An ocean normally rests on the ground, with an atmosphere of air above it. How then does one think of an ocean of consciousness which is all-encompassing, all-pervasive; that is, an ocean representing all of existence, something that is just there, with nothing outside it or beyond it?
As well, how does one think of this ever-existing ocean as THE CREATOR of all that is? The latter would need to include the material as well as the ephemeral. It is the material which would be the problem here.
Hindu cosmology, as I understand it, cleverly posits a Creator arising from the Ocean (which is Consciousness itself). This Creator does what it has to, creating everything. This is done in the form of cycles of activity over time. At the end of the largest cycle, extending 3.11 trillion years, everything collapses. This includes the Creator as well.
After a long break, another Creator appears (is projected), who fashions the Cosmos afresh; the cycle repeating itself. Then another Creator, another Cosmos – for ever and ever. Time is infinite, no?
However, what if the Ocean of Consciousness itself is the creator of all? That is, it enables all creation to occur within itself, without an intermediary. Multi-disciplinary scientist La Violette offers the concept of continuous creation of matter from with the aether. The aether seems to be directly comparable to Hinduism’s Ocean of Consciousness. Thought-provoking David Bohm has already suggested that matter is conscious.
Bypassing the current mechanistic material paradigm seeing to explain the realm of substance, could there develop a paradigm enabling the ethereal, the ephemeral, to be explained as well?
Could the substantial, the material, possibly be just a projection from the ephemeral, as has been proposed by eminent scientists? In this context, the scientific method cannot be asked to do what it is not competent to deal with.
Such a paradigm may draw upon the concepts underpinning Hinduism’s Ocean of Consciousness and those surfacing from attempted explanations of the aether. Both represent ever-existing energies enabling self-creation.
Can we bring the mystical from outside the tent to the inside?
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 