Meditations on Scuba Diving and Snorkeling

I recently had the pleasure of spending my honeymoon on the small

island of Culebra off the coast of Puerto Rico. There my wife, herself

an avid snorkeler and scuba diver, introduced me to the wonders of life

under the sea, taking me on several dives and snorkeling trips along

the island’s teeming reefs. We had many discussions on the spiritual

significance and symbolism of this contemplation of the world under

the water, and I have tried to organize my thoughts on this topic in

this short essay. I take a ‘kaleidoscopic’ approach in this piece, meaning

that I consider the same phenomena from several distinct, and often

contrasting, symbolic perspectives.

The Ocean

The ocean is one of the most powerful and direct symbols of Divine

Infinity, and as such is celebrated in the scripture, literature, and rituals

of spiritual traditions around the world.2 To quote a contemporary

Senegalese Sufi shaykh,

I

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3. Shaykh Hadi Niasse, 2002 lecture cited in Ousmane Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An

Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,

2016), p. 75.

4. For example, in the Yoruba-derived traditions of the New World, Yemaya/Yemonja,

‘The Mother of Fishes’, is the Mother Goddess of the Sea.

Before, only God existed. When he wanted other beings to come

to existence, he manifested himself in himself. From the being that

was his manifestation, God created the Muhammadan Reality. From

the Muhammadan Reality, God created the sea. From the sea, God

created foam. The sea cannot be quiet because it was created from a

living being and reflects the manifestation of God . . .. Of all creatures,

the sea is the one that resembles God most in richness, wideness,

and generosity. In the sea, we find fish and pearls; boats can circulate

without harming the sea in any way. From foam, God created earth.

From earth, God created Adam and Eve. That is why Shaykh Ibrahim

said that: ‘Only God existed before anything else existed, and even

now that other beings seem to exist, in fact, only God exists.’3

The most famous orison of Shaykh Abu’l Hasan ash-Shadhili, hizb al-

bahr (the litany of the sea), likens all of life and existence to the sea,

and asks God to subdue it to the supplicant just as he subdued the sea

for Moses to pass through in safety—and implicitly, through Qur’anic

allusion (45:12), to subdue all of existence for the supplicant as He

subdues the sea for the ships that glide upon it.

In its restlessness, its boundless and mysterious beauty and bounties,

the ocean is, as mentioned above, a natural symbol of Divine Infinity,

and therefore creativity. For this reason, in many mythologies, the

ocean is embodied as a Mother Goddess, giving birth to all life.4 Within

Sufism, the perpetual ebb and flow, push and pull of waves upon the

shore is a direct symbol of the perpetual self-manifestation of the

Divine Reality, and the reabsorption of these manifestations back into

the Divine. This Divine ‘respiration’, to use another image, is known in

Arabic as tajdid al-khalq, renewal of creation, but unlike the waves of

ocean, this renewal takes place not consecutively, but simultaneously,

time itself being a part of the self-manifestation or self-disclosure of

the Eternal Divine.

However, just as the waves of the ocean shape and are shaped by

the ocean floor and the shore, so we too along with everything in

creation are both determined by and determine the self-manifestations

‍

5. Ibn cArabi explains this point in terms of what he terms cayin al-thabitah, immutable

entities, which constitute the pre-existence of any and every thing in God’s knowledge.

These non-existent entities are formed through a ‘process’ of entification (ta‘ayyun) also

called ‘the most holy effusion’, and then given existence by a second ‘process’ known as

‘the holy effusion’. This is one of the more difficult points in Islamic metaphysics, but

the image of a crashing wave or tsunami which shapes a shoreline, and the subsequent

waves which are shaped by this shoreline, is a nice starting point for meditation on this

reality.

of the Divine that constitute our lives, our very beings.5 Furthermore,

many verses of Sufi poetry describe this life and world as a bubble

on the ocean, or liken it to the foam that forms when the waves of

Being crash against the shores of Nothingness—ephemeral, fleeting,

dynamic, and beautiful, suspended between two aspects of a single,

Absolute, and therefore inescapable Reality.

As human beings, we live on the land, suspended between the

two blue infinities of sky and sea, whose only boundaries appear to

be the horizon and the thin surface layer where we lead our lives.

