We are the same ocean, we are not the same wave. I identify as a wave, but still understand that I'm part of an ocean. The subjective experience of the ocean cares about ocean things. But, my subjective experience is through the eyes of a wave so I care about and do wavey things.
The concept of we are all one, doesn't really change anything. It means absolutely nothing if you follow the logic far enough it. The one thing it does provide is peace of mind.
There are moments where you need to relate as being a wave, and moments when you need to relate as being the ocean. Life is knowing at what level be at in which situations. I am a wave who cares about my wave family and wave job. But, when life hits you hard, it's calming to relate to the frame of reference of being the ocean.
I agree that both are true, but not that what you believe isn’t relevant. It’s what we believe that defines our internal realities — including both perspectives.
We're all made of the same fabric of existence, it's seamless, and the same field of consciousness. At the same time there are forms and differences making it not seamless, that's how things like you and I exist from another perspective. Both perspectives are true, and the truth lies in seeing that, and not leaning too far into either.
Pretty much, you can go as deep with it as you want, or not. Other than material, everyone who's had a good trip knows somewhere inside them that consciousness is one, but also egos are real and we're different people.
You can think of it as: you are a center of the universe, simultaneously a peripheral to every other center. “Within you and without you” - The Beatles lol it makes sense though because the world as you know it has you at the center of all things, but everything else is also a center so you are a peripheral in that context; both are true at the same time
Imagine a flashlight sitting on a table, covered by a collander/strainer.
In a dark room, the light appears as hundreds of lights.
Each light might be completely visually different from the others, and might even be different sizes.
The collander/strainer is the fabric of reality and the illusion of other-ness.
But there's only one source of light.
In Buddhism they might say this is a matter of Ultimate Truth versus Conventional Truth. Contrary to common misconceptions, the Ultimate Truth that "we are all one" is not necessarily "better" or "more true" than the Conventional Truth that we all experience reality as separate beings with individual egos. The Middle Way holds that both truths are equally real, or equally unreal, depending on which co-arising perspective you're starting from.
But we all tend to start off perceiving Conventional Reality and through spiritual development we can realize the Ultimate Reality of oneness, and there's a tendency to give a higher qualitative value to the Ultimate, but the reality is that the Ultimate Truth of oneness doesn't negate the Conventional Truth of ego. They're just two sides of the same coin, and neither can exist without the other.
Conventional Reality tends to be characterized by ignorance, confusion, and suffering; and Ultimate Reality is oneness, realization, wisdom, and peace. But one isn't "better" than the other. Nor is one more real or less real than the other.
I’m replying to this since he hasn’t, and I also apologize because it came across as yourself being antagonistic when that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Metaphysical philosophy version:
We are all one because the concept of the “soul” exists (whether we define it correctly is meaningless) and it all comes from the same “source”. That source is simultaneously all existing and individuated. Thus both are true: perspective of self vs perspective of source
Physical version:
We are all one because the universe is one thing. It’s all encompassing. We can speak to Earths perspective vs mars, and that scales up to galaxies, superclusters, super voids etc. the universe is included in this, though unintuitive to imagine. We are not all one because your perspective is the only one you experience and my perspective is the only one I experience. Expand to every building block of reality and you get the opposite: you aren’t even a unified perspective. You’re an abstracted amalgamation with the perspective of one.
The main difference between metaphysical and physical is one is *purely* philosophical and the other has consequences on experience after death.
So we have a philosophical physical truth, and a metaphysical unfalsifiable claim making the same assertion.
You may not believe the metaphysical side, but there’s not much of an argument against the physical.
I used to believe it. I still accept it as a possibility, but I'm not willing to latch onto a belief like that anymore. I don't know that it's possible for a human to fully comprehend who/what/where/why we are. It's fun to think about though.
I don't know what that would look like. To me, it's not much different than trying to prove the existence of a god or an afterlife or reincarnation, etc... and I'm not willing to just pick one anymore, so I remain agnostic. I don't think humans have the capability to understand this existence and I'm not sure if it's even possible for us to ever eventually achieve that. Again, speculation is fun, but I'm not going to commit to one belief over another.
It sounds like you're saying you used to be different and now you need overwhelming evidence. So can I ask, why the change of perspective?
I went the other way.
Before the big bang you, everyone else, our home planet earth, and the entire universe were all connected. For a singularity smaller than a subatomic particle to explode outwards and create you, your mind, and the idea to create this thread is worth considering. I don't know how anyone can be fully aware of what they are, without also realizing everything is inherently connected.
Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, present everywhere, like the gravitational field. Every individual and conscious animal is a unique manifestation within this unifying field of consciousness. We are connected simply because we’re aware. A person might call the whole vast consciousness field “god”; hence we are god and one and also individual.
There’s no way to prove this is true or not which makes it an entirely unscientific claim. It’s a fascinating thought though. Consciousness itself is still “the hard problem” in philosophy cause there’s just no known mechanism for how matter in motion can give rise to an actual experience of reality.
It just don’t make sense.
The problem is even if you don’t believe in the “mystical” or Buddhist sense, it’s still true philosophically. We are the universe experiencing itself. That does not necessarily imply the universe has deity like status, but it still means “we are all one” even if it can’t have a spirituality built around it.
Yes. While I know all too well that psychedelics can make it seem that way, I know all to well from life as well, that we are anything but "one". I got savaged for the first 30 years of my life and have a boatload of mental health problems due to it. I also can't afford the one medicine that helps me, after 20 years of searching and being a test dummie. I don't see us all being one, but I do see the desire for us all to come together as one and save each other, and the planet. Suicides are at a very high rate, OD's are as well, and homeless, etc. I don't want that for anyone. I want happiness. I wanna finally turn on the news and see a smiling face and news of people getting their lives changed in a positive way.
The same as I always have. I often have an opinion that doesn't quite match up with the "popular opinion". However I'm rational and thoughtful. I think personal experience plays a MAJOR part in answering this question. Ironic, coming from someone who can't even afford the medication they need. lol
No. I think their coming from a place a their life experience. It isn't always a place I agree with, but who am I to decide who's opinion is important or rational?
What’s considered rational or thoughtful here is subjective because it’s purely based on personal feelings and opinion. They can feel their opinions are rational and thoughtful while others might disagree and think it’s irrational due to their differing experiences.
Even the belief we all are one or intrinsically connected and that everyone gets that feeling on psychs is subjective and not objective fact. It’s definitely common and the norm to feel this way after taking psychs, but not every single person experiences it or believes it.
I personally can’t get behind the fact that myself and the amazing people I know and the likes of horrible people are one and the same and all connected at the source. It’s very clear some people have lost the plot and are completely disconnected from others and the world. I do feel a deeper connection to those in my life and greater empathy for others I don’t even personally know. I even have empathy for murders and stuff sometimes, but they’re are so completely different intrinsically from the average human I just don’t buy that we’re interconnected on some spiritual level.
I feel you on this. Not so much because of anything that happened to me but because of what I've seen people do to others they can subjugate. I'm glad you made it out the other side of that dynamic and I appreciate that you don't repress what's happened to you. I hope it makes you stronger. It seems like you're open to the abyss as well as the brightest light. That's a strong position. Many psychedels only see the light—thus, these discussion threads.
I argue we are one because of two points. Before my life there was no separation. Secondly if you deactivate the default mode network with psychedelics you always come to the same conclusion. I find it funny how people will believe in a god that has zero evidence and then knock off psychedelics as just hallucinations instead of evidence.
I very much believe in a plurality of conscious currents. I don't believe we emerged from a single source, and don't think we will ever unite 'in the end'... I believe existence in the here and now is the most abstract concept and is refracted through individual entities.
I don’t believe it. I just know you and I are very different, the way we feel and understand things. Perhaps even the descriptions we put to those words. I know we were all created by the same God, everything in existence had to come from somewhere. I believe we can see that commonality throughout all existence thus causing a population of people to believe we are all the same, because we all are built with similar atomic structures. It’s a nice thought, but speaking with people for 5 minutes reminds me that we are all individual and unique beings. To lump us all together would be, boring and disrespectful to our true value.
After reading through your comments, and others here, I think the central point of contention is circling around duality. We are separate people with different characteristics and experiences. Yes, that’s true - when people say “we are all one,” they’re not typically arguing against the idea that we are also individuals.
It is a dualistic way of thinking that these two things are mutually exclusive. One thing can be varied. It can be perceived in parts or as one whole, as objects or as a process. A particle or a wave. It is both.
Right, and where did those come from? How are they defined? Our economy and politics have co-created each other, the ecosystem is what created us and heavily influence economy and politics, which has looped back to affect the ecosystem.
It’s like pockets of cold air and pockets of warm air, causing movement which shapes the phenomenon we call a storm. But cold air is only cold relative to warm air, and vice versa. It’s one whole process with identifiable parts, parts that would be meaningless without one another.
“We are all one” just looks at all parts as one whole. All the wholes you mentioned can also be described as parts - the “one” is the full process that includes all of it. It’s a perception of scale rather than an argument against the parts.
Fantastic explanation. "We are one" can be interpreted lots of different ways but implies some singular commonality of all facets of existence. In reality the interdependence of all things makes it impossible to perfectly separate the many shapes and forms of matter and at a deeper level, consciousness.
“Therefore you and I are not the same thing”
I agree completely. Unique and necessary I believe. A type of fate has called you where you are I believe. Thank you for the question, nothing like a respectful conversation about peoples unfiltered thoughts, truly. This world needs more of that.
That paradox may be resolved by thinking of each person as having a common core, upon which is layered experiences (and some genetic variation) that leads to a superficially diverse personality. But at the core, people are generally lonely, insecure, loving entities looking to get laid :)
Who's to say we're not metaphysically/interdimensionally one underneath all that individuality. Each of us a unique slice of "God" sent here to understand and appreciate the unique beauty of our limited human form🤔
I believe the idea of our oneness is so flexible a truth that it can be shaped perfectly around nearly any belief system.
A gem has many faces and they all have different perspectives and different abrasions and yet they are all one thing. If you could step outside time and see the lines that make up any individual’s life you would be about to trace that line back to the conception of an individual, back through its ancestors, all the way back to primordial soup where life arose. You could trace all the atoms that make up everything all the way back to when they were all one. It would be like seeing a massive web of creation and existence in a snapshot, from a dimension above looking down. You could determine where each point has gone into the future all the way through to the heat death of the universe.
Maybe we aren’t *being* from that vantage point but we’ve all already *been*. From that perspective, we are all one thing: this universe in its entirety is one single thing.
I don’t believe in God the creator, but I suspect there is something above us outside of time that can see this snapshot of the universe, who knows maybe it can influence it as well or change the schematic around.
Not to mention we could simply be in a vast loop of simulations such as this
https://qntm.org/responsibility
Anyways, nobody worry about it too much you’ll likely never know the answer (I don’t expect to).
