Indra’s Net & The Energy Matrix: A Muse Exclusive
You are a polished jewel in the infinite net of creation; what do you want to reflect?
The following story is inspired by a Muse Exclusive I received while meditating on the concept of Indra’s Net.
Initial Impact
There’s a quote from the Tao Te Ching that has played itself out in multiple ways throughout my life. “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”
It happened the other day that my teacher appeared after about twenty years of waiting — or, should I say, getting ready?
That teacher: Indra’s Net.
What a glorious kind of irony, isn’t it? Here I was, playing a game of metaphysical connect-the-dots and I discovered that the final dot is itself about how the dots are already, have always been, and will always be connected.
In the pursuit of the whole picture, I fell into it, like the Fool from the Mountain of Innocence — into Indra’s Net.
Now that I have the whole picture, now that I’m here, I finally know what I must do and why.
I must imagine my ideal energy body with its chakras, tree-of-life sephira, torus field, and Merkabah potential and I must remove the obscurations that blind me to its radiant existence.
I must activate and interact with my energy body, speak with it, shine my love upon it, illuminate it with attention, awareness, concentration, appreciation and loving intentions.
I must learn to perceive my spirit/body/mind vehicle from the foundation up — from the subtle to the gross; from the energetic to the physical.
I must do this because in polishing my soul’s temporary body/vehicle so that it becomes the optimum receiver/transmitter, reflector/attracter — the universe transforms into what it’s always been:
An infinite, interactive, boundaryless field of potential, perfected to lovingly materialize and support the heart-felt desires of all beings.
To paraphrase the Buddha, “Transform yourself and the world transforms with you.”
This is the core teaching of Indra’s Net.
The Hindu Myth & The Buddhist Teaching
As a story from mythology, Indra’s Net is credited with its first appearance circa 1000 BCE, or approximately 3,022 years ago in a Hindu Vedic text called the Athara Veda.
According to Sensei Morris Doshin Sullivan, host of the “Adventures in Buddhism” podcast, Indra — King of the Gods — wanted to adorn his palace with something unique and wonderful. So, he called upon an architect to build something appropriate for that intention.
“The architect created a vast net,” Sullivan explained, “which he hung over Indra’s palace up in the sky and it stretched out above the palace infinitely in every direction. Each point of the net where two strands joined, the architect had placed a polished jewel.
“There are an infinite number of these jewels and they are each cut in such a way that they reflect the jewels around it.
“If you pluck a strand on the web or do anything to any of the jewels it effects the entire web. Every strand connects directly or indirectly to any other strand. There’s no way to affect one part of the net without it affecting the entire web.”
The idea of interconnected jewels reflecting the jewels around them can be witnessed by such physical phenomenon as a spider web dotted with beads of dew, as shown in the picture below:
Notice how each dew drop is reflecting the same image — a sunflower. No single dew drop created the sunflower, or IS the sunflower. They simply reflect whatever is around the web of reflecting “jewels”, and that reflection is shared by the entire web.
We can all see that, according to the image, there aren’t actually a multitude of sunflowers. There is only one sunflower being reflected a multitude of times.
In fact, if you were to look closely, to zoom in to one of the dew drops, you would see more than just the sunflower. You would see the convex reflection of the entire land and sky that surrounds the sunflower.
If you were to destroy the web, effectively popping all the dew drops, there would no longer be a reflection of the sunflower, yet the sunflower itself would be completely unphased.
And that, my dear friends, is how I’ve come to perceive how our reality works.
The universe, or reality, or Maya — whatever you want to name it — behaves in a similar manner. The universe reflects back to us what we are. It does it without judgement and without interference.
If a man were to show up near the web and cut down the sunflower, the web would reflect those actions precisely. It wouldn’t call the authorities, cry out, or react in any other way but to reflect exactly whatever was happening around it.
Consider this famous Zen quote from Dogen’s Genjokoan (written in 1233):
“When a person attains realization, it is like the moon’s reflection in water. The moon never becomes wet; the water is never disturbed. Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass.”
In other words, realization (as represented by the moon) in and of itself does nothing to transform its surroundings, yet without making the slightest effort, it is reflected everywhere.
Such is the case with all states of consciousness.
A happy person finds reasons for her happiness everywhere. An angry person finds reasons to be angry in any situation. Reality mirrors back to you your state of being, as if you are watching a play written, produced, and directed by you.
We are the reflecting jewels in Indra’s Net
In the third century AD, Mahayana Buddhism took the Hindu myth of Indra’s Net a step further.
From Buddhists.org: “Each jewel or pearl in the net is seen as a sentient being.
“Seeing the world in this way places responsibility on the individual practitioner to regard each separate manifestation as contained within his or her own heart, and each manifestation as reflecting one’s own self in turn.”
In other words, unlike the dew drops in the spider web that have no choice but to neutrally reflect their surroundings, we as sentient reflectors in Indra’s Net, have the opportunity to choose what energies to receive or attract, and what energies to transmit or reflect.
Whatever we choose, whether consciously or unconsciously, the energies we receive and transmit directly and indirectly affect the entirety of the web.
The evidence for this is revealed in the experiences we have, our state of well-being, our perceptions and perspectives, etcetera.
I have two everyday practical examples of this concept.
Social Media Postings: the Internet behaves in a similar manner to Indra’s Net, especially if you think of our devices (computers, tablets, phones, etc.) as representing reflecting jewels that contain the entirety of the internet within them.
As long as you’re “plugged in” to the internet, everything is accessible and you get to choose where to go and how to interact. A single post can sometimes affect the whole internet.
Imagine how you can get triggered by a single Twitter post. Back when I was a social media junky, a single negative response to a Facebook post could trigger a downward spiral that could take me weeks to recover from!