As such, we live in a barzakh, a liminal reality, an isthmus, between

sky and sea, which symbolize the Objective and Subjective poles of

Reality, respectively. We live, often confusingly, as both and neither

Pure Subject nor Pure Object—in some ways, we know ourselves (and

others) as subject, in others we know ourselves (and others) as object,

and in most ways, we do not know ourselves much at all. However,

through spiritual practice and grace, we can know ourselves, others,

and the Divine Reality itself as both Pure Subject and Pure Object,

because the realization of either collapses the one into the other. This

union and transcending of binary opposites is figured in the motion

of the denizens of sea, land, and sky. While we primarily move in two

dimensions, birds and fish move in three. Just as three marks the return

to unity (‘The Odd’ [al-witr] of the Qur’an) after the duality of two (‘The

Even’ [al-shafi‘] of the same Qur’anic oath [89:3], which represents The

One and the many), the paradoxes and oppositions of two-dimensional

geometry and motion can be overcome in three dimensions (i.e. the

motion of shadows seems impossible and paradoxical unless one

realizes that they are cast by three-dimensional objects).

The pair of sea and sky also symbolize the Inward /Hidden (al-

Batin in Arabic) and Outward /Apparent (al-Z. ahir), respectively, both

of which are names of God. Due to reflection and refraction, that

which is beneath the surface of the sea is hidden from those not in it,

while the celestial objects which populate the sky are visible to entire

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6. It is somewhat ironic, but not at all unrelated, that these advances have co-

occurred with the curtailment of the spiritual voyaging which they symbolize—or, more

correctly, parody. As spiritual journeying through the levels of Being and those of the

Self was reduced, the physical journeying through the sky and sea took off. The easy

access to the beauties of these realms, hitherto only vouchsafed to the pearl-diver and

unfortunate sailor or fisherman, or to the most intrepid of mountaineers or legendary

shamans, can be seen as a compensation for the loss of beauty on the land. This loss of

land-bound beauty, incidentally, is directly related to the technologies which have made

the sea and sky so accessible; and these technologies, in turn, are directly the result of

a science, a worldview, characterized by the loss of spiritual wayfaring. The innate drive

to explore the depths of the Self and Existence has been sublimated into the desire to

explore the depths of the sea and sky.

hemispheres at once. What was said above about the poles of Subject

and Object, and about land symbolizing man’s liminal reality between

the two, equally applies to this binary of Inward and Outward, and

to their transcendent unity, symbolized by the horizons where the

blue of the sky meets that of the sea. Thus Ibn cArabi describes the

realized sage as one who ‘sees with two eyes’— the Inward and the

Outward, simultaneously. And just as ordinary binocular vision results

in the perception of the third dimension of depth, this metaphysically

binocular vision (Inward and Outward together) opens up a ‘third

dimension’, the beatific vision, in which this, and all other binary

oppositions are united and transcended. Again, these three degrees of

motion are symbolized in the flight of birds and the dive of dolphins,

compared to the largely two-dimensional movement of us land-bound

creatures.

Today, however, thanks to certain advances in technology, man can

now explore the depths of both sky and sea.6 It is two modes of the

latter capability to which I wish to direct the focus of the rest of this

essay.

Snorkeling

The equipment for snorkeling is simple enough: a clear mask and a

snorkel—a tube that connects the mouth below water to the air above

water. The mask works by providing a pocket of air, through which the

eyes can see clearly, and the snorkel provides air so that the snorkeler

can breathe. If we take the ocean as a symbol of the soul or interior

aspect of the self, the air provided by the mask and snorkel represents

an element of objectivity when exploring the interior world of the self.

This element of objectivity is what brings the wonders of the self, of the

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7. Relatedly, in the tradition of Islamic philosophy the supra-rational Intellect (caql

kulli in Arabic, nous in Greek, intellectus in Latin) is often likened to the moon, and our

rational faculty to its reflection on the surface of the ocean. When the surface is calm,

the reflection appears clear and brilliant, but as the water becomes more troubled, the

reflection becomes distorted by the waves, and eventually disappears. Similarly, when

the soul is troubled and tempestuous, the reflection of the transcendent Intellect, our

reason, becomes clouded and can even seem to disappear.

8. For example, among the Songhai, Dogon, and Bozo people who live along the

River Niger.

soul, into focus. The introduction of this element of objectivity into the

subject, the air into the water, is symbolic of spiritual initiation, which

gives the initiate a glimpse into the reality of the depths of his or her self.

