A big theme in spirituality: we’re all one! No matter what the flavor of spiritual discussion, you’ll bump into something about oneness. And you know, if you are going to believe in something, you might as well believe in oneness. It’s a pretty good concept, as concepts go.
But if we are all one, then who are you? I mean that literally. If there is just The One, as in One Spirit or One Consciousness, no second, no sense of two-ness (that’s what nonduality means, by the way), then is there any sense in which I can talk about a “you” that is not me?
I do see other bodies walking around the world. I talk to other bodies. I have interactions with other bodies. But who is the “you” with whom I am interacting? If there is only One, then you are me. Your consciousness is my consciousness. Your Self is my Self. We are the same. I can even go so far as to say that your thoughts arise from the same place mine do, your body arises from the same place mine does, everything about “you” is the same as “me.” Whatever it is that I am, you are, too.
One means One. I like to call this “radical oneness.” It isn’t a bunch of individuals joined in some collective consciousness or collective state. We aren’t all one in just some special sense. We are One. Same, same, same.
The only question that really matters, then, is if you know this Oneness, through and through, bones to bones. Not think it. Not believe it. But know it. Do you? If not, keep going. You will. It is inevitable because it is the Truth.
Namaste.
P.S. I guess a blog without comments isn’t much of a blog. 
Feel free to leave your comments below.
This is radical, is it? Hmmm…..
Okay, no, it isn’t really radical. But compared to most people’s concepts of Oneness, I would say it is out there on the edge of their comfort zone. N’est-ce pas?
Oh, yes, I got it when I read it. Which is why I included the winky face. But, pfft, who cares about what “most people” (or rather, “most egos”) think?
. . . i think it, i believe it, but i don’t know it yet, not in my bones, not enough to no longer see The Other . . . further and all that, yes . . . thanks tom, for continuing to blog
Hi Tom, very nice blog you’ve got… and I totally agree that blogs without comments isn’t much of a blog
Anyway, who are you? You are me. We are one, all-inclusive, we are everything and everynothing. We are Consciousness experiencing Itself through infinite perspectives
I myself have a recent post about this one, you may check here:
http://thesoulsanctuary.us/2010/04/life-consciousness/
and there is also a draft that will be posted days ahead regarding “who am I”. Feel free to check
Thanks for sharing, Tom
I thing as long as we have different thoughts, points of view, and beliefs we are not one. I believe that every one is different and special.
thanks for opening the comments, yeah what is a blog w/o comments.
Sometimes I feel the Other is an illusion reflecting what I need to learn on my path and then other times I feel separate.
Isn’t the dream metaphor even more radical? If the whole thing is just a dream/movie created by the power of the Self’s imagination, ha, sure, everything is yours and nothing is true. Oneness probably would be easier to understand in this light.
See, this is where the whole Oneness concept breaks down for me. I understand it intellectually, I’ve even had moments of feeling it viscerally (briefly), but the truth is that we have experiences with the Other every day. Other people aren’t the same as me. They have different reactions than I do, they take up different space than I do, one of them stole my wallet the other day and charged up a bunch of stuff on my credit cards, which is why I was standing in line at the DMV this morning at 7:45. This is where I suspect Oneness is sort of a ‘mental game’ where we try to convince ourselves that it’s true by suspending what our senses tell us every minute. But, if course, that’s not a popular or acceptable thing to say around hard-core “spiritual seekers”
Jason, I don’t think Oneness is ever easy to understand until and unless you’ve really experienced. The best you can do before that is try to wrap your head around it, and that can make it easier when and if the knowingness actually comes, but, really, it’s not something you understand in the usual sense. It’s something you grok because some part of your everyday ego-self has been moved in such a way that you can see it.
Hi Tom!
First, you might be amused by this – something I posted a couple of days ago. The key part:
“he who declares ‘All this is Brahman’ to one who is ignorant or half-awakened, goes to hell.”