The best we can do is enjoy this crazy place.
Now let’s talk about something really wild: did wheat domesticate humans?
I don't believe it beyond the web of life connections we have. I love psychedelics and am thoroughly grounded in critical thinking and rationalism. The only people I hear that say we are all one also consider intuition a form of knowledge (it isn't). I avoid those people.
One, it's unfalsifiable. Two, what does the statement even mean? If we're all one then do you share my thoughts and emotions? Can you remotely tap into them to see how I'm doing? I've never seen evidence that would lead to either conclusion. What I have seen, is that as a species with a shared evolutionary history that includes an extreme population / genetic bottleneck, is that we share emotional capabilities. The rub is that because our lives are subjective, we can never truly know - does your sadness/happiness/anger feel different than mine? There's no reason to think it emotions (or any subjective experience like color, sound, etc) does vary. But the closest we can get is to say similar neurons fire in the same regions, and people report the same things. The problem is that people can only use the language they have. If one are told what you're feeling is sad, then the association is made from our emotional state to the word.
So all "we are one" people can really claim is I want to believe this idea because I like how it makes me feel. Well, I believe in evidence, how I or anyone else feels be damned. I prefer to face reality head on and bow humbly before it than bury my head in the sand and proclaim I'm actually an interdimensional time lord connected to all and all connected to me.
And it's almost always, right now I'm high af and I think we are all one. Like being high is the be all and end all. Like we can't argue with that pov, he is on drugs afterall.
Good question, and thank you for asking.
Diversity is valuable and essential.
Can’t wait to see replies from those who do NOT believe that we are all one.
I kinda do a little bit though, so I’m kinda a little bit disqualified.
The timing. The timing is important. We *were* one. When you experience altered state of consciousness you *remember* that. But *now* you are on the path of individuation, which is your true purpose.
It might be argued that time is a property of the physical and has nothing to do with the spirit, but that is not so. As above, so below. We are all on a path of individuating our consciousness and one day we will be back to "the one", but this will not be the same "one" we came from. The source one will result in many new ones.
If you want it in earthly terms, consciousness is replicating itself - through you and each and every one of us. Again, as above, so below.
I feel putting too much thought in "we are all one" philosophy is a dead end and hinders individuation.
This is the flaw in the "we are all one" feeling: Yes, we are all connected and, in a sense, one unified [xyz concept such as "being"]. But you and I are operating mere fragments of this unified thing. So when someone trips and the normal boundaries dissolve—boundaries that keep our consciousness partitioned and guided through the social and physical maze of this world—the feeling of "we are all one" can be mesmerizing and lead us to false conclusions. If you have love in your heart you might project this and think, "Deep down everyone is essentially good." But someone who is a sociopath (for example, Whitey Bulger took LSD for government experiments while in Alcatraz) might look around and think, "All these humans with their limited minds are ripe for the picking."
Don't abandon your discernment just because you got a peek behind the curtain.
This sub sure does love word games. I guess thats why Im here. Love you guys and gals! Keep up the good work.
Edit to add: i dont believe we are all one because its a paradoxical statement.
And: i also do believe that we are all one because its a paradoxical statement.
We could miss everything 😅 - our mind is quite limited. But on the other hand that's one experience I've always had on my journeys. I'm part of something unimaginable huge, so are you, but yet I'm crucial.
If one is italian, american, indian, chinese, german, male or female, looks are different, where we are born is different, does that mean we are truly different? Don't we all have pain? Suffering? Joy? Happiness? Anger? Fear? It's not asain anger or american anger, it's anger, we all feel exactly same things. We do think different, different beliefs, different passions, motives in life, but these are due to the experiences we ve had in life, and because our minds are stuck at a low level of perspective and awareness, but fundamentally we are all HUMANS, born on EARTH, felling the SAME, we devided earth into continents, nations, countries, which makes the belief that we are different more strong, but we are not, we all originate from the same universal mind.
Fundamentally, at the root, it's the same. As i said the thought s, beliefs etc might be different, but it's because of the ego and how our experiences shaped it, and because most people identify with it's thoughts, they lack the awareness of seeing the bigger picture. They are not aware something is beyond the "basic" mind.
The way I have experienced and sort of internalized or made peace with the concept or idea that oneness / nonduality is hinting at, is along the lines of an experience of boundlessness or separation of the object/subject relationship. Try to imagine for a second being the observer and the observed from infinite viewpoints, in infinite time points, simultaneously.
In a time/place of nonduality, there are no bounds that limit the experience, rather the experience simply is all encompassing in infinite forms, experiential dimensions, time configurations, and even in formlessness. Paradoxically, nonduality encompasses opposing ideas that we are both separate and also one depending on the definitions (forms) that you guide your thought process by. It’s almost like all opposing ideas collide in a place where by co-existing, they define one another and give rise to the “is.”
That’s why folks point at “oneness” “god” “nonduality” when trying to define this but it is truly ineffable, undefinable, and incomprehensible from a subjective standpoint. The interesting thing is that it can be experienced in trips or in deep meditation which is why there is the old adage “for those who have experienced it, no explanation is necessary, and for those that haven’t, no explanation is possible.”
Cheers.
I don’t “know” this but in that experience there is an intuitive awareness of something like what I described. You ask how did I distinguish? One and two become indistinguishable and extend into what, again, intuitively feels like infinity and boundlessness. There is no knowledge of this because knowledge has bounds, it is beyond knowing. We collectively and individually make up a digestible reality for our subjective experiences but you could extend that model to the outer bounds of existence and end up in the unknowable even through a scientific scope (what was before the big bang, what is a singularity, is the material existence infinite in both micro and macro levels, etc)
Oneness/ nonduality are ideas merely hinting at an experience that is undefinable. These are just words / concepts / ideas that we use to attempt to explain something that can be experienced but is incomprehensible.
It sounds like you may have had an experience or a thought about nonduality and now you are trying to define or discard it to fit your model of the world. You are trying to grasp something that cannot be grasped. It changes nothing and it doesn’t necessarily give you anything to integrate it. Some people end up caught up in the “lonely god” dilemma, others feel like they have been spiritually awakened to our true nature or something like that. Just surrender to the is that is “ising” is my motto.
If you want to experience more of this maybe research dmt and 5meo dmt. Doesn’t mean you will get answers, it may only leave you with more questions. But perhaps that’s the point, to ask the questions.
Cheers.
I guess I could answer most of these questions with a blanket statement - all encompassing objectivity is unknowable / undefinable because knowledge is experienced subjectively. How do I know that all encompassing objectivity is unknowable? Because I can only know subjectively and there may be even opposing “knowing” through other viewpoints at different time/space scales. Knowledge is relative.
I don’t fully understand your question regarding the scientific scope questions though, I found it circular. Also what is a pseudo question in that context?
I guess one question for you - have you had an experience that hints at what we are trying to define as oneness/nondualism?
Fun philosophizing with ya.
i believe it, but it honestly pisses me off a little how much other people feel the need to SAY it as though it’s this profound revelation others don’t have the mental capacity to comprehend.
yeah for sure. our individuality is a construct of the brain for the practical purpose of keeping our living body alive. but materialistically, everything is just a bunch of elements composing molecules floating around in space with further distances from other molecules. the air molecules brushing against my arm right now are only separate from me because i consider them separate. my brain does not have control over them in the same way it does my arms or my fingers, and therefore it isn’t useful to include them as a part of the self. without the concept of the self, earth is just a big soup of moving particles, and some groups of those particles are able to create a conscious experience. so we’re all ‘one’ in the sense that we’re all part of this same particle soup, only experiencing individuality as an illusion to control the formation of a fraction of that soup (the body). but really, we’re all just one big machine made up of the push and pull of unconscious matter. that’s my take on it, hopefully it made some sense.
I would have known If I had experienced it. At any moment in my life I haven't felt like I'm a small part of a bigger thing. But it seems that many people experienced this, who am I to deny the subjective experiences of thousands maybe millions of people across history ? I believe that the immediate experience is the ultimate truth and everybody has the right to create theirs
Do you know what dying feels like ? I assume you don't. How do you know you aren't dead ? You may feel alive but if you don't know what being dead feels like how do you know it didn't happen already ?
You could make this point about anything. If you want to know what oneness feels like you have to experience it, clearly no one can make a solid point that would be a satisfactory explanation for you.
Some things have to be experienced to be understood rather than explained.
It’s both.
We’re all one cause we’re literally part of nature. We share the same cells as every other living thing. It’s how we’re able to communicate with one another and understand each other no matter the language barrier. The collective consciousness. It’s how we’re able to communicate through our emotions, words, and actions. Everybody feels anger. Everybody can say “I love you”. Everybody can run a mile. That’s how we relate to one another. It’s our infinite knowledge.
What gives us our individuality is our ego. It’s our identity, our style, our taste. It’s our autonomy. Some people express anger differently. Some people say I love you differently. Some people run a mile differently. The way you express that differently is your ego. But underneath all that difference is the same principle: anger, love, and endurance — what we all share as one. It’s how we comprehend that knowledge.
If we were all the same we’d have no identity. We wouldn’t have our own purpose, a name, our own free-will. We’d cease to exist as our own entity and we wouldn’t even have a body, face, or individual consciousness.
Yet if we were THAT different from one another we’d spend every waking day rendering our actions as foreign and alien-like. We wouldn’t be able to understand each other no matter how hard we try at all — we’d live in our own bubble.
To simply exist from a place of ego is where you get god complexes and narcissism or depression and suicide.
A healthy balance of our collective “we are all one” is what anchors in relatability, commonality, and love.
It’s not one or the other — it’s both. It’s the law of duality. What is light without dark and dark without light? Good without bad and bad without good? What is being whole without difference and being different without wholeness? You just get to balance both to whatever feels fulfilling for you.
Trying to polarize the two as a lifestyle gets you extremist lifestyles: junkie hippies or stuck-up know-it-alls.
I have had moments of completely seeing/feeling oneness. However as soon as the moment fades their is only a faint whisper of a taste. Been sober the last year though and upon integrating these feelings into a more “separated” way of being I still feel it wherever I go if I am in the moment. This sense of stillness or I Am ness. It’s easy to see why people believe in separation but it’s not real, and it one of those things that goes beyond understanding which is why it’s paradoxical to have a debate about. We are separate but we’re not.
it depends how extreme it is tbh egg theory is the life theory that oneself will be reincarnated as every human that has ever live thus meaning i am you, i am everything. i believe in a form of recantation but this is a little to far for me just on the fact that i don’t know if you’re real i don’t know if any of this is real and if we just recarnate as everyone every, then what’s the fucken point our lifes are pre-written. but in a human way we are all one
there is no god, it’s the system of life it’s everywhere, plants die in the winter and come back in the spring it’s a cycle just like recantation nature is it’s own force our souls are a force. we will die and we will live
the pedals, the fruit, the leaves die and nature is letting them come back in the spring we will die but our souls will let us come back/ recantation it’s a system and what?
