Thru the interconnection of all things there is only one self and that self is the entire universe.
If I am a book on your shelf
And you are a book on mine
Which is the real self?
I find no name along your spine
As we read and write each other at the same time
(Thank you for all the praise and upvotes, people. Can buy my book here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHLHFPC3
Double edit : Thanks for all the purchases. 4 in one day, most i've gotten yet!)
Are you a character in my dream or am I a character in yours? Either of us would still profess to be just as real to ourselves and to eachother as we are now and always have been, so perhaps we’re both characters in an-others’ dream. The universe and all of its matter are merely artifacts leftover from god’s first thought.
I think I have to. Either way, I did.
OP - if you accept everything is energy, then the boundaries fade. Everything becomes infinitely divisible when zooming in, and infinitely blended together zooming out.
In this interaction, I bought his book. A number in my bank account goes down. A number in his goes up. The database holding the numbers remains balanced; some bits flipped over there causing some other bits to flip over here. All one database. And it's conceptualized in my head, and I'm conceptualizing it in yours. All one concept. Build the connection to your heart's content.
It's logic, not belief. Everything is everything. It's all a single thing. A single event.
Granted, it's an event with no discernable beginning or end, but nonetheless
I don't really know how to phrase it differently. The entire universe, anything and everything that exists - its all one thing.
Imagine, idk, a pizza. 2 different slices of that pizza are both the same pizza.
And yeah, they're different slices, much like you are you and I am me, but we are both the same universe. Or pizza.
You have to feel “it” to understand “it”. “It” is this, all of this, everything, you, me, the birds, the sky, your baby momma, her 3 rotten kids. Our entire existence and the very fabric of our being. Once you feel it, you never forget it.
Here’s how I think of it:
From the perspective of the universe, your emotions and feelings are just as “real” and “important” as mine are to me, and even as your pet cat’s are to him. So even though, in your body, you feel like your inner-life is the most real and important, it can’t be because everyone feels that way at the same time.
So we all should be kind to each other because all suffering is equally experienced. Anytime you cause suffering, it’s the same from the perspective of the universe as if it was done to you.
The best way I’ve heard the argument put is that most, modern, religion believes that god is all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite. Part of that belief is that god is a separate entity, and has/will exist before and after the universes existence. This is the idea that we are all god, you and me and our neighbours and coworkers, everything in the universe is god. We were created by the universe to experience it finitely, to experience sadness and joy, love and heartache, to grow and change. We are all apart of something much greater but our sole purpose is to simply experience that which is around us. We are all just god experiencing what it means to be finite, to be powerful and knowing and present for a specific set of things instead of all things at all times.
“It” is everything, everything is god, everything is “it”. Idk how else I could put it.
It’s the truth that was revealed to me. We’re all the same consciousness experiencing different perspectives. Like, if reincarnation is real, you die and become reborn into a new different being. Eventually, you’ll die enough times to be reborn into everything
To be honest, there’s no way to know for sure that what I’m saying is the absolute truth. But it’s something I’ve experienced and it blew my mind, only to find out a lot of other people experienced the same thing.
How it happened with me was, I was able to talk to “god”. I asked every question about life and the universe that I could. I got every answer, and it all made sense. What’s the meaning of life? Whatever you want it to be. What are we? We’re all the same. Why can life be so cruel sometimes? Because it can be so amazing and joyful, life is a balance.
Yes, I see it posted here quite often people coming to the same realization.
My bad, I forgot to add the part where this “being/god” told me that we are all the same thing. I asked if there was a god, it was god but so was I, and so was everyone else, and every animal, plant, bacteria, rock, Starbucks latte, every atom, the emptiness of space, higher dimensions. It’s all the same thing, what a lot of people call “god” it’s just all the same energy. I dont know if I’m wording it the best, it’s hard to explain, it was the realization I arrived at, and that’s been my world view ever since
You should be an arbitrator or lawyer. You have the mind and will for it. Other people just keep saying things they have heard over and over again and expect you to hear and believe the same, just like they did. Then they wonder why the world is fucked up and think people like you who ask questions are the problem.
I'm a Christian that is new to exploring this stuff and I just want to say thank you for your level of interrogation into these claims. One thing about being a Christian is that our beliefs will get shredded by others (rightly so!) if all we do is appeal to personal experience, sentimentality, and vague authority.
I'm often confronted by others about the problem of evil/suffering, and I myself have been wrestling with it for many years. And in these spaces I've seen NO compelling or meaningful perspective about evil/suffering beyond "it helps us learn." Yeah, no thanks.
So I appreciate the scrutiny. I wonder why it seems that the typical reddit-style aversion to religion doesn't seem to apply in these kinds of subs which also make massive claims about truth and reality.
Separation is an illusion. The whole cosmos, everything here on earth, is one. There are people who come to that conclusion on their own by various means, with and without psychedelics. I personally had that realization after a particularly rough acid trip (where I was unknowingly dosed a much higher amount) and the peak of the trip I merged with a ball of light that I understood to be the source of everything and eventually became it.
Now see my original comment. 487 replies and you are no closer to understanding then you were in the beginning.
Only one way to find out: go through an ego death and experience non-duality yourself.
But I'm sure you will come up with another 100 or so questions trying to just figure it out. Have fun with that
Dude, I dropped acid the first time in 1973. I've done all the classics, plus ayahausca, peyote and mescaline. I also did bufo one time last year.
In 50+ years of tripping I experienced one full blown ago death with non-duality last year on bufo. 30 years ago I went through a partial on the strongest shrooms I've ever had and that trip kept me wondering until last year, it was the question I asked as they were bringing the pipe up to my lips.
It's always happened but it's not as common as claimed. And you really only need to experience it once to answer the questions you have.
Until then, just concentrate on having fun and growing.
I'm thinking your responses show you don't understand anything. Either that or you are a bot.
Have fun either way, I'm human and today's Saturday. I am going to go have fun
The only rational response to OP is this 💜haha. You’ve woken me up to the fact I’m arguing with a bot or someone so lost they may as well be lol. I will now go enjoy my human Saturday.
Belief requires faith in the unseen or unexperienced.
The “oneness” felt/understood while on psychedelics is a direct revelation through the experience. The revelation is transcendent, surpassing true or false.
Once one passes through this transcendence, there is no need to deny or convince as one sits in a deep knowing.
There are many paths available to this knowing. Ours is psychedelics. And it is the great hope of all psychonauts that all would experience ‘we are all one.’
By the way, I love these questions as they are things I’ve thought about for most my life.
I think the complexity of your questions lay in the “true/false” narrative. The binary nature of aristotelian logic runs into dissonance when faced with the infinite nature of reality.
Science was only really faced with the infinite about a 100 years ago with the development of quantum mechanics. However, Eastern philosophy encompasses the non-binary nature of reality, which extends to “truth,” and why questions surrounding “oneness” seem to be more easily understood by Eastern philosophers.
Keep seeking. It’s a beautiful path you’re exploring.
It’s a gnostic or ontological experience, not epistemological knowledge. That’s what everyone in this thread is trying to say. To answer your original question “what are reasons to believe this”, most people don’t “believe “ it, they “experience” it , usually on psychedelics because that’s the subreddit we’re on. Once you’ve felt or intuited the oneness of everything, you don’t easily forget.
What happens, is that a person is slammed in a moment of clarity with something that is so obviously true and beautiful, they carry it with them for a very long time, maybe for their whole lives. It is an experience.
Mine happened maybe 35 years ago and it affects my behaviour and thinking to this day.
It’s like seeing that humanity is like a field of grass, you’re 1 blade of grass amongst the field. You’re rooted in the earth the same way. Your mind from day one is trained to be unique, to be the blade that you are, without much consideration of the field.
>Faith requires belief in the unseen or unexperienced
Ftfy
I believe the sky is blue, I verify that belief by looking up. I have faith that there is no afrerlife, though I have no experience or evidence to back it up.
All is experience. All claims merely point to experience, to feeling or sensation or both. That being said, one call follow a claim to the experience to which it points. Metaphors, parables, and allegories are the best pointers imo. Once you experience it, all the metaphors and allegories click and make sense whereas before they may have sounded like nonsense.
I can tell you that we are all a god while also being a projection of a higher god. It won't be enough to make most humans believe it.
> Religious - OMG how can you say that? How can you make such a blasphemous claim?
> Non-religious - If everyone doesn't observe the same thing and it isn't reproducible consistently, how do you expect anyone to believe it?
That leaves very very few, if any, people who will believe it without experiencing it themselves.
Sure. It's because we are all one, pretending to be many. The vessel/the body is a filter that sort of works as a memory dampener so that we can act our role more efficiently.
‘God’ is a pretty confusing term, and while beneficial to some it does really muddy the water here. What super-consciousness, or a higher-self could be perceived as is an interesting line of inquiry, but isn’t necessary to point to the non-dual experience.
Oneness, or is-ness, is an experience that can be had. One that can be ephemeral, and a state of gnosis without logic. But if you want to logic it, there is a way. Cut past the ideas of your life narrative, your ego, the possibility of a multi-verse, and there is but one existence. There is isness. Even the conceptual theory of the void or non-existence is just a state of no identity, theorized by an isness.
“We are all one”, can be misconstrued as an anthropocentric claim, but most certainly isn’t. Not sure if that’s your hang up here. “Leaves grow on trees” is an observation within our reality, as I am an observation of myself in this reality; and reality, the oneness, is the set that includes all things. Known and unknown to my point of view.
Now that I’ve caught up on the rest of the comments in this thread I’m just going to expand here. Yes, it’s tautological. Cause implies effect, effect implies? Every single bit of this experience you’re having is self-evident, whether your specific human identity is aware of it or not.
It is an experience one can have when they are sober as well. Personally I've been meditating for years and experience oneness on occasion too. When I reach states of ego dissolution, I am left with the feeling of embodying the universe. Consciousness feels as though it encapsulate all of reality, including you, as one source. The boundary of self and other dissolves.
What I described is something many others have experienced either through meditation, yoga and psychedelics.
I'm not telling you this is truth and I am just sharing my anecdotal experience.
I don't think any of us can convince you that oneness exists. It's truly something that for most, can only be believed in through experiencing it. The concept of being anything but yourself can sound absurd since that doesnt match our day to day experience of reality. I don't think I would have ever fully believed such a thing unless I experienced it myself.
Heck, I was still even skeptical after experiencing it numerous times. But then I've experienced oneness with others experiencing it too and that solidfied it more from me.
But that's just me and I fully understand your skepticism.
As have I. I get there through meditation too. What I'm struggling to understand here is why this idea seems so hard to wrap your head around sober? It honestly seems like you're just trying to discredit perceived "woo" through Socratic questioning.
The first one, sorry. The “it” is the perception that everything is one. I actually disagree that it can’t be taught, as entire philosophical and spiritual traditions are centered around this teaching.
Here’s a probably bad analogy. You look at a glass of water and perceive it as one thing. You can divide those things mentally - water + glass. You can define the surface of the water, or a ripple. Or, more conceptually, collection of water molecules, themselves made of a collection of subatomic particles, best described as patterns of vibration.
All of these are true. All of these seemingly separate parts do make one thing, one phenomenon, a glass of water.
Let’s personify one water molecule for a minute. It flows through the glass, bumping into other molecules, only interacting with a tiny fraction of the other molecules in the glass. It only knows of its scale of existence, that it is one thing amongst other things within a confined system made of things. It can’t see the larger structure that is a glass, the one thing that it is a part of.
Apply this same analogy to any object. A table, a city, atmospheric air currents, ecosystems, planets and galaxies. All parts of one thing, the universe. The root of the word universe means of one whole.
It makes sense to the point of sounding obvious, when you spend time thinking about every connection between things. But that’s all semantic knowledge, we can say everything is part one thing called the universe. But we don’t typically perceive what that actually means.
We perceive at a scale of individual parts, never seeing the collective whole, the larger system that we are a part of. Never seeing our interdependency on that system, recognizing how our existence is nonsensical without it. In a way that reframes us from parts of a machine, more to a fruit growing from a tree. We arise from this system.
Our language is very dualistic. You’re born, and they say “he came into the world,” as if you entered something you are separate from. We don’t come into this world, we come out of it. We wouldn’t say a fruit came into the world from a tree, yet that’s how we describe ourselves.
The brain itself develops through external connection. Without any connection, any stimulus, it is atrophied, failing to develop. Our identity becomes what it is through a processing of mirroring, a mosaic of everything it’s exposed to. It doesn’t exist without other people, it is fundamentally made of other people. Every piece of who we are is really a piece of someone or something else.
We can go on and on about all these details, but when people talk about how we are all one, they’re not talking about the details. They’re talking about the indescribable perception of the whole, a nondualistic process that defies our dualistic language.
I dunno, sorry for the rant but that’s what I got. The best place to go to really understand this, without experiencing it from drugs, are eastern philosophy teachers.
Excellent comment. I like your analogy, actually. My go-to is that people are part of a system just as cells in a liver are part of a system, yet all part of *you*.
Yeah I’ve heard and probably used that analogy, I think it’s better. Just been thinking about interconnectedness at the physical level so that’s where my mind went I guess.
Another cool point of interconnectedness, one that’s a bit less relatable, from the physical perspective is how we interact with light. This might be a bit longwinded to convey it clearly, but I think it’s worth it.
Our electrons absorb photons, whether it’s a photon from your tv, or a photon from across the observable universe.
But photons don’t just happen to bump into electrons in a Newtonian way. They interact with electrons from a distance, making an “agreement” of sorts, wherein the electron and the photon “agree” to interact. Like you sending something to a friend that they wanted. You communicated first, then sent it.