(laughs) In other words, expounding on Oneness can be trouble. The rest of the post and my comments are at:
http://in2deep.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/ooops/
It is a fascinating topic to explore as it’s not something the mind can really get. New Jersey above suggests different thoughts indicate lack of oneness. But that’s not it either. Diversity is contained within unity.
You mention bodies for example. In the process of unification, there is a stage when we see all of our history as only in the present moment. It’s all right now. Then, all people are seen as one person concurrently*. Then all people as aspects of the one cosmic body. The one body that is mirrored by all individual bodies. Then that I am that cosmic being. And so on.
As you say, oneness is not togetherness. Oneness contains diversity but no aspect of the apparent diversity is separate from the one. So the oneness is greater than all everything. If you find the size of the universe hard to grok, oneness is more so.
This is why most people come to it in stages. They discover an internal unity of being. Then an external unity of diversity. Then that both unity’s are one. Or some variation of this.
* The Bhagavad Gita Chapter 11 describes an example of this. Arjuna finds it pretty unsettling
@ Jason
Actually, oneness is greater than that. The world as Maya/Dream/illusion is a stage where we disengage our identification with perception of the world. This allows us to shift to who we are within.
Much more radical when we see who is the dreamer. And even more so when we discover what the dream is within. What the dream is made of.
hello all,
@ Davidya
Thank you Davidya for saying that diversity is contained within unity. It helps me a lot.
@ Tom
@ Davidya
When you awakened people, talk about oneness, we not-awakened people may come to think that our body-mind-person has to be thrown away, denied, escaped from.
this is dangerous.
it seems to me that awakened people talk so much about unity, unidentification from the mind and so on, that you stop seeing a human being in all its facets. aspects, and that you forget to what you are talking. And/or that I forget who i am at the moment.
so talking to a not-awakened person, it is important to remember where he is right now, and talking to that.
this is i think also the problem of language.
saying “we are all one” is not correct and is leading to confusion and even greater suffering (from personal experience).
So because we humans are using language, please make an effort to be more precise.
let’s analyze it.
We = you and me and the others
You = the body-mind-person package you are, called Tom
Me = the body-mind-person package i am, called Adrian
the others = the body-mind-person packages they are, called Jack and Nick
Do you accept this definition ?
If you didn’t, you wouldn’t send US a post on your blog. You wouldn’t try to make US see the truth that YOU have seen(thank you for that). So on that level there is a difference. there is separation between me and you (given the definition above). You have seen the truth and i don’t.
You are awakened and i’m not. I wouldn’t be writing this otherwise.
Let’s continue the analysis:
we, you, me, the others: defined above. OK. Done.
Next:
Are all one: STOP.
If the above definition of we, you, me and the others is accepted, you cannot say that you and me are one, because the definition itself meant the individual-body-mind package. And two individual-body-mind packages are not one. on that level. they are different. and this is the level we not-awakened people are living in. so please talk to us in our level.
for the individual-body-mind package which is identified to itself, we are all one is totally incorrect. in other words, from the point of view of the individual-body-mind package, the other one is an other one.
this i think is acceptable given the below prooves:
- do you know what i am thinkihng ? I know it.
also I don’t know what you are thinking. on that level we are different and not one.
- when I hurt my body, I am the one experiencing it. not YOU. if I fall down from my chair, you will not say ouch.
because i will say ouch and not you, it doesn’t make sense to me that we are one.
so on a language level, saying we are all one is not correct. because this is confusion of two different levels of existence.
the relative and the absolute. they are just different layers of reality, and each layer has its own definitions and works well as long as we don’t take elements of it and try to apply them to another layer.
so when you Tom, are writing on a plastic keyboard in the U.S., and we are using the internet, and physical matter to communicate, and technology, and your post is coming all the way to europe and me Adrian is reading it and we are far away from each other, don’t come to tell me we are one.
a little more precision would make thousands of people suffer less:
“We are all one, at some level.” is totally OK for me and doesn’t lead me to confusion.
