Imagine everything, every star and person, you, me, each plant and animal, rock and mineral, air, water, space, the sunlight on the clouds, the dark night. Then add all of our dreams and hopes, imagination, thought and action, past present and future. Throw in everything we may have left out, and everything else as well, whatever is or might be. There is a perfect word for this, 'all'.
All includes everything: objects, people, planets, plants and animals, stars as distant fiery balls and stars as points of light in the night, thoughts, dreams, feelings and sensations, spirits, psyches, souls, bodies, being and the void. The all does not exclude anything, not even nothing, for even if we do not experience nothing itself, we do experience the calling of the name 'nothing', as well as some intentionality towards that beyond and before, which we can imagine as nothing or as void.
Stay a moment in consideration of the all. If we try to describe awareness of the all from the necessarily separated perspective of a personal self, we might write such things as the following: The all has no other, thus it contains its boundaries. Having no other, the all cannot lose any part of its being. Time may exist as a play of light in the all, but there cannot be a past that is gone nor a future which is not. Whatever was, still is, and whatever will be, already is, and what is now, always was and will be.
All is connected in unitary awareness. Everything is connected in the universal all. We know many strands of those connections, others may be more obscure. Perception is a direct form of connection; what is perceived is connected with the perceiver and vice versa. Physical causation is another set of connections. Emotional attachment between beings, writing and other forms of communications, art and music, social, economic and political relations of society, the structures of mathematics, the Internet, the web of nature and genetic inheritance are more sets of connections. These are the sorts of sets and series of interconnections with which we are familiar. It is but a further step to generalize our insight into the connectivity of each in all. In between the known and the final, we can look and expect to find new strata of connectivity: psychic, synergistic, synchronistic, still unnamed.
All is one and all is aware. Our connection with all is through awareness, as awareness is the repository of all. The union of all, which contains our awareness, is thereby aware. Thus all is included in awareness, also therefore in unitary awareness, which is the central essence of awareness; thus all is included in one. Because awareness is our complete experience, all is known. Whenever we posit a boundary of awareness, awareness extends across that boundary. All is aware because awareness is both the interior and envelope of all. All is present; all is here in space and time. Here is the place that is and now is the time that is. All encompassed by union, we ourselves may appear as partial and temporary separation of union, as if we were separated from union, but we are not, such perception is an incidence of our temporarily finite perspective. There is no there, there. Here is here, here.
Whilst residing in the all, our outward forms and actions, our thoughts, doings and emotions, broach that surface of being which encounters the void. The surface of the all contains the genus of individuals, of entities which may be distinguished by their differences. The body of the all is the set of connections by which the elements of the surface are bound to each other and to the all. We need to value both the differences of separation and the connective union of the all.
One might imagine the all as a deep spheroidal body where rest at the center curves upward into diverging flows that underlie the surface, which is articulated into all the forms of individual being. That is evocative, but less than complete truth because the great and immediate connectivity among beings transcends any picture of their superficial separation and because the all is without any bounded surface or limit.
Does the all have a center? Does it make any sense to write about the all in geometric terms? Or perhaps a metaphorical center? Does the all have an inside or an outside, either or both? If the all has an outside could we not name that void? Then what would we name the inside? And what would it be like, to be inside the all? It would be like this, now, here, as always, for we are inside the all. Yet we also touch the void in freedom.
All has no other, for every possible other is already included in all. All is the entire completion of itself. Each of us is part of all. Our complete whole being is part of all. Each of us is all. This is because of the surrounding nature of awareness.
The all is of itself entire. The all is full and not empty. The all gathers itself to itself. In the presence of separation, this is awareness. The all is all of the all.