The Elephant in the Dark

We witness life through a diversity of perspectives.

We are like a network of unique, awake, simultaneous vantage points.

All witnessing reality.

Consider Rumi’s story of the elephant in a dark room:

A group of people are waiting. They have never seen an elephant.

The elephant is brought in.

It is too dark to take in the whole elephant, so each person grasps it with their sense of touch.

One person grasps the trunk, and reports that the elephant is like a snake.

Another touches the ear, and reports that the elephant is like a fan.

Each has access to the same elephant.

Despite seemingly contradictory accounts of what an elephant is, each of their observations is faithful to what they experience.

Yet the darkness causes them to argue about the nature of the elephant.

Perhaps by working together, they could come to a clearer picture of the elephant in its totality.

We are the people in the dark. The elephant is reality.

But we witness the cosmos, as the cosmos.

Who inhabits the body? Who animates it?

Who looks through the eyes?

It’s as if we are instruments of sensation that the cosmos grows to know itself.

Cosmic fingertips, all from the same hand.