A disconsolate biologist sits down, cross-legged on the small mat in the middle of his patio and begins to eat, pasta with salami and cheese from a bowl, like a Buddhist monk, only no Buddhist monk ever ate this well from his begging bowl, nor had two other adequate meals in the day. In comparison I am rich, but today I do not know it.

The view is one of rain, as it has been for most of the day, a grey endless outpouring of small drops of life falling one by one to the ground, which collects them effortlessly for storage in the nearby lake. This is the third overcast day in a row now and how my perceptions of it have changed. On the first evening, after a day when the sky had hung pregant with the promise of the rain it was trying, but couldn’t quite deliver all day, the spell eventually broke and down it poured. I watched it with joy, full of the awareness of its life giving vitality, renewing the soil for more growth, and incidentally saving me from having to water the vegetable patch again. On the second day I hardly noticed it for most of the day, instead took it as an excuse to work inside and was pleased to finally get something I had been working on for days finished. Today though, for reasons I cannot explain it has seeped into my soul.

The countryside is verdant green and this is Northern Greece, twelve miles south of the Bulgarian border. We have had a March with record breaking temperatures and now in April have come the rains. Eating my pasta, I watch it fall, seeing in the world a reflection of my heart, as though, eerily I am looking into myself, seeing all the loneliness and heartache I try so hard to hide come pouring down out of the sky.

Then for a moment I am distracted as a White Stork returns to its nest. Gliding in low between the buildings he banks sharply and rises up to the telegraph pole top nest to land. He has announced his coming to his mate by bill-clacking as he flew the last few metres and now she is standing too. Together they rap out a short bill clacking duet throwing back their heads as they emit the staccato sounds that signify their unity as a couple and their ownership of this nest. “We are, We are,” they say. Then it is over and he jumps lightly onto her back. For a moment you wonder how this can lead to mating when his legs keep their bodies nearly two feet apart. Then carefully he lowers himself and in a brief flurry their union is consummated. The whole act is amazingly short, taking less time than you or I would take to put on a condom. Yet that is the way of their lives and perhaps it is some consolation that a similar consummation has already been acted out 8 times or so by this couple today and may well occur several more times before the day is gone. Side by side they groom each other briefly and then she flies off to get her evening meal.

So I am left with mine, and my heart, and the rain, and my thoughts which now like to play with the idea that the rain I see in the world is the rain in my heart. Then a tractor drives by and is caught up in the moment, its lights close together and its smaller engine case in front of the larger cabin make it look for all the world like a spider in a world where most cars are beetles and buses are millipedes, especially the modern touring ones with their large black and round-cornered but rectangular rear view mirrors. So easy to see them as the millipedes short stubby down pointing antennae. My thoughts already in this dismal frame run away with the idea, play with it, in a lightning fast spinning of threads, worlds are built and rebuilt. Yes they say, like children with a new toy, we are really a grade further down in the scale, they really are alive, there are no machines except in your mind, and we people are spirits. The human form is the form of self consciousness. Regardless of the species of animal on the material plane once it becomes self concious another human comes into existance on the plain of conciousness. We are the spirits we feared when we were an animal and we bring our past lives with us as our subconcious selves, including our beliefs in our own materiality. Still we exist in the same world as material organisms which in our immaturity we treat as if they were unliving, and so ultimately we see them as machines as we struggle to bring the different perceptions, internal and external, of our worlds into harmony. Driven thus at our behest the world spews out cars and fax machines, computers, TVs and mobile phones, a plethora of mechanical devices that allow us to live in the both external world and the world that is inside our heads.

It is real, this world. Not the material presence of the rain, but the sorrow of my heart. My swirling thoughts explain it all with ease, and like dominos on some TV spectacular each newly awakened idea expends itself in a pyrotechnical display of images and world models. I am trapped in tesseract, a 4 dimensional mobius strip and the world is an illusion projected out beyond my senses onto some ethereal, universal background from deep within me. There is nothing really out there at all but this eternity of creative potential, reflecting and giving form to whatever is mapped onto it by my passing existance. Meanwhile this thing called ‘I’ lives and reacts to a world that is a phantom, believing itself to be real and acting out a drama of life driven by the geas to make a disparate collection of parts look like a functioning whole. Could it be true, could the whole thing, the whole huge material, and often annoying, world be merely an illusion, a spiritual hologram reflecting some other more permanent, ultimately more ‘real’ reality. Perhaps a reality that is singular and contains us all while that which I perceive as my reality is merely this universal reality coloured by some aspect of my existence? Perhaps I live merely as one facet of a huge gem, or one cell in a living creature and it is this gem or creatures reality that I see my share of whenever I see what I call the world.

