The Spiritual Truth and the Round Planet

When I gaze in the distance, especially on the open plains, I see a horizon. It looks like the edge of the world. That’s my personal perspective through the senses of my body/mind.

And yet, the truth is, the world is round.

Which truth am I referring to when I use the word in that fashion?

It can’t be the truth of my plain senses or I would argue that the earth is flat. I have to be looking through another lens. I have to have shifted my perspective to something else, an alternative to viewing through my personal senses.

I can look to the moon and see that the shadow cast by the earth upon it is round. I can use other inferences through science or even through scientists or teachers to deduce that the earth is round. I can, through this process, defy my base senses and “shift” my perspective. Then some astronaut snaps a photo of earth from space and there is even more solid evidence to support the view of earth as round even when my plain senses won’t reinforce it. If I’m very very lucky, I am sent on a space mission where I can “see for myself” what I can’t see when I’m earthbound.

In fact, in time, with enough exposure to this type of thing I will have trouble NOT seeing the earth as round as a solid and factual ground from which to make further conclusions about the earth and its place in the universe.

Outside of my senses, my direct experience, where does that confidence come from? Well, it comes from viewing the phenomenon through my imagination and through reason. Or, I can just trust my high school science teacher and be done with it.

There are multiple paths to this space where the earth is factually round in my experience. It has become my “truth.”

The spiritual path is very similar to this.

From basic human perception it does indeed seem that I am a single ego adrift in a universe of forms that are “not me.” That is my default experience through the body/mind.

Then some Guru comes along and she says “You know that’s merely an illusion of your mind…”

And it’s much like someone telling me that the earth is round when I can plainly see that it’s flat.

However, with time, courage, earnestness, and practice, the view shifts, our perception shifts, and it is now hard to see oneself as a single separate form. Our practical and solid base of experience is now built upon the view of my “Self” as oneness - as the isness.

Then some sadist, in the form of the person who taught you this “perspective switch”, tells you it’s your turn to teach others how to do this magic trick. And YOU become a Guru.

Now it’s your turn to say to those who ask “You know your ego is merely an illusion of the mind…”

And they turn to you and say “Um, that’s not my experience, I see myself as a single separate form in a sea of other forms that are ‘not me.’”

And so it goes…