The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [13]
In the cockpit the pilot feels more in control because he’s been trained to fly. He knows the aircraft; he understands the plane’s controls that he works. Therefore he has no reason to panic, even though in the back of his mind the danger of mechanical failure is always present. Disaster could occur, but that is out of his control.
Now move on to the designer of jet planes, who can build any craft he wants based on the principle of flight. He occupies a position of greater control than the pilot because if he kept on experimenting with various designs, he could come up with a plane that is incapable of crashing (perhaps some kind of glider with an airfoil that never stalls, no matter what angle of dive the plane goes into).
This progression from passenger to pilot to designer is symbolic of a spiritual journey. The passenger is trapped in the world of the five senses. He can perceive flight only as impossible because when steel is compared to air, it only seems capable of falling through it. The pilot knows the principles of flight, which transcend the five senses by going to a deeper law of nature (the Bernoulli principle), which dictates that air flowing over a curved surface creates lift. The designer transcends even further by coaxing the laws of nature to arrive at an intended effect. In other words, he is closest to the source of reality, acting not as a victim of the five senses or a passive participant in natural law but as a co-creator with nature.
You can take this journey yourself. It is more than symbolic because the brain, which is already manufacturing every sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell that you experience, is a quantum machine. Its atoms are in direct contact with the laws of nature, and through the magic of consciousness, when you have a desire, your brain is sending a signal to the very source of natural law. The simplest definition of consciousness is awareness; the two are synonymous. One time at a business conference an executive came up to me demanding a definition of consciousness that was practical and concrete. At first I wanted to reply that consciousness can’t be defined concretely, but I found myself blurting out, “Consciousness is the potential for all creation.” His face brightened as he suddenly got it. The more consciousness you have, the more potential you have to create. Pure consciousness, because it underlies everything, is pure potential.
You need to ask yourself this question: Do you want to be a victim of the five senses or a co-creator? Here are how the options look.
ON THE WAY TO CREATION
• Depending on the five senses: Separation, duality, ego-based, subject to fear, detached from the source, limited in time and space.
• Depending on natural law: In control, less subject to fear, taps into natural resources, inventive, understanding, explores the reaches of time and space.
• Depending on consciousness: Creative, intimate with natural law, close to the source, boundaries dissolve, intentions turn into results, beyond time and space.
Awareness is all that changes in the journey from separation to the one reality. When you depend on your five senses, you are aware of the physical world as primary reality. In such a world you must come second because you see yourself as a solid object made up of atoms and molecules. The only role your awareness has is to look upon the world “out there.”
The five senses are extremely deceptive. They tell us that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, that the earth is flat, that an object made of steel couldn’t possibly be held up by air. The next stage of awareness depends upon laws of nature that are arrived at by thinking and experimenting. The observer is no longer a victim of deception. He can figure out the law of gravity using mathematics