So, What About This “Connectedness”?

Is there anything to it?

For the first two, maybe three years after we’re born, we humans are still at one with the world. Just try to imagine that for a moment. There’s no separation, boundary, distinction that tells me that I’m an entity different from everything around me. A profound state. For a few weeks after my daughter was born I marveled at the depth of her eyes; they seemed to look at me from some infinite space. 

By the age of three we normally have learned to identify with our names, and the world is divided into me and not-me. We become aware of our environment, we find out about our neighborhood, we become adept at naming things, and we absorb more abstract notions when we go to school and learn about math or geography. At the same time, we become more conscious: “I like this but not that”, “I am hungry and want to eat”, “I can ride a bicycle”. I become the center of my universe.

At first sight, there seems to be a distinct boundary between me and the observed world, a division often described as an inner and outer world. The inner part is considered subjective and changeable; made up of a person's feelings and thoughts which are not really scientifically reliable. The outer world has endurance and independence, it can be measured and classified, hence is objective. Upon closer scrutiny however, the division into inner and outer becomes questionable. Where does one end, and the other begin? If I take my skin to be a boundary between inner and outer, science tells me that the skin is a highly permeable membrane. The air I constantly breathe in and out – when does it become “me”? The molecules in my body replace themselves; some very quickly, others take longer. Am I still the same “me” – or not? My senses perform a never-ending exchange with everything around me – but I perceive it as distinctly separate. When does something become “other”?

It was a profound experience when I realized that the world does not exist independently from me, has no objective reality in the sense that things are objectively  the way I perceive them. If I could turn into a butterfly for example, my world would look so radically different that it would take some time before I could find my way around. There is not one objective world, but a multitude of differing views, all coexisting and usually quite unaware of each other. Nothing changes with this realization, but if I always saw two black profiles in the above illustration and then suddenly I see the white vase, it is rather startling.

The unity between perceiver and perception is all there is as far as reality goes.

Instead of  trying to fix everything that is wrong in the outside world, maybe the potential for healing has to start with consciousness rather than political movements and the environment. At the bottom of ignorance, greed, lust for power, fear, the feeling of helplessness, in fact at the bottom of the totality of our normal consciousness, lies a misconception equal in proportion to the immensity of the current cultural crisis. This misconception believes in an objectively real world, a world of objects separate and independent from each other and their observer. Sight, hearing, touch, and the other senses are supposed to perceive ready-made data and facts in an essentially passive manner. The mind or rather brain is understood to pick up or absorb concepts, similar to taking photographic snapshots of objects that are not at all changed by the process of picture-taking. This view misses the fact that sense impressions become meaningful only because the perceiving being creates connections and relationships. When we discover that literally no-thing exists in isolation, we begin to realize that these relationships, while not being sense-perceptible, give meaning to the phenomena.

Once I start to examine whether the objects around me are indeed as “objectively real” as I had assumed, I discover that they’re not. Imagine there’s a spider on the ceiling of the room where I’m sitting. Does the spider see the same room? Does the spider see me sitting in a chair in front of a computer? Clearly, it doesn’t. I’m guessing, but as long as I’m at a safe distance I barely exist for the spider, I’m insignificant. And if I would approach it with the intention to kill (which I never do), the spider would react to the danger but would NOT see an older female with a broom in her hands. So, am I “objectively real” or not?

My point is that all beings/creatures are part of the environment of other beings/creatures, all woven together, creating this immensely rich, beautiful tapestry. But the problem with us humans is that we perceive everything from our limited ego-consciousness; each individual is at the center of their respective universe, unaware of the fact that they are part of many other creatures’ worlds. I don’t mean uncles and grandkids but earthworms and hummingbirds and coyotes and sealions. We humans are part of their world, their environment, but instead of coexisting and cooperating we’re ruining and destroying it because we’re “so superior”. In reality, we’re isolated and impoverished.

What do you think? When everything relates to everything else there isn’t really any “inner” and “outer” world. It is ONE – a universe.