Explicating Unity

I’m sure you have heard the aphorism that everything is one, but you may not have come across a complete description for how it must be. So here goes nothing.

If something is to be a separate entity, it cannot possibly interact with anything else, even in theory. If it did it would have to be part of a larger encompassing reality. Much like how a train has many parts and each part is the train. All parts interact to compose the train. If we were to take apart the train, then the pieces would compose the scrapheap and the scrapheap would compose the earth and so on. What composes what and where such distinctions lie is something the mind superimposes.

Imagine if your nerve endings extended from your feet and into the floor. You would feel the floor, but whether you feel it or not doesn’t automatically imply separation. Feeling is an arbitrary metric to choose. The mind is only apparently partitioned from the world from its imagined position. Due to its limited capacity not all dimensions of experience are apparent to it at once, but that doesn’t mean that what is “outside” is distinct. Viewing the world through binoculars does not split or limit the world. It only appears so  to a self-defined survival machine convinced that what’s “inside” must survive. Really, what is inside and outside is an arbitrary distinction. Just because “your” body appears in consciousness more often than other bodies does not mean it is more “you”. What then is the “you” that judges so?

A substantial portion of brain activity centres on narrowing down experience to single out phenomena from the background. If you were driving and the mind didn’t scan and filter out extraneous movements, you would have difficulty getting home. The trouble begins when the mind creates useful distinctions but forgets it was itself that made them. It subsequently thinks the things it has defined are existent in terms of its own definitions; and its final trick is to apply its definitions to itself, thereby creating itself as the definer. The mind arises when a defining process falsely defines itself as an entity. In our culture, we are conditioned from a young age so it goes on automatically in the background; hence you feel separate without knowing anything else (like a fish in water). The rest of life is spent shoring up the minds imagined depiction of itself, therefore any attempt to unravel it is seen as a threat. As you may realise, it will invent the logic required to defend itself. Even if directed on a spiritual path it will still be trying to see unity according to its own definitions; wondering why it doesn’t work. Nevertheless, the contracted energy can dissipate.

Following this simple fact to its logical conclusion brings about the radical understanding; Perception cannot be separate from what perceives, meaning that the reality of “objects” is perception. There is nothing causally responsible for making “your” hand appear, if there is, it’s not separate from perception. Try looking at “your” hand right now with this in mind. Isn't one who is looking is also a thought?

Even if we were to imagine a truly distinct entity. It would have to be distinct from something else to be known as distinct. That something else would also have to be a completely enclosed reality unto itself to maintain the distinctness of both entities. However for both entities to be separate in some definable capacity, they would both have to float within a larger dimension which would need to impose, by its nature, laws preventing the interaction of the two entities. These laws would then be actively enforcing separation between the entities and thereby interacting with them. As such the appearance of separation is collapsed. We could say that their separation depends on the space between them, therefore they are one with the space that gives rise to both. This space must be nothingness since it must be empty for anything to be able to occupy or dis-occupy it.

The same understanding can collapse all apparent dualities present in mind and language. It also makes clear why reality can't be anything less than infinite. Anything finite would have to sit within a larger structure which imposes its apparent finitude.