In keeping with this perspective, when the ocean is turbulent and

full of waves, the water becomes turbid and cloudy. Similarly, when the

soul’s carnal passions or emotions become turbulent, the perspective

on one’s self also becomes clouded and confused. When the waves

calm, and the sediment settles down, the remarkable beauties of the

coral, fish, and other creatures reappear.7

As for the beautiful scenery under the sea, I have seen no better

image of the imaginal world (the level of reality corresponding to the

individual world of dreams). In fact the landscapes of many Persian

miniatures, which depict this mundus imaginalis, bear striking

resemblances to the coral reefs that I saw while snorkeling. There are

colours, shapes, and beauties underwater unlike anything I have ever

seen above, just as the imaginal world contains forms and beauties only

glimpsed in dreams, and seldom seen waking. The ocean as a whole is

also a natural symbol of the unseen world (ghayb in Arabic), with land

serving as a symbol of the visible world. Just as the ocean surprisingly

accounts for 99 per cent of the area where living things reside, the

visible world is but a small portion of reality, although we often act as

if it is all that exists. This symbolism is particularly apparent if you are

on a boat or small island, and find yourself surrounded by the ocean in

the same way that the unseen worlds surround the more limited visible

world of sensible things. In fact, in many mythologies, the underwater

world of the sea, rivers, lakes, etc. is the realm of spirits.8 Just as liquid

water stands between the solidity of land and the airy expanse of the

sky, so too does the imaginal world stand between the sensible world

of form, and the formless world of pure spirit. The imaginal world is

another barzakh, where spirits take on sensible forms, and sensible

forms are animated with spirit /meaning.

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9. The Arabic word for the stringing of pearls, naz.m, is also used to refer to the

composition of poetry, music, literature, and generally for any form of artistic exposition,

organization, or composition.

10. There is a legend that the young Genghis Khan escaped a group of Mongol

warriors seeking his life by using one such reed to breathe while he hid under the water

in a river.

11. The Qur’an alludes to this reality in the verse, The prophet is closer to the believers

than their own souls (33:6).

Or from another perspective, taking the shore to symbolize the

sensible realm, the zone of the ocean near the shore, which is populated

bycoralreefs andfishofunimaginablehues, corresponds tothe imaginal

world, while the more sparsely-populated deep blue sea corresponds

to the angelic and arch-angelic realms. (The whales, dolphins, sharks,

and other large fish and other creatures that populate the open sea are

among the most direct manifestations of Divine Names of Beauty and

Majesty in the animal kingdom.)

More generally, however, just as the ocean contains a seemingly

boundless bounty of hidden beauties, which it occasionally tosses upon

the shores, the unseen world of the spirit is described as a storehouse of

beauties, which are occasionally brought forth into sensible form, often in

the natural world, and sometimes by gifted artists. In fact one of the most

common conceits of Arabic and Persian mystical literature is that of the

poet diving into the depths of the unseen to gather pearls of verse and/or

wisdom, which are then strung on a necklace to adorn the reader.9

Reversing this perspective and taking the sea as the sensible world,

snorkeling has a very different symbolism. Snorkeling itself is a very

contemplative activity: one mainly floats above the kaleidoscope of

colors below, much like the dictate to be ‘in the world, but not of it’.

This existence ‘in but not of’ the sea /the world is only possible due

to a connection between the self in the sea, representing this world

(dunya in Arabic), and the air, representing the world beyond (al-

akhirah in Arabic). In snorkeling this is achieved through the snorkel,

whose earliest form was a hollow reed.10 In Islamic spirituality, as in

many other traditions, this connection is achieved through the heart /

Intellect, that divine spark or spirit ‘neither created nor uncreated’,

without which we would all drown in the world of appearances. This is

also a kind of barzakh, connecting man with his Origin and home, and

is what allows man to serve as a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth.

As such, it is a kind of inner Logos, the inner Prophet,11 the ‘Christ

within’ or Buddha nature of other traditions.

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12. R. A. Nicholson, Rumi: Poet and Mystic (Oxford: Oneworld, 1995), p. 31.

Interestingly, in the famous opening of his Mathnawi, Rumi likens

the human side of this reality to a reed:

Hearken to this Reed forlorn,

Breathing, ever since ‘twas torn

From its rushy bed, a strain

Of impassioned love and pain.12

Now, the reed or snorkel works because it is hollow, empty of all

but air. Similarly, for the heart/ Intellect to function properly it must be

empty of all but God. As anyone who has snorkeled can tell you, it is

necessary to clear your snorkel of water from time to time, especially

if you dive beneath the surface, or turn your head the wrong way,

or swim in choppy water. If you don’t blow the water out every few

minutes, you’ll soon be choking on it. Similarly, in Islamic spirituality,

and virtually every other spiritual tradition, it is necessary to regularly

‘polish the heart’ through prayer and invocation. If we do not, the cares,

troubles, and distractions of this world can drown us. The snorkel, like

the heart, serves as a lifeline, a connection, to our home, allowing us to

survive, and even enjoy, our sojourn in an otherwise fatal environment.

