What Is Oneness?
Imagine that you’re the whole universe; you live in total joy and bliss. Imagine there is no past or future, only now. Imagine there is no space or time, just an unbounded eternity. Imagine endless peace, harmony, and unconditional love. Imagine no fear and equality in all things. This is Oneness.
Unfortunately, we can never imagine it fully. To understand or experience anything, we need to compare it to something else, which immediately brings us into duality. Oneness by definition is incomparable.
So is it ever possible to know Oneness? Yes, but only by direct experience, when we go beyond the mind, intellect, and ego. Oneness is the coming together of all opposites. It’s always with us as the basis and underlying essence of everything. It’s nothing in itself, but holds the potential for everything. We have to go beyond the senses, beyond duality to find Oneness.
We’ve all had random, unexpected glimpses of Oneness. Perhaps you were watching a beautiful sunset and had that moment when you felt like you merged with the whole of creation; or saw your newborn child for the first time and fell in love with the whole world. We even have expressions for these glimpses, we say, “It took my breath away” or “Time stood still.” This is Oneness. We became one with the totality of the experience. When we return from the moment of Oneness, we find it impossible to properly express it. It just was! There are no words to describe Oneness. In Vedanta, it’s simply referred to as Tat, which means that.
We can also have direct experience of Oneness through meditation, which provides a systematic path by which our awareness settles to quieter levels of thinking until we finally transcend thought completely. All duality is in the realm of thoughts. When we slip into the spaces between our thoughts, we become Oneness. Oneness isn’t just experiencing something; it’s a state of being.
Deepak Chopra has told us that, “Every single thing is an aspect of One Field of Consciousness.” Chopra has also said, “The Whole never loses contact with its parts, they are never lost or forgotten.”
Modern quantum physics talks about a unified field, which underlies and connects everything in creation. Who we are, is pure consciousness or Oneness, expressing itself in different forms at different times in our evolution. Pure Consciousness, which is eternal and timeless, is the Oneness; we are the separation or the duality.
Chopra said, “The origin of life forms is the differentiation of pure consciousness into multiple forms of life expressed as qualia conglomerates which create the relative world.” John Lennon simplified Oneness as, “I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.”
Author Damian Mark Smyth says, “We’re One, we’ve always been One, we’ll always be One, until we think we are not.” And herein lies our challenge, we are one but we think we are separate; we have forgotten our Oneness.
As a result of forgetting, we create an illusory world of duality, which leads to suffering. All disagreements, conflict, and wars are due to the mistaken belief that we are separate. When we realize we are one, who, or what is there to fight against? On a cosmic level, two people fighting is as ridiculous as if your hands decided they didn’t like each other and started fighting.
Are we then doomed to a life of separation, where Oneness always remains an elusive dream? Not necessarily. Vedanta and its great teachers have illuminated a path that guides us to the place where it is possible to live fully in this relative world, with full remembrance of Oneness. Vedanta gives us a vision of 200 percent of life.
Here are a few suggestions to take you in the right direction.
Community
Being part of a harmonious community helps to foster the principles of Oneness. Community supports us on our own journey and allows us the opportunity to serve others. Community helps us open up to new and different ideas; to begin to dissolve our barriers and limiting beliefs. Community can connect us with a sense of Oneness.
Meditation
Meditation can give us direct exposure to the Oneness deep within. When we transcend thought, we enter a field of pure awareness—the non-local, ground state of existence. By making this journey back and forth from local to non-local awareness, we begin to witness the state of Oneness along with our waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states of awareness. This opens the door to higher states of consciousness and the full re-integration of Oneness in our lives.
Conscious Actions
Begin to be more conscious of everything in your life. Be conscious of your thoughts, emotions, and how you react to situations and people in your life. Try to be conscious of your choices. Being conscious of how your actions affect your life and of those around you can help to create a sense of belonging—a sense of being part of something greater than just your own ideas.
