elaborate lifestyle for themselves, do they? They can do that because they are closer to the universal mind, always mindful and blissful. Similarly, the so-called non-living entities, they are just the way they are. Doing their thing for millions of years without bothering to change or evolve. I don’t have any proof for this but I strongly suspect this – The universal mind pervades them more clearly than it does our so-called superior human minds.
And that is the reason one can meditate on anything. You can meditate on a rock, a flame, a cloud or a star. What we call the universal mind or in some cultures the Tao is present in all directions for us to contemplate. So the next time you meditate on an inanimate object, know this, you are not accessing a lower mind but the highest universal mind.