Scuba Diving

Scuba diving takes the principles of snorkeling further, allowing you

actually to dive beneath the surface and to spend significant periods

of time under the water without coming up for air. The apparatus

for scuba diving is also simple enough. You keep the mask and the

snorkel, but add a tank holding compressed air on your back. The tank

is connected to a hose which supplies air to your mouth, and to an

inflatable vest that you can use to adjust your buoyancy.

Taking the sea as a symbol of the world of appearances, our time on

a dive is limited and transient: when our air is up, we have to come up

and out of the water. Similarly, we come into the world, move around,

witness many beautiful and terrible things, and when our time is up,

we return from whence we came.

When scuba diving, you become very aware of your breathing,

as your air is very precious. Your air is a bit of the world above that

you bring down into the water with you, keeping you alive. Similarly,

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the breath which God blew into each of us (Qur’an 15:29, We blew

into him [Adam] of our Spirit ) is a bit of the Divine world of the

spirit, which we carry within us in this lower world, giving us life. In

virtually every spiritual tradition, the breath or air symbolizes the

spirit, and even in English, words such as ‘inspire’, ‘respire’ allude

to this fact. When scuba diving, your breath becomes tangible, and

you see it rise to the surface in bubbles. Each breath becomes like a

prayer rising back up to the Divine, from whence it came. Breath is

spirit, it is not of this world. For this reason, many spiritual traditions

emphasize meditating upon and controlling the breath, or praying

with each breath, as a means of integrating body, soul and spirit,

and raising the former to a fuller state of being/consciousness. Scuba

divers often speak of the meditative or even spiritual qualities of

their dives, and from my own experience, this is due in no small part

to the focus on the breath that diving engenders. Our every breath is

a prayer, coming from and returning to the Divine; and exercises like

meditation, and even scuba diving, can help make us aware of this

fact. Our breaths, our lives in this world, are a precious, and finite,

gift. Watching the bubbles rise from my mouth and from other divers,

I was struck that this must be somewhat how our invocations (dhikr )

appear in the imaginal world, rising up to rejoin their substance in

the Divine empyrean.

When scuba diving, you try to achieve neutral buoyancy by

balancing your weight with the air in your vest— that is, you want to

be able to float at the same depth without rising or falling. The test for

neutral buoyancy is to breathe in and breathe out. When you breathe

in, your lungs expand with air, and you rise. When you breathe out,

your lungs contract and you sink. You can also sink by contracting

your body (curling up in a ball), and rise by expanding it (going spread-

eagle). As you swim on a dive, you are constantly breathing in and out,

and thus expanding and contracting, and thus rising and falling. This

is similar to the phases of contraction and expansion one experiences

on the spiritual path. When one considers the role of breathing in

this process, a number of symbolic permutations emerge; but for the

sake of space, I will only explore two. In exhaling, we contract and

empty ourselves by giving of our breath, just as in performing prayer

or invocation (dhikr) we give of ourselves, emptying ( faqr) ourselves

and our souls of all but God. As a result, we sink deeper into the sea

of the Real. One could easily invert the symbolism and take sipping

air to be like drinking the wine of remembrance (dhikr) of the Divine

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13. R. A. Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jaláluddin Rúmí, 8 vols (London: Luzac & Co.,

1925-40), iii.349–53.

14. Martin Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century (repr. Aligarh: Premier Publish-

ing Company, 1993), p. 209.

Beloved, increasing the empty space ( faqr) within us, making us rise

out of illusion towards the Real.

Not only does breathing affect your buoyancy, but the air that

you breathe and that fills your vest is compressed as you go to lower

depths due to the increased pressure, and expands as you ascend.

