On Oneness - Part 1

The most difficult thing as a student of Vedanta is that, it asks the us to walk the talk...and the talk itself is so lofty and high that sometimes, it almost makes me whish that I didn't have this knowledge, so that I could have continued living as I was.

The one thing that kind of blew my mind when I finally understood and comprehended is the vision of oneness. It is so simple and evident that it made me smack my forehead for missing something so obvious that was right in front of my eyes. Before I write about what is the difficulty in this, let me quickly run through what this oneness is all about.

I, with my limited understanding, come to completely believe and live with the conviction that I am this body. I + body gives raise to the feelings of me and mine -My house, my clothes, my father, my children, my husband, my money and so on. Life, as we know it revolves around this "I". It is this "I" that makes us believe that we are separate entities. Thus, as an "Individual", we live this life within a small boundary that is clearly demarcated by our skins. 

Now, if we only observe a little keenly, we know that the life principle in us is the same life principle in everyone and everything else too.

How?

If we consider this whole universe for that matter, it is evident that it has been created by a single force of creation / supreme intelligence / God / Highest Power or whatever else we choose to call it as. It cannot be any other way. It is not like God X says I will take care of the western half of the universe, God Y takes care of the east. On earth, it is funny to even imagine that Jesus being in charge only for the creation of the Christian population, Allah minting out Muslim babies and Hindu Gods fighting amongst themselves as to who will create whom among the Hindu population.

So, going by this logic, we all come from the same source. This "we" includes not only the humans, but everything around us -the trees, the insects, the river, the stone - even the irritating relatives, the stupid boss, the nasty neighbors and the serial rapist. Everyone and everything come from the same source. 

This life principle or the piece of the creator is present equally in all of us. A criminal has no less amount of the life principle in him as against a saint. A stone has no lesser life principle in it than a dog. 

Now, extending this inference, if we are all made by and of the same life principle (Let us call it creator because it is easier to type), then we are but different expressions of the same creator. And it is not like the creator has dusted her hands off and walked away after creating. She continues to be in the creation - as the life of the creation itself.

So, if we strip away all the layers -the body, mind and intellect through which we come to identify ourselves as separate, non-connected individuals, then all that remains is the creator herself (I am using a female gender because God is tired of being portrayed as male all the time, when in fact, the life principle cannot have a gender).

At this most basic and also the most supreme level, we are all the same. There is only ONE. This, by extension, implies that WE ARE ALL ONE! Not in a poetic sense, but actually, we are one. The stars, the rivers, the trees, the animals, the insects, the birds, the black holes -anything and everything that we can think of - is just one. Definitely not SAME, but undeniably ONE.

Let us reflect some more on this with various examples & also try and understand the implications of this in our everyday lives in the next post.