Tiruvannamalai is a place full of people hankering after spiritual experience, of one kind or another, and this sort of epitomizes the spiritual scene; the guru scene, especially. Which I'm generally tired of, have no further time for. I'm not sure that reality or the universe, unencumbered by an egoistic separatist vision is achievable by many. And the majority of those who do claim to have "transcended" it, and are therefore considered to be "enlightened" say that it is possible to see either a divided, fragmented universe, or a simple oneness that swallows all differences in one gulp: they insist that it is impossible to see both.
My own reasoning and intuition tells me that the universe and all its elements are real, not illusory, but that our perception of them is in error. Our perception is based first of all on a subject-object relationship that is well-nigh impossible to overcome. Second, we fail to see the underlying common thread (or ecology) that links all things in a state of interbeing. Common to all of them, as a kind of substratum of all animate and inanimate things, is their existence, which is also a form of consciousness, because there seems to be an intrinsic, perhaps atomic-level, awareness of the individual part as it relates to the whole; in a way, the parts even contain the whole; or at least the entire blueprint or map. So according to this metaphysical scheme, all "things" are made up of their nameable form + existence-consciousness.
This is my working hypothesis. It cannot be proven, only reasoned or intuited, and like any idea that our brain can come up with, it is only an approximate truth. But I would claim that it is a better model for our relationship with the planet than our existing exploitive relationship. If we understand the implications of there being a common thread of existence-consciousness that links all things in a web of interbeing, we are less likely to assert some sort of false independence that gives us the right and the prerogative to destroy the biosphere for our personal (or tribal, or national) gain. It changes the relationship.
However, that will only happen if this becomes a bit more than a mental concept. If we cannot mystically experience it (and we've already said that may be impossible), we at least need to grok it: To feel it deeply. This means coming to understand our world, the natural laws according to which it operates, our influence upon the environment, and the entire code of relationship between each other and with the planet. Taking the underlying oneness (I prefer to say wholeness) as base, and adding to this scientific knowledge + practical engagement, will give us a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with our world and may help to save us from extinction. Because I have no doubt that our flawed vision of the universe has gradually led to our current existential crisis. We can now clearly see where it has led us, and where it is leading.
A tentative experiential understanding
Although those who have actually or supposedly "transcended" egoistic vision and become absorbed in the underlying unity claim that it's either this or that - we either see the universe of things, or we see only oneness everywhere - I do think there is a form of spiritual experience that allows both of these exclusive views of reality to coexist. This is something that is beginning to dawn on me while I am here in Tiruvannamalai, thanks to the highly devotional nature of those who come here. We have before us a mountain, deemed holy; a temple to which devotees have thronged for a millenium, hordes of pilgrims who bow before every shrine, every idol as they tirelessly circumambulate the mountain. And we have all the dirt, pollution, and squalor that so disturbs those of us who are not used to these being so blatant and in our face. If we are more used to western monotheistic traditions, we are less used to the spiritualization of what we see as material things like mountains and idols.
This has given me the notion that a "thing" is not always just a "thing", but can carry in it a symbolic value. Of course we know this anyway. Money is the most obvious example. It's just paper or cheap metal, but we invest it with value. Its value is temporal, rather than spiritual, whereas the holy mountain of Arunachala, the enormous ancient temple at its base, and the countless idols, have, for the worshippers, spiritual value. Hard to accept in Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, but unquestionable for Hindus.
There are reasons specific to western theology that make idol-worship taboo, and an opposite understanding that make it normal for Hindus. The prohibition on idol worship in the west follows the logic that since the deity cannot be constrained by a form, by a name, or by a concept, then it, or "He", should not be represented in any way, lest we confuse Him with the other elements of His creation that can be so represented. No matter that westerners do not properly understand or follow through with this logic. If they did, they would not worry so much about questions such as belief and atheism. Belief in what, exactly? In some mental creation or concept? Such theism is actual atheism; whereas atheism is simply the refusal to believe that God, who is, by definition, indefinable, can be so defined. What can be defined is not God, period; end of story.
Hindus, on the other hand, at least those who are well-versed in their scriptures, understand that their murtis (which we call idols) do not in any way contain or constrain the deity worshipped, but provide a convenient channel for devotion. (They further understand that God can equally be worshipped without form.) The murti is to be respected not for the material that it is made of but for what it represents.
This is the value of symbols: they present us with a kind of portal to the transcendent. They are like the wardrobe in the Narnia stories; a door to another world. But the value of a symbol is that it stands in for something much broader and grander than what is seen by our eyes. Thus a murti, particularly here in South India, is often idealized. If we were speaking of the world of children, we would say that these murtis are more like rag dolls than Barbies: they give greater scope for the imagination than would a realistic representation.
Now what if we take not just murtis and holy mountains but the entire seen universe as a symbolic representation of the transcendent? We are not conceptualizing but speaking of an avenue for correcting our common egoistic and separative perception. We are further not speaking of an experience that can be intellectualized or put into words.
We are actually speaking of the vision of poets and artists. We cannot say how we are affected by the field of daffodils evoked in a poem or a painting, just as we cannot say how or why we are touched by a musical composition. If we try to verbalize it, we can only approximate, convey a second-hand experience of something sublime.
In that sense, spiritual experience is accessible to us: through the portal of the actual experienced "material" objectified world, we can get a glimpse of something that lies beyond it; an intimation of that which many would call divine, but which could also be referred to as wholeness, interbeing or the existence-consciousness; the common substratum of our universe.
It may be that before humankind became good at objectifying and conceptualizing the world, our sense of the transcendent was more immanent. When I visited the caves of early humankind in Southern France, and saw the handprints and early representations of animals drawn there, this was the sense that I got; that these people's perception of reality was inherently symbolic and mystical. No one can prove or disprove it. It's just the feeling I had. And whether any of this suggestion regarding the possibility of experiencing reality through symbolic vision carries any weight is unimportant. It is not a basis for the hypothesis earlier presented. Experience, which is always in danger of being merely subjective, should not be taken as a condition for understanding reality, in my view.