View From the Top > Esteemed Reader

By Jason Stern, publisher

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer. —Dylan Thomas

Esteemed Reader of our Magazine:

At the center of it all is Life. All the disparate lives we perceive—plant, animal, and human—are manifestations of the singular force of Life. It is not my life or your life, but the life that flows through all. On this basis, all is one. The differences we see are delusional. Perceiving an “other” means that we are not looking deeply.

All the spiritual traditions talk about it. They patiently repeat, with many formulations, that “all life is one, and everything that lives is holy.”
The Vedas say:
Filled with Brahman are the things we see,
Filled with Brahman are the things we see not,
From out of Brahman floweth all that is:
From Brahman all—yet he is still the same.

Somehow, in the thick of our personal difficulties, we forget that all of us spring from a common source—that we are constantly enlivened by the same energy. And we crave the feeling of oneness that flows from feeling the interconnectedness of all.
So what keeps us from it?

Instead of dwelling in that feeling of unity, we become enamored with various objects of desire or ire. We are all too distractible. We seek unity in all the wrong places. We think the physical union of sex will produce real connection. And it does for a fleeting moment—long enough to send us searching for the next flash encounter. Or we may believe that joining a club—where everyone is interested in chess, or Frisbee, or writing, or political change, or bondage—will give us the connection to the one. Or perhaps we find temporary solace on entering into the apparently singular unit of a family, a religion, or a support group. But all these are outer manifestations of what is already one. They provide only a temporary feeling of completion, and are predicated on returning again and again to the same circumstances. Initially exciting, those circumstances inevitably lose their original potency as the novelty fades.

Every construct that provides a simulacrum of unity is inherently cultic. Each requires blind acceptance or belief to sustain our interest. The belief could be seemingly benign, but the effect is that the effort of inquiry is deadened. Thinking and seeing within the box of the known we are prevented from seeking the sublime mystery of the common principle of life that animates all.

Saint Rama’s guru Agastya told him: “The search for Truth is the search for one’s Self. When a man truly understands who he is, he will realize that he is part of God. This understanding cannot come from the intellect, it comes from a place far deeper. Know yourself, my friend, and you will see that you are none other than the Lord.”
Feel the life in your own body. Connect to the sensation that flows through your hands, arms, legs, sex, trunk and head. This is Life. Not your little life, but Life itself, common to all sentient beings.
Says the Eesha Upanishad: “How can a wise man, knowing the unity of life, seeing all creatures in himself, be deluded or sorrowful?”
L’chaim, l’chaim—to Life!