“Ultimately, what do you have other than Consciousness?” I used this sentence in the introduction to the SeymourLovejoy.com web-sight. I’d like to expand that concept a bit.

There is a concept called dualism, which most people, at least, have some semblance of a meaning for, since it’s a familiar word. Perceiver/Perceived, Yin/Yang, Male/Female, all that stuff. But if you study Hinduism, you also hear of Monism, which essentially means experiencing but not interpreting or naming everything you happen to experience. Consider a baby who opens his eyes for the first time and hears things and feels the smack on his bottom, not to mention the trauma to the body birth includes. This baby doesn’t have names for anything to associate the experiences experienced. It’s just experience. There aren’t a million things being experienced; the concepts of one two and a million have not been presented; there’s just something. All of a sudden, someone turned all the senses on and there’s something that wasn’t there before, and perhaps some pain, though it can’t be named. I’m reminded fondly of a skit done by Steve Martin and Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live, where, practically, the only words used are “What the hell is that?”

Anyway, you get the idea. If you don’t impose any names or divisions, all you have is one undivided, all-inclusiveness, not even an all-inclusive “thing”, because that would impose boundaries and a name on it. “All That Is”. I like to picture it as a big chemical soup. Or you could note that you’re just seeing a lot of undivided color. Or you could call it white light, which is, technically, “the presence of all color”. But then, again, bottom line, those are analogies, and it comes down to consciousness or awareness. It’s the common ingredient in all things: some kind of presence in what we call consciousness. Even those things we’re not conscious of, are in our consciousness because we can point them out as holes, perhaps after the fact. As the Evergreens have said, “Even the things you don’t know, you know”, because you can categorize them. The world you experience is all wrapped up in your consciousness. Every person you know (or don’t know) and to whom you attribute qualities is in your consciousness, and they symbolize those qualities; and you make decisions based upon what is in your consciousness.

Oneness is a great concept, but even describing it brings up issues. The phrase “One with…” already separated you from the one, because there’s you and the it that you’re with. A Science of Mind instructor I knew, discussing this issue, suggested that a better phrase might be “One as…”. Perhaps “One being…” Describing the One in terms of Two, doesn’t work. Two includes language, One doesn’t.

So if you take a step back and ask the question, “How can we experience being Oneness”?, at some point, if you keep stepping back and taking a view of yourself being aware of being aware, then being aware that you’re aware that you’re aware, you might, as I did, come to the conclusion, that everything you’re aware of is within consciousness, it’s practically equivalent to Oneness. No matter where you look, even with your eyes shut, you are experiencing consciousness. No matter what you experience, there’s you, the watcher, experiencing it. So what does every “thing” have in common? It’s in consciousness.

So that’s why I say Oneness = Consciousness. Nothing is outside consciousness, including this article and you.