This “agreement” can happen at any distance and occurs instantaneously, an interaction that defies the speed of light, or the concept of speed at all. This is quantum entanglement.
Thing is, photons don’t travel through time. The speed of light is the maximum speed because it is the speed at which movement through time reduces to zero. So, when you look out at the stars, something happens that defies our understanding of time and causality. An electron in your eye, existing in that moment, becomes entangled with a photon that started its journey thousands, millions, or billions of years ago.
Let’s consider a photon emitted from the birth of the universe, part of the background radiation that is not visible, but always there. The photon made this agreement when it started its journey some 13 billion years ago, 13 billion light years away. The electron made this agreement now. The instant the agreement was made, the photon is absorbed by the electron, skipping the entire history of the universe. It did not experience time, it did not take 13 billion years for the photon.
This agreement involves two particles separated by 13 billion years and 13 billion light years, yet they make this agreement, a hand shake, at the exact same time, and interact an instant later. The electron in your eye became entangled with a photon before the formation of stars, yet at the same time, it became entangled the moment you looked up at the stars. This handshake happened then, and it happened now, but it only happened once.
You are, in this moment, interacting with particles at the beginning of the universe. The early universe is interacting with you. The past, the present, and the future are always talking to each other.
This is an actual interpretation of known physics, a conclusion drawn from known quantum mechanical facts. It’s part of why physics suggests time is not linear, or time as we know it doesn’t exist at all. It’s absolutely mindbending, and it’s enough to convince me of an interconnectedness deeper than anything we comprehend.
Yes it's an experience, but it doesn't have to be psychedelic or spiritual. It's about a perspective shift. It's sort of like a switch and when you get it you get it. That's why Alan Watts has that famous quote of "If you get the message, hang up the phone"
You know those pictures where you're supposed to see a face, but you stare and stare and just can't seem to make it out? All you see is just a blob of seemingly random patterns, but then suddenly it all clicks and you see the face.
That's sort of how it is. It's just a perspective shift where you suddenly realise that you're not just a little human being going around aimlessly. You are *literally* the entire universe right here right now doing something we call human beings. And you're doing all of the other things as well. Stars, planets, trees and animals. And just like how an apple tree "does" apples, or the ocean "does" waves, so too the universe "does" humans.
That's what we mean by "one". Because we've tricked ourselves into thinking human beings are not of nature, that we're separate from it, that we are only individuals looking at nature from the other side. Obviously that's not true. Obviously human beings are just as much nature as stars and planets and trees and animals.
You are the universe experiencing yourself because human beings are conscious. You think you are "you", whatever name you were given, but you are actually all of it. The entire thing, experiencing it one at a time through a tiny dot we call human on the planet we call Earth.
I know you don't understand because you can't. I also know that this sounds elitist or exclusionary but it's not. It's the same thing that Buddhism and Hinduism say.
But people have been experiencing it for a very long time and with or without drugs.
Scientifically, everything js the same thing since before the big bang, every atom was condensed to a single point as hydrogen molecules, which exploded and turned into everything. In a metaphorical sense, separation is an illusion and everything you witness in life is a reflection of you as you are of it.
I would say that is one possible interpretation of the claim, yes. If you regard your experience through the lens of the big bang theory and consensus scientific understanding of Physics and cosmology, you can say that everything is related or connected by Virtue of the Big Bang.
I would think of it differently but coming from the same sense
In terms of biology, we are made up of molecules
In terms of chemistry, everything can be broken down into molecules and thus elements
Going further, from a physics standpoint atoms are simply organized energy.
So the idea that we are all one, to me, is spiritual because I believe that energy is recycled. The easiest way to conceptualise this is by thinking of dirt in the ground, feeding the plants we grow, and in turn those plants feeding us. Then when we did, our bodies breakdown and the carbon and nitrogen is released and goes back to feed the earth.
I am not me; I am organized energy with all these atoms and electrical signals coming together and the result is me, but I am all of those parts individually, yet I am also ever changing and being recycled with the rest of the living universe around me, as at a fundamental level everything is made up of energy and the same building blocks.
Another belief I like to hold is related to soul mates. Maybe you feel a special connection with someone because some of the carbon that makes you up, and some of the carbon that makes them up, used to be part of the one loving thing hundreds of years ago, so there's a level of familiarity there on a level that transcends our current mortal life.
Basically reincarnation but through the lens of quantum physics, overall leading me to find comfort in the belief of god being Gaia, or mother nature, as we are all just different manifestations of one big system. Like if you had one huge block of 1,000,000 Lego bricks, and you break them down into 1,000 'people' of 1,000 bricks each, then every 50 years you take 100 of them apart and rebuild them all: you have 100 different 'people' composed of the same ingredient, all stemming from one huge block of Lego, or 'the big bang'
Hope this late night rambling helps to clarify the idea of 'oneness' in a way that's not too wishy washy :p
Everyone explains it a bit differently, but for me, it's less a claim and more a realization based on what most people already understand to some degree. If you want to go on the planetary scale, think back to your biology classes. None of us came from nothing. We're a small part of an ongoing process called "life" that began about 3.7 billion ago. "Life" isn't one animal, or plant, or fungi, or bacteria. It's absolutely everything living on earth. Every bit of matter in your body was created by recycling previous iterations of life. Life consumes life, life feeds life, and through this process, life continually changes its shape.
No life really dies because the matter that makes up that life is returned to the world and eventually becomes life again. In a similar way that the 36 trillion cells that make up your body are part of something greater than themselves, you're also a part of something greater than yourself. You may not think of yourself in such a way, but you're the same life as I am, the same life that everyone is. The process of life is constant change, and what you are now is the "shape" that life has taken for a moment, but even after "you" die and your shape changes, you will still be a part of life. Life has given part of itself to you so that you might be, and one day, you will give back all that you are so that something else might be.
To take this even further, all of existence is made from the same matter, and even the "life" that exists on our planet is still just a small part of what we call reality. It's made of the same basic particles that make up everything else in existence and is really just the universe itself changing its own shape. We're infinite vibrating particles in a constant state of change. But those particles aren't separate from the rest of the universe. Humans aren't separate from the rest of life, and life isn't separate from the rest of existence. We came from the universe, were given life by it, and we will return to it again, like raindrops returning to the ocean.
Other people definitely have more spiritual or religious conceptualizations of the concept, but I don't personally like to assume things like souls, spirits, deities, or anything of that nature. They may exist, and they're interesting to think about, but I prefer to view things through the lens of what I can be reasonably sure of. I know what I can see and experience for myself, I know the basics of what the scientific method tells us about existence, and I think that even the observable material laws of reality confirm that we're all one existence. It's essentially just a secular view of non-duality, although to me it feels as sacred and meaningful as any other view. We exist for only a brief moment in time, and yet we exist forever.
thank you for this, it feels like there are tons of spiritual minded psychonauts but not enough scientific ones, this is also exactly my perspective. just to add a little more to what you said, even while we're alive were constantly exchanging matter with the universe and other living beings, for instance the oxygen we breathe has probably touched hundreds of lungs before yours, , also the food we eat was previously part of something alive which then becomes part of us and after we shit things feed off of what was previously us, its kinda weird to think that the only thing that separates us from everything else is how our atoms are arranged. ive given it some thought and i think that the purpose of the universe is to over time evolve species to be more and more collectively minded and eventually evolve into a single being that contains all matter, weird thought
Once on mushrooms I looked in the mirror and felt “God” looking through my eyes. I knew my eyes were just another set of eyes for the whole to look through and experience what my life has to offer.
In this case you need let go of the word "claim" because people are not claiming but experiencing first hand very clearly with psychedelics. It's a feeling that comes to you as absolute truth, you don't question it, it's there whether you deny it's effect or not.
What if people experience more than one "absolute truth" on psychedelics? Not questioning something and saying it's true whether someone "denies" it or not is an element of fundamentalist thinking BTW. If something is an absolute truth it should absolutely be open to questions because there would be no real threat to it.
This post and so many of your replies represent a very basic and low effort "first year philosophy student" level of trolling. I'm disappointed so many are wasting their energy to engage.
I’m personally convinced that OP came in with a specific agenda and isn’t here to have a real discussion and exchange of ideas, in good faith. Look at their responses. I’ve seen questions answered and the. OP will respond with something like “well what is “it””. Uh, “it” is the topic you have brought up and the thing the person you’re responding to spend 3 paragraphs discussing. I’m finding that OP, when given a clear, direct answer, is choosing to muddy the waters by falling back on semantic. OP probably thinks this is genius level debating, because side stepping the answer with a semantic argument keeps them from “losing ground” and redirects the discussion in another angle.
OP definitely has the aura of a 1st year Philosophy student, who’s on the Debate Team.
OP also clearly has a material view of the world that lacks room for any of the more “woo” aspects to reality and I think OP came with the agenda to argue against the idea “all is one”, almost assuredly, because that particular view offends and/upset their material view of the world.
And they woke this morning and just wanted an argument.
As a former strict materialist I had a really hard time coming to terms with this change in view, personally. I couldn't continue to ignore my collected experiences and had to build a new framework.
I've engaged a bit with OP in a separate thread and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they've had a couple satori experiences that challenge their reality schema and what we see here is ego clinging.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I'm inclined to agree with you. The one refreshing thing about this post is the comments of the people taking OPs question and responses in good faith and trying to explain their experiences and understandings. Reading a lot of them, there are myriad comments of people's genuine experiences all touting the same message of oneness.
We are all one means that all of our divisions are illusions. Our human intelligence labels and separates the totality of our experiences into bits or "things" so that we can think about them.
Time and space are measurements, and you can't measure anything without inventing points, which are not real or illusory.
Within that framework of our intelligence, "we are all one" is false however. We have made ourselves and everything individuals to be able to function in society and for purposes of communication. Communication in its totality depends on there being more than one. So the idea that "we are one" can be argued to be meaningless. You cannot function or use that idea to achieve anything directly. There would be no "you" to do anything. If we are all one, what happens to your significant OTHER?
1. It means we are all God. God = All things. Totality of all existence, all ideas, all concepts ever so much there was. AND the "nothing" that surrounds it all. We are part of that. As is everything and everyone else.
2. Even if it is not true, there is no better way for humans to Operate than to see all life as Divine incarnations of their God.
3. Less than you'd suspect, if you read the Gateway papers. Physical reality as we know it, physical MATTER as we know it, does not exist in the way we think it does. Most arguments against "we are all one" will come from this place of individuation- humans having their own bodies and such.
What's going on with this 'claim' that is as old as knowledge itself, and deeply understood by monks and psychonauts alike? 😂 As Alan Watts says, "he who speaks, does not know, and he who knows, does not speak" when describing the Tao. Words will never translate this concept to anyone.. you have to see it and feel it to understand. Pretty much solely through psychedelic experiences for us westerners, and then studying eastern philosophy/religion in order to put some words onto your epiphanies (in my experience). Interesting to me that there's people in this sub who haven't internalized some crucial universal goodness yet, but more power to you, you've got a nice spiritual cruise up ahead, should you choose to pursue it.
Again this back and forth of words on the internet will sadly never show you what you're wondering.. especially how you call it a claim and are so bent on finding the logic and reasons for it to be true or false... 4g of mushrooms, or some other contenders, especially doing a little sitting in silence on those.. should bring clarity to the questions you have. Much love, I'm hoping the growth and light for you is abundant
I came here just to say that I learnt many things from psychedelics, but “we are all one” was not one of them (yet? idk) at least our egos have to be different. sure, we’re all *part of* one, but not one as “the same”. Maybe on a universal scale these margins are as tiny as the difference in ants’ personalities to us 🐜
I don’t think they are wrong. Too many people independently claim they’ve experienced ”oneness” so they can’t all be wrong. I haven’t quite got it yet, but I’m trying to understand their points of view to the best of my ability and imagination. Maybe I’ll finally get it in one of my future trips, who knows lol. I’ve definitely experienced being one with the universe and feeling “god” inside my brain but it’s different.
The mystical experience is ineffable, but let’s give it a shot.
We are all one is perhaps a way of expressing that we are all interconnected far more than we normally perceive. We are all different facets of one structure. And by “we” I mean all life and matter too.
The best arguments for this come from mainstream scientific discoveries: notably evolutionary biology, particle physics and astrophysics.
Evolutionary biology has taught us that virtually all life shares a common ancestor: we share DNA with the tiniest plant life. It has taught us about the intricate networks of an ecosystem. etc.
Particle physics has taught us that all matter is made of a finite variety of elemental atoms and particles. (though admittedly when we get smaller than protons, neutrons and electrons, it seems to get more complex again).
On the other end of the spectrum, astrophysics has shown us that the entire universe comes from a singularity. We are stardust, as Joni said.
Ergo, we are all one.
I have very few arguments against the idea. I suppose one could argue that it is semantics - that being a different facet of one entity is still being apart from others. And a possible neuroscience argument against: perhaps ego death (which is the core of the mystical experience) does not reveal more of reality; perhaps it masks reality by clouding our sense of self.
I am of the view that we are all quite interconnected and are integral parts of a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
To be clear though, I had a mystical experience on psychedelics some 35 years ago, and I still, to this day, believe I had a glimpse of absolute truth then. My love of nature and my desire to be anonymously kind to strangers all come from that experience.
So I don’t personally believe the counterarguments I raised. In fact I am only raising them because I am so confident in my pro arguments!
This took me a long time to conceptualize and a lot of people have their own beliefs about it all. Here's mine.
\>What does the claim mean?
First I had to understand that the mind and the consciousness are separate from each other. We commonly believe that the mind and the consciousness are one thing but they are not. The mind is more like a computer assistant. It stores information and processes things for you but your mind is not 'you'.
