Mount Mandara

The continued rotation of a stick of wood in a wooden divot produces friction. Rotated long enough and with enough intensity, the friction produces heat. Eventually the heat combusts and becomes a flame.

Our attitudes towards friction and difficulties range from avoidance (a natural reaction) to resignation, to an almost religious challenge that we must surmount by any means possible for salvation, and so on and so forth. In fact, who in their right mind would actively court friction?

The early twentieth century print portraying the churning of the ocean of milk depicts this beautiful Hindu myth telling how the devas (gods) and daityas (demons) churned the primeval ocean at the beginning of time to obtain Amrita, the nectar of immortality. Using Mount Mandara as a churning stick, with its tip placed on the back of the deity Vishnu incarnated as a tortoise, and using the serpent king Vāsuki as a cord, they must work together to churn the ocean into milk and make the nectar of immortality rise from it’s depths.

We see that the devas, or gods, symbolize work i’s, those i’s that support efforts to engage the third state, and that the daityas, or demons, represent the i’s and attitudes that oppose conscious evolution. Rather than friction being a denying force, in a school it is one of the elements that helps usher in the third state.

Indeed, if we look further into the image, we see immediately our analogy of the wooden stick rotating on a complementary surface. Such is the the process of awakening. At first there is the rapid twisting of the stick of wood, the struggle between ‘yes’ and ‘no’- the effort to Be - and the denying force of the lower self. This push-pull of opposing forces produces friction. When the friction reaches a certain intensity over a period of time, transformation becomes possible and higher centers combust into existence.

The natural inclination to friction is to avoid it. We do this mechanically and efficiently through buffering the contradiction of the ‘yes-no’ experiences we encounter. School work removes buffers, and allows us to observe and experience these contradictions. As uncomfortable, and sometimes painful as these observations and experiences may be, when we do not buffer, our ‘devas’ and ‘daityas' churns the Amrita - the fuel that combusts into the immortal flame of higher centers.

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