“We are all one, from some point of view”, is also OK.
or even “There is oneness” is OK.
but “we”, me adrian and you tom are one. No.
i’m laughing, i stop, please comment.
thank you
Lots of good comments!
@Jason & Davidya: I enjoy the dream/movie metaphor. But it only really works if you include in the metaphor that the one watching the movie is also the movie screen, the projector, the light shining throught the film, the film, the director, the cast, the characters, etc. And of course, none of it is really it, either. All metaphors unfortunately break down.
@Melissa: You are pointing out what is the central paradox of spirituality. Essentially, others SEEM to be OTHERS. You certainly do not appear to be me. And yet, when awakening happens, you know that others are NOT others but in fact exactly the same as YOU. No difference, no separation, no distinction. No matter how apparent it is to my body’s eyes, separation still isn’t true. Another way to say this would be to note: I am nothingness, you are nothingness. How can nothingness not be anything but nothingness?
@CaterpillarWoman: I love the word GROK. That about sums it up. If you’ve every read A Stranger in a Strange Land (the source of the word grok), then you get how incredibly deep this must go before one groks something. And this is a grok situation for sure.
@Davidya: I’m pretty certain I’m going to hell. At least, that’s what they say around here in the Ozarks.
You point out the paradoxes involved, too. Diversity arises out of unity is another way of saying it.
@Adrian: Okay, let me see if I can help. The problem, you see, is that this whole “we, you, me, other” thing is NOT TRUE. I know it APPEARS to be true, but it isn’t. While there appears to be a body called Adrian and a body called Tom having an interaction via writing on a blog, that isn’t what is really happening. You see, the One Consciousness is extending itself into form as a body called Adrian having an interaction with a body called Tom. But the real key here is: who is Tom? Who is Adrian? You see, there is no Adrian, no Tom. Just the One doing it’s little game of pretending to be form.
You see, you can’t convince me I’m Tom interacting with Adrian. There is no Tom or Adrian!! Individual body-mind packages are not what I am or what you are or what this computer is or a rock is or what anything is.
There is no point of view or level or anything from which we are all one. There is no we, there is no level, there is no point from which to view any of this. It is just the simple case that there is nothing but One.
I personally never use the expression “we are all one.” However, many, many others do, and that is why I used it in this article. There isn’t a “we” to be all one! I much prefer to say, “There is Oneness” or “Oneness Is.” That pretty much sums it up.
But I’m sorry to inform you: whatever that means, “Oneness Is,” you are THAT very Oneness. And so, I am having a discussion with myself. Literally. And I’m also having a conversation with No One. Literally. And neither. And both. I know, it is paradoxical. And that is just the way of it. I hope that helps.
@Adrian
Perhaps I can add something to this which is suggested in 2 of my comments.
You said “When you awakened people, talk about oneness, we not-awakened people may come to think that our body-mind-person has to be thrown away, denied, escaped from.”
Not at all. The key thing to understand about the process is not that the body-mind-person ends. It’s that our relationship with it changes completely. Several times. It continues but who we see ourselves to be shifts. We shift from being a me to being itself. And then that being is found to be in everything and we realize i am That, there is only oneness.
You’ll have to take our word that this is a lot better. For the body-mind-person too.
We are all different. We have similar experiences, more or less, similar wants and needs, but we are all different. We are all individuals. It is an obvious and not so difficult concept to comprehend. Why make something so simple into something else that is so convoluted?
I hope one day I can feel it
I know is true, but my ego still doesn’t let me feel it. One day, I’m sure.
@Aristocrates You know, I can see exactly where you are coming from. The world sure appears to be filled with differences. I see a tree, a flower, a house, a person, you name it, all appearing to be completely different. And yet…. none of them are different. I look and see what appear to be individuals, and yet, there are no individuals. The convoluted thing to me is this insistence that we are all separate and individual when it just isn’t so.
