The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James W. Sire

Author:James W. Sire
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-02-01T08:12:00+00:00

Siddhartha tried to listen better. The picture of his father, his own picture, and the picture of his son all flowed into each other. Kamala's picture also appeared and flowed on, and the picture of Govinda and others emerged and passed on. They all became part of the river. It was the goal of all of them, yearning, desiring, suffering; and the river's voice was full of longing, full of smarting woe, full of insatiable desire. The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddhartha saw the river hasten, made up of himself and his relatives and all the people he had ever seen. All the waves and water hastened, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.18

Finally all the voices and images and faces intertwine: "And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world.... The great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om-perfection."19 It is at this point that Siddhartha achieves an inner unity with the One, and "the serenity of knowledge" shines in his face.

The river in this long passage-and throughout the book-becomes an image for the cosmos. When looked at from the standpoint of a place along the bank, the river flows (time exists). But when looked at in its entirety-from spring to brook to river to ocean to vapor to rain to spring-the river does not flow (time does not exist). It is an illusion produced by sitting on the bank rather than seeing the river from the heavens. Time likewise is cyclical; history is what is produced by the flow of the water past a point on the shore. It is illusory. History then has no meaning where reality is concerned. In fact, our task as people who would realize their godhead is to transcend history.

This should help explain why Western Christians who place so much emphasis on history find their presentation of the historical basis of Christianity almost completely ignored in the East. To the Western mind, whether or not Jesus existed, performed miracles, healed the sick, died and rose from the dead is important. If it happened, there must be a vital meaning to these strange, unnatural events. Perhaps there is a God after all.

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