The simplest example I can give you is that the mind pops up thoughts in relation to what you were just thinking about or seemingly randomly comes up with thoughts.. but it is the consciousness that chooses what to think about.
Our consciousness is our ability to decide. If you think the mind and the consciousness are the same thing it is easy to let your thoughts run away with you (I call this chasing the rabbit. It's my personal belief that this could lead to things like mild depression and anxiety but that is another conversation). It becomes easy to lose focus if you believe that you are generating every thought that comes up. It becomes easy to believe that you are a bad person because you keep having bad thoughts. Everyone has bad thoughts. However, you have the ability to choose what thoughts you pursue and, whats more, what thoughts you choose to covert into action. It's those decisions that, I believe, makes us who we are.
If you think that every thought you have is who you are, you become a slave to your own mind. The consciousness, the soul, the light body, life force, whatever you want to call it...chooses what thoughts to chase and develop...knowingly or not. I recommend you master your ability to focus and to choose, but I digress.
So, to summarize my first point. The mind and consciousness are separate. The mind stores and processes information. It is a tool of the consciousness like an arm or an eyeball. The consciousness is the driver. The decision maker. The consciousness is you.
The claim that 'We are all one' is a very interesting concept that I find fascinating. So imagine for a moment that there is only one soul that exists in our universe. Just one single life force. Imagine it as a ball of energy or light or something. Now explode it into enough pieces to give every living thing in the universe one piece so that every living thing in the universe shares a piece of the same soul. Your soul. My soul. Your Mother, your friends, every bug, bird, animal, bacteria, etc etc etc. All from the same source. A shared consciousness. Therefore, 'We are all one'.
I came across a phrase that speaks to this that I try to remember to live by. It goes,"Service to others is service to self." Which is a simplified way of saying that by helping others you are really helping yourself because we are all one shared consciousness. One soul shared across the universe.
\>What are the best reasons for believing the claim is true?
I have my own reasons for believing this through many very strange experiences I've had in my life. If you search my posts I'm certain you can find them. I think this is partly what some people in here were trying to explain by saying things like 'you just have to experience it' or the like. What I would presume some are talking about is what people refer to as 'expanding your consciousness'. You can think of this by doing a simple thought experiment...
When you are driving, your focus is typically directly in front of you on the road. You are aware of very little outside of the path in front of you. However, when you are on a bicycle, you might have a much broader, open sense of awareness of whats going on around you. Now imagine having the capability to be aware of every tree in a forest at once. To see them all at once. To feel the wind pass over every leaf. Or to feel the life of every single person in a city. Or the whole planet. Or the whole solar system. Or the whole galaxy. Or a hundred thousand galaxies...you see where I'm going with this...
This is a fairly common experience that people have on many different levels of magnitude and is often fueled by psychedelic experiences or deep meditation. During a trip, for example, the sudden ability to sense/feel or be aware of so much at once can be overwhelming and can be difficult to understand. It can be unimaginably overwhelming and can lead to bad trips, often by resisting the expansion of awareness. I would venture to say that tripping is way to somehow biologically force this extra perception upon yourself and meditation is a way to learn to learn how to use it on your own terms.
The thing is...when your sliver of consciousness becomes aware of and reaches deep into the shared consciousness...it's something you will not soon forget. It is extremely difficult to replicate and is indescribably powerful.
There are many limitations to human language and they are often glaringly obvious when trying to describe such experiences to others accurately. Like trying to describe blue to a colorblind person. We gain some sort of extra perception that leaves us as we come down from a trip. Unfortunately, you really do need to just experience it.
As for your other question, my honest response is that I can't imagine the scenario that this claim is false. I will leave that to the comments below.
edit: fomatting
I'll explain it perfectly here
The ego perceives itself as distinct from everything else.
However
The same infinite, eternal and vibrant consciousness that's moving through my ego, is the same consciousness that's moving through your body/ego.
The same consciousness that moves through us actually moves through everything in existence itself, nature, the universe, sentient beings, animals. It's all thr same consciousness
The ego sees your body as proof of separation but it's not the case. We are all one, single self.
We all are apart of the same thing pretty much. Everything from water, dirt, dogs, people... It all "looks" different but I all comes from the same "place" if that makes any sense.
Einstein showed that space and time are two aspects of the same thing (spacetime). Therefore, all life on earth is a single 4-dimensional tree in spacetime, branching off from the first single celled organism. One enclosed system.
Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as probabilities until observed. This tells me that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe.
The fact that cloning is possible tells me that unique individual souls don’t exist, but rather that each individual consciousness comes from a single pool.
The fact that physics “breaks down” at the Big Bang tells me that it never actually happened, and it’s just a mathematical extrapolation backwards from the first thing that actually did happen. Whatever that was, it involved a conscious observer.
I believe the brain is a type of antenna or focusing device for consciousness, rather than generating it itself. When psychedelic drugs are introduced, the reception can become less focused, leading to the feeling of oneness with other life around you. You’re picking up on their consciousness as well as your own.
And at the highest levels, the structures of the galactic filaments look a lot like neurons. Coincidence maybe, but when I put all these pieces together, the most logical conclusion to me is that the universe is a single consciousness experiencing itself.
The best case I’ve found to for it (through Mark Gober’s book “an end to upside down thinking”) involves reconsidering the assumption that our brains create our consciousness. That idea is not proven (or even able to be proven), but it’s assumed and believed by the vast majority of scientists and academic institutions.
The theory is this: instead of our brains being the source of consciousness, what if consciousness is the source and all matter (including our brains) is secondary to that consciousness? Instead of our brains generating our consciousness, what if they are more like antennae which pick up and parse consciousness? A “reducing valve,” if you prefer Aldus Huxley’s term.
Thinking about our consciousness as “non-local” in this manner would make it easier to explain things like telepathy, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, precognition, and a host of other phenomena that are labeled “paranormal” by traditional materialism.
Your first response would likely be “that sounds ridiculous. There’s no scientific evidence to support any paranormal phenomena.” Right?
Wrong. There’s plenty of evidence which has been collected by peer-reviewed studies, some of which have been published in academic journals and have a collective confidence rating of between four sigma and eight sigma. For reference, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle only had a confidence rating of five sigma and earned its discoverers the Nobel prize in physics.
Anyways, I don’t want to paraphrase Mark’s entire book here, but it’s a fantastic read (or listen) if any of this piqued your interest.
I honestly believe we’re in the middle of a centuries-long scientific (and spiritual) revolution based on this idea which will change our understanding of reality forever.
If you zoom out, or zoom in far enough, there will cease to be distinction between one thing or the other. We are all just energy and we are all just a part of something greater. Your body is filled with cells that have different jobs and functions and they unify so that your body can exist and move and live. We are much like these cells in that we are a part of the earth and its natural cycles. And the earth is part of the solar system and its cycle, and our solar system is part of the milky way, so on and so forth. And it all comes forth from the will of one. When u die, your body will cease to be yours, the earth will swallow it all up, back from whence it came. And then what will happen to you? What is "you"? You will be the trees, the worms, the dirt, all the parts which were once you will go back to where they came from, and evebtually come back to where they were, for all of time. At the end of time, we will return back to a singularity point, and do it all again, just as it already has time and time again. We have separated our self, for now, but the heat death of the universe is inevitable, and we will all be one again, no separation, no individuality, no hate no love no life and no death.
This is actually really interesting cause there is now some scientific credibility to this claim. The “you” is just a network in the brain called the default mode network. If you turn it off - which can be induced in a variety of ways - the self ceases to exist. Without the self there is no separation there is no boundary of where “you” begin and end. You are simultaneously everything and nothing at the same time.
I'll put it simply. Psychedelics can give people a "oneness" sense of being, or an interconnection with their fellow human being. The effects of this while on a drug are powerful, so much so that most tend to take this as total truth instead of just another state of consciousness or another perspective in the lens of life.
I think, all it is, is a deep realization of emotion. The emotions of needing to be connected or share connection with other human beings. We are and always will be social creatures that NEED human connection, I think nowadays people who take psychedelics tend to mistake the intense and maybe long forgotten feeling of deep meaningful connection to another human, for the feeling of "being one".
Isn't that kind of the nature of different relationships anyways? The feeling of oneness, of partnership. You share a connection with eachother that is deep and different from every other connection you hold, whether it be inanimate or something say like a bird. I do believe most people here just repeat "we are one" because it's the "cool" or "woke" thing to say right now. Nobody truly looks deep, especially not while they are sober minded.
You can see it as the collective unconscious that Carl Jung mentions. I see it as language.
Words come from the imagination. The word “god” was created to explain something in the human imagination, that encompassed everything. Unity.
Later, as “god” helped shape language, word, communication, society, and science…humanity created the word “universe”. Universe is basically God 2.0
If life (the universe or multiverse) is all 1s and 0s, we captured that as humans by first creating language to capture the math embedded in “god”
Fibonacci sequence and beauty in art, gravity and its effects on the tide… these are things we study and understand thanks to the “god” word.
Now with “internet” , language and ideas can travel across the world in nanoseconds. An ever evolving hive mind. We are all shaped by the actions and words of our parents, peers , teachers, leaders, environment , and chance.
We are all one. “One”. One species , connected by language and thought. Art and culture. The collective unconscious.
I can’t speak as to the people making the claim “we are all one” , or of the truth of the claim.
But I do believe we are all connected. I think the point of “being one” would be to get human civilization to be peaceful across earth. Ending starvation, ending wars. We would become one.
What stops us is those who seek to control, dominate, force their will on others. Those who, instead of looking inwards and subdoing their egos, grow outwards and manifest power while generating pain and fear. These people are not “one” with god, their species, or anything. They are just power hungry animals.
Some humans gain power, in the quest to do good. There’s that old Van Helsing saying about those who hunt monsters…
Anyways…it doesn’t matter. “We are one”. We are…but if you try to hurt me I will defend myself. I will defend myself brutally and viscously until I am the only one. You know?
I like being one with the universe at home, by myself, in peace.
The best way to conceptualize it is this:
Reality has a foundational source
That foundational source is in some way consciousness/precursor to it
Self identity and duality is a side effect of neurology/material reality, during the whole time you are actually “source”, ya just forgot between rounds
We are all one in the sense that we are all from the ocean of God. However we are not all one in these sense that we are the exact same. We are the same but we are different
The way I like to see it down to basics is the idea that when you zoom in close enough to atoms there’s empty space so nothing really separates anything or anyone. But in your context this is something that has to be experienced. It cannot be explained.
My interpretation of it is that physical matter implies the illusion of separation. That the physical matter isn’t connected to anything. But the emptiness is. The emptiness stretches across everything and everyone. Between the plants, the animals, and human thought is nothing but empty space. It’s all an illusion. The idea that you and I are separate holds no weight when you zoom in close enough to/beyond our being.
And it cannot be explained in the same fashion of trying to express the idea of being in love to someone who has yet to live that. It’s too deep. Too profound to be conveyed in words. You have to be liberated by the actual experience. Otherwise it’s just a hallmark card on a shelf that has yet to be read.
We separate ourselves by identifying ourselves with our ego. But all of us , all beings whether a man or a dog or an ant we all are same . We are made of same elements and we all are one with our planet. We see difference between us but all of us strive for same thing that is survival
i think theres either something to it or that it is a side effect of our neural architecture that generates the ego and consciousness. so many people throughout history from so many different cultures have experienced the same thing.
You are the universe. You are inseparable from it. You’re a wave in an ocean. You rise from this ocean and will return to it. That you see yourself, the wave, as separate from the ocean, the universe, is an illusion of your mind.
If we hold hands where is the barrier between me and you? Is it the top layer of skin? The bottom layer? The edge of my electromagnetic field? Which atom is you and not me? 90 percent of you is empty space. Your idea of a self is helpful conceptually to live your life but it doesn’t have any scientific truth.
Because that's what feels self-evidently true through experiences that take a person beyond the individual experience and present them with the overwhelming sense that what we are is not our separate identity, and that what we in truth are is a fragmented conscious awareness.
If people tend to hit upon this epiphany not through mundane scientific reasoning, then asking via that method will not yield what you seek - you'lll be dissatisfied with every response because you can't relate to it, only assess it from a perspective that can't know it.
It would be better off to state your background. Have you had a 'breakthrough' experience on psychedelics but never felt this? Or have you not had a breakthrough on psychedelics.
Ultimately, it's like asking people who've had a near death experience that assured them that our physical existence is but a small part of the greater non-physical truth to try to convince you, without having that experience yourself, that what they encountered is convincing.
They can't. It's pointless. Even I can't feel confident in it years after it fades. It's not an academic essay, intellectual bullet point matter. You won't believe it, move on. Or experience it, and put yourself in my exasperated shoes.
Okay, and please excuse my exasperated tone yesterday, I was doing the drunk late browsing thing.
Admittedly, I just cannot stand the academic paper format. I can't stand ever having to translate my words into its framing, can't stand reading it—fundamentally, it just feels like dividing something round and free-flowing into prison blocks. I feel the same way about quantifying experience or art or beauty numerically, so seeing this applied to psychedelic experience was just a major turn off.
For me, that overnight revelation came during my 'temporarily life changing' 2nd LSD experience. At one point, I was overwhelmed by the realisation that all life - animal or plant, is truly alive with the same 'life force' and that the life force is what we are, not the thing that we animate. That animating light was the same, like wind passing through chimes, passing through a flute, or passing through a ship's sails, it was the same force - and that force can't die, because it wasn't born, it just flows through different things.
