«There never was and never will be someone like you». This phrase, somewhere between lapidary and typical of lovers, may seem exaggerated, but it responds to a truth: each one of us is unique.
For reasons and mechanisms beyond our understanding, the entire universe has conspired to keep us here. just as we are, with all our virtues and defects. This observation, elementary and at the same time surprising, should fill us with healthy pride.
Also from some responsibility: that of looking a little good in the theater of life. Something is expected of us. Discovering it can take a lifetime, but in the meantime you have to keep respect for oneself and for others: they are equally unique and unrepeatable beings.
Also if we walk down the street, or move in the middle of nature, we see that life is rich in variety: people each with a different face, plants and animals that we barely know given the exuberant richness in species. At night, when the darkness seems to make us forget the differences and plunge us into the same elemental magma, the firmament is filled with distant and ethereal stars. we imagine other possible worlds that rotate in circular orbits that return on themselves.
The universe is infinite for us: planets, suns, constellations, galaxies… But harmony is necessary so that everything is multiple and, at the same time, coherent.. That instead of a cacophony, a pile of unconnected noises, there is that symphony that is life.
Harmony, proportion and measure: unity manifested in multiplicity.
The number 1 and its philosophical meaning
«The Tao generates the One. One generates the Two. Two generates the Three. Three generates the Ten Thousand beings…»
These enigmatic words of Lao Tzu (Tao-Te-Ching42) explain very simply the genesis of the world:
- By CAT It is possible to understand the unmanifest Principle (the zeroyou could say).
- He One It is the beginning of manifestation, the Be.
- Two It is already duality, bipolarization (yin-yang) of the single principle.
- And Two gives way to Threeorigin of the multiplicity (the ten thousand beings).
The manifestation (or creation, in Christian language) involves the appearance of unnameable beings and objects. This is easy to see, just open your eyes and contemplate the world in which we live. However, this everyday reality has a lot of appearance in the sense that such Apparent plurality hides the truth that everything has the same and unique origin.
Only the One Is. This One (or Monad) is not a number itself.because it is beyond quantity. However, the number 1 expresses its nature well.
Just as Being is in everything that exists, The number one is the essence of all possible figures. Any numerical quantity, no matter how large, is always the sum of many ones.
As he said Aristophanes: «at the origin of all things is unitywhich divides and becomes multiple, but to one day return to what it was before.
The one in our lives
Unity is not something abstract or purely mathematical.but it is evident in every aspect of our lives.
The human body, and that of all other living beings, It is a functional unit. All organs collaborate with each other, they work to form a great synergy which even allows, if one of them falters, others to help him in his duties. Blood is related to the air we breathe, but it also collects nutritional principles or allows immunity.
In each cell there are millions of biological reactions per second, and just think about the millions of cells that make up our body to be amazed at the miracle of life, that everything has sense and coherence.
There is a will of lifeone of the manifestations of which is the so-called «healing force of nature», which is also expression of wanting to be one and face what would somehow mean returning to the inorganic, to multiplicity.
Psychology of number one
We have another confirmation that unity is always present in the psychological sphere. Thoughts, emotions and feelings would be pure chaos if there were no unitary consciousness underlying.
The sense of self, the innate ethical or moral valueswhat in short makes us human, is also a form of unification.
The body and mind are united, but equally we move in other social and geographical units: family, town, region, country, and even continent, planet… Our parents, and before them the countless ancestors, have been our biological origin.
half of the chromosomes of the father they joined with half of the mother’s, through the germ cells, so that duality would become unity again.
LOVE or wanting to be «one» with the other
Most situations that give us happiness are moments of plenitude all of them characterized by the presence of love. And it is not unreasonable to say that Any act of love can be considered a small return to lost unity..
If it is an action of social helpthere is the tacit recognition that all human beings we form, without distinction, a kind of great brotherhood. In family-type affection, blood ties that unite people beyond ages or ways of thinking are also highlighted.
But it is in erotic love, or as a couplewhere That return to unity becomes even more evident. Falling in love is finding a being whose presence becomes essential and almost luminous. To move away from it is, on the contrary, a reason for sorrow and obfuscation.
already commented Plato in one of his myths that the primordial Androgynous split into the masculine and the feminine. That’s why lovers seek to recover that lost unity.