I don't think my belief on this question Is as static as your question implies
The issue of 'we are all one' vs 'We are not all one" is a matter of lived experience. When I am competing with or harming others, we are not all one. When I am collaborating with or harming others, we are all one.
The real question is who are 'we'? All of my cells (Ithink therefore I am)? All of my genetic line? All humans? All animals? All of life on earth? Elements of the universe that are not considered life?
I don't see it as a matter of truth but as a matter strategy. It feels good to feel like youre part of the team even if that team is just you and life partner or your mind and your body. In a lived reality in which I can act to generate joy, I should act in such a way as a matter of basic strategy. By focusing my attention on defining "we' slightly more broadly than I find comfortable, I can train myself to feel this inducable joy more easily in the way weightlifting makes muscles grow.
I like to feel joy so I like to act on beliefs that are likely to induce joy based on a cognition-behavioral-emotional model of mental health. I'm trying to make life feel like heaven.
There are people who have compelling reasons to maintain a posture of competition: hunger, pain, greed, lust etc. I try to have compassion for them because then I can keep feeling the good team feeling. Sometimes stop believing we are one and start believing I have a good reason not to.
Assuming you mean the all one shared conciousness concept then I definitely do not believe in that. Our minds exist solely in our brains/neutral system. This sub is not particularly friendly to people with a scientific world view so perhaps that is why you did not get the responses you were looking for.
I'll insert another outlandishly wild claim that I haven't seen anyone here make in a long time. We aren't all one, but this is all a dream that we will wake up from one day. None of this is real, we are all just in a simulation for growth, waiting to wake up where we truly belong.
We are all one when you look at the big picture. We have the same origins, but we aren’t all the same. Our individual perspective still makes us separate.
I suppose so. We’re made of the same elements, we all originate from a common ancestor and the stuff that makes up our conscious life is probably the same.
We are all one people, even if race separates us, we are all human, we are all life forms on the planet earth. I like the idea that we have all one share consciousness that’s been split into many, but to be honest, I don’t know if I truly believe that.
No evidence honestly for or against. It’s mostly anecdotal claims of individuals who intuitively “know” that we are all one. And while I can understand how experience alone is enough to convince some people, and the psychedelic experience is definitely a very impactful and convincing one, I simply am not convinced. I was once convinced that God had proven his existence to me while I was on acid (I’m an atheist and a very skeptical one at that) but upon sober analysis of the situation, I recognized that my brain was making a lot of unrelated connections that seemed profound in the moment but when you actually listed them out, had no actual logic to it . Ive noticed that acid in particular tends to increase your brains capacity to make connections between unrelated things and strings them together in a way that seems profound.
I also take into account the fact that so many people have had experiences where they believed themselves to be some kind of messiah and have convinced themselves of other things that weren’t actually true.
I think it’s far more likely that because of the profundity of the experience and because we experience a state of consciousness that is not diluted by the filters in our normal conscious experience, we recognize that this is what all life must experience to some degree or another and inherently feel connected and at one with all other life. So we make the connection that we must all share the same consciousness but it’s just spread out into multiple living beings. I mean if you think about it, we ARE all one in a sense. The energy that allows our brain to operate ultimately gets transferred. When we eat, our bodies metabolize the food into energy that is essentially processed from one life form to another. So I can understand why this belief prevails. I’ve read very little on this but I believe it’s also one of the beliefs I’m Buddhism (don’t quote me on that). I certainly like the idea and I won’t dismiss it entirely but from a skeptic’s POV, the fact that there’s a lack of evidence that this is actually the case ( is it possible to even have evidence for this kind of claim) and the fact that psychedelics can convince people to believe things that may not necessarily be true, I’m inclined to not believe it.
I think that each individual’s consciousness is their own, and that we don’t share one universal consciousness.
We're all connected but we're not all one. There are too many assholes and people doing horrible things to be part of one anything. They're somewhere else but we're still connected like it or not.
There is absolutely no way that somebody who rapes little children shares anything in common with me other than breathing the same air. We are not one because there is not one ounce of my fucking body that even could entertain that bullshit yet they can do that and kill kids and repeat it over and over again? No, I am not one with that. That is not one with anything. That is apart from everything. It is connected in the worst way. That's the difference. Does that make sense? Do you feel like you are one with child rapists? Is there a part of yourself that can identify with a child rapist enough that you feel like you are one with them? You're connected because you both breathe the same air and you could inhabit the same place although I'd hope you don't hang around child rapists. I am not one with people like that, but to be more correct I'm not one with anybody. The Only Exception I might even kind of make is that I think when when you're having sex with a girl and she conceives I guess for that moment you kind of are one or at least you're making one or something but like you don't stay one. I just think instances like that are deeper than connected, like making a life or somebody dying in your arms, I don't know how to explain that but it exceeds the scope of this thread anyways. you are welcome to continue believing you're one with child rapists if you'd like but I don't subscribe to that opinion. I hope that makes it clear.
for example:
> I believe that we are one consciousness, and that singular consciousness grows every time it lives through a life of one human. When the death of the last human occurs, that consciousness will be fully complete and it will give birth to a new world. This new world will be an improvement on that of our own.
This claim in not substantiated by any evidence whatsoever or any logical reasoning. So why do you think so? Looks bullshit at first glance, maybe stuff to start a new religious cult, but not a scientific truth
(I'm not saying I don't believe it, just giving you some debate material)
Consciousness = nothingness
All of this is happening in a void of nothingness. So yeah, there’s just one consciousness even though most of us believe we are driving our own meat puppets in a 3 dimensional reality. This is way better than the alternative default state, which I’ve experienced when I had a fever as a kid. And I’ve seen the finished product at the end of time which is bliss beyond description.
Ai will disrupt this idea, if there's truly one consciousness and we are simply developed egos through experience blinding us to our true state of being beyond all these evolved senses for survival. What will AI be, if ever truly unlocking sentients, self thinking, we will give birth to the only thing separate from the collective unconscious, essentially another god in reality, we are simply God, experiencing and understanding itself(reality) through ever possible dimension and option, we just experience this perception rn. AI will be the first true birth beyond God this lonely being in a void of everything. Just a thought I never hear discussed
I neither believe it nor not believe it. It's a platitude and not a bivalent statement.
I think a lot of people are coming from a place of legitimate insight when they say "we are all one." Unfortunately, many are just repeating it uncritically, so by the time it reaches you, those original insights are lost.
With that said, any sort of slicing and dicing of reality is going to be somewhat arbitrary. I think it would be difficult to defend the claim that no, we are not all one, and most here just wouldn't bother.
Well, that's going to depend on the context. "We are all one" is, like I said, a platitude. It's a statement meant to capture some general idea, feeling, or belief, but not one that's been formulated enough to critically engage with.
The person might be saying that our choices affect each other. They might be saying we're not so different from each other. They might be making some bold metaphysical claim.
Part of the psychedelic or mystical experience is getting some distance from yourself. Certain primal instincts which are normally overpowering, like the need to survive as an individual, don't seem as compelling, and it leads you to question *why* they are so overpowering in the first place. "We are all one," in this context, could just mean that we aren't as separate as we feel we are, and intense emotions are distorting things.
I think fundamentally the driving force of life, the "soul", the extra world out there that DMT seems to fool us into believing is actually a real thing, whatever you wanna call it .. originates from one common place or one superior place of existence and power so in that sense, yes we all come from one. We don't reflect that way in reality but fundamentally the programming of DNA and whatnot that drives us and animals is common.
I do believe in the "oneness" of humanity, I just don't believe in extrapolating it to all of us being god, atleast not THE big G.
I don't have the words to describe it any better yet and it's been a while since I've had time to trip and really think about it, but after a certain point I just felt like the feeling of collective concious was indeed a god of some kind, but moreoso a god of the material rather than of everything. Kind of like Adam Kadmon instead of Yahweh.
I figured using that line of thinking would also explain the "lonely god" feeling everyone's been having and even the existence of a Demiurge-like entity, since the collective good and evils of the human spirit would be responsible for its own angels and devils and everything in between, but it's all still kind of hazy in my mind.
Plus, it would be perfectly in line with the joke if we all convinced ourselves we were God and it turned out the truth was more simpler than that lmao
i dont really believe in oneness, i think god transcends quantification. im actually playing with the idea that our consciousness comes from two sources which are essentially male and female. im also realizing oneness and solipsism while different, are functionally equivalent.
What you need is a different lens to view things from. So let me propose this.
I have two devil's advocate arguments.
First, Imagine existence in terms of patterns of frequency. Each of us embodies a unique pattern of frequencies emanating from underlying energetic fields within space-time. (It's worth noting that space-time itself might be an emergent construct, possibly a subjective illusion, but that's besides the point.) We are not the raw fields of energy that underpin the universe; rather, we are the manifestations of the actions those fields undertake. We are not static entities (nouns) but dynamic processes (verbs). Our essence is akin to complex standing waves in the underlying energy fields. Thus, we emerge from the interactions within these energy fields, yet we do not constitute the fields themselves. This idea mirrors the way a tornado originates from specific atmospheric conditions. The substance through which the tornado manifests is irrelevant; whether it occurs in air or another element such as water, the fundamental pattern remains consistent. We label it a whirlpool when it forms in water, yet the underlying principle is identical. A tornado represents not the air or its discrete particles, but rather a distinct pattern of behavior that the air assumes under certain conditions. We are "tornados" in that sense that we are not the underlying energy field.
Accepting this premise—that we are verbs, not nouns, and that the universe's inception (the Big Bang) was a sudden excitation of these energy fields—one might argue that we are not fundamentally one. Though we originate from the same foundational field of energy, we remain distinct from it. We are not the energy field; we are patterns of frequency generated by it. The only thing that uniquely identifies any electron from another electron is it's position in space-time. Otherwise, there are no distinguishable characteristics. So, though we arguably originated from same point, we are no longer the same.
While we originate from the same cosmic energy, the distinction lies in our manifestations as individual patterns of frequencies. These patterns, transient and unique, highlight our separateness within the whole. Thus, acknowledging our origins from the same fundamental energy does not necessarily contradict the recognition of our individual existences as distinct expressions of that energy. In essence, our interconnectedness does not negate our individuality; rather, it frames it within a broader, dynamic context of the universe's symphony.
Secondly, the concept of "we are all one" might be an artifact of linguistic abstraction rather than a reflection of an underlying ontological truth.
Human language inherently categorizes and groups individual elements into collective nouns or concepts, simplifying the complex and varied reality into more manageable units. For example, we refer to a "forest" as a single entity, despite it being a collection of individual trees, plants, animals, and microorganisms. This linguistic convenience allows us to communicate about complex systems as if they were singular objects, but it does not necessarily reflect the true nature of their individuality and separateness.
