On the night the storm broke, the young seeker Sudhanva could not sleep.

He had come to the seashore ashram of the old teacher Varuni to learn the final secret — how the one Self could possibly be all these many, many things. The world was so full of separate creatures: fishermen and herons and crabs, kings and beggars, his stern teacher and his own restless heart. How could all of that be one?

Unable to rest, Sudhanva walked down to the shore. The sea was wild that night, heaving under a sky scrubbed of clouds, every star burning. Wave after wave rose up, curled, and crashed white upon the sand.

Old Varuni was already there, a still shape against the stars.

"Count the waves for me," the teacher said without turning.

Sudhanva tried. "One — there. Two. Three —" but already the first had sunk back and a fourth had risen, and a fifth, and twenty more, faster than he could name them. "I cannot, master. There are too many. They keep coming and going."

"How many oceans are there?"

Sudhanva looked out at the heaving dark water, stretching to the edge of the world. "One," he said. "Just one sea."

"And the waves?"

"Countless."

"Where do the countless waves come from?"

"From the one sea."

"And where do they go when they fall?"

Sudhanva watched a great wave climb, hang shining for a heartbeat, and pour itself back into the dark. "Back into the one sea," he whispered.

Varuni turned to him at last, his eyes catching the starlight. "Each wave rises up separate. Each has its own shape, its own crest, its own moment. Each could say, 'I am I, and that other wave is not me.' And yet — there was never anything there but the one sea, lifting itself for a little while into many shapes."

Sudhanva felt something open in his chest, wide as the water.

"Every being you have ever met," said the teacher, "every fisherman, every heron, every king and beggar — every separate one of them rises from a single Self and sinks back into it. See the many resting in the One, see them all spreading out from That alone, and in that very seeing you become Brahman, boundless as this sea."

They stood together until dawn, watching the one ocean make its countless waves, and Sudhanva never again felt quite so alone.