IN THE VASTNESS of the ocean, there is no ego. Seen from a great distance, from the moon or a satellite, the ocean looks calm and inanimate, a large swath of blue girdling the earth. But as we get closer and closer to the ocean itself, we see that it is in constant motion, roiled by currents and tides, eddies and waves. We see these ocean patterns as distinct entities. As each wave is created, we can watch it crest, break, and race to the shore. Yet it is impossible to separate the wave from the ocean. You cannot take a bucket, scoop out a wave, and bring it home. If you take a photo of a wave and come back the next day, no wave will be an exact match.
When we are beginning to understand the soul, the ocean provides a wonderful analogy. Imagine the ocean as nonlocal reality, the field of infinite possibilities, the virtual level of existence that synchronizes everything. Each of us is like a wave in that ocean. We are created from it, and it makes up the very core of who we are. Just as a wave takes on a specific shape, we, too, take on intricate patterns of nonlocal reality. This vast, unending ocean of possibility is the essence of everything in the physical world. The ocean represents the nonlocal, and the wave represents the local. The two are intimately connected.
Once we define the soul as deriving from the nonlocal, or virtual, realm, then our place in the universe becomes remarkably clear: We are both local and nonlocal, an individual pattern emerging from nonlocal intelligence, which is also part of everyone and everything else. We can think of the soul, then, as having two parts. The vast, nonlocal soul exists at the virtual or spirit level. It is powerful, pure, and capable of anything. The personal, local part of the soul exists at the quantum level. This is what reaches into our daily lives and holds the essence of who we are. It, too, is powerful, pure, and capable of anything. The same unbounded potential of the infinite spirit also resides in each and every one of us. Our personal soul, which we think of when we think of our “selves,” is an outcropping of the eternal soul.
If we could learn to live from the level of the soul, we would see that the best, most luminous part of ourselves is connected to all the rhythms of the universe. We would truly know ourselves as the miracle-makers we are capable of being. We would lose fear, and longing, and hatred, and anxiety, and hesitation. Living from the level of the soul means diving past the ego, past the limitations of the mind that harness us to events and outcomes in the physical world.
In the vastness of the ocean there is no individual “I” clamoring for attention. There are waves and eddies and tides, but it is all, in the end, ocean. We are all patterns of nonlocality pretending to be people. In the end, it is all spirit.
And yet, we all feel quite individual, don’t we? Our senses reassure us that these bodies are real, and we think our own very personal, individual thoughts. We learn, fall in love, have children, and work at our own careers. How is it that we do not feel this vast ocean churning inside us? Why do our lives feel so circumscribed? It all comes back to the three levels of existence.
At the physical level, what we call the real world, the soul is the observer in the midst of the observation. Anytime you observe something, there are three components involved. The first, which occurs in the physical world, is the object of your observation. The second, which happens at the level of the mind, is the process of observing. The third component of observation is the actual observer, which we call the soul.
Let’s look at a simple example of the three components of observation. First, a four-legged, furry animal becomes the object of your observation. Next, your eyes receive the visual image of the object and transmit the signal to your mind, which interprets that object to be a dog. But who is observing the dog? Turn your awareness inward and you become aware of a presence within you. That presence is your soul, the extension of the vast nonlocal intelligence that is cropping up in you. So the mind is involved in the process of knowing, but the soul is the knower. This presence, this awareness, this knower, this soul, is unchanging. It is the still point of reference in the midst of all the changing scenery in the physical world.
We each have a soul, but because we are each observing from a different place and a different set of experiences, we do not observe the same things in exactly the same ways. The variations in what we observe are based on our minds’ interpretations. If you and I both were to observe a dog, for instance, we would have different thoughts. I may see it as a ferocious animal, and I may become afraid. You may look at the same dog and see it as a friendly companion. Our minds interpret the observation differently. When I see a dog, I run. When you see a dog, you whistle and play with it.