But no, you are getting lost says another thought, stop trying so hard, you are creating confusion for yourself. Yes it is all an illusion but you contain the key, you are not some insignificant part. You are the centre, the core. If you would only believe, you could live in a world as full of joy and happiness as you could ever desire. All you have to do is believe. Yes, my thoughts are saying again. This would explain miracles, and faith healing and all the mysterious things you hide away in your subconscious, desperately trying to avoid the conflict they inevitably bring because they just don’t fit into the orderly pattern that you like to perceive, the dream you call your life. To one side, almost unheard a thought floats through, that says. “Ah, the art of creative dreaming, I remember it well. Dream well my children, before birth all is dreams anyway”. Scary if looked at closely, like so much in this vibrant descent into the unresolved.

The excitement flowing within continues to grow and I see myself again as a ball of consciousness with this thing called ‘I’ sitting in the middle, projecting out onto the world its image of reality, this image that becomes more diffuse as it nears the edges of my sphere of being, but ‘I’ never sees that far. Thus when another being is encountered the edges of our images interact and slowly a functioning whole is fit together that pretty much allows our inner ‘I’s or selves to keep living and believing in themselves. If we do not get too close it does not matter that our 'I's might be seeing different weather patterns, a different country or even a different planet. The rest is brutal, unconscious. Fragments of lives are created by wispy half formed edges of our realities and then destroyed by dreaming thoughts or the bow-waves caused by passing egos, and somewhere, hidden, is the truth of why things should be like this and not really as they seem.

“So is that all there is”, I ask my thoughts? This journey through nothingness where I, like a ball of mud propelled through the pristine water of reality leave behind me a murky trail that reflects the poorly conceived and misunderstood formulations of my mind? A world where I see what I expect to see, and where I expect to see pretty much what I saw yesterday, and so, ‘pretty much what I saw yesterday’, is what I see today. An endless progression of similarity with its own fascinating echoes, shadows and perturbations designed to keep my foolish ego forever chasing its own tail. Is this the karmic wheel of the Buddhas, the curse of existence that we must strive so hard to escape.

Another thought comes in then, strong and full of denial. “Rubbish” it cries. “Rubbish dreamed in a mind spending too much time looking toward itself, a lovely image, a bauble for a lady’s fancy but nothing to live from. To be real it needs to be testable, reproducible, solid and reliable. There may well be a creative aspect to life but it is not this nihilistic day dream, this denial of pain and joy, of sorrow and love, of achievement.” Is this really the scientist within seeking irriducible proof, rejecting anything it can not measure or my ego defending itself, perhaps a little of both. Which ‘will’ prevails when these stolid mental entities struggle for the light is often hard to discern from my half formed point of view. Change and change again, but the whole is turning more slowly now.

You and your science are part of the whole says a quieter voice. “Your beliefs create your own perceptions. You cannot prove that this is wrong, only that you cannot perceive it. It contains you, explains you and maintains you. Your time will come. There is room for your denial and my assertion both.”

A dog starts barking and another answers, I am dragged back to the rain and my sorrow. What difference does it make, I throw at my thoughts, I am trapped and drowning in my own heart. Illusion or not, it is what I perceive and there is little else I can live from. Then comes quiet, for a moment the angst is spent, and in the space of its passing gently sings an angel in my heart. “Peace. Remember this too will pass. Like the night and the day, or hunger and satisfaction, all must have their time. Live each one as it comes to you, try not to cling to or reject too much the joys and sorrows of life and you will understand yet.”

Nature abhores a vacuum they say, and so into the remaining silence comes yet another thought. Remember says the mathematician, at least you are here, here to perceive this whatever it is, here against all the odds. When you think of all the people who might have been, but who aren’t and never will be, you realise that to exist at all is a miracle. In every male human ejaculation, 250,000 different sets of genes strive to become real; in every female thousands of eggs each representing a potentially different person wait, mostly in vain, for one of those millions of sperm to complete them, to allow them to become real also. The odds against any one particular combination of genes coming together to make any one particular person are billions to one. If you exist then you have beaten the odds handsomely. Remember this, remember this, to be born is to be a winner in the game of life.

I have finished my pasta though the rain continues, but now faced with this oddly positive reminder of the ignominy of my own beginnings, or one image of them, I can smile. Yes, here at least I know it will be sunny again soon.

Epilogue:-
Retiring to sleep with this hard won peace I awake the next morning to brilliant sunshine and that awesomely blue sky the Greeks call galazyous, my spirit has won through, the sun is shining again and I have regained my normal positive frame of mind. Life, as ever it did, moves on to something new, something old and maybe even something blue.