See Your Own Oneness
When you stand in front of a mirror, pause for a moment, and look directly into your eyes. Say silently or aloud AHUM BRAHMASMI (a hum brah mass me), which means I am the Universe or I am the totality. You can say it in English if you prefer. This is your soul reflecting back into itself and reminding itself of its Oneness. Practice this at least once a day or whenever you catch your reflection in a mirror.
See the Oneness in Everything
The Bhagavad Gita states, “If you can see God (the Oneness) in everyone, you can never do harm to anyone.” Wherever you go, whatever you experience through your senses, keep reminding yourself that it is all part of the same Oneness. Begin to recognize the world as a reflection of yourself.
Namaste
The Indian blessing Namaste (nam ass tay) is accompanied by bringing the palms together in front of the heart center, when meeting or taking leave of someone. It means, “I recognize the Divinity in you which is also the Divinity in me” or in other words, “We are the same Oneness.” If it’s not comfortable for you to say it aloud, think it silently every time you meet someone.
OM
Oneness is the potential for all sounds but is, itself silent. In every moment of existence, the whole of of creation is constantly emerging from the silence of Oneness. The first sound or vibration emerging from the silence is OM. This vibration then expands into all the sounds and vibrations of the Universe. When we chant OM it draws our awareness back to the dawn of creation, and into Oneness.
Love
Love is the greatest, most powerful unifying force in creation. When we are in love, we become one with the object of our love. These inspirational quotes that tell the story of the relationship between love and Oneness.
The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “The lover asked his beloved, do you love yourself more than you love me? The beloved replied, I have died to myself but I live for thee.”
Ram Das said, “Oneness is the source of love. Real love is the One celebrating itself as two.”
In the Vedanta it says, “The ignorant man (engrossed in duality) desires material things; the intelligent man (seeker on the path) desires enlightenment; but the wise man (know-er of Oneness) just loves and receives everything.”
The Yajur Veda tells us “It is Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent. It is all-powerful, all-pervasive. It pervades, permeates, and penetrates all things and all hearts.”
Live your life from love, recognize that you are the Universe. Be the Oneness and everything will be yours.
The Oneness Meditation
This is an earlier recorded version of a guided meditation including the Oneness message from Shaltazar. At the end, you will hear the song I Let Go by Deidrey Francois. It is a more traditional guided meditation and different from the other meditations I have uploaded. The lovely song at the end helps integrate and embody the message contained in the meditation. It is a very relaxing and powerful meditation. I hope you enjoy it.
Oneness Meditation
A Direct Transfer of Divine Energies
In January of 2012, Oneness University in India began offering a new program called Oneness Meditation (OM), which is a powerful, direct transfer of Divine energies. This special, sacred blessing stems from ancient times when students studied with masters for years and years in order to receive such a transmission for higher states of awareness, for Awakening. There are over 4000 Oneness Trainers worldwide, and only 51 have been initiated to offer the OM. Rev. Howard Caesar is one of the 51.
There are three very powerful intentions that naturally occur in this Oneness Meditation Transmission:
- One is it strengthens your bond, your relationship with your Divine, Spirit, God, however you relate to that.
- Second is that it brings freedom from your chattering mind.
- And the third one occurs naturally when you strengthen your bond with your Divine and when the mind chatter quiets. The Authentic You begins to shine and YOU become present in the moment and experience the fullness of Life as it truly is.
- Some people may have a strong experience while some may have a subtle experience; and yet still others may not experience anything at all. However, it is very common for people to experience hours later, or even a day or two later, conditions such as relaxation, stress reduction, peacefulness, harmony, and other positives.
What is oneness in meditation?
Normally consciousness is interpreted by layering on an additional conceptual framework. In this framework, there is a you that hears a bird and sees a bird. There is a you that we assume is thinking the thoughts we have.