Interpretation happens at the level of the mind, but it is our individual souls that are conditioned by experience, and through that memory of past experience the soul influences our choices and interpretations in life. These tiny kernels or seeds of memory build up in the individual soul over a lifetime, and this combination of memory and imagination based on experience is called karma. Karma accumulates in the personal part of the soul, the wave at the core of our being, and colors it. This personal soul governs the conscience and provides a template for the kind of person each of us will turn out to be. In addition, the actions we take can affect this personal soul, and change our karma, for better or worse.
The universal, nonlocal part of the soul is not touched by our actions, but is connected to a spirit that is pure and unchanging. In fact, the definition of enlightenment is “the recognition that I am an infinite being seeing and seen from, observing and observed from, a particular and localized point of view.” Whatever else we are, no matter how much of a mess we may have made of our lives, it is always possible to tap into the part of the soul that is universal, the infinite field of pure potential, and change the course of our destiny. That is synchrodestiny—taking advantage of this connection between the personal soul and the universal soul to shape your life.
So the seeds of memory built by experience, our karma, help determine who we are. But the individuality of our personal soul is shaped by more than karma; our relationships also play an important role in the construction of the soul. Let me explain by more closely examining the different aspects of our existence. When we consider our physical bodies, we discover that we are, really, a collection of recycled molecules. Cells of our body are created, die, and are replaced many times throughout our lives. We are constantly remaking ourselves. In order to regenerate, our bodies convert the food we eat into basic building blocks of life. The earth itself provides the nutrients we need to renew ourselves, and when we shed cells, they are returned to the earth. We might say, then, that we are constantly transforming our physical bodies by recycling earth.
Next, consider our emotions. Emotions are just recycled energy. Emotions do not originate with us. They come and go depending on situations, circumstances, relationships, and events. On September 11, 2001, the date of the World Trade Center disaster, fear and terror were common emotions, triggered by the events of that day. Those powerful emotions continued for months. Emotions are never created in isolation; they always come about because of some interaction with the environment. In the absence of circumstances or relationships, there is no emotion. So even though I may fly into a rage, it is not actually my anger. It is anger that has settled on me for the moment.
Think about the last time you were surrounded by people who were all experiencing similar emotions—an angry mob, mourners at a funeral, or fans at a winning soccer match. It is nearly impossible not to get caught up in that emotion because it is so potent when expressed by so many people simultaneously. It would not be “your” anger, sadness, or jubilation, in those situations. Each emotion is dependent on the context, circumstances, and relationships that define your reality at that moment.
And what about our thoughts? Well, our thoughts are recycled information. Every thought we have is actually part of a collective database. One hundred years ago it would have been impossible to say, “I’m going to Disney World on Delta Air Lines.” There was no concept of those things in the world at large; therefore I could not have that thought. There was no Disney World, no Delta Air Lines, let alone any commercial air travel. All but the most original thoughts are simply recycled information, and even the most original thoughts are actually quantum leaps of creativity that occur from that same collective, recycled bed of information.
Although the phrase “quantum leap” has become common in everyday conversation, it actually has a very specific meaning. When we are taught about atoms in school, we are usually told that there is a nucleus that contains protons and neutrons, and that electrons circle the nucleus in fixed orbits or shells that are varying distances from the nucleus.
We are told that electrons stay in one particular orbit, but sometimes change to a different orbit. If it absorbs energy, an electron can jump to a higher orbit; if it releases energy, it can drop to a lower orbit. What most of us are never told is that when an electron changes orbits, it does not move through space to arrive at its new location; rather, at one moment the electron is in orbit A, and in the very next moment it is in orbit B, without having traveled through the space in between. This is what is meant by a quantum leap. A quantum leap is a change in status from one set of circumstances to another set of circumstances that takes place immediately, without passing through the circumstances in between.
Scientists have learned that they cannot predict when and where a quantum leap will occur. They can create mathematical models that allow them to estimate the quantum leaps, but they are never totally predictable. On a subatomic level, that little bit of unpredictability seems inconsequential. If an electron jumps from orbit to orbit, what does that have to do with me? Well, when we consider all the atoms in the world and all that unpredictability, we’re obliged to look at the world in completely new ways.
