The Room
Ken Drummond Oct 26, 2005

Imagine that you go into a room. The room has an intercom system so you can hear the voices of other people from time to time. The room also has a window through which you can look out onto the world. You notice certain things through the window and sometimes you discuss them with the voices you hear on the intercom. The people behind the voices are in rooms too. Their rooms also have windows, though the view may not be the same as what you see.

Based on the things you see, you give very certain opinions on how life must be. But you are fixated on your view through the window. You do not talk about the room, even though it may be similar to the rooms of your fellows. And you don't discuss the house that you came from before you went into your room. In fact you believe that the view through your window represents reality. You can see some of your friends' rooms through your window, and maybe even wave at them, but you never go out of your room or back inside the house and meet them intimately, nor do you know the owner of the house, or the builder, or anything about where you came from or how you came to this room in the first place.

This scenario is similar to the state that many scientists find themselves in. They have focused on an outward world and they believe that everything that exists is a manifestation of the outward conditions they see. They no longer think about the underlying "structure" upon which all their observations are based. They may be expert at interpreting observed phenomena, but they forget they are merely looking out of windows onto a "reality" that is prominent only from their current vantage points.

In short, in our world of science, the cart has been put before the horse. The manifested is thought to be real, and the unmanifested, underlying thought and vision, is considered to be a construct of the manifested physical brain. What is being observed arose first in thought, and was manifested in physical form. The idea that thought itself has arisen from an accumulation of chance physical constructs might be only an aberration in our world scientific viewpoint, and may in fact be an obstruction in our search for deeper truths having to do with the nature of our existence, our origin, and our main purpose in life. 

Ancient yoga and other teachings understood the true nature of creation to be an inner world that has been manifest in outward form. Some of these concepts are unfamiliar to many in western civilization. Bringing out ancient teachings from higher ages of understanding can be a big help toward uniting our world in common purpose and vision.