Sunken Treasures

 

SUNKEN TREASURES

The spiritual metaphor of the drop merging into the Ocean is well-known throughout mystical literature.  For Jung, it was the symbol, par excellence, of the Collective Unconscious.  The unconscius realm contains may treasures hard to attain, sunk deeply in that watery realm, gems and pearls of great price.  In transpersonal psychology we find oceanic states which mirror those formerly known as cosmic consciousness.  But there are oceans and oceans.  The pre-personal, overwhelming flooding and submersion in the pre-rational world of the Great Goddess is not the same experience as the merging of the mature soul, freed of the fetters of the mind.  The drop of liberated soul dissolves without a trace in the trans-rational ocean of eternal spiritual reality, the Sea of Limitless Light.  One is regressive, while the other signifies (not progression) but the elimination of the experience of time altogether.  There is dissolution, and then there is dissolution.  But both hold the promise of diving deep, plumbing our depths and the depths of nature and spirit.  That which emerges unconscious from the primal terrestrial sea through evolution, is ultimately returned to the transcendent sea of liberated consciousness.

"The natural elements that are essentially connected with vessel symbolism include both earth and water.  This containing water is the primordial womb of life, from which in innumerable myths life is born.  It is the water "below," the water of the depths, ground water and ocean, lake, and pond.  But the maternal water not only contains; it also nourishes and transforms, since all living things build up and preserve their existence with the water or milk of the earth.  ...The primordial ocean is a uroboic snake encompassing the earth that is born of it, and at the end of the world taking everything born of it back into its primordial waters."

                                                                                Erich Neumann, The Great Mother

* * *

"Setting aside its grandeur, The two most essential aspects of the ocean are its ceaseless movement and the formlessness of its waters.  It is a symbol, therefore, of dynamic forces and of transitional states between the stable and the formless.  The ocean as a whole, as opposed to the concept of a drop of water, is a symbol of universal life as opposed to the particular.  It is regarded traditonally as the source of the generation of all life, and science has conformed that it did in fact begin in the sea.  Zimmer observes that the ocean is 'immense illogic'--a vast expanse dreaming its own dreams and asleep in its own reality, yet containing within itself the seeds of its antithesis.  The island is the opponent of the ocean and symbolic of the metaphysical point of irradiating force.

In keeping with the general symbolism of water, both fresh and salt, the ocean stands for the sum of all the possibilities of one plane of existence.  Having regard to its characteristics, one may deduce whether these potentialities are positive (or germinant) or negative (destructive).  The ocean, then, denotes an ambivalent situation.  As the begetter of monsters, it is abysmal abode par excellence, the chaotic source, which still brings forth base entities ill-fitted to life in its aerial and superior forms.  Consequently, aquatic monsters represent a cosmic or psychological situation at a lower level than land-monsters; this is why sirens and tritons denote a sub-animal order.  The power of salt water to destroy the higher forms of land-life means that it is also a symbol of sterility, so confirming the ambivalent nature of the ocean--its contradictory dynamism.

...The ocean is equated also with the collective unconscious, out of which arises the sun of the spirit.  The stormy sea, as a poetic image or a dream, is a sign of an analogous state in the lower depths of the affective unconscious.  A translucent calm, on the other hand, denotes a state of contemplative serenity.

                                                                                     Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols

My heart, when love's Sea of a sudden burst into its viewing,
Leaped headlong in, with 'Find me now who may!'

                                                                                      Divani Shamsi Tabriz

* * *

I've filled the vessel of my body
    With water luminous and pure;
With my body, mind
    And the vigor of youth
I drink it; I drink it,
    Yet thirst for more.

My mind turned inwards,
    It plunged into the sea
Of love and bliss
    And it bathes with joy;
It tries to fathom Thee:
    It tries
But does not succeed
    For Thou art perfect,
My merciful Lord,
    While mind is not.

Searching for Him, O friend,
    Kabir lost himself;
When the drop has merged
    Into the Ocean,
How can the drop be found?

Searching
    And searching
For Him, O friend,
    Kabir lost himself;
The Ocean has merged
    Into the drop,
Now how can the Ocean
    Be found?