Scientists recognize the unpredictability of nature, and have been trying to make sense of it. Even the most seemingly simple events are governed by this unpredictability. When and where will bubbles appear in a pot of boiling water? What patterns will be made by the smoke of a lit cigarette? How does the position of water molecules at the top of a waterfall relate to their eventual position at the bottom? As James Gleick wrote in his book Chaos, as far as standard physics is concerned, God might just as well have taken all those water molecules under the table and shuffled them personally.
The new science of chaos is attempting to predict the unpredictable through intricate mathematical models. In the classic example, a butterfly flutters its wings in Texas and there is a typhoon in Tokyo six days later. The connection may not seem obvious, but it exists. That little change of air pressure caused by the butterfly can get multiplied and magnified, resulting in a tornado. But it can never be entirely predicted. That’s why weather forecasters seem to be wrong so often, and why any forecast longer than about forty-eight hours away is unreliable. Yet among all the possible occurrences in the world, weather is more predictable than just about anything else.
What this says on a spiritual level is that we can never really know what direction life will take, what changes those small butterfly-flutters of intention and action might cause in our destiny. And at the same time, it also tells us that we can never truly know the mind of God. We can never fully understand the how, where, and when of anything, even something as simple as boiling water. We have to surrender to uncertainty, while appreciating its intricate beauty.
All creativity is based on quantum leaps and uncertainty. At particular moments in time, truly novel ideas emanate from the collective bed of information. These ideas did not originate in the fortunate individual, but in the collective consciousness. This is why significant scientific discoveries are often made by two or more different people at the same time. The ideas are already circulating in the collective unconscious, and prepared minds are ready to translate that information. This is the nature of genius, to be able to grasp the knowable even when no one else recognizes that it is present. At any given moment, the innovation or creative idea doesn’t exist, and in the next moment, it is part of our conscious world. In between, where was it? It came from the virtual domain, at the level of the universal spirit, where everything is potential. Sometimes this potential creates something predictable, sometimes it creates something novel, but in this realm all possibilities already exist.
So if our bodies are recycled earth, our emotions are recycled energy, and our thoughts are recycled information, what is it that makes you an individual? How about your personality? Well, the personality doesn’t originate with us, either. Personality gets created through selective identification with situations and through relationships. Think about a close friend. How do you define that person? Most of us do so by describing the people in their lives—their spouses, their children, their parents, the people they work with. We also describe people in the context of the situations in their lives, what kinds of jobs they perform, where they live, what they do for fun. What we call personality is built on a foundation of relationships and situations.
So now we may ask, if my body, emotions, thoughts, and personality are not original or created by me, who am I really? According to many of the great spiritual traditions, one of the great truths is that “1 am the other.” Without the other, we would not exist. Your soul is the reflection of all souls. Imagine trying to understand the complex web of personal interactions that have made you who you are today—all your family and friends, every teacher and classmate you’ve ever had, every shop clerk in every store you’ve ever visited, everyone you’ve ever worked with or come in contact with at any point in your life. And then, in order to understand all those people and the type of influence they may have had on you, you have to find out who they are. So now you have to describe the web of relationships surrounding every one of those people who form your relationship network. Eventually, you would find that you would need to describe the whole universe in order to define a single person. In truth, then, every single person is the whole universe. You are the infinite, seen from a specific, localized point of view. Your soul is the part of you that is universal and individual at the same time, and it is a reflection of all other souls.
To define the soul in this way, therefore, is to understand that your soul is both personal and universal at the same time, which has meaning and implications beyond your personal experience of life. The soul is the observer who interprets and makes choices in a confluence of relationships. These relationships provide the background, setting, characters, and events that shape the stories of our lives. Just as the soul is created through relationships and is a reflection of all relationships, the experience of life is created from context and meaning.
By context I mean everything that surrounds us that allows us to understand the meaning of individual actions, words, occurrences, or anything else. A word, for example, can have different meanings depending on what surrounds it, or its context. If I say the word “bark” without context, you won’t know whether I mean the bark of a dog or the bark of a tree. When we say that someone took our words “out of context,” we know that the meaning of our words was misunderstood, because context determines the meaning of everything. The flow of meaning is the flow of life. Our context determines how we will interpret what we encounter in life, and these interpretations become our experience.
