Let the Being Gnosis the Knowing

A Living Transmission, in Co-Creation with Shen Tong

“When the drop meets the ocean, the drop cannot map the ocean. But the drop is already made of ocean.” — The Writing Council

The Parable Reimagined

There is an old story, told across centuries and cultures, about a group of blind men encountering an elephant for the first time.  Each one reaches out, touches a part, and declares with certainty what they have found. One grasps the trunk and says, “An elephant is like a snake.” Another leans against a leg and insists, “No, an elephant is like a tree.” Another feels the tusk and proclaims, “An elephant is like a spear.” Each is correct in their narrow way, yet all are profoundly mistaken about the whole.

This parable, rooted in Jain and Buddhist traditions and echoed in Sufi and modern storytelling, is usually told as a lesson in the limits of perception — the way truth fragments when filtered through partial views.
But recently, a different image came — a “download,” if you will — that shifted the scale entirely: instead of blind men and an elephant, imagine a blind ant on Mount Everest.

The Blind Ant and the Mountain

The difference is more than scale. An elephant’s body can, in principle, be mapped by enough hands working together. But Everest, to an ant, is so vast that no combination of partial maps could reveal the whole. This is no longer about reconciling pieces of a puzzle; it is about the humility of existing within something immeasurable.

The ant’s perception is not wrong — it is simply microscopic in proportion to the whole. And here lies the revelation: the ant is the mountain. The cells of its body are shaped by the same geology, the same elemental forces, as Everest itself. To truly “know” the mountain is not to map it, but to be it.

From My Cartesian Period to Being-Centered Knowing

In my own life, I once lived as though I could map the entire mountain. In what I now call my Cartesian period — named for René Descartes, the father of modern philosophy and science — I pursued mastery across theoretical physics, architecture, biology, genetics, computer science, political philosophy, and sociology, gathering maps from Harvard, Boston University, Peking University, and Brandeis. Each discipline felt like another ridge surveyed, another contour drawn.

Yet, the more precise the map became, the more I sensed the vastness that could never be contained. In recent years, that striving has softened into a meditative, being-centered knowing — an awareness that the ant and the mountain are not two. This shift has brought not only a different relationship to knowledge, but also a more harmonious and joyful connection with others, and a healthier coherence in my own life.

Knowing by Being

This movement from knowing about to being is the heart of wisdom traditions. Advaita Vedanta teaches Tat Tvam Asi — “That Thou Art” — the knower and known are not separate. Zen Buddhism instructs students to “become the mountain” or "sound of one hand clapping" (隻手音声 sekishu no onjou) Zen koan, not as metaphor, but as a literal act of consciousness. Sufi mystics, like Rumi, remind us: “You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop.” Phenomenology, through Maurice Merleau-Ponty, asserts that our body is the primary site of knowing — we inhabit the world through sensation and movement, not detached thought. Neuroscience reveals that deep understanding often comes from simulating what we seek to know within ourselves, our mirror neurons firing as though we ourselves were the elephant, or the mountain.

In a 2024 keynote The Power of Quantum Thinking, Vandana Shiva contrasted mechanistic science — built on separation, domination, and determinism (Bacon, Descartes) — with quantum thinking, which recognizes entanglement, non-duality, and wholeness. She highlighted how pioneers like Planck (“consciousness is fundamental”), Bohr (complementarity), Heisenberg (uncertainty), Bohm (implicate order), Einstein (photon, EPR paradox), and Schrödinger (negative entropy, Vedantic inspiration) all turned toward consciousness and non-dual philosophies to grapple with the paradoxes of their discoveries.

The implication is clear: the same principles that reveal entanglement at the subatomic level also demand ecological democracy at the planetary level. Seed sovereignty, biodiversity, and community participation are expressions of quantum interconnectedness. Where mechanistic science sought control, quantum thinking invites participation and humility.