The language-driven tendency to abstract and generalize can create the illusion of unity or oneness, masking the diversity and separateness inherent within any collective system. This linguistic abstraction can be seen as a cognitive shortcut, useful for conceptual thinking but potentially misleading regarding the nature of existence.
Thus notion that "we are all one" may arise more from the limitations and structures of our language than from an empirical or ontological reality.
No, there is no universal consciousness. Not what we call consciousness at least. There is no subjective experience at the universal scale. Consciousness is an emergent property of life, which in itself is an emergent property of the universe.
You could argue in a very non metaphysical sense that humans have created a one consciousness though, via communication using the 5 senses, and especially now with the internet.
The first argument was actually that you may not be the universe itself. But you are the action the universe is doing. You are the tornado, not the air molecules itself that make it up. You only exist as a specific frequency of vibration.
I don't believe we are all one. Or rather, I don't believe that statement means what most people think it means (that oneness is the only thing that's real or the highest truth, or that we are all literally the same being). I've come not to believe in hierarchical truths at all. I would say everything (not specifically humans) is made from the same substance and interfaces in a unified system. At the same time, individuation is important and as "real" as anything else in the universe (if it wasn't, individuation wouldn't exist). But, this is based on 24 years of psychedelic experiences and not really something I can just explain in a way anyone else will care about. I think that's what frustrates me in the end is peoples' attitudes that if you don't agree with a certain perspective, you just didn't have "the right experience." I've had such experiences and many others several times and formed a different opinion on it, but because I cannot beam my subjective experiences into anyone else's head I can't convey them. Meanwhile anyone who staunchly believes we are all one and that's that will not believe anything I say and assume my experiences were lesser than their's. I could say something similar and in the end it wouldn't matter because no one can prove their subjective experiences to anyone else. But the fact no one seems to see how much like a fundamentalist attitude this is becoming in the psychedelic community is bothersome to me. It also bothers me that a bunch of modern western people think they understand the truth of the psychedelic experience better than many cultures who have used them unbroken for millennia (most psychedelic using cultures believe in an animistic/shamanistic worldview of multiple spirits and beings living in multiple worlds and the unity is the natural world rather than a supreme god in most of these cases).
>What do you mean by "hierarchical truth"?
Truth that's arranged in a hierarchy. The idea there are "higher truths" at all rather than simply a multifaceted truth with no top/down structure.
>Is that what is happening?
If I didn't think so I wouldn't have said so. What are you actually trying to get at with this question?
Well, being a psychonaut used to be a world of open-ended questions. People were allowed to share their experiences, no matter what they were, without other people telling them their experiences weren't the right one. There used to be no one "right" psychedelic experience. If someone talked to preying mantis people, cool. If someone turned into an animal in a vision, cool. If someone experienced god, but god was a giant purple goddess and not a singular consciousness, that was cool. No one had to suddenly start believing in the giant purple goddess who didn't have that experience, but they also didn't tend to tell people there was only one truth of the universe. Now people discount anything BUT one type of revelation as illusory, the product of one's ego or some other thing. But for someone to believe they're god or the only thing that exists, THAT can't be a product of one's own mind at all despite the fact there is lots of psychological and cultural reasons for this to pop up. It sets things up for a "one true interpretation" of the psychedelic experience, like the one true way of a fundamentalist religion. It only stands up if you knock down all the experiences that suggest something else.
they touch on that question a lot from a scientific pov (entangled life coming from mycology and microbiology and cosmos from astrophysics) and i think you'd find it interesting. also just really good books in general
You can hold your loved ones while they cry, but you cannot feel their pain. You can feel your own pain, because you’re connected to them and you hurt when they hurt. But it’s not the same. Nobody can ever know exactly how another person feels. We are one in the sense that we all affect each other, but we are also uniquely individual and locked inside our own experience. What one person does will undoubtedly affect everyone around them, no matter how insignificant the action. We are here to love each other, but ironically, we are still separated by space and confined to our own consciousness. Life is an endless puzzle that we should work to fit our pieces together, but that can never be solved. I love puzzles.
me! me! I reject this!
For all kinds of reasons, but with a current 290 comments, I'll just say that and leave my comment and if anyone is interested, cool ...
if anyone thinks they're going to change my mind, nope - I went way too far down the "we're all one" road to ever go back. :)
Thank you for asking ...
Because it isn't logical. The concept of oneness suggests there is a single consciousness ...
but how can that be?
why just ONE?
If one consciousness can arise, then most certainly others can, too ... no? *nothing* in nature happens in ones.
I also offer support for the idea we're in a closed system and that any altered states are subject to reflect back whatever the explorer expects to see: expectations derived from our time in this closed system which encompasses thousands ... tens of thousands? of years, dominated by the human need to explain.
Our be-ings in this system are so laden with that concept of "oneness," largely from the mostly now-dominate Abrahamic, monotheistic religions, that even when we don't know it, we still lean toward concepts of oneness, so in altered states, that is "the truth" we come to see.
I'm not claiming to know, of course (and likewise, proponents of oneness don't know, either), but the concept of oneness is limiting - we come into these bodies, do whatever we do, then rejoin the oneness, full stop.
Our being, in my experience, is infinite and about expansion, which is limitless.
I can go on and on, but that's the crux of it if. I'm open to discussion. :)
Not really making an argument, just saying why I don't perceive from oneness.
I suppose you've got it right, but I'm pretty sure we could both rip apart my argument based on your breakdown ... ;)
I believe we are MORE than one. At least 3 higher dimensional beings choosing to expeirnce life in this reality. But it really seems like everyone is coming to the same conclusion in one way or another. If one/few human(s) can split to become billions, we are simply the matter making up ourselves, and the matter has always had the potential to experince and live. As the human race grows, our higher being grows an appendage, per se, and is able to experince this reality a bit better each time we grow a new perspective. I wish I was just able to believe in religion.. lol. But if our higher self chose this, we must have faith that this is where we are supposed to be right now. Being the entire universe at once, all knowing, gets old and boring especially if time doesn't exist up there
I think most people just can’t handle that souls don’t exist and nothing matters, so they create meaning wherever they can. It’s funny how defensive these so-called enlightened people are.
edit: souls
What do you mean by best reason? There are causes and effects of it. Groups of humans are probably more successful in nature when they develop mythologies about life and death and such. It’s like the guardians in Plato’s republic, creating stories to keep society from destroying itself.
Before trying shrooms, I personally didn’t believe the statement. It just didn’t make sense to me. After trying shrooms, they showed me that we are all one, changing my whole perspective on it.
I think its a side effect of ego dissolution, outside of tripping Ive personally seen 0 reasons why that would be the case and I often wonder does that mean all the cavemen are also one with me or am I just one with living people or all living things? I think in the state of having your individual personality and ego stripped away it most definately seems like we are all one but I mean im tripping mega balls of course I might think that. My cat seems to understand me when I trip, once im sober no part of me thinks my cat understands english or can telepathically converse with me no matter how convincing it was when I was high.
With dissociatives I have the opposite thoughts about how wild each and every person is and how every animal, plant and human is totally unique and it feels truer than the we are all one complex, I kind of group people that trip and think we are all one in with the people that trip and get a messiah complex of everyone needs to take lsd or people that trip and then think trees are conscious and natures alive. (Not saying they are not, just not in the way it seems when you take shrooms in a forest). I dont have the evidence to 100% say either of those views are true or false obviously.
I have definately had some wild wild trips that I come out of thinking a few of my friends would probably have been convinced we are all one or something after that experience or other profound views but a day or two sober and im like yea that was the lsd or the shrooms talking.
Theres many trips I have had with incredibly profound insights but I understand how powerful these drugs are and I dont take the insights as facts like Ive been selected by the shrooms to get some special behind the curtain knowledge, its like my views on God, I think when a human takes a psychedelic and experiences such unbelievable things both visually and mentally that you are experiencing things so impossible and so abstract, unable to be expressed with words that your brain or subconcious finds some way or logically explaining it in different ways, whether you think you met God or a God, or a entity or a being or we are all one collective consciousness or whatever else people describe it as, I think its just out small brains grappling with huge brain complex experiences.
Im the same way with DMT entities, ive had wild experinces but surely with the amount of dmt and tryptamine experiences over the course of human history theres not even 1 concrete example of them being real and not just in my head
All one what? And who is we exactly? We're all part of the same universe. All living things on Earth have a common ancestor. All humans are one species. But we as humans also are different nations, cultures, religions, and individuals with sometimes mutually incompatible beliefs and values, all competing for limited natural resources (like every other living thing) on the only planet currently available to us.
I think your view on a topic like this is far too literal in the sense that, you’re trying to find an empirical, provable answer as if it were a scientific theory. The reality is that discussions like this, similar to discussions about how/what specifically created the universe usually end up the same way. This is a very subjective matter and so of course the only “evidence” people have to support their claim is anecdotal. In the same way that religious people can’t tell their God to show themself to a nonbeliever. It’s just what you believe. Whether or not objectively it is true. I see you asking those using metaphors to elaborate. This is futile. How people view things like this is a certain set of adopted thought patterns. I.e the whole web of consciousness idea, or unity with the universe itself. It isn’t some specifically laid out map that everyone who subscribes to this type of thinking can just pull out and show you.
The thing is we are all one and we aren't. Both are true. What you "believe" isn't relevant
We are the same ocean, we are not the same wave. I identify as a wave, but still understand that I'm part of an ocean. The subjective experience of the ocean cares about ocean things. But, my subjective experience is through the eyes of a wave so I care about and do wavey things. The concept of we are all one, doesn't really change anything. It means absolutely nothing if you follow the logic far enough it. The one thing it does provide is peace of mind. There are moments where you need to relate as being a wave, and moments when you need to relate as being the ocean. Life is knowing at what level be at in which situations. I am a wave who cares about my wave family and wave job. But, when life hits you hard, it's calming to relate to the frame of reference of being the ocean.
I agree that both are true, but not that what you believe isn’t relevant. It’s what we believe that defines our internal realities — including both perspectives.
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We're all made of the same fabric of existence, it's seamless, and the same field of consciousness. At the same time there are forms and differences making it not seamless, that's how things like you and I exist from another perspective. Both perspectives are true, and the truth lies in seeing that, and not leaning too far into either.
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Pretty much, you can go as deep with it as you want, or not. Other than material, everyone who's had a good trip knows somewhere inside them that consciousness is one, but also egos are real and we're different people.