Everything that accompanies infatuation (a phenomenon that some, not without reason, have called a momentary attack of «madness») is a consequence of that search for fusion and plenitude. The physical union involvesIn this sense, the symbol and the culmination of that movement of return to the fullness that is love.
In addition, every spiritual search involves a return to the origin. The soul, separated from its divine origin, seeks to return to the Beginning. Hence the wise men and saints of all traditions invite us to love and know the supreme Good. Achieving true inner peace is only achieved by resting in the purity of the Being thatas already mentioned, It is the One.
FLASHES IN THE NIGHT
The recognition of unity does not mean, however, losing one’s own personal identity. or get lost in a confusing whole. It is a progressive transformation of experienceseach one according to their characteristics and personal history.
When the awareness of an I greater than the small particular egoeverything changes without ceasing to be what it is. It could be compared to cleaning the fog formed on a glass and suddenly notice the deep greenness of the trees in a park, the laughter of children playing or the slow movement of clouds that were always there, even if we had not noticed them, too lost in our own thoughts.
There are no apparent changes in form, but rather in meaning. Everything is the same and at the same time different. The trill of a solitary bird can almost become a dialogue. Will we dare to say that we do not understand what he tells us?
We look at the face of the one who often accompanies us and we realize that we are seeing him for the first time and we can smile at him. Holding the hand of the friend lying in a hospital bed It is a sad experience but it can also be accompanied by a secret and warm light that is exchanged at that moment.
The external world is also then an internal reality and nothing can be completely foreign to us. Dostoevsky put in the mouth of one of his characters, in The Karamazov brothersthe following words: «What is hell? It is the inability to feel oneness with the world and all its forms.»
FIND THE UNIT
We have reflected on unity in its double meaning of universality and uniqueness. The universe is an expression of that intrinsic unity and each of the beings that exist is unique.
But the tendency to unity and harmonywhether among the people or within us, it’s not an easy task. There are many dispersing forces, especially in today’s world, so full of audiovisual impacts and the cultivation of the frivolous and prosaic.
It is also frequently incurred in error of believing that uniformity means Unity, when It implies just the opposite: true unity allows and enhances diversity.
The universe is multiple and infinite because the divine Principle that sustains it is One. Globalization understood as a single thought and imposition of a single cultural pattern means impoverishing human heritage, always based on diversity and freedom.
Meditate on the one
Recovering the feeling of unity is an exercise which should be done as often as possible to, among other things, not distance ourselves too much from ourselves. Meditate on the one, unify consciousness retreating inwardly from time to time, allows us, as a popular song from Franco Battiatolook for «a permanent center of gravity.»
In that way the relationship with nature and other human beings can take on greater meaning.
Let us end with a Hindu text that summarizes the essence of what we have been discussing: «Everything, including the world you see, as well as yourself -the witness of the world-, everything is One. Everything that you consider to be me, you, her and this, everything is One. Sensitive beings, as well as the inert and the insensitive (earth, air, fire and water), all this is One. The well-being which results from the awareness that ‘all is One’ cannot be obtained by a fragmentary consciousnesswhich separates things and beings: everything is One.»
A UNIFYING MEDITATION
True meditation involves a search of the spiritual center and, therefore, of the unit. It is an inverse path to that of dispersion in the outside world and the proliferation of contradictory selves within us. To this end, we propose a simple exercise.
Relaxed, sitting, lying or standingwe close our eyes and place the hands at the height of the area located just below the navel; the left palm on the abdomen and the right palm on top of it.
The breathing is deep and widebut calm. With each inhalation we repeat «I am», and, with each exhalation, «one» (it is a neutral term, not masculine).
With this practice that can be done several times a day, a certain awareness of unity is gained, by unify three levels: mind (head), breathing (thorax) and abdomen (center of gravity).
To know more
- Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching. Ed. RBA-lntegral
- Anonymous 19th century Tamil text: Everything is one. JJ de Olañeta Ed.
- Jack Kornfield: After the ecstasy, the laundry. Ed. March Hare.
- Jorge Bucay: The path of the encounter. Ed. Plaza & Janes