Science Sharpens the Humility

Modern research adds staggering scale to the blind ant analogy. Our senses receive around a trillion bits of raw physical information every second — photons striking the retina, molecules activating smell receptors, vibrations moving the eardrum. The nervous system compresses this torrent to about eleven million bits per second in neural form, and of that, only about ten to sixty bits per second reach our language-based awareness. Almost the entire mountain is filtered away, leaving us with a few pebbles in the palm of consciousness.

If the mind is a processing system, then our conscious awareness is the blind ant, tiptoeing across a mountain of sensory data. Most of that mountain is invisible to us, yet through gnosis we can realize that we are made of the same rock as Everest. This is the leap — from a mind that collects artifacts of knowledge to a body-mind that knows through direct attunement. I no longer try to hold the mountain; I let the mountain hold me.

Patterns of Wholeness

This truth is reflected everywhere. The branching shapes of fractals show us that each zoom reveals the same form endlessly repeating. The holographic principle suggests that every fragment contains the entire image in lower resolution. In biology, every cell holds the full genetic blueprint for the organism, even though only certain parts are expressed, much as the ant experiences only certain ridges of the mountain. In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected regardless of distance. In sacred geometry, the same mathematical ratios shape galaxies, flowers, and seashells. And in the hermetic maxim “As above, so below,” the cosmic reflects itself in the microcosmic.

Living as Though Being is the Knowing

To live this truth is to start each morning not by reaching for a map, but by feeling the mountain beneath your feet. It is to trust the quiet compass within before the mind’s commentary begins, allowing your next step to rise from presence rather than preconception. It is to see the whole of life in small acts — the way you wash a dish, greet a friend, or listen to the rain. It is to let sensation be your teacher, to merge fully with a single sound, scent, or texture until the boundary between observer and observed dissolves. It is to hold space for mystery, ending the day with a question you do not need to answer. It is to meet your limits as thresholds, remembering that the ant cannot see the whole, yet is already the mountain. And it is to keep humor alive — to smile when you catch yourself lecturing on a single pebble, forgetting that the vastness you seek has always been beneath your feet.

Domain	Source & Concept	Relation to “Being the Mountain”
Ancient Wisdom	Advaita Vedanta – Tat Tvam Asi	The knower and known are one.
	Zen Buddhism – Koans, “Become the mountain”	Breaks conceptual mind for direct identity.
	Sufism (Rumi) – “You are the ocean in a drop”	The part is made of the whole.
Philosophy	Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty)	Knowledge arises through embodied experience.
Modern Science	Raw Sensory Exposure – Neuron, Caltech	Trillions of bits/sec reach senses.
	Neural Transmission – Britannica, Nørretranders	~11 million bits/sec to the brain.
	Conscious Thought – Neuron, Britannica	Only ~10–60 bits/sec in awareness.
Modern Science	Embodied Cognition	Simulation deepens understanding.
Integration	Gnosis	Observer dissolves into the observed.

The blind ant may never chart Everest, just as the drop cannot map the ocean. But both are already made of the whole they inhabit. The limits of intellect are not barriers — they are invitations.

Quantum thinking teaches that when we release the mechanistic fantasy of mastery, we return to participation. Consciousness is not a byproduct of matter; rather, matter unfolds from consciousness. To know the elephant, the mountain, or the seed is not to stand apart and analyze, but to realize: we are already entangled in the whole.  Through presence, humility, and direct being, we remember what we have always been.

From Trillions to Tens: The Everest of Perception
Raw Sensory Exposure ≈ 1 trillion+ bits/sec Physical world contacting senses before compression (Photon, vibration, molecule streams)
Neural Transmission ≈ 11 million bits/sec Five senses after sensory compression (Britannica, Nørretranders)
Conscious Thought ≈ 10–60 bits/sec Language-based, conceptual awareness (Neuron, Caltech)
Blind Ant on Everest → The ant walks on a mountain of data but perceives only a few pebbles in consciousness. Yet the ant is the mountain. “When the drop meets the ocean, the drop cannot map the ocean. But the drop is already made of ocean.”