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World is a Gold Soup | Panpsychism | Podcast #9 by Neha's Notebook

Each time I visit the optician, they put some eyedrops to dilute my eyes in order to check them. After the eyedrops, the world around me appears to me to be blurry. Shapes start melitng into each other. Everything appears fluidy and colours appear to be dissolving into one another.

 

I learned something from this…

 

From the time being we have been told by the people that the world is the way it is. That, it is a rigid or a fixed entity. But the truth is that the world that appears to us, is not a fixed or a rigid thing. Rather, it is a malleable thing. It can change itself according to what we want to see.

 

It appears to us based on the functioning of our body machine, our five sense organs and the sixth sense of our mind. You change the functioning of just one sense and the entire world appears to be altogether a different place. Just like in the example of eyedrops.

 

The world is a soup of molten gold. If you take a gold necklace, a gold bracelet and a gold earring, these three are totally three different things, but they are made of only one and the same substance, gold. Similarly, this world is a zillion different things, but all of them cast from the same gold, the gold of consciousness, mind or call it anything.

 

A theory called as Panpsychism also elaborates on this reality. Panpsychism states that everything is made up of one consciousness, one mind. The same thing has been scripted in ancient Indian scriptures which were scripted thousands of years ago.

 

For instance, there is a century-long debate about paranormal and ghosts activity. While some scientists believe that ghosts exist, others argue that they don’t. In India, for example, there are forts, such as the Bhangard Fort in Rajasthan. This fort is considered to be haunted. Places like these are considered to be haunted because it is believed that the spirit or the mind of the person didn’t fully dissolve into space at the time of their death. Remnants of their mind are still hovering in the space, seeking liberation. The moment they are able to express themselves through a body, they then walk on the path of spiritual journey seeking liberation from their past. We don’t see these ghosts, but according to this theory, it is quite possible that they do exist. And they too are made of the same consciousness as the human beings who are alive.

 

Take another example. In India, there is a dish called as Pav Bhaji. In this dish, the pav is referred to as butter-coated buns and bhaji is referred to as a paste-like veggie mix. This bhaji consists of many vegetables such as peas, potatoes, tomatoes, capsicum, cauliflower etc. all mashed together into a consistency so that the resulting mix appears to be a homogenous gravy-like mix. All the things of the world, including us human beings too are just like these vegetables. We are all swimming in the same soup. The gold soup. Like gold, the world is a malleable entity. It can change and shapeshift into different forms according to us.

 

The world that appears to us appears through the filter of our five senses as well as through the filter of our mind which includes our stored experiences, perception, beliefs and desires. We see what we desire to see. Two people may see entirely different things in the same thing. Two people may think entirely different thoughts about the same thing.

 

We can have two different reactions to the same situation in two different moments. We can see the same thing with different points of view during our childhood and during our adulthood. In reality, there is no adulthood, only one awareness.

 

When we change the way we think about things, the things we see change.

 

The world is more malleable than you think, and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. - Bono

 

So, pick up your mallet and shape the gold of the world according to what you desire the most!

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