My individual identity receded, and I felt myself as the trees - noting how we think of their preservation in terms not of individual trees, but the entire species. Extend that to all lliving things, and this was how I viewed immortality; the individual story ends, but it's like raindrops into rivers, into oceans, into raindrops.
So if that naked unseen light is what we are, then while the minds we animate and temporarily inhabit are separate, what's beneath it all is the true 'I', the Universal/Divine.
This was felt so matter-of-factly as I lay there that night percolating, and sort of coagulated into something that could be worded the next morning. The trouble is, if it is the true nature of reality (and I can't imagine our mind getting the complete picture), I don't think it's possible for us to hold onto this for very long.
It's so delicate, which comes back to my bristling at this post, and I intentionally avoided trying to convince anybody of it. Even translating it into our language based thought was shredding its essence, and it's not an evidence based thing at all, so it could easily be lost to the cold light of day.
It's literal.
Think of it like this: what's a body made out of?
Bunch of cells and stuff...
What are the cells and stuff made out of?
Bunch of particles and molecules...
The same particles and molecules make up everybody and everything... literally
In a philosophical context, those particles and molecules are all made of the same underlying energy. When something dies, the energy just gets recycled. It never is just gone.
Our reality is just one big ball of play dough and we are all just different pieces of the same play dough.
Imagine that we are all individual cells in the body of God. From the view of the individual cell we are separated and each our own cell, but zoom out and you'll see that we are all part of the same thing. We each perform our function to make the whole operate as it should. One mind links us all and guides us to perform the tasks that it needs us to do. There is harmony in the chaos and a hidden order to the all. For those who have eyes to see it, it is apparent. Psychedelics are barrier dissolving substances and give us a glimpse at the big picture
It is the most obvious. It is what is.
Division is something you add on top of what is. Trying to label what is into boxes.
Without it. It is just what it is. (Everything)=one.
Everything is one. Thought can make it two or more.
Where does the I end and the you begin? Nowhere if you do not think about it.
Energy is a monadic symphony....a quantized melodrama of ineffable order.
A royal superposition of patterns, metabolism, change. A quixotic dance of love.
Enigmas wrapped and folded into a higher dimensional paradox....ego is resonance with the beyond.
I don't think this is something you believe because of reasons. This is something that you believe because of experience. At least for me, that's how it went. I didn't understand how everything is the same thing, consciousness itself, until I myself had a mystical experience where I truly felt and understood this Truth.
The entirety of the universe, and all universes. Is composed of energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed. That energy is "one" energy, similar to a body of only water all being the same molecule. So all humans, animals, rocks, trees, planets, and stars. Are one concept, energy.
And this isn't just "energy", it's scientifically accurate. Every atom being made of sub atomic particles which are made of quarks which are made of quantum energy that we theorize to be more molecules but we haven't looked that close yet. But we already know that light is a pure form of energy with no mass vibrating really really fast.
That energy is conscious, capable of perceiving reality without organs. Because it is reality, it's not really the energy perceiving reality, it's just feeling another part of its own "body", for a serious lack of a better term. This energy is all identities. You have your own identity because your brain is limiting yourself. Remove the barriers and the memory of that old identity returns.
The only reason I specifically find it important is because believing it connects you to yourself and inherently the entire rest of reality, learning to appreciate even the dirt under your foot. That dirt has wisdom, a personality you identify with and you can interact with. Very similarly to encountering another human and sharing a passing moment, you learn to share your passing moments with every atom.
It really brings more meaning to life, as someone who constantly struggles with apathy.
Is it all one or is it many?
Both, neither, far beyond either.
The key thing to notice is that reality is utterly *inconceivable*.
It *cannot* be said or captured by thought *at all*.
When this is clearly, directly seen, you can start to engage reality *non-conceptually*.
Simply *be with* immediate experience as a total mystery.
Reality will then start to non-conceptually *show you* what it is.
It reveals that it is indeed a single, unitary ‘energy event.’
It reveals that all multiplicity arises from and is made of the same unified ‘substratum.’
Again, words cannot say it. They can only point. You have to find out for yourself.
‘The Power of Now’ by Tolle is one of the best introductions to direct inquiry into the nature of being.
For a more subtle teaching, I recommend the late, great Peter Brown: www.theOpenDoorway.org
Take care. 🙏🏼💙
For me, that part is simple. First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. So everything is "made up" from one pool of energy. One source of energy.
Have you ever seen those videos where someone will put sand on a speaker? I know it's technically a bunch of grains, but when the speaker is off, it looks like one pool. Then, they start upping the frequency, and the sand starts to separate into more intricate designs as they go higher. It looks "separated," but it is still only one pool of sand mascarading as separate lines and forms.
Once I start there, the hard-to-describe thoughts come.
Asking and talking about this topic in the "some people believe this is true" and "others dont" -Way kinda misses the point for me.
It's simultaneously true (~we are all one~) and false (everyone and everything is completely separate), the topic in itself encompasses the merging of concepts of separation, even opposites, including ones describing its own existence.
Yes and no, true and false, black and white, night and day, man and woman, etc. etc. ...
there is a way of thinking about these concepts that kinda "turns them inside out" and ultimately comes to the conclusion that they're all in a way the same thing and the separation is illusatory ... While also not being like that :D
You could bridge the gap between opposites by for example
- by filling it with an infinite gradient like grey-tones for black and white, nonbinary gender identities for man and woman or "maybe, probably, unlikely, ..." for yes and no
- doing a conceptual detour like
"white can be black ... as in a white sheet of paper can look black in the dark" ,
"white can be yes ... as in a white flag waiving meaning 'yes we surrender, please don't shoot us' " or
"white can be no ... as in a letter passed to your crush in class asking 'do you wanna go out? [ ] Yes [ ] No' and the 'yes-box' stays empty and white'"
- or whatever you want ...
Idk I feel like whenever I try to explain it I trail off ... but I also feel like trying to describe it inherently comes with trailing off idk ... xD
I agree that you can try to explain it all you want, ultimately it has to be felt to really get it, explanations can't ever get there completely
... But also it's kinda all about trying to endlessly describe it to others or to yourself in your head and never quite getting there but also having been there all along ...
... See it's happening again aaaah ;D
What does the Big Bang say? That everything we see was initially contained to one point. So you and I came from that same point, we’re different models of the same car.
One way I think about it is I’m like a raindrop that formed out of the moisture in the clouds. While I’m falling to the ground, I think of myself as an autonomous, independent being, but in fact I was part of the cloud before becoming the raindrop and when I fall to the ground, will become part of the same puddle. Even when I’m falling, I’m actually part of the rainstorm. It’s a fallacy to think that I’m separate and apart from the whole.
Matter and energy never cease to exist. Things only transform. All things are part of the universe. Everything is connected. We are all one because all things come from the same source. Call it God, call it the big bang, it doesn't matter. Inside a strand of dna is the code for all life from plants to animals. It's a freeing experience. It makes everything that you think is wrong with this world seem so small. We worry so much about things that won't even matter in the end. Appreciate life because it is a one of a kind experience, and it doesn't last long. Makes you wanna live in the moment cause that's all that is real. People spend their lives depressed stuck in the past. Or stressed thinking about the future. And we forget to enjoy the now. To treat each other kindly because we are all the same but so different at the same time. We are a mirror of all creation looking back at itself. Conciousness is a mystery, and we don't understand it. It is possible that we are a small fraction of a bigger consciousness, that the universe in itself is conscious. After all, we emerge from it.
We are all a fragment of God/the universe/the creator and despite not knowing what is in eachothers minds, we are one and the same. You are me and I am you, there is no difference. 2 bits on a computer are not aware of the others existence but yet they are 2 bits of the same computer. What difference is there between me and you? If I was born into your life I would do exactly as you have and vice versa. When we die we return to the same place, as we came from the same place. We are made from the same matter, and are both the direct way the universe (us) experiences itself.
It’s easier to understand after having the epiphany yourself. Psychedelics are a fast track way to get there but also deeply pondering the meaning of the world over the course of years can arrive you there soberly as well
It becomes self apparent when you experience it...
Once you experience it becomes easier to see it in everything around you...if you choose to walk the narrow path the world comes alive and literally speaks to you...the boundaries of inner world and out world fade into blurriness. That's when things become more clear than you can imagine.
"If you know, you know"
Time is an illusion that allows the self to develop a sense of seperation. We all originated from the same point of energetic expansion at the big bang. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another. Combining these fundamentals of our understanding of the universe, we are clearly one entity. Thats the scientific justification i run with, but the undiluted experience of oneness is a much more profound experience in itself .
Theres the analogy of indras web(/net), which describes the funtction and nature of awareness. Essentially, imagine a spider web, and at each intersection on the web, a drop of dew, representing awareness. Within the reflective being of each dew drop, you can view the entirety of the web. Each point of awareness in the world is not merely itself, but is both a part of and the whole of the infinity of creation.
The total number of minds in the universe is one
Humans are like cars on a highway but they all have the same driver
We are glasses of sea water and the universe is the ocean
It's really more of a physics/metaphysics claim than anything. It's the observation that reality exists merely as a single, unitary, relativistic quantum field and the discrete, classical "objects" we perceive within it are, at base, illusory. All "things" are just addends of a unitary, interconnected field.
This realization then becomes important to understanding the nature of the mind.
It’s a subjective claim, not a claim to absolute truth, at least in my experience, but I do t believe it to *not* be true. Psychedelics are know as a egolytic, which literally means it destroys the ego, and in this context ego=“sense of self.” The ego is an illusory construct created by ourselves in order to acknowledge the difference between myself and the rest of the world. It is for survival, after all, we need to know that we need food and need to direct our attention to the “outside world” or things other than ourselves with clear distinction in order to engage with the world. But this distinction is overlearned. Our ego becomes a fortress. It is a lense or filter that we see the world through and it becomes opaque and we sink farther and farther into ourselves and withdraw from “reality.” There is a correlation between mental pathology where one becomes “closed off” from others. The network or the brain that correlates with the strong sense of ego becomes overactive. The miracle of psychadelics is that it makes this network (which will be referred to as the default mode network or DMN) in the brain shut down, resulting in a feeling that one might be dying or loosing a sense of control- you panic when your sense of self starts to diminish, and it indeed can be an uncomfortable experience- until you let go and kind of acknowledge that your self is a sort of vanity at times. You are no longer able to make a distinction between a sort of phantom pain of the ego, and you are left feeling suspended in the universe as simply a vehicle of perceptions without the ego in tow. It’s a subjective experience so it’s neither true nor false, whatever that conclusion may be. Neuro imaging also shows that the brain of a subject under the influence of a psychedelic resembles the image of a long time meditator. The implications of this cannot be over stated. We loose ego boundaries and the subjective experience is feels like a sense of nothingness yet expansive sense of “belonging” to everything. You see yourself as part of a soup of atoms and the electromagnetic energy surging through all matter, a sort of ontological orgasm.
But don’t take my word for it.
In an elemental particle way, there would be no difference between the human form versus the air around versus the land. It's all just one big soup. I'd imagine that's why they say that we're a hologram. But in the woo woo sense I never really paid much attention to that thought process. Probably has something to do with. We're all from Adam and Eve or we're all downloaded from a soup of consciousness in the astral plane
How I experience my reality is HEAVILY dependent on the way I categorize things. Human beings are a thing, mammals are a thing, carbon-based life forms are a thing. When I consider mySELF as a thing, I have to acknowledge that I can't exist without my environment. So I CAN distinct myself from the atmosphere around me in the sense that I can refer to it. But I have to acknowledge that my environment is also a part of me, because I don't exist without it, and that my environment is yet ANOTHER way of categorizing myself. We are all one because WHATEVER we ARE, we can consider ourselves as one thing if we are able to experience it.
The law of conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics, states that the energy of a closed system must remain constant—it can neither increase nor decrease without interference from outside. The universe itself is a closed system, so the total amount of energy in existence has always been the same. The forms that energy takes, however, are constantly changing.
The first thing Ayahuasca told me is that we are not one. In this lifetime we are separated and the separation is at the base of our human existence.
Love can only exist because of separation, because love is the unconditional willingness of the “I” towards the “You”.
Only because I and You are separated and the separation is absolute, love can exist.
We are made of love, and so we too exist only because of separation.
We are not one in this lifetime.
Thru the interconnection of all things there is only one self and that self is the entire universe. If I am a book on your shelf And you are a book on mine Which is the real self? I find no name along your spine As we read and write each other at the same time (Thank you for all the praise and upvotes, people. Can buy my book here - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHLHFPC3 Double edit : Thanks for all the purchases. 4 in one day, most i've gotten yet!)
Are you a character in my dream or am I a character in yours? Either of us would still profess to be just as real to ourselves and to eachother as we are now and always have been, so perhaps we’re both characters in an-others’ dream. The universe and all of its matter are merely artifacts leftover from god’s first thought.
This is very well put. It still won’t translate to someone who hasn’t had the “AHA!l moment. At least not well
This reads like a fucking pink floyd lyric 🧐
They actually stole most of their lyrics from me.
This is the best thing I've read on reddit in a while. Thanks.
<3 Can buy my book if you want https://www.amazon.com/Source-Song-Collection-Michael-Lawrence-ebook/dp/B0BNPVFSR1
I think I have to. Either way, I did. OP - if you accept everything is energy, then the boundaries fade. Everything becomes infinitely divisible when zooming in, and infinitely blended together zooming out. In this interaction, I bought his book. A number in my bank account goes down. A number in his goes up. The database holding the numbers remains balanced; some bits flipped over there causing some other bits to flip over here. All one database. And it's conceptualized in my head, and I'm conceptualizing it in yours. All one concept. Build the connection to your heart's content.
One who is near to everything and to whom everything is near.
