We take life for granted and define everything through our points of view. Our definitions vary, from the mystery of not knowing to the presumption of knowing something. Everything that surrounds us, our bodies, the energies that activate them, and the substances that compose and surround it, are a continuum. Yet, we live our lives as if we were fragments, competing with each other and ignoring the oneness of everything.

As a collective, we have deeply explored with our consciousness our existence, based on science, intuition, feelings, and our spiritual intuition, and it all clearly points to this oneness. Today humanity is more connected than ever. Separations into tribes and boundaries are becoming more and more imaginary, and we have realized, like no time in our history, that the essential components of life are universal.

However, we are seeing an intensification of greed and selfishness, competition, and intolerance. And we continue fighting for our exclusive space instead of reorganizing ourselves into a common and inclusive humanity, sharing a continuum of life, a song of the universe.

I, like each of the many other fellow characters, exhibit a temporal and unique point of view in this passing by. But now, as I am almost about to exit the present role being played, somehow I have begun to feel more frequent moments of amazement, seeing the wonderful magic which is this flow of the universe and life. This dance of being.

Yes, we always live reacting, thinking, reading, observing, philosophizing, opining, and imagining. Each one, as an *“I” * with a momentary appearance on stage. This is how we relate to each other and to the environment. Each form we observe is unique in its individuality, and the diversity of forms is infinite. We, you, me, others, everything, parades in space and time. With some, one stumbles and develops close contact; with others, some kind of passing relationship; but the rest are distant and alien, and we cannot even imagine what moves them inside or what they are experiencing. They are like extras in films where we are the protagonists. While we in turn are extras in their films.

Materially, we are constituted and interconnected by the same substances, by bubbling physicochemical energy processes, by dynamic conformations of multiple levels of elementary components. And our minds share the same mystery—this being alive, this thing of existing.

As one stops to reflect on the assemblage of life, going from galaxies to atoms, from butterflies to comets, from sunrises to flowering fields, and adds the movements and diversity of life forms in general, the scares, the loves, the inequities, the wars, the sacrifices, myths, creativity, affection, the hands of a mother, and the verses of a poet, one can only be but astonished by the vast mystery and miracle of life.

One afternoon, I was pondering on this, while sitting in a gazebo in a nearby forest where I had gone for a walk. Surrounded by the murmur of the green silence of life, I remembered the days when I would listen to stories by my friend Eruch on the Decan plateau in the countryside of Maharashtra, India.

And in that inner world of memories and love moments that we all carry inside, I would speak again inwardly with him, as if he were sitting there next to me in that forest of silence. I conveyed to him my amazement at the wonder of life and my perplexity at its mystery.

I remembered a story he told a group of us one day. Once he was alone with Meher Baba, who kept silent for 44 years, and that Baba with gestures called his attention to a threaded tapestry that was on the floor of the place where they were spending the night. The tapestry portrayed drawings of scenes in an oasis, like a camel, palms, and a traveler. The tapestry was a bit frayed, and Baba asked Eruch to describe what he saw. Eruch said to him, a palm, a camel, a caravan traveler. Then, Meher Baba said to him with gestures, "Take that tip where the tapestry is fraying, near that scene and pull on it."

Eruch did. And after a few minutes, the master asked, "What do you see now?" and Eruch said to him, now I see half a palm, half a camel, and half a traveler. Meher Baba gestured, "Go on, keep pulling," and he did it until the whole tapestry frayed and a single strand of thread remained in Eruch’s hands.

"And now what do you see?" Baba asked again. “A single strand of thread," Eruch replied. Meher Baba looked at him, and with a smile and through gestures, said, "That is life, the universe, a multitude of forms constituted by the same strand of thread that is existence."

I saw again in my memory the serene face of Eruch, responding to my astonishment and perplexity before the marvel of life, before the mystery of being. I felt in my imagination that he kept on talking to me inside, there by the gazebo, just like when he was talking that day in that hall when he told the story of the tapestry. His voice, now inside, resounded in silence as he said:

"It's a secret. I know because I don't know. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a secret. But it's an open secret. It manifests itself all the time everywhere. Everything emerges like a flooded river gushing inward, and expanding like a vast ocean outward, at every point in space and time.

In every flower it blossoms, in every misdeed, in every cloud, in every dawn, in every doubt. It appears as we close and open our eyes and ears. This beautiful secret goes around the universe and makes all the hugs and smiles.

There is no way to reveal it because the secret is already manifest; one cannot spread it, because it becomes apparent all the time. It hides in its own manifestation. That way, we can play games of hide-and-seek. Getting lost and finding ourselves. Looking for ourselves when there is nothing but ourselves everywhere.

There's not even an "everywhere" or a “where”, there's just an open secret. A something we can't say we know—not knowing—so we can set our limits and play. That you want to give a name to the secret with a word? Try: energy, being, God, existence, and love.

But whatever the sound, or symbol, any word you can think of, it will remain just a myth. Because the secret has no name and no identification, the secret is. So, let's play the game, hide from the open secret, and keep producing as many moments, dramas, comedies, music, aches and pains, madness, and rationalizations as we do.”

From time to time, we will have a brief glimpse, a glow, that will pour out like a fountain from outside and from within, and we will see for an instant, that every point is the secret, and that we are the secret, and that the game we play is the secret. And that the secret is an open secret, and at the same time, a well-kept one, a secret from ourselves to ourselves. That's the secret.”

For a moment I imagined drop-bubbles in a powerful wave, an enchanted mixture of the imagination of Everything, touching its shadow of nothingness. And then a cascade of forms, energies, gestures, eruptions, passions, loyalties, affairs, frowns, beauty, heinous crimes, sacrifices of supreme love, laughter, joy, excruciating pains, whiskers, roses, and wine emerging. Infinite forms, plots, and subplots, within perennial cycles of dust and possibility, appearing like mirages, creating a majestic multidimensional tapestry, at every stitch that the thread of imagination takes, while running to nowhere in time.

I felt that solving the mystery of life is the only thing that is worthwhile. Without knowing why.