“A striking image from India’s Vedic tradition gives us a clue about what it means to be transformed. It’s the image of a clay jug, the kind village women carried to the well for water (and still do in rural India).
The jug’s molded sides define the space inside, which isn’t very large, and yet all around it, outside the walls, space is immense. Now shatter the jug. The walls are destroyed, but the space inside the jug remains. Only now, instead of seeming to be separate from all the space around it, there is no separation – the space inside the jug merges with infinite space. In the same way, people assume that they are enclosed in the walls of a separate body and a limited mind. But in reality, the separation is artificial. It’s literally true that infinity extends all around us even if we don’t choose to see it. Nothing divides us from this infinity. Each of us is merged into the whole, and what we prize in our lives – love, creativity, intelligence, truth – can expand without limitation. Human awareness has this capacity…and the way is always open.”