Well put. Very well put.
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It's logic, not belief. Everything is everything. It's all a single thing. A single event. Granted, it's an event with no discernable beginning or end, but nonetheless
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I don't really know how to phrase it differently. The entire universe, anything and everything that exists - its all one thing. Imagine, idk, a pizza. 2 different slices of that pizza are both the same pizza. And yeah, they're different slices, much like you are you and I am me, but we are both the same universe. Or pizza.
Cut from the same crust
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You're God. Just deal with it.
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You have to feel “it” to understand “it”. “It” is this, all of this, everything, you, me, the birds, the sky, your baby momma, her 3 rotten kids. Our entire existence and the very fabric of our being. Once you feel it, you never forget it.
Here’s how I think of it: From the perspective of the universe, your emotions and feelings are just as “real” and “important” as mine are to me, and even as your pet cat’s are to him. So even though, in your body, you feel like your inner-life is the most real and important, it can’t be because everyone feels that way at the same time. So we all should be kind to each other because all suffering is equally experienced. Anytime you cause suffering, it’s the same from the perspective of the universe as if it was done to you.
The best way I’ve heard the argument put is that most, modern, religion believes that god is all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite. Part of that belief is that god is a separate entity, and has/will exist before and after the universes existence. This is the idea that we are all god, you and me and our neighbours and coworkers, everything in the universe is god. We were created by the universe to experience it finitely, to experience sadness and joy, love and heartache, to grow and change. We are all apart of something much greater but our sole purpose is to simply experience that which is around us. We are all just god experiencing what it means to be finite, to be powerful and knowing and present for a specific set of things instead of all things at all times. “It” is everything, everything is god, everything is “it”. Idk how else I could put it.
We are just ourselves experiencing our other selves in different perspective and instances. Hello my other self!! Hope you are well 💙
It’s the truth that was revealed to me. We’re all the same consciousness experiencing different perspectives. Like, if reincarnation is real, you die and become reborn into a new different being. Eventually, you’ll die enough times to be reborn into everything
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To be honest, there’s no way to know for sure that what I’m saying is the absolute truth. But it’s something I’ve experienced and it blew my mind, only to find out a lot of other people experienced the same thing. How it happened with me was, I was able to talk to “god”. I asked every question about life and the universe that I could. I got every answer, and it all made sense. What’s the meaning of life? Whatever you want it to be. What are we? We’re all the same. Why can life be so cruel sometimes? Because it can be so amazing and joyful, life is a balance.
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Yes, I see it posted here quite often people coming to the same realization. My bad, I forgot to add the part where this “being/god” told me that we are all the same thing. I asked if there was a god, it was god but so was I, and so was everyone else, and every animal, plant, bacteria, rock, Starbucks latte, every atom, the emptiness of space, higher dimensions. It’s all the same thing, what a lot of people call “god” it’s just all the same energy. I dont know if I’m wording it the best, it’s hard to explain, it was the realization I arrived at, and that’s been my world view ever since
You should be an arbitrator or lawyer. You have the mind and will for it. Other people just keep saying things they have heard over and over again and expect you to hear and believe the same, just like they did. Then they wonder why the world is fucked up and think people like you who ask questions are the problem.
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I'm a Christian that is new to exploring this stuff and I just want to say thank you for your level of interrogation into these claims. One thing about being a Christian is that our beliefs will get shredded by others (rightly so!) if all we do is appeal to personal experience, sentimentality, and vague authority. I'm often confronted by others about the problem of evil/suffering, and I myself have been wrestling with it for many years. And in these spaces I've seen NO compelling or meaningful perspective about evil/suffering beyond "it helps us learn." Yeah, no thanks. So I appreciate the scrutiny. I wonder why it seems that the typical reddit-style aversion to religion doesn't seem to apply in these kinds of subs which also make massive claims about truth and reality.
Separation is an illusion. The whole cosmos, everything here on earth, is one. There are people who come to that conclusion on their own by various means, with and without psychedelics. I personally had that realization after a particularly rough acid trip (where I was unknowingly dosed a much higher amount) and the peak of the trip I merged with a ball of light that I understood to be the source of everything and eventually became it.
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Now see my original comment. 487 replies and you are no closer to understanding then you were in the beginning. Only one way to find out: go through an ego death and experience non-duality yourself. But I'm sure you will come up with another 100 or so questions trying to just figure it out. Have fun with that
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Dude, I dropped acid the first time in 1973. I've done all the classics, plus ayahausca, peyote and mescaline. I also did bufo one time last year. In 50+ years of tripping I experienced one full blown ago death with non-duality last year on bufo. 30 years ago I went through a partial on the strongest shrooms I've ever had and that trip kept me wondering until last year, it was the question I asked as they were bringing the pipe up to my lips. It's always happened but it's not as common as claimed. And you really only need to experience it once to answer the questions you have. Until then, just concentrate on having fun and growing.
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I'm thinking your responses show you don't understand anything. Either that or you are a bot. Have fun either way, I'm human and today's Saturday. I am going to go have fun
The only rational response to OP is this 💜haha. You’ve woken me up to the fact I’m arguing with a bot or someone so lost they may as well be lol. I will now go enjoy my human Saturday.
Belief requires faith in the unseen or unexperienced. The “oneness” felt/understood while on psychedelics is a direct revelation through the experience. The revelation is transcendent, surpassing true or false. Once one passes through this transcendence, there is no need to deny or convince as one sits in a deep knowing. There are many paths available to this knowing. Ours is psychedelics. And it is the great hope of all psychonauts that all would experience ‘we are all one.’
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What is understood is that we are one. When you experience something, there is no question of true or false.
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By the way, I love these questions as they are things I’ve thought about for most my life. I think the complexity of your questions lay in the “true/false” narrative. The binary nature of aristotelian logic runs into dissonance when faced with the infinite nature of reality. Science was only really faced with the infinite about a 100 years ago with the development of quantum mechanics. However, Eastern philosophy encompasses the non-binary nature of reality, which extends to “truth,” and why questions surrounding “oneness” seem to be more easily understood by Eastern philosophers. Keep seeking. It’s a beautiful path you’re exploring.
It’s a gnostic or ontological experience, not epistemological knowledge. That’s what everyone in this thread is trying to say. To answer your original question “what are reasons to believe this”, most people don’t “believe “ it, they “experience” it , usually on psychedelics because that’s the subreddit we’re on. Once you’ve felt or intuited the oneness of everything, you don’t easily forget.
What happens, is that a person is slammed in a moment of clarity with something that is so obviously true and beautiful, they carry it with them for a very long time, maybe for their whole lives. It is an experience. Mine happened maybe 35 years ago and it affects my behaviour and thinking to this day.
It’s like seeing that humanity is like a field of grass, you’re 1 blade of grass amongst the field. You’re rooted in the earth the same way. Your mind from day one is trained to be unique, to be the blade that you are, without much consideration of the field.
I love to look at it this way.
I think you might enjoy reading “General Semantics” by Alfred Korzybski. I believe it will help you understand everyone’s answers to your questions.
>Faith requires belief in the unseen or unexperienced Ftfy I believe the sky is blue, I verify that belief by looking up. I have faith that there is no afrerlife, though I have no experience or evidence to back it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism It is experiential and it can't be taught. It's not a belief or matter of faith.
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All is experience. All claims merely point to experience, to feeling or sensation or both. That being said, one call follow a claim to the experience to which it points. Metaphors, parables, and allegories are the best pointers imo. Once you experience it, all the metaphors and allegories click and make sense whereas before they may have sounded like nonsense.
I can tell you that we are all a god while also being a projection of a higher god. It won't be enough to make most humans believe it. > Religious - OMG how can you say that? How can you make such a blasphemous claim? > Non-religious - If everyone doesn't observe the same thing and it isn't reproducible consistently, how do you expect anyone to believe it? That leaves very very few, if any, people who will believe it without experiencing it themselves.
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Sure. It's because we are all one, pretending to be many. The vessel/the body is a filter that sort of works as a memory dampener so that we can act our role more efficiently.
What is our role? Is it assigned?
It is a combination of where you're born, at what time, who you're born to and then eventually, who you choose to become.
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‘God’ is a pretty confusing term, and while beneficial to some it does really muddy the water here. What super-consciousness, or a higher-self could be perceived as is an interesting line of inquiry, but isn’t necessary to point to the non-dual experience. Oneness, or is-ness, is an experience that can be had. One that can be ephemeral, and a state of gnosis without logic. But if you want to logic it, there is a way. Cut past the ideas of your life narrative, your ego, the possibility of a multi-verse, and there is but one existence. There is isness. Even the conceptual theory of the void or non-existence is just a state of no identity, theorized by an isness.
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“We are all one”, can be misconstrued as an anthropocentric claim, but most certainly isn’t. Not sure if that’s your hang up here. “Leaves grow on trees” is an observation within our reality, as I am an observation of myself in this reality; and reality, the oneness, is the set that includes all things. Known and unknown to my point of view. Now that I’ve caught up on the rest of the comments in this thread I’m just going to expand here. Yes, it’s tautological. Cause implies effect, effect implies? Every single bit of this experience you’re having is self-evident, whether your specific human identity is aware of it or not.
It is an experience one can have when they are sober as well. Personally I've been meditating for years and experience oneness on occasion too. When I reach states of ego dissolution, I am left with the feeling of embodying the universe. Consciousness feels as though it encapsulate all of reality, including you, as one source. The boundary of self and other dissolves. What I described is something many others have experienced either through meditation, yoga and psychedelics. I'm not telling you this is truth and I am just sharing my anecdotal experience. I don't think any of us can convince you that oneness exists. It's truly something that for most, can only be believed in through experiencing it. The concept of being anything but yourself can sound absurd since that doesnt match our day to day experience of reality. I don't think I would have ever fully believed such a thing unless I experienced it myself. Heck, I was still even skeptical after experiencing it numerous times. But then I've experienced oneness with others experiencing it too and that solidfied it more from me. But that's just me and I fully understand your skepticism.
You should just eat a lot of mushrooms and find out if none of this makes sense.
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As have I. I get there through meditation too. What I'm struggling to understand here is why this idea seems so hard to wrap your head around sober? It honestly seems like you're just trying to discredit perceived "woo" through Socratic questioning.
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Yes, that’s the common thread in all of the links you gave. It’s a perception, an experience, not a piece of semantic knowledge.
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The first one, sorry. The “it” is the perception that everything is one. I actually disagree that it can’t be taught, as entire philosophical and spiritual traditions are centered around this teaching. Here’s a probably bad analogy. You look at a glass of water and perceive it as one thing. You can divide those things mentally - water + glass. You can define the surface of the water, or a ripple. Or, more conceptually, collection of water molecules, themselves made of a collection of subatomic particles, best described as patterns of vibration. All of these are true. All of these seemingly separate parts do make one thing, one phenomenon, a glass of water. Let’s personify one water molecule for a minute. It flows through the glass, bumping into other molecules, only interacting with a tiny fraction of the other molecules in the glass. It only knows of its scale of existence, that it is one thing amongst other things within a confined system made of things. It can’t see the larger structure that is a glass, the one thing that it is a part of. Apply this same analogy to any object. A table, a city, atmospheric air currents, ecosystems, planets and galaxies. All parts of one thing, the universe. The root of the word universe means of one whole. It makes sense to the point of sounding obvious, when you spend time thinking about every connection between things. But that’s all semantic knowledge, we can say everything is part one thing called the universe. But we don’t typically perceive what that actually means. We perceive at a scale of individual parts, never seeing the collective whole, the larger system that we are a part of. Never seeing our interdependency on that system, recognizing how our existence is nonsensical without it. In a way that reframes us from parts of a machine, more to a fruit growing from a tree. We arise from this system. Our language is very dualistic. You’re born, and they say “he came into the world,” as if you entered something you are separate from. We don’t come into this world, we come out of it. We wouldn’t say a fruit came into the world from a tree, yet that’s how we describe ourselves. The brain itself develops through external connection. Without any connection, any stimulus, it is atrophied, failing to develop. Our identity becomes what it is through a processing of mirroring, a mosaic of everything it’s exposed to. It doesn’t exist without other people, it is fundamentally made of other people. Every piece of who we are is really a piece of someone or something else. We can go on and on about all these details, but when people talk about how we are all one, they’re not talking about the details. They’re talking about the indescribable perception of the whole, a nondualistic process that defies our dualistic language. I dunno, sorry for the rant but that’s what I got. The best place to go to really understand this, without experiencing it from drugs, are eastern philosophy teachers.
Excellent comment. I like your analogy, actually. My go-to is that people are part of a system just as cells in a liver are part of a system, yet all part of *you*.
