Rumi Explained | The Entire Ocean in a Drop

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop."

So said Rumi.

And many of us have heard this line and felt its beauty and the insight here, but it's just a passing, touching experience.

The insight doesn't quite hit home. Because if it did, you would see into Rumi's mind. The mind of the Sufi. The mind after the sense of being a separate self has been annihilated.

And only Reality remains.

In what the Sufis call, "Fana!"

So, let's try to understand Rumi's mind a bit deeper. Take this moment.

This space around you, reaching all the way up there to the sky. And all the things in it. All this variety of colors and shapes and brightness. All the sounds you're hearing right now.

That sensation over there. And the feeling, or the mood, setting the scene for this whole experience. Al of this means the world to you. This is your entire world.

But this is just a drop in the ocean.

All of this experience taken together is the drop.

And you are the ocean.

If you try to make sense of Rumi's Insight with reference to this drop it won't make much sense.

Whatever way you judge yourself with reference to this experience is going to be limited and transient. So, if you define yourself only in regards to the drop, then of course you will feel small and insignificant and without purpose. This moment of experience is just dust in the wind. A drop in the ocean.

But what Rumi is telling you is that you are the wind. You are the ocean. The Ocean of Reality. All of it. Right here in this drop.

You see, Reality cannot be understood in terms of subjects and objects. Objects are only ever known through experience. And experience is only ever local and limited. The dust motes straying into the sunbeam.

The sea mist flying off the waves.

And Reality cannot be understood in terms of an ultimate subject either. If there was only one subject to which all these experiences were appearing, they would be known simultaneously, as one universal stream of consciousness. But the streams of consciousness are diverse and local and limited.

They arise and subside as waves on the surface of the ocean. The ocean of Reality. God.

This is why the Sufis were considered heretics by the religious scholars.

It is a subtle but radical difference to the understanding of God, and Reality, and the Self.

Fana!

The annihilation of the self, and becoming one with God is not a physical or literal event. It is a mental implosion.

It is what this Insight feels like. But what you find is that you were always this and nothing else.

You are this Ocean of Reality. Neither subject, nor object, but the entire Ocean of Subjectivity itself.

Pure, self-shining, Awareness. Consciousness. Sentience. The Ocean of Life, and Existence, and Creativity, and Love.

Only this and nothing else.

There is only this Ocean. All else is ripples on the surface.

The Ocean doesn't know itself.

It knows the ripples on its surface. The ripples are the dream worlds. Entire lifetimes. There's always a dream character in the dream.

Every character in this dream is being experienced. Every character is a protagonist.

But turn your attention to what is really alive here. What is aware?

Where do all these lives begin and where do they end? In pure undisturbed Awareness. In the Silence where Sentience submerges into Rest. The Ocean.

The entire Ocean.

You.

You are not a drop in the Ocean.

You are the entire Ocean in a drop.