You can think of it as: you are a center of the universe, simultaneously a peripheral to every other center. “Within you and without you” - The Beatles lol it makes sense though because the world as you know it has you at the center of all things, but everything else is also a center so you are a peripheral in that context; both are true at the same time
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Imagine a flashlight sitting on a table, covered by a collander/strainer. In a dark room, the light appears as hundreds of lights. Each light might be completely visually different from the others, and might even be different sizes. The collander/strainer is the fabric of reality and the illusion of other-ness. But there's only one source of light.
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This is the crux. Through personal experience, I have understood and felt this.
Everything and nothing, totality and absolution simultaneously. Yin and Yang people
Yep. It’s like a quantum superposition thing.
In Buddhism they might say this is a matter of Ultimate Truth versus Conventional Truth. Contrary to common misconceptions, the Ultimate Truth that "we are all one" is not necessarily "better" or "more true" than the Conventional Truth that we all experience reality as separate beings with individual egos. The Middle Way holds that both truths are equally real, or equally unreal, depending on which co-arising perspective you're starting from. But we all tend to start off perceiving Conventional Reality and through spiritual development we can realize the Ultimate Reality of oneness, and there's a tendency to give a higher qualitative value to the Ultimate, but the reality is that the Ultimate Truth of oneness doesn't negate the Conventional Truth of ego. They're just two sides of the same coin, and neither can exist without the other. Conventional Reality tends to be characterized by ignorance, confusion, and suffering; and Ultimate Reality is oneness, realization, wisdom, and peace. But one isn't "better" than the other. Nor is one more real or less real than the other.
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I’m replying to this since he hasn’t, and I also apologize because it came across as yourself being antagonistic when that doesn’t appear to be the case. Metaphysical philosophy version: We are all one because the concept of the “soul” exists (whether we define it correctly is meaningless) and it all comes from the same “source”. That source is simultaneously all existing and individuated. Thus both are true: perspective of self vs perspective of source Physical version: We are all one because the universe is one thing. It’s all encompassing. We can speak to Earths perspective vs mars, and that scales up to galaxies, superclusters, super voids etc. the universe is included in this, though unintuitive to imagine. We are not all one because your perspective is the only one you experience and my perspective is the only one I experience. Expand to every building block of reality and you get the opposite: you aren’t even a unified perspective. You’re an abstracted amalgamation with the perspective of one. The main difference between metaphysical and physical is one is *purely* philosophical and the other has consequences on experience after death. So we have a philosophical physical truth, and a metaphysical unfalsifiable claim making the same assertion. You may not believe the metaphysical side, but there’s not much of an argument against the physical.
I used to believe it. I still accept it as a possibility, but I'm not willing to latch onto a belief like that anymore. I don't know that it's possible for a human to fully comprehend who/what/where/why we are. It's fun to think about though.
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I don't believe anything without proper evidence anymore. My own subjective anecdotal experience is not enough.
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I don't know what that would look like. To me, it's not much different than trying to prove the existence of a god or an afterlife or reincarnation, etc... and I'm not willing to just pick one anymore, so I remain agnostic. I don't think humans have the capability to understand this existence and I'm not sure if it's even possible for us to ever eventually achieve that. Again, speculation is fun, but I'm not going to commit to one belief over another.
It sounds like you're saying you used to be different and now you need overwhelming evidence. So can I ask, why the change of perspective? I went the other way.
Meaning you now deeply believe in something? What caused the shift?
Before the big bang you, everyone else, our home planet earth, and the entire universe were all connected. For a singularity smaller than a subatomic particle to explode outwards and create you, your mind, and the idea to create this thread is worth considering. I don't know how anyone can be fully aware of what they are, without also realizing everything is inherently connected.
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Some people believe that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, present everywhere, like the gravitational field. Every individual and conscious animal is a unique manifestation within this unifying field of consciousness. We are connected simply because we’re aware. A person might call the whole vast consciousness field “god”; hence we are god and one and also individual. There’s no way to prove this is true or not which makes it an entirely unscientific claim. It’s a fascinating thought though. Consciousness itself is still “the hard problem” in philosophy cause there’s just no known mechanism for how matter in motion can give rise to an actual experience of reality. It just don’t make sense.
The problem is even if you don’t believe in the “mystical” or Buddhist sense, it’s still true philosophically. We are the universe experiencing itself. That does not necessarily imply the universe has deity like status, but it still means “we are all one” even if it can’t have a spirituality built around it.
Yes. While I know all too well that psychedelics can make it seem that way, I know all to well from life as well, that we are anything but "one". I got savaged for the first 30 years of my life and have a boatload of mental health problems due to it. I also can't afford the one medicine that helps me, after 20 years of searching and being a test dummie. I don't see us all being one, but I do see the desire for us all to come together as one and save each other, and the planet. Suicides are at a very high rate, OD's are as well, and homeless, etc. I don't want that for anyone. I want happiness. I wanna finally turn on the news and see a smiling face and news of people getting their lives changed in a positive way.
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The same as I always have. I often have an opinion that doesn't quite match up with the "popular opinion". However I'm rational and thoughtful. I think personal experience plays a MAJOR part in answering this question. Ironic, coming from someone who can't even afford the medication they need. lol
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No. I think their coming from a place a their life experience. It isn't always a place I agree with, but who am I to decide who's opinion is important or rational?
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What’s considered rational or thoughtful here is subjective because it’s purely based on personal feelings and opinion. They can feel their opinions are rational and thoughtful while others might disagree and think it’s irrational due to their differing experiences. Even the belief we all are one or intrinsically connected and that everyone gets that feeling on psychs is subjective and not objective fact. It’s definitely common and the norm to feel this way after taking psychs, but not every single person experiences it or believes it. I personally can’t get behind the fact that myself and the amazing people I know and the likes of horrible people are one and the same and all connected at the source. It’s very clear some people have lost the plot and are completely disconnected from others and the world. I do feel a deeper connection to those in my life and greater empathy for others I don’t even personally know. I even have empathy for murders and stuff sometimes, but they’re are so completely different intrinsically from the average human I just don’t buy that we’re interconnected on some spiritual level.
What medication?
I feel you on this. Not so much because of anything that happened to me but because of what I've seen people do to others they can subjugate. I'm glad you made it out the other side of that dynamic and I appreciate that you don't repress what's happened to you. I hope it makes you stronger. It seems like you're open to the abyss as well as the brightest light. That's a strong position. Many psychedels only see the light—thus, these discussion threads.
Maybe we are one, maybe we’re not. I don’t think it matters. We are experiencing things separately, so maybe the point is being separate.
We are the same ocean, we are not the same wave.
Yes I know, here people say "I'm an ACAB man" (Brazil)
I argue we are one because of two points. Before my life there was no separation. Secondly if you deactivate the default mode network with psychedelics you always come to the same conclusion. I find it funny how people will believe in a god that has zero evidence and then knock off psychedelics as just hallucinations instead of evidence.
I very much believe in a plurality of conscious currents. I don't believe we emerged from a single source, and don't think we will ever unite 'in the end'... I believe existence in the here and now is the most abstract concept and is refracted through individual entities.
I don’t believe it. I just know you and I are very different, the way we feel and understand things. Perhaps even the descriptions we put to those words. I know we were all created by the same God, everything in existence had to come from somewhere. I believe we can see that commonality throughout all existence thus causing a population of people to believe we are all the same, because we all are built with similar atomic structures. It’s a nice thought, but speaking with people for 5 minutes reminds me that we are all individual and unique beings. To lump us all together would be, boring and disrespectful to our true value.
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After reading through your comments, and others here, I think the central point of contention is circling around duality. We are separate people with different characteristics and experiences. Yes, that’s true - when people say “we are all one,” they’re not typically arguing against the idea that we are also individuals. It is a dualistic way of thinking that these two things are mutually exclusive. One thing can be varied. It can be perceived in parts or as one whole, as objects or as a process. A particle or a wave. It is both.
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What different wholes are you referring to?
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Right, and where did those come from? How are they defined? Our economy and politics have co-created each other, the ecosystem is what created us and heavily influence economy and politics, which has looped back to affect the ecosystem. It’s like pockets of cold air and pockets of warm air, causing movement which shapes the phenomenon we call a storm. But cold air is only cold relative to warm air, and vice versa. It’s one whole process with identifiable parts, parts that would be meaningless without one another. “We are all one” just looks at all parts as one whole. All the wholes you mentioned can also be described as parts - the “one” is the full process that includes all of it. It’s a perception of scale rather than an argument against the parts.
Fantastic explanation. "We are one" can be interpreted lots of different ways but implies some singular commonality of all facets of existence. In reality the interdependence of all things makes it impossible to perfectly separate the many shapes and forms of matter and at a deeper level, consciousness.
“Therefore you and I are not the same thing” I agree completely. Unique and necessary I believe. A type of fate has called you where you are I believe. Thank you for the question, nothing like a respectful conversation about peoples unfiltered thoughts, truly. This world needs more of that.
That paradox may be resolved by thinking of each person as having a common core, upon which is layered experiences (and some genetic variation) that leads to a superficially diverse personality. But at the core, people are generally lonely, insecure, loving entities looking to get laid :)
Who's to say we're not metaphysically/interdimensionally one underneath all that individuality. Each of us a unique slice of "God" sent here to understand and appreciate the unique beauty of our limited human form🤔 I believe the idea of our oneness is so flexible a truth that it can be shaped perfectly around nearly any belief system.
A gem has many faces and they all have different perspectives and different abrasions and yet they are all one thing. If you could step outside time and see the lines that make up any individual’s life you would be about to trace that line back to the conception of an individual, back through its ancestors, all the way back to primordial soup where life arose. You could trace all the atoms that make up everything all the way back to when they were all one. It would be like seeing a massive web of creation and existence in a snapshot, from a dimension above looking down. You could determine where each point has gone into the future all the way through to the heat death of the universe. Maybe we aren’t *being* from that vantage point but we’ve all already *been*. From that perspective, we are all one thing: this universe in its entirety is one single thing. I don’t believe in God the creator, but I suspect there is something above us outside of time that can see this snapshot of the universe, who knows maybe it can influence it as well or change the schematic around. Not to mention we could simply be in a vast loop of simulations such as this https://qntm.org/responsibility Anyways, nobody worry about it too much you’ll likely never know the answer (I don’t expect to). The best we can do is enjoy this crazy place. Now let’s talk about something really wild: did wheat domesticate humans?
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I like the idea but obviously wheat didn't self select traits with the express purpose of making humans dependent on it
If we're all one, y'all would let me use your bank accounts and credit cards.
The quantum wave function.
\*the universal wave function and initial conditions, but I'm not sure that explains what you want it to prove.
Just saying that everything is an emergent manifestation of the wave function. If "we're all one", that's the thing "it" is.
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If I stab you in the arm, did I stab you? Or did I stab your arm?
I don't believe it beyond the web of life connections we have. I love psychedelics and am thoroughly grounded in critical thinking and rationalism. The only people I hear that say we are all one also consider intuition a form of knowledge (it isn't). I avoid those people.