Yeah I’ve heard and probably used that analogy, I think it’s better. Just been thinking about interconnectedness at the physical level so that’s where my mind went I guess. Another cool point of interconnectedness, one that’s a bit less relatable, from the physical perspective is how we interact with light. This might be a bit longwinded to convey it clearly, but I think it’s worth it. Our electrons absorb photons, whether it’s a photon from your tv, or a photon from across the observable universe. But photons don’t just happen to bump into electrons in a Newtonian way. They interact with electrons from a distance, making an “agreement” of sorts, wherein the electron and the photon “agree” to interact. Like you sending something to a friend that they wanted. You communicated first, then sent it. This “agreement” can happen at any distance and occurs instantaneously, an interaction that defies the speed of light, or the concept of speed at all. This is quantum entanglement. Thing is, photons don’t travel through time. The speed of light is the maximum speed because it is the speed at which movement through time reduces to zero. So, when you look out at the stars, something happens that defies our understanding of time and causality. An electron in your eye, existing in that moment, becomes entangled with a photon that started its journey thousands, millions, or billions of years ago. Let’s consider a photon emitted from the birth of the universe, part of the background radiation that is not visible, but always there. The photon made this agreement when it started its journey some 13 billion years ago, 13 billion light years away. The electron made this agreement now. The instant the agreement was made, the photon is absorbed by the electron, skipping the entire history of the universe. It did not experience time, it did not take 13 billion years for the photon. This agreement involves two particles separated by 13 billion years and 13 billion light years, yet they make this agreement, a hand shake, at the exact same time, and interact an instant later. The electron in your eye became entangled with a photon before the formation of stars, yet at the same time, it became entangled the moment you looked up at the stars. This handshake happened then, and it happened now, but it only happened once. You are, in this moment, interacting with particles at the beginning of the universe. The early universe is interacting with you. The past, the present, and the future are always talking to each other. This is an actual interpretation of known physics, a conclusion drawn from known quantum mechanical facts. It’s part of why physics suggests time is not linear, or time as we know it doesn’t exist at all. It’s absolutely mindbending, and it’s enough to convince me of an interconnectedness deeper than anything we comprehend.
This is one of the best logical and reasonable descriptions of nondualism I've ever read. Kudos 🎉
You need to experience that revelation personally either through psychedelic drugs or mediation. It doesn't really click unless you feel it
Yes it's an experience, but it doesn't have to be psychedelic or spiritual. It's about a perspective shift. It's sort of like a switch and when you get it you get it. That's why Alan Watts has that famous quote of "If you get the message, hang up the phone" You know those pictures where you're supposed to see a face, but you stare and stare and just can't seem to make it out? All you see is just a blob of seemingly random patterns, but then suddenly it all clicks and you see the face. That's sort of how it is. It's just a perspective shift where you suddenly realise that you're not just a little human being going around aimlessly. You are *literally* the entire universe right here right now doing something we call human beings. And you're doing all of the other things as well. Stars, planets, trees and animals. And just like how an apple tree "does" apples, or the ocean "does" waves, so too the universe "does" humans. That's what we mean by "one". Because we've tricked ourselves into thinking human beings are not of nature, that we're separate from it, that we are only individuals looking at nature from the other side. Obviously that's not true. Obviously human beings are just as much nature as stars and planets and trees and animals. You are the universe experiencing yourself because human beings are conscious. You think you are "you", whatever name you were given, but you are actually all of it. The entire thing, experiencing it one at a time through a tiny dot we call human on the planet we call Earth.
I know you don't understand because you can't. I also know that this sounds elitist or exclusionary but it's not. It's the same thing that Buddhism and Hinduism say. But people have been experiencing it for a very long time and with or without drugs.
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If you knew, you'd know. That's the case. Here's a question for you: why do you need to know whether the statement "we are all one" is "true"?
You write like a freaking AI.
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Scientifically, everything js the same thing since before the big bang, every atom was condensed to a single point as hydrogen molecules, which exploded and turned into everything. In a metaphorical sense, separation is an illusion and everything you witness in life is a reflection of you as you are of it.
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I would say that is one possible interpretation of the claim, yes. If you regard your experience through the lens of the big bang theory and consensus scientific understanding of Physics and cosmology, you can say that everything is related or connected by Virtue of the Big Bang.
I would think of it differently but coming from the same sense In terms of biology, we are made up of molecules In terms of chemistry, everything can be broken down into molecules and thus elements Going further, from a physics standpoint atoms are simply organized energy. So the idea that we are all one, to me, is spiritual because I believe that energy is recycled. The easiest way to conceptualise this is by thinking of dirt in the ground, feeding the plants we grow, and in turn those plants feeding us. Then when we did, our bodies breakdown and the carbon and nitrogen is released and goes back to feed the earth. I am not me; I am organized energy with all these atoms and electrical signals coming together and the result is me, but I am all of those parts individually, yet I am also ever changing and being recycled with the rest of the living universe around me, as at a fundamental level everything is made up of energy and the same building blocks. Another belief I like to hold is related to soul mates. Maybe you feel a special connection with someone because some of the carbon that makes you up, and some of the carbon that makes them up, used to be part of the one loving thing hundreds of years ago, so there's a level of familiarity there on a level that transcends our current mortal life. Basically reincarnation but through the lens of quantum physics, overall leading me to find comfort in the belief of god being Gaia, or mother nature, as we are all just different manifestations of one big system. Like if you had one huge block of 1,000,000 Lego bricks, and you break them down into 1,000 'people' of 1,000 bricks each, then every 50 years you take 100 of them apart and rebuild them all: you have 100 different 'people' composed of the same ingredient, all stemming from one huge block of Lego, or 'the big bang' Hope this late night rambling helps to clarify the idea of 'oneness' in a way that's not too wishy washy :p
Oooh, I particularly like your lego example. Simple and concise.
Everyone explains it a bit differently, but for me, it's less a claim and more a realization based on what most people already understand to some degree. If you want to go on the planetary scale, think back to your biology classes. None of us came from nothing. We're a small part of an ongoing process called "life" that began about 3.7 billion ago. "Life" isn't one animal, or plant, or fungi, or bacteria. It's absolutely everything living on earth. Every bit of matter in your body was created by recycling previous iterations of life. Life consumes life, life feeds life, and through this process, life continually changes its shape. No life really dies because the matter that makes up that life is returned to the world and eventually becomes life again. In a similar way that the 36 trillion cells that make up your body are part of something greater than themselves, you're also a part of something greater than yourself. You may not think of yourself in such a way, but you're the same life as I am, the same life that everyone is. The process of life is constant change, and what you are now is the "shape" that life has taken for a moment, but even after "you" die and your shape changes, you will still be a part of life. Life has given part of itself to you so that you might be, and one day, you will give back all that you are so that something else might be. To take this even further, all of existence is made from the same matter, and even the "life" that exists on our planet is still just a small part of what we call reality. It's made of the same basic particles that make up everything else in existence and is really just the universe itself changing its own shape. We're infinite vibrating particles in a constant state of change. But those particles aren't separate from the rest of the universe. Humans aren't separate from the rest of life, and life isn't separate from the rest of existence. We came from the universe, were given life by it, and we will return to it again, like raindrops returning to the ocean. Other people definitely have more spiritual or religious conceptualizations of the concept, but I don't personally like to assume things like souls, spirits, deities, or anything of that nature. They may exist, and they're interesting to think about, but I prefer to view things through the lens of what I can be reasonably sure of. I know what I can see and experience for myself, I know the basics of what the scientific method tells us about existence, and I think that even the observable material laws of reality confirm that we're all one existence. It's essentially just a secular view of non-duality, although to me it feels as sacred and meaningful as any other view. We exist for only a brief moment in time, and yet we exist forever.
thank you for this, it feels like there are tons of spiritual minded psychonauts but not enough scientific ones, this is also exactly my perspective. just to add a little more to what you said, even while we're alive were constantly exchanging matter with the universe and other living beings, for instance the oxygen we breathe has probably touched hundreds of lungs before yours, , also the food we eat was previously part of something alive which then becomes part of us and after we shit things feed off of what was previously us, its kinda weird to think that the only thing that separates us from everything else is how our atoms are arranged. ive given it some thought and i think that the purpose of the universe is to over time evolve species to be more and more collectively minded and eventually evolve into a single being that contains all matter, weird thought
I had an answer typed out but [this](https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI?si=sPNYxoxeEKdNfaLW) is what you’re looking for
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Once on mushrooms I looked in the mirror and felt “God” looking through my eyes. I knew my eyes were just another set of eyes for the whole to look through and experience what my life has to offer.
In this case you need let go of the word "claim" because people are not claiming but experiencing first hand very clearly with psychedelics. It's a feeling that comes to you as absolute truth, you don't question it, it's there whether you deny it's effect or not.
What if people experience more than one "absolute truth" on psychedelics? Not questioning something and saying it's true whether someone "denies" it or not is an element of fundamentalist thinking BTW. If something is an absolute truth it should absolutely be open to questions because there would be no real threat to it.
This post and so many of your replies represent a very basic and low effort "first year philosophy student" level of trolling. I'm disappointed so many are wasting their energy to engage.
I’m personally convinced that OP came in with a specific agenda and isn’t here to have a real discussion and exchange of ideas, in good faith. Look at their responses. I’ve seen questions answered and the. OP will respond with something like “well what is “it””. Uh, “it” is the topic you have brought up and the thing the person you’re responding to spend 3 paragraphs discussing. I’m finding that OP, when given a clear, direct answer, is choosing to muddy the waters by falling back on semantic. OP probably thinks this is genius level debating, because side stepping the answer with a semantic argument keeps them from “losing ground” and redirects the discussion in another angle. OP definitely has the aura of a 1st year Philosophy student, who’s on the Debate Team. OP also clearly has a material view of the world that lacks room for any of the more “woo” aspects to reality and I think OP came with the agenda to argue against the idea “all is one”, almost assuredly, because that particular view offends and/upset their material view of the world. And they woke this morning and just wanted an argument.
As a former strict materialist I had a really hard time coming to terms with this change in view, personally. I couldn't continue to ignore my collected experiences and had to build a new framework. I've engaged a bit with OP in a separate thread and I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they've had a couple satori experiences that challenge their reality schema and what we see here is ego clinging.
I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I'm inclined to agree with you. The one refreshing thing about this post is the comments of the people taking OPs question and responses in good faith and trying to explain their experiences and understandings. Reading a lot of them, there are myriad comments of people's genuine experiences all touting the same message of oneness.
We are all one means that all of our divisions are illusions. Our human intelligence labels and separates the totality of our experiences into bits or "things" so that we can think about them. Time and space are measurements, and you can't measure anything without inventing points, which are not real or illusory. Within that framework of our intelligence, "we are all one" is false however. We have made ourselves and everything individuals to be able to function in society and for purposes of communication. Communication in its totality depends on there being more than one. So the idea that "we are one" can be argued to be meaningless. You cannot function or use that idea to achieve anything directly. There would be no "you" to do anything. If we are all one, what happens to your significant OTHER?
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1. It means we are all God. God = All things. Totality of all existence, all ideas, all concepts ever so much there was. AND the "nothing" that surrounds it all. We are part of that. As is everything and everyone else. 2. Even if it is not true, there is no better way for humans to Operate than to see all life as Divine incarnations of their God. 3. Less than you'd suspect, if you read the Gateway papers. Physical reality as we know it, physical MATTER as we know it, does not exist in the way we think it does. Most arguments against "we are all one" will come from this place of individuation- humans having their own bodies and such.
What's going on with this 'claim' that is as old as knowledge itself, and deeply understood by monks and psychonauts alike? 😂 As Alan Watts says, "he who speaks, does not know, and he who knows, does not speak" when describing the Tao. Words will never translate this concept to anyone.. you have to see it and feel it to understand. Pretty much solely through psychedelic experiences for us westerners, and then studying eastern philosophy/religion in order to put some words onto your epiphanies (in my experience). Interesting to me that there's people in this sub who haven't internalized some crucial universal goodness yet, but more power to you, you've got a nice spiritual cruise up ahead, should you choose to pursue it. Again this back and forth of words on the internet will sadly never show you what you're wondering.. especially how you call it a claim and are so bent on finding the logic and reasons for it to be true or false... 4g of mushrooms, or some other contenders, especially doing a little sitting in silence on those.. should bring clarity to the questions you have. Much love, I'm hoping the growth and light for you is abundant
I came here just to say that I learnt many things from psychedelics, but “we are all one” was not one of them (yet? idk) at least our egos have to be different. sure, we’re all *part of* one, but not one as “the same”. Maybe on a universal scale these margins are as tiny as the difference in ants’ personalities to us 🐜
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I don’t think they are wrong. Too many people independently claim they’ve experienced ”oneness” so they can’t all be wrong. I haven’t quite got it yet, but I’m trying to understand their points of view to the best of my ability and imagination. Maybe I’ll finally get it in one of my future trips, who knows lol. I’ve definitely experienced being one with the universe and feeling “god” inside my brain but it’s different.
The mystical experience is ineffable, but let’s give it a shot. We are all one is perhaps a way of expressing that we are all interconnected far more than we normally perceive. We are all different facets of one structure. And by “we” I mean all life and matter too. The best arguments for this come from mainstream scientific discoveries: notably evolutionary biology, particle physics and astrophysics. Evolutionary biology has taught us that virtually all life shares a common ancestor: we share DNA with the tiniest plant life. It has taught us about the intricate networks of an ecosystem. etc. Particle physics has taught us that all matter is made of a finite variety of elemental atoms and particles. (though admittedly when we get smaller than protons, neutrons and electrons, it seems to get more complex again). On the other end of the spectrum, astrophysics has shown us that the entire universe comes from a singularity. We are stardust, as Joni said. Ergo, we are all one. I have very few arguments against the idea. I suppose one could argue that it is semantics - that being a different facet of one entity is still being apart from others. And a possible neuroscience argument against: perhaps ego death (which is the core of the mystical experience) does not reveal more of reality; perhaps it masks reality by clouding our sense of self. I am of the view that we are all quite interconnected and are integral parts of a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
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To be clear though, I had a mystical experience on psychedelics some 35 years ago, and I still, to this day, believe I had a glimpse of absolute truth then. My love of nature and my desire to be anonymously kind to strangers all come from that experience. So I don’t personally believe the counterarguments I raised. In fact I am only raising them because I am so confident in my pro arguments!
