The Tree of Life
Hanging on the wall of the dojo (meeting-room) at Gurukula is a hand-embroided wall-hanging of the 'Tree of Life,' given to us by our daughter. It clearly depicts in stylized form, the whole tree -- leaves, branches, trunk and even the exposed roots. What is the meaning of this symbolic tree? What deeper understanding does it offer us?

The leaves are the symbol of our individual identities. There are so many leaves and so many individuals on the tree of life. If each leaf is living for itself, then it is living in individual love.

When the leaf realizes it is connected to a branch, it moves into the collective identity and lives for its collective identity. This identity unites us with some and separates us from others, just as one branch is separated from another. In this level, our love becomes collective love. We live for our collective identity and may even be willing to die for our collective identity.

The trunk is the symbol of our universal mind. All branches and leaves are attached to the trunk, but at the same time it transcends them. Here our love becomes universal love.

At the level of the roots -- the unitive mind or consciousness or God -- our love becomes divine love or unitive love.

Each of us is a leaf for we are a unique physical being. Each of us is a branch in as much as we belong to a particular nation, culture or tradition. And each of us is the roots in as much as we are one with the divine or absolute ... whether we realize it fully or not.

To accept intellectually the truth that we are, right now, each grounded inseparably in and as the divine is one thing, but to actually see It, even briefly, is another thing, and to experience this unitive vision continuously is quite another altogether and joy unspeakable. There have always been a few of these visionaries in every age whose lives seem to correspond with the whole tree of life ... including the trunk.
There is only one trunk and one universal mind. The trunk or the universal mind is the mediator between the roots, which represent the unitive mind, and the branches and leaves.
The trunk receives from the roots and nourishes the branches and the leaves. It speaks to the roots in the name of the leaves and the branches and it speaks to the branches and the leaves in the name of the roots.
The trunk lives for all. The Buddha, Jesus, Shankara and Ramana Mahashi etc. could be described as 'universal persons', who lived for all humankind. These are the way-showers, the truth-revealers or the mediators, as it were, between the the roots and the leaves / branches of their time.No one is outside this tree and no ideology, religion or belief-system is outside this tree that is 'life' Itself. There's only one way, one truth and one life. This is the way of the tree, the way of unity and non-duality. This way embraces different levels of truth, the un-manifested truth and manifested truth.
The great transition or shift isn't about an individual entering into a branch (belief-system) or moving from one branch (belief-system) to another branch (belief-system). It's an invitation to make the leap in consciousness from the branches to the trunk and from there to the roots. Now that's radical!