Oneness 

Whenever I introduce people from different ends of the planet to each other, I am often struck by the fact that within minutes they have focused in on at least one person they know in common. A little reflection has clarified the situation. Bottom Line researchers have established that the vast majority of people in the world are linked by no more than two intermediaries. They have also concluded that two of the most isolated people in the world – say a monk in Tibet and a hermit in Appalachia – are linked by no more than eight intermediaries. Philosopher and scientist Guy Murchie turns poet to communicate his sense of the interrelatedness of everybody,

What relation is a white man

To a black man?

A yellow man to a red or brown?

Closer maybe than you’d think.

For all family trees meet and merge

Within fifty generations, more or less –

In round numbers a thousand years:

Which makes all people cousins,

Siblings in spirit if you will.

Or, to be genetically precise,

Within the range of fiftieth cousin.

Creation spirituality would bid us pursue the phenomenon of oneness still further. The fundamental interconnectedness and perennial allurement of all things for each other belongs to the exciting realms of deep mystery and emerging mysticism. Mysticism is all about interconnectivity. Fritjof Capra is a creation-centred physicist. ‘The universe,’ he writes is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events.’ And the mystic, Eckhart, points out that ‘Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.’ Having indicated the manner in which  humanity’s family includes the animal kingdom, the whole of nature including trees and rocks, and the galaxies uncountable, Guy Murchie continues,

There is no line, you see, between these cousin kingdoms,

No real boundary between you and the universe –

For all things are related,

Through identical elements in world and world,

Even out to the farthest reaches

Of space.

The emergence of a living cosmology is revealing ever-new depths to the mystery of unity. As the physicists explore relentlessly into the dark secrets of space, they confess to continual astonishment at the recurring patterns and harmonic flow that stem from and tend toward a ubiquitous oneness, the reawakening of a vibrant mysticism from a long sleep, also bringing home to us the interdependence of all living things which are all part of one another and involved in one another. In the creation tradition all people are mystics. The Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel wrote:

The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavour to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.

Gandhi saw all life as one  in a cosmic family in which each member helped to elevate the whole from a selfish, destructive level to a spiritual and productive one. And no only among the ‘major world religions’ do we find insights into the mysterious oneness at the heart of everything but also among the more ancient and more earth-centred traditions of native peoples all over the world. ‘The earth and myself are of one mind,’ wrote Chief Joseph of the Nez Puruse Indian tribe over one hundred years ago, ‘the measure of the land and the measure of our bodies are the same.’ Such creation-centred reflections on ‘oneness’ are sometime cosmological, sometimes mystical. These disciplines are intrinsically connected. The mystical experience is like the mirror image of science, a direct perception of cosmic oneness, an inside window into the mystery that science grapples with from the outside.

It is easy to maintain the sense of excitement and movement in this vision of intimacy at the heart of all created and uncreated being. The nature of the primordial ones is described and imaged in a variety of ways that portray a trusting dynamism – a flowing, an awakening, a dancing, an allurement, a loving, a creating, a returning.

‘The world is a spinning die,’ according to an old Hasidic passage, ‘and all things turn and spin and change, for at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things.’

But the symphony is rarely complete. There are usually instruments missing or out of tune. Or the acoustics are inadequate. There is often hard wax in the ears, or people’s hearts are distracted. The magic is missed. The whole symphony is less perfect when the tiniest note is untrue. There is a Pigmy legend about the forest filled with the beautiful music.

A little boy finds the bird with the enchanting song and brings it home. He asks his father to bring food for the bird. The father refuses to feed a mere bird, so he kills it. And the legend says that with the killing of the bird he kills the song, and with the song himself. He dropped dead and was dead forever.

Every hurt we cause nature leaves a scar on ourselves. Every time we honour the smallest creature we honour ourselves. Once a Zen master stood up before his students and was about to deliver a sermon. And just as he was about to open his mouth a bird sang. ‘The sermon,’ he said, ‘has been delivered.’

(Extract from “Passion for the Possible” pp 275-277)