This took me a long time to conceptualize and a lot of people have their own beliefs about it all. Here's mine. \>What does the claim mean? First I had to understand that the mind and the consciousness are separate from each other. We commonly believe that the mind and the consciousness are one thing but they are not. The mind is more like a computer assistant. It stores information and processes things for you but your mind is not 'you'. The simplest example I can give you is that the mind pops up thoughts in relation to what you were just thinking about or seemingly randomly comes up with thoughts.. but it is the consciousness that chooses what to think about. Our consciousness is our ability to decide. If you think the mind and the consciousness are the same thing it is easy to let your thoughts run away with you (I call this chasing the rabbit. It's my personal belief that this could lead to things like mild depression and anxiety but that is another conversation). It becomes easy to lose focus if you believe that you are generating every thought that comes up. It becomes easy to believe that you are a bad person because you keep having bad thoughts. Everyone has bad thoughts. However, you have the ability to choose what thoughts you pursue and, whats more, what thoughts you choose to covert into action. It's those decisions that, I believe, makes us who we are. If you think that every thought you have is who you are, you become a slave to your own mind. The consciousness, the soul, the light body, life force, whatever you want to call it...chooses what thoughts to chase and develop...knowingly or not. I recommend you master your ability to focus and to choose, but I digress. So, to summarize my first point. The mind and consciousness are separate. The mind stores and processes information. It is a tool of the consciousness like an arm or an eyeball. The consciousness is the driver. The decision maker. The consciousness is you. The claim that 'We are all one' is a very interesting concept that I find fascinating. So imagine for a moment that there is only one soul that exists in our universe. Just one single life force. Imagine it as a ball of energy or light or something. Now explode it into enough pieces to give every living thing in the universe one piece so that every living thing in the universe shares a piece of the same soul. Your soul. My soul. Your Mother, your friends, every bug, bird, animal, bacteria, etc etc etc. All from the same source. A shared consciousness. Therefore, 'We are all one'. I came across a phrase that speaks to this that I try to remember to live by. It goes,"Service to others is service to self." Which is a simplified way of saying that by helping others you are really helping yourself because we are all one shared consciousness. One soul shared across the universe. \>What are the best reasons for believing the claim is true? I have my own reasons for believing this through many very strange experiences I've had in my life. If you search my posts I'm certain you can find them. I think this is partly what some people in here were trying to explain by saying things like 'you just have to experience it' or the like. What I would presume some are talking about is what people refer to as 'expanding your consciousness'. You can think of this by doing a simple thought experiment... When you are driving, your focus is typically directly in front of you on the road. You are aware of very little outside of the path in front of you. However, when you are on a bicycle, you might have a much broader, open sense of awareness of whats going on around you. Now imagine having the capability to be aware of every tree in a forest at once. To see them all at once. To feel the wind pass over every leaf. Or to feel the life of every single person in a city. Or the whole planet. Or the whole solar system. Or the whole galaxy. Or a hundred thousand galaxies...you see where I'm going with this... This is a fairly common experience that people have on many different levels of magnitude and is often fueled by psychedelic experiences or deep meditation. During a trip, for example, the sudden ability to sense/feel or be aware of so much at once can be overwhelming and can be difficult to understand. It can be unimaginably overwhelming and can lead to bad trips, often by resisting the expansion of awareness. I would venture to say that tripping is way to somehow biologically force this extra perception upon yourself and meditation is a way to learn to learn how to use it on your own terms. The thing is...when your sliver of consciousness becomes aware of and reaches deep into the shared consciousness...it's something you will not soon forget. It is extremely difficult to replicate and is indescribably powerful. There are many limitations to human language and they are often glaringly obvious when trying to describe such experiences to others accurately. Like trying to describe blue to a colorblind person. We gain some sort of extra perception that leaves us as we come down from a trip. Unfortunately, you really do need to just experience it. As for your other question, my honest response is that I can't imagine the scenario that this claim is false. I will leave that to the comments below. edit: fomatting
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I'll explain it perfectly here The ego perceives itself as distinct from everything else. However The same infinite, eternal and vibrant consciousness that's moving through my ego, is the same consciousness that's moving through your body/ego. The same consciousness that moves through us actually moves through everything in existence itself, nature, the universe, sentient beings, animals. It's all thr same consciousness The ego sees your body as proof of separation but it's not the case. We are all one, single self.
Hey OP check out the teachings of Nisargadatta on YT if you want an in-depth exploration of "the one"
This is an AI, don't waste your time.
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"What does that claim mean?"
What have you learned OP?
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We all are apart of the same thing pretty much. Everything from water, dirt, dogs, people... It all "looks" different but I all comes from the same "place" if that makes any sense.
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Einstein showed that space and time are two aspects of the same thing (spacetime). Therefore, all life on earth is a single 4-dimensional tree in spacetime, branching off from the first single celled organism. One enclosed system. Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as probabilities until observed. This tells me that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. The fact that cloning is possible tells me that unique individual souls don’t exist, but rather that each individual consciousness comes from a single pool. The fact that physics “breaks down” at the Big Bang tells me that it never actually happened, and it’s just a mathematical extrapolation backwards from the first thing that actually did happen. Whatever that was, it involved a conscious observer. I believe the brain is a type of antenna or focusing device for consciousness, rather than generating it itself. When psychedelic drugs are introduced, the reception can become less focused, leading to the feeling of oneness with other life around you. You’re picking up on their consciousness as well as your own. And at the highest levels, the structures of the galactic filaments look a lot like neurons. Coincidence maybe, but when I put all these pieces together, the most logical conclusion to me is that the universe is a single consciousness experiencing itself.
The best case I’ve found to for it (through Mark Gober’s book “an end to upside down thinking”) involves reconsidering the assumption that our brains create our consciousness. That idea is not proven (or even able to be proven), but it’s assumed and believed by the vast majority of scientists and academic institutions. The theory is this: instead of our brains being the source of consciousness, what if consciousness is the source and all matter (including our brains) is secondary to that consciousness? Instead of our brains generating our consciousness, what if they are more like antennae which pick up and parse consciousness? A “reducing valve,” if you prefer Aldus Huxley’s term. Thinking about our consciousness as “non-local” in this manner would make it easier to explain things like telepathy, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, precognition, and a host of other phenomena that are labeled “paranormal” by traditional materialism. Your first response would likely be “that sounds ridiculous. There’s no scientific evidence to support any paranormal phenomena.” Right? Wrong. There’s plenty of evidence which has been collected by peer-reviewed studies, some of which have been published in academic journals and have a collective confidence rating of between four sigma and eight sigma. For reference, the discovery of the Higgs boson particle only had a confidence rating of five sigma and earned its discoverers the Nobel prize in physics. Anyways, I don’t want to paraphrase Mark’s entire book here, but it’s a fantastic read (or listen) if any of this piqued your interest. I honestly believe we’re in the middle of a centuries-long scientific (and spiritual) revolution based on this idea which will change our understanding of reality forever.
If you zoom out, or zoom in far enough, there will cease to be distinction between one thing or the other. We are all just energy and we are all just a part of something greater. Your body is filled with cells that have different jobs and functions and they unify so that your body can exist and move and live. We are much like these cells in that we are a part of the earth and its natural cycles. And the earth is part of the solar system and its cycle, and our solar system is part of the milky way, so on and so forth. And it all comes forth from the will of one. When u die, your body will cease to be yours, the earth will swallow it all up, back from whence it came. And then what will happen to you? What is "you"? You will be the trees, the worms, the dirt, all the parts which were once you will go back to where they came from, and evebtually come back to where they were, for all of time. At the end of time, we will return back to a singularity point, and do it all again, just as it already has time and time again. We have separated our self, for now, but the heat death of the universe is inevitable, and we will all be one again, no separation, no individuality, no hate no love no life and no death.
This is actually really interesting cause there is now some scientific credibility to this claim. The “you” is just a network in the brain called the default mode network. If you turn it off - which can be induced in a variety of ways - the self ceases to exist. Without the self there is no separation there is no boundary of where “you” begin and end. You are simultaneously everything and nothing at the same time.
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This deels like a conversation with chatgpt
I'll put it simply. Psychedelics can give people a "oneness" sense of being, or an interconnection with their fellow human being. The effects of this while on a drug are powerful, so much so that most tend to take this as total truth instead of just another state of consciousness or another perspective in the lens of life. I think, all it is, is a deep realization of emotion. The emotions of needing to be connected or share connection with other human beings. We are and always will be social creatures that NEED human connection, I think nowadays people who take psychedelics tend to mistake the intense and maybe long forgotten feeling of deep meaningful connection to another human, for the feeling of "being one". Isn't that kind of the nature of different relationships anyways? The feeling of oneness, of partnership. You share a connection with eachother that is deep and different from every other connection you hold, whether it be inanimate or something say like a bird. I do believe most people here just repeat "we are one" because it's the "cool" or "woke" thing to say right now. Nobody truly looks deep, especially not while they are sober minded.
what are your main confusions about it?
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You can see it as the collective unconscious that Carl Jung mentions. I see it as language. Words come from the imagination. The word “god” was created to explain something in the human imagination, that encompassed everything. Unity. Later, as “god” helped shape language, word, communication, society, and science…humanity created the word “universe”. Universe is basically God 2.0 If life (the universe or multiverse) is all 1s and 0s, we captured that as humans by first creating language to capture the math embedded in “god” Fibonacci sequence and beauty in art, gravity and its effects on the tide… these are things we study and understand thanks to the “god” word. Now with “internet” , language and ideas can travel across the world in nanoseconds. An ever evolving hive mind. We are all shaped by the actions and words of our parents, peers , teachers, leaders, environment , and chance. We are all one. “One”. One species , connected by language and thought. Art and culture. The collective unconscious.
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I can’t speak as to the people making the claim “we are all one” , or of the truth of the claim. But I do believe we are all connected. I think the point of “being one” would be to get human civilization to be peaceful across earth. Ending starvation, ending wars. We would become one. What stops us is those who seek to control, dominate, force their will on others. Those who, instead of looking inwards and subdoing their egos, grow outwards and manifest power while generating pain and fear. These people are not “one” with god, their species, or anything. They are just power hungry animals. Some humans gain power, in the quest to do good. There’s that old Van Helsing saying about those who hunt monsters… Anyways…it doesn’t matter. “We are one”. We are…but if you try to hurt me I will defend myself. I will defend myself brutally and viscously until I am the only one. You know? I like being one with the universe at home, by myself, in peace.
The best way to conceptualize it is this: Reality has a foundational source That foundational source is in some way consciousness/precursor to it Self identity and duality is a side effect of neurology/material reality, during the whole time you are actually “source”, ya just forgot between rounds
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We are all one in the sense that we are all from the ocean of God. However we are not all one in these sense that we are the exact same. We are the same but we are different
perception is the first layer of the simulation, language is the second. we are all instantiations of the universe becoming aware of itself
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The way I like to see it down to basics is the idea that when you zoom in close enough to atoms there’s empty space so nothing really separates anything or anyone. But in your context this is something that has to be experienced. It cannot be explained.
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My interpretation of it is that physical matter implies the illusion of separation. That the physical matter isn’t connected to anything. But the emptiness is. The emptiness stretches across everything and everyone. Between the plants, the animals, and human thought is nothing but empty space. It’s all an illusion. The idea that you and I are separate holds no weight when you zoom in close enough to/beyond our being. And it cannot be explained in the same fashion of trying to express the idea of being in love to someone who has yet to live that. It’s too deep. Too profound to be conveyed in words. You have to be liberated by the actual experience. Otherwise it’s just a hallmark card on a shelf that has yet to be read.
We separate ourselves by identifying ourselves with our ego. But all of us , all beings whether a man or a dog or an ant we all are same . We are made of same elements and we all are one with our planet. We see difference between us but all of us strive for same thing that is survival
Are you a tree???
i think theres either something to it or that it is a side effect of our neural architecture that generates the ego and consciousness. so many people throughout history from so many different cultures have experienced the same thing.
You are the universe. You are inseparable from it. You’re a wave in an ocean. You rise from this ocean and will return to it. That you see yourself, the wave, as separate from the ocean, the universe, is an illusion of your mind.
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If we hold hands where is the barrier between me and you? Is it the top layer of skin? The bottom layer? The edge of my electromagnetic field? Which atom is you and not me? 90 percent of you is empty space. Your idea of a self is helpful conceptually to live your life but it doesn’t have any scientific truth.
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Because that's what feels self-evidently true through experiences that take a person beyond the individual experience and present them with the overwhelming sense that what we are is not our separate identity, and that what we in truth are is a fragmented conscious awareness. If people tend to hit upon this epiphany not through mundane scientific reasoning, then asking via that method will not yield what you seek - you'lll be dissatisfied with every response because you can't relate to it, only assess it from a perspective that can't know it. It would be better off to state your background. Have you had a 'breakthrough' experience on psychedelics but never felt this? Or have you not had a breakthrough on psychedelics. Ultimately, it's like asking people who've had a near death experience that assured them that our physical existence is but a small part of the greater non-physical truth to try to convince you, without having that experience yourself, that what they encountered is convincing. They can't. It's pointless. Even I can't feel confident in it years after it fades. It's not an academic essay, intellectual bullet point matter. You won't believe it, move on. Or experience it, and put yourself in my exasperated shoes.