                     Kabir, "The Drop and the Ocean"

'Say goodbye forever to all earthly creatures and take to the open sea, thanks to the unceasing act of love (invocation).  Full sails away for the eternal shores!' 
                                                               Sister Consolata

Taking the name of Kali, dive deep down, O mind,
Into the heart's fathomless depths,
Where many a precious gem lies hid.
But never believe the bed of the ocean bare of gems
If in the first few dives you fail;
With firm resolve and self-control
Dive deep and make your way to Mother Kali's realm.
Down in the ocean depths of heavenly Wisdom lie
The wondrous pearls of Peace, O mind;
And you yourself can gather them,
If you but have pure love and follow the scriptures' rule.
Within those ocean depths, as well,
Six alligators lurk--lust, anger, and the rest--
Swimming about in search of prey.
Smear yourself with the turmeric of discrimination;
The very smell of it will shield you from their jaws.

Upon the ocean bed lie strewn
Unnumbered pearls and precious gems;
Plunge in, Ramprasad, and gather up handfuls there!

                                                       Ramprasad

The rippling tide of love, which all her life had flowed secretely from God into her soul, drew it mightily back to its Source.

                                                                                    Mechthild of Magdeburg

Ah, noble soul, prove thy nobility!  But while it is the case with thee that thou lettest not go thine own self altogether to drown in the bottomless sea of the Godhead, verily thou canst not know this divine death.

                                                                                                       Eckhart

The drop became a fountain, and the fountain grew into a river,
Which river became reunited to the ocean of eternity.

                                                                            Sheikh Abulfaiz Faiyazi

O God, drown me in the essence of the Ocean of Divine Solitude, so that I neither see nor hear nor find nor feel except through it.

                                                                                         Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish

O thou! who art free of notion, imagination, and duality,
We are all billows in the ocean of thy being.

                                          Binavali

We are pearls in that Sea, therein we all abide
...Enter that Ocean, then your drop may become a sea which is a hundred seas of Oman.

                                                                    Divani Shamsi Tabriz

If we possess God in the immersion of love--that is, if we are lost to ourselves--God is our own and we are His own: and we sink ourselves eternally and irretrievably in our own possession, which is God...And this down-sinking is like a river, which without pause or turning back ever pours into the sea; since this is its proper resting-place.
                                                                                        Ruysbroeck

All the great rivers, ...on reaching the great ocean lose their former names and identities and are reckoned simply as the great ocean.
                                                                                                   Vinaya-Pitaka

God is the Lake of Nectar, the Ocean of Immortality.  He is called the 'Immortal' in the Vedas.  Sinking in it, one does not die, but verily transcends death.  

                                                                                                       Sri Ramakrishna

Shoreless, unfathomable, vast
Is the dreadful ocean of this world;
Take measures to be ferried
To the banks of bliss.

The labyrinthine currrents
Of cravings and passions
Captivate and confuse the mind;
Through their swirling tides
One finds no way
To steer homewards.

The ocean of existence
  Is dark and abysmal;
Man's only succor
  Is the boat of God's Name.

Says Kabir: When I took
  The shelter of my Lord,
The ocean became
A hoofprint in the mud,
Filled with rain.

             Kabir, The Weaver of God's Name

Saints often use this image to convey that through devotion and the Lord's grace, the vast ocean of phenomena becomes insignificant and the devotee crosses it as simply as one steps across the print of a cow's hoof.

     (The self) is like a drop of water afraid of wind and earth; for by means of these twain it is made to pass away and perish.  When it has leaped into the sea, which was its source, it is delivered from the heat of the sun and from wind and earth.  Its outward form has disappeared in the sea, but its essence is inviolate and permanent and goodly.  Hark, O drop, give thyself up without repenting, that in recompense for the drop thou mayst gain the ocean.

                                                                                                         Rumi

Here, I still flow in God as the stream of time;
There, I myself shall be the sea of eternal felicity.
 
                                            Angelus Silesius

Drink this wine and, dying to self,
You will be freed from the spell of self.
Then will your being, as a drop,
Fall into the ocean of the Eternal.

                                Shabistari

It is like an infinite ocean--water everywhere, to the right, lft, above, and below.  Water enveloped in water.  It is the Water of the Great Cause, motionless.  Waves spring up when it becomes active.  Its activities are creation, preservation, and destruction...   A salt doll entered the ocean to measure its depth; but it did not return to tell others how deep the ocean was.  It melted in the ocean itself.
                                                                       Sri Ramakrishna

Go and plunge yourself into the calm sea of spiritual solitude,
and wash your soul in the nectar of ambrosial meditation. 
Dive and dive deep in the depth of Unity, and fly from the salt waves of duality and the brackish water of diversity.
 
                                                            Yoga-Vasishtha

Though one equal to a hundred like me would not have the strength to bear the Sea, yet I cannot refrain from the drowning waters of the Sea.  May my soul and mind be a sacrifice to the Sea: this Sea has paid the blood-price of mind and soul.

                                                                                Rumi