The individual is an aperture through which the whole energy of the universe is aware of itself, a vortex of vibrations in which it realizes itself as man or beast, flower or star—not alone, but as central to all that surrounds it.
The individual feels restricted to the area of his voluntary behavior, since all else seems to be an independent and uncontrollable happening on the part of something quite other than himself. He does not realize that, just as one cannot walk without ground, one cannot experience doing except in relation to happening, or self (center) except in relation to other (surround).
Not to see the unity of self and other is the fear of life, and not to see the unity of being and non-being is the fear of death.
To feel polar vision is to feel that what happens to you is your own doing, and that your own doing is happening to you; that death and emptiness is the firm ground upon which life walks; and that oneself as both center and surround is the eternal universe. But this feeling, or intuition, does not come in the form of words or ideas, and does not depend on any trick of imagination or self-suggestion. it is more as when one simply sees blue sky or feels that one is alive.
It is not that you are something which is just watching what happens. “What happens” is just using your organism to watch itself. It is the universe centering as a particular being.
It is almost ridiculous to ask, “Why meditate?” as if it were going out of one’s way to do something bizarre, like lying on a bed of nails. Why look at the stars or watch clouds? Why go sailing to no fixed destination? Nothing is really explained by its cause or motivation, for we find only causes behind causes until we can pursue them no longer.
Free action is certainly not caused by a purely abstract “I.” It emerges from the total intelligence of the organism, in the same way as the growth of the brain and the digestion of food, and it will employ conscious reasoning in situations where reasoning is an appropriate tool. This would perhaps be called biologically or physically “determined” action by those who separate the organism from the rest of the universe, and see it “obeying” or “responding” to “drives” which have first been defined as external to itself.
When there is a crack in the Cosmic Egg, Buddha is about to be born.