But consciousness does not actually work that way. A bird is seen and heard by nervous pulses transmitted to the brain. A foot on the ground is felt by nervous impulses sent to the brain. Thoughts emerge from a neutral network of trillions of connections. What we see, hear and feel is actually all created in the brain. This experience of this simulation of what sense information provides is what consciousness is.
In meditation, one studies consciousness. As the brain quiets, the affirmation of conceptual frameworks relaxes. Consciousness comes to be experienced as a unified space, because it is a unified space. There is no you hearing a bird, there is birdsong. There is no foot touching ground, there is foot feeling.
One can come to directly explore the unified space consciousness is. The bird seen “out there” is the mind interacting with itself. Yellow of the bird exists only in a mind. One can feel levitation, because consciousness extends to the horizon in all dimensions. The ass on ground sensation is floating in the middle of nowhere.
Consciousness is experienced as one all encompassing infinite space, because the simulation we experience is one infinite virtual space. Kinda wild, but entirely consistent with neuroscience. (See David Eagle man)
Different kinds of meditation practices lead to different states that everyone tries to call “oneness.”
My own practice, Transcendental Meditation, is a mind-wandering practice that strengthens the activity of the brain’s default mode network, which comes online when you are not trying to do anything.
The DMN is where you get your sense-of-self. Normally, the activity of the DMN is very noisy and inefficient, but TM helps reduce the noise level of the DMN while still allowing the beneficial effects of mind-wandering (creativity and the ability to truly rest, basically) to continue. This lower-noise mind-wandering is perceived as a lower-noise sense-of-self, and as TM continues to change the brain, you start to perceive that your sense-of-self is less and less associated with stuff. Eventually, your sense-of-self simply emerges as “I am” and that is all.
Further strengthening and quieting of the mind-wandering mode of the brain eventually brings you to the point where you appreciate that all activity of the brain (the doing and perceiving stuff) is actually fluctuations on top of this low-noise mind-wandering, and so you say “everything I see and think and do are merely fluctuations of my own pure Self.”
This kind of “oneness” has been celebrated fro thousands of years in india and tradition says that a person with this perspective is quite special:
He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings no longer hides in fear. For the man of wisdom, in whom all beings have become his own Self, how can delusion, how can sorrow befall that seer of oneness?
- The usual state: You are going on the grass, see birds, snail, reindeer, clouds, and the sky. All are separated and keep their own identity.
- The meditative state: You become the grass which you are walking on, birds signing around, snail, reindeer nearby, clouds in the sky, the sky itself. All at once, everywhere, everything. You are everything and everything is you. There is no separation.
Meditation rewires your brain, increasing gray matter and white matter in key areas. More gray matter means more connections between neurons, and more white matter means increased efficiency in communication between parts of the brain. This is what they mean by whole brain functioning. The brain acts as one rather than a collection of parts.
This rewiring leads to deep changes in consciousness, including intuition.
Intuition allows you to connect more dots and see connections between events and ideas that others may miss. It’s the phenomenon that led to Einstein’s theories. Intuition came first, then the science.
During the intuitive process, Einstein couldn’t explain how he “knew” things. He couldn’t trace it all back to the source. That’s the nature of intuition. Instead, he used his amateur scientific training to verify what he was seeing.
That is just one benefit of whole brain functioning.
Another is the knowledge that mind and body are one thing. Perception of “energy fields” and all that whoopdeedoodah stuff comes from an ability to process subtle information that brains, by default, usually cannot.
The mystics of many traditions also point out that “God” and human are one. That doesn’t mean you can go around claiming God status. They’re referring to something very specific. The word “Atman” in Sanskrit refers to the human soul. It also means your True Self, beyond the thoughts you have about yourself such as name, job title, etc. Meditation gradually allows you to perceive this directly. There is no logical argument that will prove the mystics correct, just sensitization and awakening the brain.
I could go on forever about this. See some very revealing quotes from saints and mystics at One Soul. They’re from various worldwide spiritual traditions, but they’re all saying the same thing. It’ll be the most mind blowing thing you’ve read all year.