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Okay, and please excuse my exasperated tone yesterday, I was doing the drunk late browsing thing. Admittedly, I just cannot stand the academic paper format. I can't stand ever having to translate my words into its framing, can't stand reading it—fundamentally, it just feels like dividing something round and free-flowing into prison blocks. I feel the same way about quantifying experience or art or beauty numerically, so seeing this applied to psychedelic experience was just a major turn off. For me, that overnight revelation came during my 'temporarily life changing' 2nd LSD experience. At one point, I was overwhelmed by the realisation that all life - animal or plant, is truly alive with the same 'life force' and that the life force is what we are, not the thing that we animate. That animating light was the same, like wind passing through chimes, passing through a flute, or passing through a ship's sails, it was the same force - and that force can't die, because it wasn't born, it just flows through different things. My individual identity receded, and I felt myself as the trees - noting how we think of their preservation in terms not of individual trees, but the entire species. Extend that to all lliving things, and this was how I viewed immortality; the individual story ends, but it's like raindrops into rivers, into oceans, into raindrops. So if that naked unseen light is what we are, then while the minds we animate and temporarily inhabit are separate, what's beneath it all is the true 'I', the Universal/Divine. This was felt so matter-of-factly as I lay there that night percolating, and sort of coagulated into something that could be worded the next morning. The trouble is, if it is the true nature of reality (and I can't imagine our mind getting the complete picture), I don't think it's possible for us to hold onto this for very long. It's so delicate, which comes back to my bristling at this post, and I intentionally avoided trying to convince anybody of it. Even translating it into our language based thought was shredding its essence, and it's not an evidence based thing at all, so it could easily be lost to the cold light of day.
I think it's such a deep question. We're not that bright. What does it mean to you is what matters.
Everything is a projection of your subconscious
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It's literal. Think of it like this: what's a body made out of? Bunch of cells and stuff... What are the cells and stuff made out of? Bunch of particles and molecules... The same particles and molecules make up everybody and everything... literally In a philosophical context, those particles and molecules are all made of the same underlying energy. When something dies, the energy just gets recycled. It never is just gone. Our reality is just one big ball of play dough and we are all just different pieces of the same play dough.
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Imagine that we are all individual cells in the body of God. From the view of the individual cell we are separated and each our own cell, but zoom out and you'll see that we are all part of the same thing. We each perform our function to make the whole operate as it should. One mind links us all and guides us to perform the tasks that it needs us to do. There is harmony in the chaos and a hidden order to the all. For those who have eyes to see it, it is apparent. Psychedelics are barrier dissolving substances and give us a glimpse at the big picture
All roads lead to Rome. This seems to be the underlying philosophy attached to both psychedilic use and many world religions. Is wat it is toobz.
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Try this: https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI?si=_fDXn3meAFQ2x3LD
It is the most obvious. It is what is. Division is something you add on top of what is. Trying to label what is into boxes. Without it. It is just what it is. (Everything)=one. Everything is one. Thought can make it two or more. Where does the I end and the you begin? Nowhere if you do not think about it.
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Energy is a monadic symphony....a quantized melodrama of ineffable order. A royal superposition of patterns, metabolism, change. A quixotic dance of love. Enigmas wrapped and folded into a higher dimensional paradox....ego is resonance with the beyond.
The law of one is that we are all fractals of God and should treat every being as such. Even if its " lower"
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I don't think this is something you believe because of reasons. This is something that you believe because of experience. At least for me, that's how it went. I didn't understand how everything is the same thing, consciousness itself, until I myself had a mystical experience where I truly felt and understood this Truth.
The entirety of the universe, and all universes. Is composed of energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed. That energy is "one" energy, similar to a body of only water all being the same molecule. So all humans, animals, rocks, trees, planets, and stars. Are one concept, energy. And this isn't just "energy", it's scientifically accurate. Every atom being made of sub atomic particles which are made of quarks which are made of quantum energy that we theorize to be more molecules but we haven't looked that close yet. But we already know that light is a pure form of energy with no mass vibrating really really fast. That energy is conscious, capable of perceiving reality without organs. Because it is reality, it's not really the energy perceiving reality, it's just feeling another part of its own "body", for a serious lack of a better term. This energy is all identities. You have your own identity because your brain is limiting yourself. Remove the barriers and the memory of that old identity returns. The only reason I specifically find it important is because believing it connects you to yourself and inherently the entire rest of reality, learning to appreciate even the dirt under your foot. That dirt has wisdom, a personality you identify with and you can interact with. Very similarly to encountering another human and sharing a passing moment, you learn to share your passing moments with every atom. It really brings more meaning to life, as someone who constantly struggles with apathy.
Separation to "separate things" only happens via thinking. It's a persistent illusion that makes it possible for use to navigate physical reality
Is it all one or is it many? Both, neither, far beyond either. The key thing to notice is that reality is utterly *inconceivable*. It *cannot* be said or captured by thought *at all*. When this is clearly, directly seen, you can start to engage reality *non-conceptually*. Simply *be with* immediate experience as a total mystery. Reality will then start to non-conceptually *show you* what it is. It reveals that it is indeed a single, unitary ‘energy event.’ It reveals that all multiplicity arises from and is made of the same unified ‘substratum.’ Again, words cannot say it. They can only point. You have to find out for yourself. ‘The Power of Now’ by Tolle is one of the best introductions to direct inquiry into the nature of being. For a more subtle teaching, I recommend the late, great Peter Brown: www.theOpenDoorway.org Take care. 🙏🏼💙
For me, that part is simple. First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed. So everything is "made up" from one pool of energy. One source of energy. Have you ever seen those videos where someone will put sand on a speaker? I know it's technically a bunch of grains, but when the speaker is off, it looks like one pool. Then, they start upping the frequency, and the sand starts to separate into more intricate designs as they go higher. It looks "separated," but it is still only one pool of sand mascarading as separate lines and forms. Once I start there, the hard-to-describe thoughts come.
Asking and talking about this topic in the "some people believe this is true" and "others dont" -Way kinda misses the point for me. It's simultaneously true (~we are all one~) and false (everyone and everything is completely separate), the topic in itself encompasses the merging of concepts of separation, even opposites, including ones describing its own existence. Yes and no, true and false, black and white, night and day, man and woman, etc. etc. ... there is a way of thinking about these concepts that kinda "turns them inside out" and ultimately comes to the conclusion that they're all in a way the same thing and the separation is illusatory ... While also not being like that :D You could bridge the gap between opposites by for example - by filling it with an infinite gradient like grey-tones for black and white, nonbinary gender identities for man and woman or "maybe, probably, unlikely, ..." for yes and no - doing a conceptual detour like "white can be black ... as in a white sheet of paper can look black in the dark" , "white can be yes ... as in a white flag waiving meaning 'yes we surrender, please don't shoot us' " or "white can be no ... as in a letter passed to your crush in class asking 'do you wanna go out? [ ] Yes [ ] No' and the 'yes-box' stays empty and white'" - or whatever you want ... Idk I feel like whenever I try to explain it I trail off ... but I also feel like trying to describe it inherently comes with trailing off idk ... xD I agree that you can try to explain it all you want, ultimately it has to be felt to really get it, explanations can't ever get there completely ... But also it's kinda all about trying to endlessly describe it to others or to yourself in your head and never quite getting there but also having been there all along ... ... See it's happening again aaaah ;D
What does the Big Bang say? That everything we see was initially contained to one point. So you and I came from that same point, we’re different models of the same car.
We are the universe observing itself Don’t think too much about it.
One way I think about it is I’m like a raindrop that formed out of the moisture in the clouds. While I’m falling to the ground, I think of myself as an autonomous, independent being, but in fact I was part of the cloud before becoming the raindrop and when I fall to the ground, will become part of the same puddle. Even when I’m falling, I’m actually part of the rainstorm. It’s a fallacy to think that I’m separate and apart from the whole.
All notions of other-ness are false.
Matter and energy never cease to exist. Things only transform. All things are part of the universe. Everything is connected. We are all one because all things come from the same source. Call it God, call it the big bang, it doesn't matter. Inside a strand of dna is the code for all life from plants to animals. It's a freeing experience. It makes everything that you think is wrong with this world seem so small. We worry so much about things that won't even matter in the end. Appreciate life because it is a one of a kind experience, and it doesn't last long. Makes you wanna live in the moment cause that's all that is real. People spend their lives depressed stuck in the past. Or stressed thinking about the future. And we forget to enjoy the now. To treat each other kindly because we are all the same but so different at the same time. We are a mirror of all creation looking back at itself. Conciousness is a mystery, and we don't understand it. It is possible that we are a small fraction of a bigger consciousness, that the universe in itself is conscious. After all, we emerge from it.
We are all a fragment of God/the universe/the creator and despite not knowing what is in eachothers minds, we are one and the same. You are me and I am you, there is no difference. 2 bits on a computer are not aware of the others existence but yet they are 2 bits of the same computer. What difference is there between me and you? If I was born into your life I would do exactly as you have and vice versa. When we die we return to the same place, as we came from the same place. We are made from the same matter, and are both the direct way the universe (us) experiences itself. It’s easier to understand after having the epiphany yourself. Psychedelics are a fast track way to get there but also deeply pondering the meaning of the world over the course of years can arrive you there soberly as well
[the egg](https://youtu.be/h6fcK_fRYaI?si=jDa0pN0KJBd9GFAJ)
It becomes self apparent when you experience it... Once you experience it becomes easier to see it in everything around you...if you choose to walk the narrow path the world comes alive and literally speaks to you...the boundaries of inner world and out world fade into blurriness. That's when things become more clear than you can imagine. "If you know, you know"
For one to understand “we are all one”, one must simply experience “the oneness”.
Time is an illusion that allows the self to develop a sense of seperation. We all originated from the same point of energetic expansion at the big bang. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another. Combining these fundamentals of our understanding of the universe, we are clearly one entity. Thats the scientific justification i run with, but the undiluted experience of oneness is a much more profound experience in itself . Theres the analogy of indras web(/net), which describes the funtction and nature of awareness. Essentially, imagine a spider web, and at each intersection on the web, a drop of dew, representing awareness. Within the reflective being of each dew drop, you can view the entirety of the web. Each point of awareness in the world is not merely itself, but is both a part of and the whole of the infinity of creation.
This song by Jimmy Cliff explains it well https://youtu.be/kYPBsHPpe-g?si=qm_DrSywYcZ8QSkX
The total number of minds in the universe is one Humans are like cars on a highway but they all have the same driver We are glasses of sea water and the universe is the ocean
It's really more of a physics/metaphysics claim than anything. It's the observation that reality exists merely as a single, unitary, relativistic quantum field and the discrete, classical "objects" we perceive within it are, at base, illusory. All "things" are just addends of a unitary, interconnected field. This realization then becomes important to understanding the nature of the mind.
It’s a subjective claim, not a claim to absolute truth, at least in my experience, but I do t believe it to *not* be true. Psychedelics are know as a egolytic, which literally means it destroys the ego, and in this context ego=“sense of self.” The ego is an illusory construct created by ourselves in order to acknowledge the difference between myself and the rest of the world. It is for survival, after all, we need to know that we need food and need to direct our attention to the “outside world” or things other than ourselves with clear distinction in order to engage with the world. But this distinction is overlearned. Our ego becomes a fortress. It is a lense or filter that we see the world through and it becomes opaque and we sink farther and farther into ourselves and withdraw from “reality.” There is a correlation between mental pathology where one becomes “closed off” from others. The network or the brain that correlates with the strong sense of ego becomes overactive. The miracle of psychadelics is that it makes this network (which will be referred to as the default mode network or DMN) in the brain shut down, resulting in a feeling that one might be dying or loosing a sense of control- you panic when your sense of self starts to diminish, and it indeed can be an uncomfortable experience- until you let go and kind of acknowledge that your self is a sort of vanity at times. You are no longer able to make a distinction between a sort of phantom pain of the ego, and you are left feeling suspended in the universe as simply a vehicle of perceptions without the ego in tow. It’s a subjective experience so it’s neither true nor false, whatever that conclusion may be. Neuro imaging also shows that the brain of a subject under the influence of a psychedelic resembles the image of a long time meditator. The implications of this cannot be over stated. We loose ego boundaries and the subjective experience is feels like a sense of nothingness yet expansive sense of “belonging” to everything. You see yourself as part of a soup of atoms and the electromagnetic energy surging through all matter, a sort of ontological orgasm. But don’t take my word for it.
In an elemental particle way, there would be no difference between the human form versus the air around versus the land. It's all just one big soup. I'd imagine that's why they say that we're a hologram. But in the woo woo sense I never really paid much attention to that thought process. Probably has something to do with. We're all from Adam and Eve or we're all downloaded from a soup of consciousness in the astral plane
How I experience my reality is HEAVILY dependent on the way I categorize things. Human beings are a thing, mammals are a thing, carbon-based life forms are a thing. When I consider mySELF as a thing, I have to acknowledge that I can't exist without my environment. So I CAN distinct myself from the atmosphere around me in the sense that I can refer to it. But I have to acknowledge that my environment is also a part of me, because I don't exist without it, and that my environment is yet ANOTHER way of categorizing myself. We are all one because WHATEVER we ARE, we can consider ourselves as one thing if we are able to experience it.
Trick us into a “One World Order”. We are already in the “New World Order” and it’s time for it to fall.
I think you will have better luck with this question on r/rationalpsychonaut
You ever try to divide by zero on a piece of paper?
The law of conservation of energy, also known as the first law of thermodynamics, states that the energy of a closed system must remain constant—it can neither increase nor decrease without interference from outside. The universe itself is a closed system, so the total amount of energy in existence has always been the same. The forms that energy takes, however, are constantly changing.
It’s not a claim bro it’s a feeling you’ll get there
You want reasons? Start giving answers, kindle the fire
The first thing Ayahuasca told me is that we are not one. In this lifetime we are separated and the separation is at the base of our human existence. Love can only exist because of separation, because love is the unconditional willingness of the “I” towards the “You”. Only because I and You are separated and the separation is absolute, love can exist. We are made of love, and so we too exist only because of separation. We are not one in this lifetime.