Who is experiencing life?

Life in its infinite variety offers endless experiences. There appear plenty of people, with individual lives, unique in several ways. The experiences that each one seems to have is so different from one another, sometimes it appears for the good, sometimes for the worse.

As long as life presents favorable situations and experiences, one's individual story provides happiness and not much to complain. The individual script in fact provides a reason for pride. The moment things begin to take unfavorable turns, we begin to complain, we scramble to fix it, when things get out of hand and we loose hope, we become miserable. There are situations that hurt us and make us suffer so much, we question the point of life. The individual story is no longer fun. One begins to look at other stories, and almost all of them appear to be better.

Life is a sequence of experiences. depending on how we look at things, some are favorable some are not. we seek a sequence that is always favorable. Little do we realize that a sequence gets its meaning and sense only by a mixture. A monotonous sequence of either case will never provide us any experience.

Leaving aside the impossibility of a monotonous sequence, if we probe deeper into who is it that is experiencing life, we get an even more interesting answer. A physical analysis of the self, and an attempt to identify it, results in an absence of such a thing as the Self. Assuming the most common object of one's  body to be the self, we easily get past the parts of the body one by one, including the heart and the brain, abstract notions of thoughts, emotions, feeling and intellect, since all of this is observable by the self, we come to a point where the observer is not to be observed! 

If there is no one to observe, or experience, then could there have been an experience?  When there is no experience , then what sense does it make to classify it to be favorable or not? Realizing this liberates one from the consequences of apparent experiences. Life becomes an interesting sequence.

Infinite Mind

Infinity is an interesting idea. It generally creates a sense of vastness, an unfathomable distance. Some thing far far away. Whether we are looking at it from a numerical perspective or intuitively, it seems daunting to think about it. A sense of overwhelming takes over us. The physical and material world is limited and finite. However large and vast it may be, it is still finite. It is bound by the physical faculties of observation.

The mind however is not material. Hence it is not bound by the physical constraints and hence is infinite. When we say that, it might appear as though the mind is vast and huge and might appear counter intuitive to accept that. The reason is, infinity is not something "out there". Its a mere idea. It is a concept. For example we can simplify the idea as "Whatever there is, there is one more". We can experiment with lots of interesting things.

For example, the mind's needs are infinite. Its true for everyone. no matter how little or how much more one has, the mind seems to need "one more". Similarly the mind can keep on learning. Irrespective of how little or how much more one knows, one can always know or learn about "one more" thing. 

Infinity is possible only in the subtle realm. The material realm is finite and bound. The body is limited but the mind is unlimited. Music, Arts, Literature, Philosophy, Religion, ideas and thoughts belong to this infinite subtle realm. They allow us to travel boundlessly and experience freedom. 

Once we realize that infinity is in itself is a mere idea, that there can always be one more thing, the mind's infinite needs can be let go. No matter how much it travels, and how much it experiences, it will seek for that "one more" thing :). This travel of the mind is cyclic like a circle, and a circle though apparently endless and provides infinite travel is indeed finite. Realizing this liberates one from the bindings of the mind's endless needs.