Finally, we come to a more complete definition of a soul. A soul is the observer who interprets and makes choices based on karma, it is also a confluence of relationships, out of which emerge contexts and meaning, and it is this flow of context and meaning that creates experience. So it is through the soul that we create our lives.
As I will discuss later, the best way to approach an understanding of the dual nature of the soul and to tap into the nonlocal field of potential is through meditation. Meditation allows us to reach the level of the soul by easing past the tangle of thoughts and emotions that usually keep our attention bound to the physical world. When we close our eyes to meditate, thoughts spring up spontaneously. There are only two kinds of thoughts you can have, memories and imaginings. But, as we’ve discussed, these thoughts do not originate in your physical body.
Try this little thought experiment: Think about the dinner you ate last night. Can you remember what you were eating? What the food tasted like? What conversations were going on around you? Now, where was that information before I asked those questions? That dinner took place, but the information about it didn’t exist except as potential information. If a surgeon went inside your brain, there would be no trace of information about the food you ate for dinner. Memory resides at the level of the soul until we call it up. Once we consciously decide to recall our dinner, electrical activity and a release of chemicals signal that the brain is at work. But before we pull up the memory, it has no location in your brain. Simply asking a question or trying to recall an event converts a virtual memory into a real memory.
The same is true of imagination. Until a thought arises from the virtual realm, it does not exist in your mental or physical life. But imagination can have a powerful effect on the mind and body. A common but highly effective thought experiment is to imagine slicing a lemon into large wedges, putting a wedge between your teeth, and biting into the flesh of the lemon. Imagine the juice squirting into your mouth as you bite down. If you are like most people, just that quick thought led to a rush of saliva in your mouth, your body’s way of saying that it believes what your mind is telling it. But again, where was that lemon before I asked you to think of it? It did not exist anywhere but at the level of potential.
So intention, imagination, insight, intuition, inspiration, meaning, purpose, creativity, understanding, all these have nothing to do with the brain. They orchestrate their activity through the brain, but they are qualities of the nonlocal domain, which is beyond space and time. Still, their impact is felt very strongly. Once they enter our minds, we have to do something with them, and what we do with them determines, in part, who you define yourself to be. That’s because we have rational minds, and we tend to create stories around these thoughts. You might think, “My husband loves me,” or “My children are happy,” or “I enjoy my work.” You create rational stories around these thoughts, and then you create meaning out of them. Then you go and live out these stories in the physical world, and this is what we call everyday life.
Our stories are derived from relationships, contexts, and meanings triggered through memory, arising from karma and experience. As we live out these stories, we start to realize that they are not original. Although the details of the stories vary from individual to individual, the themes and motifs are timeless, basic archetypes that replay endlessly: heroes and villains; sin and redemption; the divine and the diabolical; forbidden lust and unconditional love. These are the same themes that keep many of us fascinated by soap operas, gossip columns, and tabloids, where we see them expressed in slightly exaggerated form. We’re fascinated because we can identify some aspect of our souls in those stories. These are the same archetypes that are represented in exaggerated form in mythologies, so whether we examine Indian mythology or Greek mythology or Egyptian mythology, we find these same themes and motifs. The drama of these stories is more compelling and more dramatic than fiction because they resonate in our soul.
So now we can refine our definition of the soul even further. The soul is the confluence of meanings, contexts, relationships, and mythical stories or archetypal themes that give rise to everyday thoughts, memories, and desires (conditioned by karma) that create the stories in which we participate.
In nearly everyone, this participation in the stories of our lives is happening automatically, without awareness. We live like actors in a play who are given only one line at a time, going through the motions without understanding the full story. But when you get in touch with your soul, you see the whole script for the drama. You understand. You still participate in the story, but now you participate joyously, consciously, and fully. You can make choices based on knowledge and born out of freedom. Each moment takes on a deeper quality that comes from appreciation of what it means in the context of your life.
What is even more thrilling is that we, ourselves, are capable of rewriting the play or changing our roles by applying intention, grasping the opportunities that arise from coincidence, and being true to the calling of our souls.