All in the Divine
We do not experience consciousness through the body; we experience the body through consciousness.
The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, through logical deduction, famously asserted that being is one, eternal, and unchanging. He argued against the possibility of non-being or multiplicity in any ultimate sense, concluding that all change and distinction are merely appearances. This ground-breaking Western insight aligns with the nondual understanding that if there is truly only one ultimate reality, then it cannot be fragmented, multiplied or fundamentally divided from itself in any way.
Applied to experience, this means that you are not a separate piece of reality. You are a localized expression within one reality of awareness. In other words, you are the awareness that illuminates your experience, and you as awareness are not limited or local, despite appearances.
Advaita Vedanta, the nondual school of Hindu philosophy, encapsulates this truth with the saying, “Atman is Brahman.” Atman refers to the essence of the individual. Brahman is the ultimate reality, the Absolute. Atman is Brahman because that which appears as the individual self is the universal reality. There is not a separate perceiver within the body-mind; there is only awareness, and awareness is one.
The Hermetic principle, “As above, so below,” points to the mirroring of the macrocosm (the universe, the divine) and the microcosm (the individual, the earthly realm), suggesting that the essence of reality-at-large is the same essence as the individuated self.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ declaration, “I and the Father are one,” is another expression of this truth, which, here, is not a claim of exclusive divinity for a single historical figure. It is an articulation of the recognition of the reality of awareness speaking through a particular form. In other words, the “I” here is not a separate awareness, but the universal awareness recognizing itself as the ultimate source of all being, as that from which all forms arise (in awareness).
The nondual truth is also echoed in the Buddhist concept of emptiness, which does not mean nothingness, but rather the empty nature of all phenomena which lacks its own discrete, independent existence apart from awareness.
Another concept of unity is seen in the mystic tradition of Sufism where all phenomena are understood to be appearances of God's infinite being.
Many Indigenous cultures speak of a Great Spirit or an interconnected web of life where all things are related and infused with the same animating essence. The land, the ancestors, the animals, the people, are not fundamentally separate but are expressions of a single, sacred reality.
Here, that sacred reality is the reality of awareness.