Reasoning Toward the Unity of All Being

2015-01-03

Real reasoning with ourselves to the point of transformation is not easy. Generally we have to give up long standing but unexamined ways of understanding our thoughts, feelings and actions. To follow where real reasoning leads requires a ruthless intensity, courage, honesty with oneself, and a single minded determination to not stop until the end.

That said, here is a ‘relatively’ easy place to start. We can reason with ourselves toward understanding the unity of all being.

One line of reasoning toward this proceeds as follows…

I have a finger. Actually I have many fingers. However, if one of my fingers gets cut off, it’s no longer a finger, even though I might still call it a finger. Why is it no longer a finger? If I reason with myself I can clearly see that one of the central characteristics of a finger is that a finger is attached to a hand.  If it’s cut off, it’s simply a lump of flesh and bones that used to be a finger.

So a finger is only a finger if it’s attached to a hand. Continuing this line of reasoning I see that a hand is only a hand if it is attached to an arm. And that arm is only an arm if it’s attached to a shoulder. And that shoulder…

Although slightly harder to see, I also discover that a shoulder without an arm is not really a shoulder. An arm without a hand is not really an arm, and a hand without fingers is not really a hand, even if we continue to use these terms out of habit.

So does this reasoning come to a stop when I get to the whole human body? Hardly! A human body is only a human body by virtue of being connected to the genetic pattern of the entire human race and inhabited by some form of human consciousness. That genetic history and development of consciousness took place over millions of years on a planet energized by a sun circling a galaxy in a vast universe. If the universe, or the galaxy, or the sun, or the planet was not here… I wouldn’t be here either.

So does my reasoning stop at the edge of the universe? As we said earlier… “Hardly”. I now have to reason with the implications of what I have just understood. 

Clearly if I cut off my arm I would harm my hand and fingers going down the chain of being, and I would harm my body going up the chain of being. Continuing this line of reasoning I can clearly see that if I destroyed my body, or the human race, or this planet, or the sun… I would be harming myself.

When I apply this same kind of reasoning forward and backward in time and extend it to my family, my community, my society, all life on earth and beyond, I can clearly reason with myself that “myself” is not limited to a particular human body existing at a particular moment in history. On the contrary, my reasoning leads me to the inescapable conclusion that I am directly connected to everything. In fact, I begin to understand that I am not a separate part connected to other separate parts the way I used to think of myself. Rather I see that “myself” and everything else are one and the same thing. Reasoning in this way, the apparent multiplicity of separation is absorbed in the unity of being. And I further see that I am that unity of all being. Simply put… “I AM”.

One obvious outcome (among many) to reasoning in this way is the realization that to harm anything is to harm myself. To help anyone or anything is also to help myself. I’ll know when this line of reasoning has come to its inevitable ‘end’ when I look around and all I see is me.

Now it may feel like we’ve gone the long way around the barn to get here. But in truth, it may take several more trips for all of this to really sink in.  When it does, it will be transformative.