In the beginning, there was the Self. There was the One Self, and nothing but the Self.
The Self was All One. The Self was all-one. The self was al-one.
In its aloneness the Self considered itself. There was nothing else to consider, since the Self was all there was.
The One Self looked at itself and, in the looking, became two: that which was looked at, and that which was doing the looking.
In looking, there was here and there, and there was movement between the here and the there. In movement, there was vibration, there was energy; and where there was energy there were limitless possibilities.
And the voice of the One Self sang out the One Song, the One Verse, the Uni-Verse, and an infinite richness of light and heat and sound vibrated into being.
Within this great sea of potential, each tiny note trembled and sped, emerged and dissolved and united with others in great patterns and harmonies to give rise to suns and stones and butterfly wings and the concepts of space and time.
And the Onesong, in all its glory, was still One, and the Self was still the One Self, and all things were simply aspects of that One Self.
But being is not the same as experiencing; in order to experience anything, it is necessary to express it. For example, creativity is only experienced when it is expressed through the act of creating something.
Although the Self could never divide itself or become anything other than Self, the infinite shifting patterns within itself created opportunities to express its ideas and to experience them by shifting the position through which it observed the whole.
It could observe from the perspective of a galaxy or a garden snail. It could experience the totality of its whole being, or reflect upon the qualities of a rose through the senses and mental processes of a child.
And, being a child, it could imagine that those senses and mental processes were all it was, and forget its totality for a while.
It could believe itself to be limited and small within an infinite playground, and be awed by the presence of something vast and seemingly other than itself.
It could do that for a whole lifetime or for many lifetimes; or perhaps forever. But there was a sadness in that, because a tiny being within a limitless universe could feel helpless and small and insignificant and thereby lose its sense of meaning and purpose in life.
So, like a traveler in a strange land leaving signs on the road so that he could always find his way back home, it left clues to remind itself of its true identity and in each lifetime it played out the Great Game, the solving of the mystery of "What Am I?"
And the game itself provided meaning and purpose and enjoyment; and when the mystery was solved within a lifetime, that embodiment lived out its remaining years in full awareness of its identity as both a small, separate being and as its whole, universal Self, and this state of awareness became known among human beings as "Enlightenment."