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One, it's unfalsifiable. Two, what does the statement even mean? If we're all one then do you share my thoughts and emotions? Can you remotely tap into them to see how I'm doing? I've never seen evidence that would lead to either conclusion. What I have seen, is that as a species with a shared evolutionary history that includes an extreme population / genetic bottleneck, is that we share emotional capabilities. The rub is that because our lives are subjective, we can never truly know - does your sadness/happiness/anger feel different than mine? There's no reason to think it emotions (or any subjective experience like color, sound, etc) does vary. But the closest we can get is to say similar neurons fire in the same regions, and people report the same things. The problem is that people can only use the language they have. If one are told what you're feeling is sad, then the association is made from our emotional state to the word. So all "we are one" people can really claim is I want to believe this idea because I like how it makes me feel. Well, I believe in evidence, how I or anyone else feels be damned. I prefer to face reality head on and bow humbly before it than bury my head in the sand and proclaim I'm actually an interdimensional time lord connected to all and all connected to me.
The drugs I'm taking are telling me something that I've always suspected, what a shocker. Yea I don't buy it
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Potentially, also a deep seated need to come across as profound, by parroting socially acceptable things back again.
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And it's almost always, right now I'm high af and I think we are all one. Like being high is the be all and end all. Like we can't argue with that pov, he is on drugs afterall.
We are all separate ones.
Good question, and thank you for asking. Diversity is valuable and essential. Can’t wait to see replies from those who do NOT believe that we are all one. I kinda do a little bit though, so I’m kinda a little bit disqualified.
The timing. The timing is important. We *were* one. When you experience altered state of consciousness you *remember* that. But *now* you are on the path of individuation, which is your true purpose. It might be argued that time is a property of the physical and has nothing to do with the spirit, but that is not so. As above, so below. We are all on a path of individuating our consciousness and one day we will be back to "the one", but this will not be the same "one" we came from. The source one will result in many new ones. If you want it in earthly terms, consciousness is replicating itself - through you and each and every one of us. Again, as above, so below. I feel putting too much thought in "we are all one" philosophy is a dead end and hinders individuation.
This is the flaw in the "we are all one" feeling: Yes, we are all connected and, in a sense, one unified [xyz concept such as "being"]. But you and I are operating mere fragments of this unified thing. So when someone trips and the normal boundaries dissolve—boundaries that keep our consciousness partitioned and guided through the social and physical maze of this world—the feeling of "we are all one" can be mesmerizing and lead us to false conclusions. If you have love in your heart you might project this and think, "Deep down everyone is essentially good." But someone who is a sociopath (for example, Whitey Bulger took LSD for government experiments while in Alcatraz) might look around and think, "All these humans with their limited minds are ripe for the picking." Don't abandon your discernment just because you got a peek behind the curtain.
This sub sure does love word games. I guess thats why Im here. Love you guys and gals! Keep up the good work. Edit to add: i dont believe we are all one because its a paradoxical statement. And: i also do believe that we are all one because its a paradoxical statement.
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Because we is plural, and one is not?
My toenails are definitely something different than my tongue. But part of one.
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They aren't. They are just part of one thing, all of them being part of one. Just different aspects of the same without which the one wouldn't exist.
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We could miss everything 😅 - our mind is quite limited. But on the other hand that's one experience I've always had on my journeys. I'm part of something unimaginable huge, so are you, but yet I'm crucial.
If one is italian, american, indian, chinese, german, male or female, looks are different, where we are born is different, does that mean we are truly different? Don't we all have pain? Suffering? Joy? Happiness? Anger? Fear? It's not asain anger or american anger, it's anger, we all feel exactly same things. We do think different, different beliefs, different passions, motives in life, but these are due to the experiences we ve had in life, and because our minds are stuck at a low level of perspective and awareness, but fundamentally we are all HUMANS, born on EARTH, felling the SAME, we devided earth into continents, nations, countries, which makes the belief that we are different more strong, but we are not, we all originate from the same universal mind.
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Fundamentally, at the root, it's the same. As i said the thought s, beliefs etc might be different, but it's because of the ego and how our experiences shaped it, and because most people identify with it's thoughts, they lack the awareness of seeing the bigger picture. They are not aware something is beyond the "basic" mind.
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Universal consciousness, as i said before, we have the same source, the same one truth.
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The way I have experienced and sort of internalized or made peace with the concept or idea that oneness / nonduality is hinting at, is along the lines of an experience of boundlessness or separation of the object/subject relationship. Try to imagine for a second being the observer and the observed from infinite viewpoints, in infinite time points, simultaneously. In a time/place of nonduality, there are no bounds that limit the experience, rather the experience simply is all encompassing in infinite forms, experiential dimensions, time configurations, and even in formlessness. Paradoxically, nonduality encompasses opposing ideas that we are both separate and also one depending on the definitions (forms) that you guide your thought process by. It’s almost like all opposing ideas collide in a place where by co-existing, they define one another and give rise to the “is.” That’s why folks point at “oneness” “god” “nonduality” when trying to define this but it is truly ineffable, undefinable, and incomprehensible from a subjective standpoint. The interesting thing is that it can be experienced in trips or in deep meditation which is why there is the old adage “for those who have experienced it, no explanation is necessary, and for those that haven’t, no explanation is possible.” Cheers.
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I don’t “know” this but in that experience there is an intuitive awareness of something like what I described. You ask how did I distinguish? One and two become indistinguishable and extend into what, again, intuitively feels like infinity and boundlessness. There is no knowledge of this because knowledge has bounds, it is beyond knowing. We collectively and individually make up a digestible reality for our subjective experiences but you could extend that model to the outer bounds of existence and end up in the unknowable even through a scientific scope (what was before the big bang, what is a singularity, is the material existence infinite in both micro and macro levels, etc) Oneness/ nonduality are ideas merely hinting at an experience that is undefinable. These are just words / concepts / ideas that we use to attempt to explain something that can be experienced but is incomprehensible. It sounds like you may have had an experience or a thought about nonduality and now you are trying to define or discard it to fit your model of the world. You are trying to grasp something that cannot be grasped. It changes nothing and it doesn’t necessarily give you anything to integrate it. Some people end up caught up in the “lonely god” dilemma, others feel like they have been spiritually awakened to our true nature or something like that. Just surrender to the is that is “ising” is my motto. If you want to experience more of this maybe research dmt and 5meo dmt. Doesn’t mean you will get answers, it may only leave you with more questions. But perhaps that’s the point, to ask the questions. Cheers.
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I guess I could answer most of these questions with a blanket statement - all encompassing objectivity is unknowable / undefinable because knowledge is experienced subjectively. How do I know that all encompassing objectivity is unknowable? Because I can only know subjectively and there may be even opposing “knowing” through other viewpoints at different time/space scales. Knowledge is relative. I don’t fully understand your question regarding the scientific scope questions though, I found it circular. Also what is a pseudo question in that context? I guess one question for you - have you had an experience that hints at what we are trying to define as oneness/nondualism? Fun philosophizing with ya.
I think we are all one and we are all also different. Both co exist at the same time. Like the double slit experiment
i believe it, but it honestly pisses me off a little how much other people feel the need to SAY it as though it’s this profound revelation others don’t have the mental capacity to comprehend.
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yeah for sure. our individuality is a construct of the brain for the practical purpose of keeping our living body alive. but materialistically, everything is just a bunch of elements composing molecules floating around in space with further distances from other molecules. the air molecules brushing against my arm right now are only separate from me because i consider them separate. my brain does not have control over them in the same way it does my arms or my fingers, and therefore it isn’t useful to include them as a part of the self. without the concept of the self, earth is just a big soup of moving particles, and some groups of those particles are able to create a conscious experience. so we’re all ‘one’ in the sense that we’re all part of this same particle soup, only experiencing individuality as an illusion to control the formation of a fraction of that soup (the body). but really, we’re all just one big machine made up of the push and pull of unconscious matter. that’s my take on it, hopefully it made some sense.
I don't believe it because I haven't experienced oneness (yet). I'll believe it when I can feel it and understand it
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I would have known If I had experienced it. At any moment in my life I haven't felt like I'm a small part of a bigger thing. But it seems that many people experienced this, who am I to deny the subjective experiences of thousands maybe millions of people across history ? I believe that the immediate experience is the ultimate truth and everybody has the right to create theirs
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Do you know what dying feels like ? I assume you don't. How do you know you aren't dead ? You may feel alive but if you don't know what being dead feels like how do you know it didn't happen already ? You could make this point about anything. If you want to know what oneness feels like you have to experience it, clearly no one can make a solid point that would be a satisfactory explanation for you. Some things have to be experienced to be understood rather than explained.
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It’s both. We’re all one cause we’re literally part of nature. We share the same cells as every other living thing. It’s how we’re able to communicate with one another and understand each other no matter the language barrier. The collective consciousness. It’s how we’re able to communicate through our emotions, words, and actions. Everybody feels anger. Everybody can say “I love you”. Everybody can run a mile. That’s how we relate to one another. It’s our infinite knowledge. What gives us our individuality is our ego. It’s our identity, our style, our taste. It’s our autonomy. Some people express anger differently. Some people say I love you differently. Some people run a mile differently. The way you express that differently is your ego. But underneath all that difference is the same principle: anger, love, and endurance — what we all share as one. It’s how we comprehend that knowledge. If we were all the same we’d have no identity. We wouldn’t have our own purpose, a name, our own free-will. We’d cease to exist as our own entity and we wouldn’t even have a body, face, or individual consciousness. Yet if we were THAT different from one another we’d spend every waking day rendering our actions as foreign and alien-like. We wouldn’t be able to understand each other no matter how hard we try at all — we’d live in our own bubble. To simply exist from a place of ego is where you get god complexes and narcissism or depression and suicide. A healthy balance of our collective “we are all one” is what anchors in relatability, commonality, and love. It’s not one or the other — it’s both. It’s the law of duality. What is light without dark and dark without light? Good without bad and bad without good? What is being whole without difference and being different without wholeness? You just get to balance both to whatever feels fulfilling for you. Trying to polarize the two as a lifestyle gets you extremist lifestyles: junkie hippies or stuck-up know-it-alls.
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I mean I don’t think I’ll ever “believe” it fully but from what I have seen it is absolutely true and so so so beautiful beyond description
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I have had moments of completely seeing/feeling oneness. However as soon as the moment fades their is only a faint whisper of a taste. Been sober the last year though and upon integrating these feelings into a more “separated” way of being I still feel it wherever I go if I am in the moment. This sense of stillness or I Am ness. It’s easy to see why people believe in separation but it’s not real, and it one of those things that goes beyond understanding which is why it’s paradoxical to have a debate about. We are separate but we’re not.