When descending, you feel this pressure in your ears, your head, and

even sometimes in your lungs. A spiritual descent, or fall, is also often

accompanied by a feeling of contraction, as Rumi notes:

When you have neglected a part of your orisons in the Way,

there comes over you a painful and hot feeling of contraction...

the (spiritual) contractions (which occur) in (the case of) sins affect

(only) the heart;

after death (these) contractions become (actual) chains . . ..13

Inversely, as you rise, air expands in your vest and lungs, making you

rise faster. Any longtime traveler on a spiritual path has experienced

a similar sense of acceleration or snowballing of spiritual progress,

sometimes accompanied by a feeling of expansion. But just as ascending

through the water too quickly can cause your lungs to rupture,

attempts to progress too quickly spiritually can cause imbalances and

ruptures in the soul. As the Algerian Sufi Shaykh Ahmad al-cAlawi once

told a disciple who complained of a lack of illumination after years of

practice, ‘If you could make in one moment all the spiritual progress

you have gradually made in these ten years, it would cause a mortal

rupture in your soul.’14 Ascending too quickly can also cause the bends:

a condition in which gasses in the joints and other regions of the body

expand as they are depressurized, causing intense pain.

On the other hand, descending too quickly can cause nitrogen

narcosis, or ‘the rapture of the deep’, in which you can become drunk,

disorientated, giddy, or anxious as a result of inhaling air so pressurized

that it dissolves into the nerve membranes. Needless to say, this can

be very dangerous, as it can make ordinary things appear threatening,

and dangerous things seem safe. Similarly, the world of phenomena

can easily intoxicate us, making us unstable, anxious, giddy and

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unable to distinguish right from wrong, the safe from the dangerous.

Conversely, taking the sea as a symbol of the heart, the ‘rapture of the

deep’ can be likened to the unbalanced rapture certain aspirants feel

when diving into the world of the spirit. This spiritual rapture ( jadhb)

can be dangerous, and can lead to a kind of madness if balance is

not restored. Whatever perspective one takes on the symbolism of the

‘rapture of the deep’, the solution is the same: ascend a little bit and

stay there until you sober up and regain your bearings.

We usually think of the spiritually enraptured (majdhubin or ‘holy

madmen’) as being ‘somewhat out of it’, but rather it is we so-called

‘normal’ or ordinary people who are ‘somewhat out of’ the real world,

immersed in the phenomena of the world of appearances. In being

immersed in appearances, we are absent from our true selves, whereas

those in the grips of spiritual ecstasy are absent from appearances and

present with their true Self. The Sufi tradition emphasizes that the

ideal is to be present with the Real both in Itself/our true Self, as well

as in its illusory appearances.

This balance is symbolized in scuba diving by neutral buoyancy,

simply swimming in a straight line while breathing. Because of the

expansion and contraction of air, this is actually quite a challenge at

first, and is one of the marks of an experienced diver. It is easy to drift

up or down, and the compression and expansion of air can accelerate

this drift or make new divers overcompensate in the one or the other

direction. Similarly, staying on ‘the straight path’ in spiritual wayfaring

is not an easy feat, as slight deviations can easily lead to extremes

in one direction or overcompensation in the other. Staying on the

straight path requires constant small corrections, and is the mark of

an experienced spiritual traveler, swimming between ‘the bends’ and

‘the rapture of the deep’, between the One and the many, the Inward

and the Outward, being enraptured by the Real and being dazzled by

its appearances.

When diving, the ‘rapture of the deep’ can sometimes be hard

to notice since communication on a dive is quite challenging: it is

usually limited to hand signals and gestures, since our speaking and

hearing faculties were designed to work in air. Similarly, our ability to

communicate with one another in this world is limited by time, space,

and our different languages, but this is not the case in the communion

of the spirit. As Rumi writes,

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15. Nicholson, The Mathnawí, i.1206–8.

16. ‘According to Mulla Sadra, all the various stages of the development of the soul

are latent or potential within the original substance of the human sperm. Through the

process of transubstantial motion, the soul traverses through the various levels or degrees

of being until it finally attains complete independence of all matter and potentiality

and is capable of enjoying immortal life. Thus for Mulla Sadra, although the human

soul is brought into being with the body, it possesses the spiritual subsistence which

through the process of transubstantial motion enables it to attain a level of being which

is completely independent of the body.’ (Zailan Morris, ‘Mulla Sadra on the Human Soul

and its Becoming’, Transcendent Philosophy 11 [December 2010] 21–36 [at p. 23]).

There are many Hindus and Turks with the same tongue,

And oh, many a pair of Turks, strangers to each other.

Hence the tongue of intimacy is something else,

It is better to be of one heart than of one tongue.

