dolphins

I heard the dolphins before I saw them. I was swimming in the sea, here in India – or at least floating on my back in the water with my head half submerged, and of course sound travels well under water – and I heard that whistle, a descending note, which I recognised immediately. I had heard dolphins before, playing in the bow waves of boats. And I really love dolphins: their playfulness, their obvious intelligence. And I love how they move in the water: so masterfully, powerfully, and yet it seems without much effort, and always with a lot of joy.

On this occasion I stood up in the water and watched them for a long time. I don't know if they were fishing, or mating, or just playing, but they looked happy. And seeing this, I remember that dolphins, along with whales, are mammals. They are not fish. In their evolutionary past they were once land animals. And like the rest of us land animals, a long time ago they had come from the ocean. So the dolphins have returned to the ocean. And they look so at home there, they move so gracefully, with such a sense of freedom. And this return to the ocean, of course, is a great symbol in spirituality. We have come from the ocean, the ocean of cosmic consciousness, the ocean of the divine, the ocean of god, where all is one. And this is the ocean that we are returning to on our spiritual journey: the ocean of non-separation.

And somehow it felt to me as I watched those dolphins that they have already made that journey. They have returned to the ocean. And they seem to live without the problems that we humans create for ourselves. It is our own mind that creates an island of separation around us. That is the land that we are living on: a little island, an island that is keeping us separate from the rest of existence, the island in our mind. So let's join the dolphins and return to the ocean.