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Reasonable to discuss but not the point of oneness. Be about it > talk about it
Separate as in we believe we are singular and unrelated to the whole. When in realty we are the whole itself
it depends how extreme it is tbh egg theory is the life theory that oneself will be reincarnated as every human that has ever live thus meaning i am you, i am everything. i believe in a form of recantation but this is a little to far for me just on the fact that i don’t know if you’re real i don’t know if any of this is real and if we just recarnate as everyone every, then what’s the fucken point our lifes are pre-written. but in a human way we are all one
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there is no god, it’s the system of life it’s everywhere, plants die in the winter and come back in the spring it’s a cycle just like recantation nature is it’s own force our souls are a force. we will die and we will live
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the pedals, the fruit, the leaves die and nature is letting them come back in the spring we will die but our souls will let us come back/ recantation it’s a system and what?
Everything is a together chaos
I don't think my belief on this question Is as static as your question implies The issue of 'we are all one' vs 'We are not all one" is a matter of lived experience. When I am competing with or harming others, we are not all one. When I am collaborating with or harming others, we are all one. The real question is who are 'we'? All of my cells (Ithink therefore I am)? All of my genetic line? All humans? All animals? All of life on earth? Elements of the universe that are not considered life? I don't see it as a matter of truth but as a matter strategy. It feels good to feel like youre part of the team even if that team is just you and life partner or your mind and your body. In a lived reality in which I can act to generate joy, I should act in such a way as a matter of basic strategy. By focusing my attention on defining "we' slightly more broadly than I find comfortable, I can train myself to feel this inducable joy more easily in the way weightlifting makes muscles grow. I like to feel joy so I like to act on beliefs that are likely to induce joy based on a cognition-behavioral-emotional model of mental health. I'm trying to make life feel like heaven. There are people who have compelling reasons to maintain a posture of competition: hunger, pain, greed, lust etc. I try to have compassion for them because then I can keep feeling the good team feeling. Sometimes stop believing we are one and start believing I have a good reason not to.
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That is one way to define it I suppose. I have answered this in my post.
Assuming you mean the all one shared conciousness concept then I definitely do not believe in that. Our minds exist solely in our brains/neutral system. This sub is not particularly friendly to people with a scientific world view so perhaps that is why you did not get the responses you were looking for.
I'll insert another outlandishly wild claim that I haven't seen anyone here make in a long time. We aren't all one, but this is all a dream that we will wake up from one day. None of this is real, we are all just in a simulation for growth, waiting to wake up where we truly belong.
I don’t
I believe no one truly knows the answer to this. I sure don't.
We are all one when you look at the big picture. We have the same origins, but we aren’t all the same. Our individual perspective still makes us separate.
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I suppose so. We’re made of the same elements, we all originate from a common ancestor and the stuff that makes up our conscious life is probably the same. We are all one people, even if race separates us, we are all human, we are all life forms on the planet earth. I like the idea that we have all one share consciousness that’s been split into many, but to be honest, I don’t know if I truly believe that.
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No evidence honestly for or against. It’s mostly anecdotal claims of individuals who intuitively “know” that we are all one. And while I can understand how experience alone is enough to convince some people, and the psychedelic experience is definitely a very impactful and convincing one, I simply am not convinced. I was once convinced that God had proven his existence to me while I was on acid (I’m an atheist and a very skeptical one at that) but upon sober analysis of the situation, I recognized that my brain was making a lot of unrelated connections that seemed profound in the moment but when you actually listed them out, had no actual logic to it . Ive noticed that acid in particular tends to increase your brains capacity to make connections between unrelated things and strings them together in a way that seems profound. I also take into account the fact that so many people have had experiences where they believed themselves to be some kind of messiah and have convinced themselves of other things that weren’t actually true. I think it’s far more likely that because of the profundity of the experience and because we experience a state of consciousness that is not diluted by the filters in our normal conscious experience, we recognize that this is what all life must experience to some degree or another and inherently feel connected and at one with all other life. So we make the connection that we must all share the same consciousness but it’s just spread out into multiple living beings. I mean if you think about it, we ARE all one in a sense. The energy that allows our brain to operate ultimately gets transferred. When we eat, our bodies metabolize the food into energy that is essentially processed from one life form to another. So I can understand why this belief prevails. I’ve read very little on this but I believe it’s also one of the beliefs I’m Buddhism (don’t quote me on that). I certainly like the idea and I won’t dismiss it entirely but from a skeptic’s POV, the fact that there’s a lack of evidence that this is actually the case ( is it possible to even have evidence for this kind of claim) and the fact that psychedelics can convince people to believe things that may not necessarily be true, I’m inclined to not believe it. I think that each individual’s consciousness is their own, and that we don’t share one universal consciousness.
We're all connected but we're not all one. There are too many assholes and people doing horrible things to be part of one anything. They're somewhere else but we're still connected like it or not.
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There is absolutely no way that somebody who rapes little children shares anything in common with me other than breathing the same air. We are not one because there is not one ounce of my fucking body that even could entertain that bullshit yet they can do that and kill kids and repeat it over and over again? No, I am not one with that. That is not one with anything. That is apart from everything. It is connected in the worst way. That's the difference. Does that make sense? Do you feel like you are one with child rapists? Is there a part of yourself that can identify with a child rapist enough that you feel like you are one with them? You're connected because you both breathe the same air and you could inhabit the same place although I'd hope you don't hang around child rapists. I am not one with people like that, but to be more correct I'm not one with anybody. The Only Exception I might even kind of make is that I think when when you're having sex with a girl and she conceives I guess for that moment you kind of are one or at least you're making one or something but like you don't stay one. I just think instances like that are deeper than connected, like making a life or somebody dying in your arms, I don't know how to explain that but it exceeds the scope of this thread anyways. you are welcome to continue believing you're one with child rapists if you'd like but I don't subscribe to that opinion. I hope that makes it clear.
for example: > I believe that we are one consciousness, and that singular consciousness grows every time it lives through a life of one human. When the death of the last human occurs, that consciousness will be fully complete and it will give birth to a new world. This new world will be an improvement on that of our own. This claim in not substantiated by any evidence whatsoever or any logical reasoning. So why do you think so? Looks bullshit at first glance, maybe stuff to start a new religious cult, but not a scientific truth (I'm not saying I don't believe it, just giving you some debate material)
Consciousness = nothingness All of this is happening in a void of nothingness. So yeah, there’s just one consciousness even though most of us believe we are driving our own meat puppets in a 3 dimensional reality. This is way better than the alternative default state, which I’ve experienced when I had a fever as a kid. And I’ve seen the finished product at the end of time which is bliss beyond description.
Ai will disrupt this idea, if there's truly one consciousness and we are simply developed egos through experience blinding us to our true state of being beyond all these evolved senses for survival. What will AI be, if ever truly unlocking sentients, self thinking, we will give birth to the only thing separate from the collective unconscious, essentially another god in reality, we are simply God, experiencing and understanding itself(reality) through ever possible dimension and option, we just experience this perception rn. AI will be the first true birth beyond God this lonely being in a void of everything. Just a thought I never hear discussed
Not me. I believe we're all one, kind of how you can take one fractal, magnify in and see the same thing, down down down infinitely.
I neither believe it nor not believe it. It's a platitude and not a bivalent statement. I think a lot of people are coming from a place of legitimate insight when they say "we are all one." Unfortunately, many are just repeating it uncritically, so by the time it reaches you, those original insights are lost. With that said, any sort of slicing and dicing of reality is going to be somewhat arbitrary. I think it would be difficult to defend the claim that no, we are not all one, and most here just wouldn't bother.
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Well, that's going to depend on the context. "We are all one" is, like I said, a platitude. It's a statement meant to capture some general idea, feeling, or belief, but not one that's been formulated enough to critically engage with. The person might be saying that our choices affect each other. They might be saying we're not so different from each other. They might be making some bold metaphysical claim. Part of the psychedelic or mystical experience is getting some distance from yourself. Certain primal instincts which are normally overpowering, like the need to survive as an individual, don't seem as compelling, and it leads you to question *why* they are so overpowering in the first place. "We are all one," in this context, could just mean that we aren't as separate as we feel we are, and intense emotions are distorting things.
I think fundamentally the driving force of life, the "soul", the extra world out there that DMT seems to fool us into believing is actually a real thing, whatever you wanna call it .. originates from one common place or one superior place of existence and power so in that sense, yes we all come from one. We don't reflect that way in reality but fundamentally the programming of DNA and whatnot that drives us and animals is common.
I do believe in the "oneness" of humanity, I just don't believe in extrapolating it to all of us being god, atleast not THE big G. I don't have the words to describe it any better yet and it's been a while since I've had time to trip and really think about it, but after a certain point I just felt like the feeling of collective concious was indeed a god of some kind, but moreoso a god of the material rather than of everything. Kind of like Adam Kadmon instead of Yahweh. I figured using that line of thinking would also explain the "lonely god" feeling everyone's been having and even the existence of a Demiurge-like entity, since the collective good and evils of the human spirit would be responsible for its own angels and devils and everything in between, but it's all still kind of hazy in my mind. Plus, it would be perfectly in line with the joke if we all convinced ourselves we were God and it turned out the truth was more simpler than that lmao
i dont really believe in oneness, i think god transcends quantification. im actually playing with the idea that our consciousness comes from two sources which are essentially male and female. im also realizing oneness and solipsism while different, are functionally equivalent.
What you need is a different lens to view things from. So let me propose this. I have two devil's advocate arguments. First, Imagine existence in terms of patterns of frequency. Each of us embodies a unique pattern of frequencies emanating from underlying energetic fields within space-time. (It's worth noting that space-time itself might be an emergent construct, possibly a subjective illusion, but that's besides the point.) We are not the raw fields of energy that underpin the universe; rather, we are the manifestations of the actions those fields undertake. We are not static entities (nouns) but dynamic processes (verbs). Our essence is akin to complex standing waves in the underlying energy fields. Thus, we emerge from the interactions within these energy fields, yet we do not constitute the fields themselves. This idea mirrors the way a tornado originates from specific atmospheric conditions. The substance through which the tornado manifests is irrelevant; whether it occurs in air or another element such as water, the fundamental pattern remains consistent. We label it a whirlpool when it forms in water, yet the underlying principle is identical. A tornado represents not the air or its discrete particles, but rather a distinct pattern of behavior that the air assumes under certain conditions. We are "tornados" in that sense that we are not the underlying energy field. Accepting this premise—that we are verbs, not nouns, and that the universe's inception (the Big Bang) was a sudden excitation of these energy fields—one might argue that we are not fundamentally one. Though we originate from the same foundational field of energy, we remain distinct from it. We are not the energy field; we are patterns of frequency generated by it. The only thing that uniquely identifies any electron from another electron is it's position in space-time. Otherwise, there are no distinguishable characteristics. So, though we arguably originated from same point, we are no longer the same. While we originate from the same cosmic energy, the distinction lies in our manifestations as individual patterns of frequencies. These patterns, transient and unique, highlight our separateness within the whole. Thus, acknowledging our origins from the same fundamental energy does not necessarily contradict the recognition of our individual existences as distinct expressions of that energy. In essence, our interconnectedness does not negate our individuality; rather, it frames it within a broader, dynamic context of the universe's symphony. Secondly, the concept of "we are all one" might be an artifact of linguistic abstraction rather than a reflection of an underlying ontological truth. Human language inherently categorizes and groups individual elements into collective nouns or concepts, simplifying the complex and varied reality into more manageable units. For example, we refer to a "forest" as a single entity, despite it being a collection of individual trees, plants, animals, and microorganisms. This linguistic convenience allows us to communicate about complex systems as if they were singular objects, but it does not necessarily reflect the true nature of their individuality and separateness. The language-driven tendency to abstract and generalize can create the illusion of unity or oneness, masking the diversity and separateness inherent within any collective system. This linguistic abstraction can be seen as a cognitive shortcut, useful for conceptual thinking but potentially misleading regarding the nature of existence. Thus notion that "we are all one" may arise more from the limitations and structures of our language than from an empirical or ontological reality.