Without speech, without oath, without register,

A hundred thousand interpreters from the heart arise.15

Scuba diving contains most of the same symbolism as snorkeling,

but it represents a further degree of involvement in this realm. Most

people, especially when wearing a wet suit, are naturally buoyant

in seawater, and so it takes some weight to enable them to remain

submerged. For some, the tank is enough, but especially for deeper

dives, you often have to add weights to your vest in order to explore

the depths of the ocean. If you drop your weights on a dive, you will

begin to rise faster and faster, as the air in your vest expands as the

pressure decreases, until you pop up at the surface. Taking the sea to

represent this world, this natural buoyancy and expansion represent

the tendency of all things, but especially man, to return to the Divine,

the natural perpetual ascent of all existence. This ‘unbearable lightness

of being’ is known in Islamic philosophy as transubstantial motion,

harakat al-jawhariyyah: the tendency of being, especially the human

substance, to increase in intensity by actualizing all of its various

potentialities.16 Just as you and your air expand as you rise to the

surface, so the soul, the human substance, ‘expands’ by actualizing its

latent potentialities along its return to Pure Being.

Seen from another perspective, however, this buoyancy represents

the centrifugal tendencies of our soul that we each encounter on a

daily basis. When snorkeling, most people have to fight to get to the

bottom, and if they relax, they will float to the top. Similarly, it takes

great effort for most people to remain centered, to reach to their own

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hearts and stay there. There are the fortunate few who naturally ‘sink’

more than others, and, continuing to take the depths of the sea as a

symbol of depths of the soul, the heart, there are those who naturally

remain ‘in their hearts’. The scuba gear, however, enables virtually

anyone to sink to explore the depths, just as the initiation, doctrines,

and practices of spiritual traditions allow virtually anyone to overcome

the dispersive, centrifugal forces of their souls and discover his or her

heart-center.

Taking the ocean to represent the world of the unseen, the scuba

apparatus is that which allows one to safely explore this world, namely

initiation. The highly pressurized air in the tank is like the initiatic

power or wilayah which makes spiritual wayfaring possible. The

pressure is so intense in the tank that the mouthpiece from which

you breathe has a regulator, which steps down the pressure, allowing

you to breathe normally instead of being blown away. Similarly the

spiritual power of wilayah is almost always transmitted via the founder

of a tradition, and from him, through his representatives to the

disciple. These intermediaries channel the Divine Grace that allows

their disciples to journey in the world of the spirit; and Sufi lore (and

that of many other spiritual traditions) is full of stories of shaykhs

(spiritual masters) through whom this power flowed so powerfully at

one time or another that it killed their disciples or even those who

happened to look at them.

Unsurprisingly, the deeper you go in the ocean, the greater the

pressure, and the more difficult and involved the process of diving

becomes. Deep dives are akin to mountain climbing: your body

requires time to adjust to the different stages and levels of depth, and

what is fine 10 meters under, can be fatal at 100 meters. Similarly, each

of the different stages and stations of the spiritual path needs to be

mastered before progressing to the next, and as the saying goes, ‘the

good deeds of the novice are the lapses of the advanced’. In diving,

as in mountain climbing and spiritual wayfaring, the deeper/higher/

farther one goes, the greater the stakes.

Due to these and other dangers, uncertified divers must always dive

with a dive master (a degree of certification requiring 100 dives), and

can only be certified by a dive instructor, which is an even higher

degree of certification requiring more experience. Similarly, most

spiritual aspirants can only safely explore the unseen world under the

supervision of a spiritual master or one of his or her representatives.

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17. Verse by the author.

Dive instructors are allowed to train and certify new divers, while dive

masters can only lead other certified divers on dives. This hierarchy

is quite similar to that of many spiritual orders, as the enterprises in

which they are engaged require experience and can be dangerous.

This is quite unlike snorkeling, which requires no certification.

Continuing to take the ocean as a symbol of the unseen, snorkeling

is akin to reading spiritual books, or practicing the basic rudiments of

a tradition, while scuba diving is more like being a serious spiritual

traveler. The things you observe from a distance while snorkeling, you

encounter, face-to-face, while scuba diving. On my first set of dives, I

saw several stingrays at eye-level, as well as turtles, jellyfish, fire coral,

and a large nurse shark. I swam with schools of fish that circled above,

below, and on all sides of me. This experience of immersion can only

be described faintly, and as the epigraph from Hafez indicates, those

who remain on the surface can never know what it is like to be in the

deep blue.

Who knew that beauty’s bounties know no bounds of shape or hue?

Who knew so many colours lay buried beneath the blue?

Who knew why the ocean sighs and seethes in its torment?

I do, I know the reason: It can’t get enough of you.17

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