The Universe in a Flower
– By Ravi Tiwari, advanced spiritual seeker, and analytics consultant.
"I wanted to share this experience which happened few days back when Smriti and I visited a nursery. While Smriti was busy talking to the nursery guy I just walked around looking at the plants. There was this temple-tree with fluorescent, reddish-orange flowers which caught my attention. The flowers looked almost divine. There was something about the flower. It was like a spell. I was staring right in the space between petals when I had this vision…
“It felt as if the entire universe was within that small space and I am zooming into it. It kept me going deeper into it until I saw myself from within the flower standing and staring at the flower.”
"Smriti called my name and the "spell" was broken and it almost felt as if few years had passed while having this vision. For next few minutes I was little confused in my behavior. It felt like loads of information bombarded on to me without an instant mechanism to decipher it.
"This thought keeps rising in my mind - Everything - even the tiniest, represents/contains a hidden universe. May be, today I had a glimpse of mine.
"At the end of the plant shopping and bargaining we also picked up that temple tree. It’s growing in our garden." -- Ravi
The Cosmic Heart
Spiritual Pathway
Commentary by Tarun & Celia Cherian: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour.” – Was William Blake writing about Ravi Tiwari, when he said these words? And indeed Ravi has seen heaven in a flower and has held eternity in the palm of his hand. Or is he closer to Lord Buddha sitting under The ‘Bodhi’ Tree?
Ravi does not just stop where The Immortal Poet Blake did, with just holding eternity, or cupping a heaven. Ravi allowed himself to be pulled into the Tree’s embrace. He did not just see a vastness within the flower. He saw himself from the Flower’s Eyes. We often think of the flower as a flower, tree as a tree, here we see two things, first that it is vast, that every inch of our world opens to a vastness. Every atom is a palace. Yes, but secondly, he sees every inch of creation is alive. Every tree lives. In the Tree is a Sage.
Now many respectfully describe Siddartha with the apellation, Lord Buddha, but rarely do we make the extra mental step… As we see the Temple Tree experience we see what few have realized, that Lord Buddha was not self realized, he had a great guru, the Bodhi Tree. Few say Lord Bodhi Tree, or Maha Bodhi Deva, or Bodhi Maha Rishi...
Now it is not easy to walk in a world where every inch opens to infinity, where every weed is a spirit.
For as we are awakening we go into deep mystic reveries, and the people we love may feel abandoned. There was a time when Celia and I experienced precisely what Ravi and Smriti are going through. I was having a humungous experience where sheets of gold was pouring down and Celia kept trying to get me interested in lunch. I sat for lunch and every morsel became a gourmet’s delight, every spoonful a meditation. So quite similarly, Smriti walks in on Ravi lost in a flower, what does she do? Okay and that’s at personal time where people care… but what happens at office?
On the one hand, Ravi is one of our most advanced students, but most know him as a hugely successful Analytics Manager… But mystic joy does not always make these distinctions… for sometimes heaven stirs when Ravi sits in office, and he literally sees a storm in a tea cup, and an ocean in a drop of coffee. Every inch of his world opens its great majesty. But it can be disconcerting when in the middle of a meeting, the table becomes a whirl field of worm holes… And then after heaven reveals itself he has to return to graphs, bell curves, and 6 sigma’s, and bosses looking curiously, and friends wondering at his far-faraway eyes!
There are two words that describe the process of spiritual growth. The first is awakening, which may be likened, to a plant raising its head above the earth. But realization is greater, it is the time when the plant grows and roots deep, and branches high, and obviously as it grows it faces hungry cows, windy days, screeching monsoon nights, scorching summers…
Now many think we need a teacher only till awakening. Actually it is when a student is awakening that he or she needs us the most. For it is not easy to walk in a world where every inch opens to infinity, where every weed is a spirit.
Consider this, a few weeks after the experience, Smrithi and Ravi had to tear down part of a creeper, as the neighbour’s objected. Ravi was haunted by the pain he was inflicting, the death he caused. In fact, he fell desperately ill. When we went to visit Ravi post a surgery we discovered he had been enmeshed in a dark thicket of energy, it was the pain of growing plants, so generously giving, so little respected.
The truth that the world is alive, the every inch is infinite has another side, of responsibility, of caring. Should Ravi go one step beyond the strictest Jain monk, and not just avoid injuring a single ant, and be afraid of walking on grass, of crushing a single leaf?
The infinite turmoil of walking in an infinite world where a word may spark a Tsunami, and 12 lifetimes of pain follow a beetle’s death adjoin each other… The vast and the mundane, the wondrous and the practical, the power and helplessness can paralyse us. But if we look again through the eyes of the flower it is easy. For it is not enough for the leaf to raise its head out of the coffin of the earth, but like Jack’s bean stalk, peek its head above the cloud’s celling and see the magnificence of the giant’s world, and not enough to see the giant’s world but to climb higher still, to dare the heavens, to rush into God’s chamber… aah there we may expect a towering figure in gold, but may just see in the centre of infinity a little tree with sweet smelling flowers that fill a universe.
So many of you have experienced it! Now many of you have had experiences of this profundity. We remember for example, Monica D feeling the aura of a tree. Kusum sensing the living presence in a rock in the Himalaya's. Amita talking to her land in Palghat. Bela merging with a landscape. Divya recently being swept up by a forest spirit. Arpana being visited by unearthly jungle creatures. Manisha and Nilima being touched by the power of of a mountain. Vasu speaking of a world where the tree's sing. Zahid healing a forest spirit in someone's home. We recall an entire group talking to the neighbourhood tree and one seeker seeing the tree spirit encircled by a devi. There are hundreds of you opening up to the vastness within... And the lessons are the same... Yes, we are encircled by a world filled with the infinite. Every stone, river, tree, animal, man... is alive, connected to the source. In every heartbeat is all eternity. And so our eyes cannot stop with the world's idea of the world. Our shoulders cannot droop when we live belittled by nukes, mafia threats... The Universe is our arms. Our head must not bow in a world where bling seems to rule, the twisted is norm. No, it is time to remind oneself of the glory within. in the words of Creator's Child, we must "Know God, Use God, Be God."
Commentary by Kamaan reveals a profound aspect of Ravi's Experience: Reading Ravi’s passage on his experience at the nursery Seeker and advanced healer Kamaan sent this exquisitely relevant message...I was reminded of another poem by John Moffitt I have cherished from long back…sharing it here.
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,” will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.~ John Moffitt ~
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