Here There and Everywhere
Eric Marsh
We all at sometime or other have wanted to go somewhere else - where the grass is perhaps greener. But it has been said that somewhere else is actually an illusion, that all that is, was and will be is here - wherever one is. And that all that is, is contained in an area smaller than the point of a pin. It has been suggested there is no where else to go, nothing else to do.
To any sensible person, of course this sounds like nonsense. Everyone knows that here is some distance from there. No two places are alike. So how can anywhere be everywhere and everywhere be anywhere? Its not only contrary to common sense and experience, it's against physical law. Except some scientists studying strange states of subatomic substance are suggesting such possibilities.
Making some sense out of this might prove useful on our journey. If we are interested we can at least watch how it works. Just a slight shift in viewpoint and subtle objectivity will show that wherever one is, is here. One is here, wherever one happens to be. If one is paying attention, one is here. Other places exist in the mind. Of course they are real and we can go to them, but as we do, we are here ( Are you still with me?)
There is no place that anyone can go to that is not here. We take 'here' with us. Why do we want to go somewhere else? Despite the usual reasons, basically we go to get away from the unbearable emptiness of ourselves. Doing so is not Seeing. Try as we may, we cannot get away from ourselves. We are present wherever we go. Always present, we are filled with the world. And so we are never empty. - still with me?
If one can be attentive to this, an interesting phenomenon might occur. The desire or compulsion to be someone else or somewhere else, might disappear. This is not a mental trick. One is just being oneself right here now. For a moment the old, familiar, boring world is suddenly vibrant, new and alive without one going anywhere. It is within us. We are here. We are everywhere.
One might even say, we are God!! ...or at least ecce homo (Behold the Man)