Thank you Tom and Davidya
@Tom (Davidya please also comment)
Aristocrates says we’re all different and you say flower, house, person, tree, are not different.
On what are they not different ? I’m not sure about my english here, again:
Me and Aristocrates are not different on the fact we are both humans.
So, on what are trees, houses and persons, not different ?
Would you accept that they and we are different on the form?
If they weren’t different, then how would we understand what you mean when you say “flower” ? or “house” ?
We obviously understand these two things as different things. Because, i think, we have put different labels/names on different form shapes.
So would you accept that a flower and a house, me and Aristocrates, are different on form and not different on essence ?
Thank you and please reply to all questions so i can point where exactly it stucks
A.
Adrian – I think you get the idea. Everything is different on the level of form. We could say on the surface there seems to be individual everything. But at “essence”, everything is the same.
This is far more profound that a conceptual idea. It is the direct experience. An experience where the oneness is more dominant and then is found to contain all the diversity or differences. The differences are seen to be like waves on the ocean. Different waves but never separate from the ocean. One thing seen many ways.
This discovery typically happens in stages. First a realization of who we are within. Then a deeper perception of how our world comes to be. Then the realization that who we are within is everything out there too. That progresses in depth and completeness until everything: past and future, here and there, memories, everything gradually becomes seen as part of the one.
Flower and house are still there. But they are seen to be that which you are as well. When I and you and this and that are all seen to be the same thing, you know it is one.
Hopefully my English is clear enough for you. Just remember – this is beyond concepts. Mind cannot really grasp what it has not experienced. Words just point at something else.
@Davidya
Thank you for these pointers to the truth.
I guess that ùmy “problem”-raction comes from the fact that, we, not awakened people, we know separation as something granted, we think on the basis of separation, we function on the basis of separation etc.
So, when you awakened people try to help us to see the truth, by saying that :
“I see a tree, a flower, a house, a person, you name it, all appearing to be completely different. And yet…. none of them are different.”
without adding “at esssence”, we kind of become crazy.
Because we try to get the idea of, me (as separate) and the other (as separate) are one. This logic is by itself wrong because it is based on the separation. Thus, trying to make a kind of “togetherness” out of two separate things (as you mention).
While if you are clear in your talks etc, and say “we are same AT ESSENCE”, it is a better pointer. For me
I get frustrated of hearing these words because they don’t seem to help.
Thank you though, because that are maybe helping on a deeper level, and i think i’m in fact reacting to that. Thank you
@Adrian
This is one of the reasons I talk about process. How you get there from here. For most of us, there is a journey from the world as separate objects into a world of one. Not one step but a series of steps and several major shifts in our sense of what’s real.
As I mention, what I spoke about is not a conceptual idea. It is our direct experience and sense of being. Until it is the experience, it is outside the mind so the mind cannot grasp it. But because it is who we are, there can be that sense of reminding, even if the mind is balking at the idea of it.
At one point, there can be a sense of “at essence”. We begin to get a sense of underlying oneness. This gradually becomes more of a direct experience than a sense. And then it is found right on the surface. It is the dominant truth. Not only essence but right in the touch and taste.
Again, it can seem like a wild out there idea, but its actually quite ordinary and normal once it becomes real to you. Don’t worry about “getting it”. This is more about allowing it to unfold. Allowing for the possibility you could be everything.
@Davidya
Thank you
Excellent!
If We Are All One, Then Who the Hell Are You?
This question does not arise when one is sleeping -”dreamless sleep” (such a state does exist) or operating with that oneness in the real sense in the waking state – identification state.
If this question is occuring or bothering, one has only understood, one has not beconme that yet – although it is ones very own essential state.
Everything is one, All is Brahman, I am that – these are mere words and thoughts. When even these thought ceases to be – pure awareness opeartes naturally. I different from you ceases to be. In pure awareness state there is no identification yet things will be happening. Like sun shing, moon reflecting, Water flowing, Air blowing…