Relationships: If you relate to individuals in your life as reflections of your own heart, whenever conflict arises, especially if you find yourself triggered by that person, this is the perfect opportunity for you to ask the question: how is this person’s behavior reflecting my own issues back to me? What are they showing me about my own way of being?
In my own relationships, I found that the relationships only ever changed when I changed my perspective and my own behavior with that person.
The Mahayana Buddhist perspective on Indra’s net, according to Sullivan and others, is “used to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all life.
The idea of an interdependent universe means the dignity of all of humanity rises and falls with individual actions.”
In his podcast, Sullivan ends the episode on Indra’s Net with a beautiful quote from Ronald Nakasone:
“What effects one member of the community affects me. What I do in turn affects every other link in the web. Tug one string and the whole web vibrates. Since we’re all inexorably bound together in a community, what affects one link affects everyone. The idea of an interdependent universe means the dignity of all of humanity rises and falls with individual actions.”
The Egyptian “Netters” and Sacred Geometry
If that wasn’t enough, Indra’s Net gets even more esoteric, especially when analyzed from the perspective of Ancient Egypt and Sacred Geometry.
According to experts in Sacred Geometry like Dr. Robert J. Gilbert, Indra’s Net is more than a mythological story, more than a Buddhist teaching, and much more than a metaphor to explain reality.
What we’re calling Indra’s Net Gilbert claims is the actual blueprint for our universe — the “out there” universe of the (macro)cosmos, which is perfectly reflected within the microcosmic atomic universe explored by quantum physics.
“Behind everything in physical existence is an invisible matrix of energy which is the source of all physical manifestation,” Gilbert explained in the introductory episode of his 18-episode series “Masters of the Net” currently streaming on Gaia.
The show explores the hypothesis that the universe was created first as an energetic net, or web, and that this blueprint and how to work with it represents the fundamental teachings of many ancient mystery schools, including in ancient Egypt.
Gilbert teaches some of the same techniques in his school called the Vesica Institute.
“By learning how to work with subtle energy patterns known to ancient traditions, you can initiate an alchemical transformation within yourself,” Gilbert said. “This process can empower your own individual evolution of consciousness and thereby assist the raising of consciousness on our planet.”
The reason the net is invisible to us is because we perceive reality from the limited perspective of the third dimension. Once we activate our inner senses, as the ancient initiates did in Egypt and in other places and times, we can better understand and interact with the subtle energies of the higher dimensions.
“The energy geometry of the human body also exist in a larger macro form in the larger energy grids of the earth itself,” said Gilbert.
“Geometrical forms we see may just be shadows of higher dimensional forms which most humans have not yet developed a sense organ to perceive directly.”
These mystery schools of Egypt did not see the Gods the way we see them today, Gilbert claimed. For one thing, these deities weren’t even called gods. They were called “Netters” and represented “conscious forces of nature which the initiate learns to directly communicate with and to direct their power.”
The reason these figures were shown with animal heads, according to Gilbert, is because the mystery schools “understood that higher divine powers manifested through specific animals.”
Ultimately, according to Gilbert, the initiate becomes a Master of the Net.
“The True Master of the Net is the initiate who has learned how to navigate through the net and learn how to use the net of the living energy matrix behind everything on the physical plane to develop powers that the uninitiated considered to be magical.”
These “magical” powers possessed by Masters of the Net initiates represent “advanced applications in manifestation, prosperity work, and materializations of energy and thought forms into physical reality.
“It is all about knowing how to work with the patterns of energy which move from the higher planes of consciousness into vibrational matrixes and then crystalize into physical manifestation.”
Final Thoughts: The Labor of Love
As is reflected by the title of this publication — New Earth Consciousness — just about everyone in the metaphysical/new age/light worker/esoteric community truly believes (with the experiences to support those beliefs) that the earth is in the process of “ascending” to a higher dimension of awareness.
If this is the case, the concepts of oneness and interconnectedness will no longer be described as ideas or philosophies to be debated and ultimately ignored by the materialists currently controlling the narrative.
Once the earth “ascends”, oneness and interconnectedness will be revealed to be as obvious and non-controversial as someone today saying “the sky is blue” or “one plus one is two”, because oneness will be self evident.
We will all be perceiving and interacting with energy the way we today perceive and interact with matter.
As humans on this planet, we are here to help facilitate this ascension so that we can, in part, ultimately enjoy the fruits of our labor.
That labor: purifying, activating, empowering and integrating our own (apparently) individual energy bodies.
As we commit more and more to this labor, we become rewarded with better health, deeper sense of well being, richer feelings of love and compassion for self and others.
For me, I recognize that as I do the energy work on myself, the aspect of my individual self, my Atman (or soul), is connected to all the other Souls of the universe via my heart chakra.
In the Bible (John 14:6) Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
My interpretation of this verse goes as follows: Jesus is divine love. The father is the architect of “heaven” or Indra’s Net. Jesus, as the anointed Christ, lives within each of our hearts as pure divine love.
When we purify, activate, empower, and integrate our heart chakra to its optimum Christ Consciousness capacity, all the other energies follow suit, because, as those who know, know that it is this divine love that connects all the jewels, all the souls together as one infinite soul.
So, here we are again, more evidence, the final piece of the puzzle, the last dot that completes the whole picture of what we all have been feeling from the beginning.
Love is the only way.
Indra’s Net, for me, was the teacher I had been preparing for these past twenty years.
The Tao Te Ching’s verse that I quoted at the top of the article — “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear” — is directly followed by another sentence that is quoted much less frequently.
“When the student is truly ready… The teacher will disappear.”
The teacher — Indra’s Net — is disappearing into me, into you, into all of us.