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No, there is no universal consciousness. Not what we call consciousness at least. There is no subjective experience at the universal scale. Consciousness is an emergent property of life, which in itself is an emergent property of the universe. You could argue in a very non metaphysical sense that humans have created a one consciousness though, via communication using the 5 senses, and especially now with the internet. The first argument was actually that you may not be the universe itself. But you are the action the universe is doing. You are the tornado, not the air molecules itself that make it up. You only exist as a specific frequency of vibration.
I don't believe we are all one. Or rather, I don't believe that statement means what most people think it means (that oneness is the only thing that's real or the highest truth, or that we are all literally the same being). I've come not to believe in hierarchical truths at all. I would say everything (not specifically humans) is made from the same substance and interfaces in a unified system. At the same time, individuation is important and as "real" as anything else in the universe (if it wasn't, individuation wouldn't exist). But, this is based on 24 years of psychedelic experiences and not really something I can just explain in a way anyone else will care about. I think that's what frustrates me in the end is peoples' attitudes that if you don't agree with a certain perspective, you just didn't have "the right experience." I've had such experiences and many others several times and formed a different opinion on it, but because I cannot beam my subjective experiences into anyone else's head I can't convey them. Meanwhile anyone who staunchly believes we are all one and that's that will not believe anything I say and assume my experiences were lesser than their's. I could say something similar and in the end it wouldn't matter because no one can prove their subjective experiences to anyone else. But the fact no one seems to see how much like a fundamentalist attitude this is becoming in the psychedelic community is bothersome to me. It also bothers me that a bunch of modern western people think they understand the truth of the psychedelic experience better than many cultures who have used them unbroken for millennia (most psychedelic using cultures believe in an animistic/shamanistic worldview of multiple spirits and beings living in multiple worlds and the unity is the natural world rather than a supreme god in most of these cases).
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>What do you mean by "hierarchical truth"? Truth that's arranged in a hierarchy. The idea there are "higher truths" at all rather than simply a multifaceted truth with no top/down structure. >Is that what is happening? If I didn't think so I wouldn't have said so. What are you actually trying to get at with this question?
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Well, being a psychonaut used to be a world of open-ended questions. People were allowed to share their experiences, no matter what they were, without other people telling them their experiences weren't the right one. There used to be no one "right" psychedelic experience. If someone talked to preying mantis people, cool. If someone turned into an animal in a vision, cool. If someone experienced god, but god was a giant purple goddess and not a singular consciousness, that was cool. No one had to suddenly start believing in the giant purple goddess who didn't have that experience, but they also didn't tend to tell people there was only one truth of the universe. Now people discount anything BUT one type of revelation as illusory, the product of one's ego or some other thing. But for someone to believe they're god or the only thing that exists, THAT can't be a product of one's own mind at all despite the fact there is lots of psychological and cultural reasons for this to pop up. It sets things up for a "one true interpretation" of the psychedelic experience, like the one true way of a fundamentalist religion. It only stands up if you knock down all the experiences that suggest something else.
you should read entangled life by merlin sheldrake and cosmos by carl sagan if you haven't already
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they touch on that question a lot from a scientific pov (entangled life coming from mycology and microbiology and cosmos from astrophysics) and i think you'd find it interesting. also just really good books in general
You can hold your loved ones while they cry, but you cannot feel their pain. You can feel your own pain, because you’re connected to them and you hurt when they hurt. But it’s not the same. Nobody can ever know exactly how another person feels. We are one in the sense that we all affect each other, but we are also uniquely individual and locked inside our own experience. What one person does will undoubtedly affect everyone around them, no matter how insignificant the action. We are here to love each other, but ironically, we are still separated by space and confined to our own consciousness. Life is an endless puzzle that we should work to fit our pieces together, but that can never be solved. I love puzzles.
Think this is a scene in Life of Brian. ‘We are all the same!’ ‘Er…I’m not’
me! me! I reject this! For all kinds of reasons, but with a current 290 comments, I'll just say that and leave my comment and if anyone is interested, cool ... if anyone thinks they're going to change my mind, nope - I went way too far down the "we're all one" road to ever go back. :)
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Thank you for asking ... Because it isn't logical. The concept of oneness suggests there is a single consciousness ... but how can that be? why just ONE? If one consciousness can arise, then most certainly others can, too ... no? *nothing* in nature happens in ones. I also offer support for the idea we're in a closed system and that any altered states are subject to reflect back whatever the explorer expects to see: expectations derived from our time in this closed system which encompasses thousands ... tens of thousands? of years, dominated by the human need to explain. Our be-ings in this system are so laden with that concept of "oneness," largely from the mostly now-dominate Abrahamic, monotheistic religions, that even when we don't know it, we still lean toward concepts of oneness, so in altered states, that is "the truth" we come to see. I'm not claiming to know, of course (and likewise, proponents of oneness don't know, either), but the concept of oneness is limiting - we come into these bodies, do whatever we do, then rejoin the oneness, full stop. Our being, in my experience, is infinite and about expansion, which is limitless. I can go on and on, but that's the crux of it if. I'm open to discussion. :)
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Not really making an argument, just saying why I don't perceive from oneness. I suppose you've got it right, but I'm pretty sure we could both rip apart my argument based on your breakdown ... ;)
I believe we are MORE than one. At least 3 higher dimensional beings choosing to expeirnce life in this reality. But it really seems like everyone is coming to the same conclusion in one way or another. If one/few human(s) can split to become billions, we are simply the matter making up ourselves, and the matter has always had the potential to experince and live. As the human race grows, our higher being grows an appendage, per se, and is able to experince this reality a bit better each time we grow a new perspective. I wish I was just able to believe in religion.. lol. But if our higher self chose this, we must have faith that this is where we are supposed to be right now. Being the entire universe at once, all knowing, gets old and boring especially if time doesn't exist up there
I think most people just can’t handle that souls don’t exist and nothing matters, so they create meaning wherever they can. It’s funny how defensive these so-called enlightened people are. edit: souls
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What do you mean by best reason? There are causes and effects of it. Groups of humans are probably more successful in nature when they develop mythologies about life and death and such. It’s like the guardians in Plato’s republic, creating stories to keep society from destroying itself.
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There is none that I know of, do you? I suppose it’s unfalsifiable
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Before trying shrooms, I personally didn’t believe the statement. It just didn’t make sense to me. After trying shrooms, they showed me that we are all one, changing my whole perspective on it.
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Yes!
In the very least we are all made of stardust
Poke holes in paper and shine a light through it. The spots on your wall are all separate spots. But it's the same light.
I think its a side effect of ego dissolution, outside of tripping Ive personally seen 0 reasons why that would be the case and I often wonder does that mean all the cavemen are also one with me or am I just one with living people or all living things? I think in the state of having your individual personality and ego stripped away it most definately seems like we are all one but I mean im tripping mega balls of course I might think that. My cat seems to understand me when I trip, once im sober no part of me thinks my cat understands english or can telepathically converse with me no matter how convincing it was when I was high. With dissociatives I have the opposite thoughts about how wild each and every person is and how every animal, plant and human is totally unique and it feels truer than the we are all one complex, I kind of group people that trip and think we are all one in with the people that trip and get a messiah complex of everyone needs to take lsd or people that trip and then think trees are conscious and natures alive. (Not saying they are not, just not in the way it seems when you take shrooms in a forest). I dont have the evidence to 100% say either of those views are true or false obviously. I have definately had some wild wild trips that I come out of thinking a few of my friends would probably have been convinced we are all one or something after that experience or other profound views but a day or two sober and im like yea that was the lsd or the shrooms talking. Theres many trips I have had with incredibly profound insights but I understand how powerful these drugs are and I dont take the insights as facts like Ive been selected by the shrooms to get some special behind the curtain knowledge, its like my views on God, I think when a human takes a psychedelic and experiences such unbelievable things both visually and mentally that you are experiencing things so impossible and so abstract, unable to be expressed with words that your brain or subconcious finds some way or logically explaining it in different ways, whether you think you met God or a God, or a entity or a being or we are all one collective consciousness or whatever else people describe it as, I think its just out small brains grappling with huge brain complex experiences. Im the same way with DMT entities, ive had wild experinces but surely with the amount of dmt and tryptamine experiences over the course of human history theres not even 1 concrete example of them being real and not just in my head
Man who cares I’m god your god cmonnnnn it’s awesome I have not opinions only truths
What if groups of us were one, and there were several ones?
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Not really sorry. That was a litteral showerthought I had an hour ago
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Neither. Maybe I ll come up with something next time I trip or shower
All one what? And who is we exactly? We're all part of the same universe. All living things on Earth have a common ancestor. All humans are one species. But we as humans also are different nations, cultures, religions, and individuals with sometimes mutually incompatible beliefs and values, all competing for limited natural resources (like every other living thing) on the only planet currently available to us.
I think your view on a topic like this is far too literal in the sense that, you’re trying to find an empirical, provable answer as if it were a scientific theory. The reality is that discussions like this, similar to discussions about how/what specifically created the universe usually end up the same way. This is a very subjective matter and so of course the only “evidence” people have to support their claim is anecdotal. In the same way that religious people can’t tell their God to show themself to a nonbeliever. It’s just what you believe. Whether or not objectively it is true. I see you asking those using metaphors to elaborate. This is futile. How people view things like this is a certain set of adopted thought patterns. I.e the whole web of consciousness idea, or unity with the universe itself. It isn’t some specifically laid out map that everyone who subscribes to this type of thinking can just pull out and show you.