We can give the name 'union' to the connected all. Union has many other names, such as God, being, void, universe, and unitary awareness. Union encloses us and enfolds us in an all embracing mutual identity and universal awareness. Union is the deep into which we sweetly emerge from our separated and finite identities. Union is conscious because it includes consciousness, aware because it includes awareness. Awareness is in union and unitary awareness is coextensive with union. Awareness is our thread of connection with union, especially unitary awareness. We are also connected with and in union as being and as void.
Union for the walker who paces far ahead. Union for the brave and fearful. Union for the artist to guide her brush. Union for the tired who fall back before being. Union for the strong in their glory. Union for the weak and for the homeless. Union for the rich aristocrat who trembles before the power of God. Union for the sick and for the dying. Union for all who see and for the blind. Union for everyone everywhere, in or outside of time. Union for the fallen and for the victorious. Union for all but especially union for each and every one.
Out of the pure sea of the union of all a distinction is marked by our calling it so. Such a distinction becomes a separation between what is marked and what is not. That separation marks a boundary and that boundary marks a connection between what is marked and what is not. The boundary has the form of awareness where the marked may be associated with the subject, the unmarked with the object, and the boundary may be associated with the unitary center of awareness itself. It might seem that what we have described is marked as a distinction only through our calling it, through our intent, rather than naturally arising of itself; however, that might be a false limitation, for awareness is, by its nature, aware.
Here am I and here you are. Each of us lives our individual lives in superficial separation but, in the more central reality of the all, of union, we are connected and eventually identical. Many of our connections appear in common reality; we are both beings of awareness and, at least from my current information, we are both humans, socially and perhaps genetically connected; that being so, we have many similar ends and feel similar obstructions; we share life in nature and the possibility of eventual physical dissolution. We are also connected by the current text, which we now both inhabit. While our interests may partly coincide and partly differ in our individuality, at our deeper root in union, our interests do converge towards our approaching identity. That knowledge should serve to fortify and coordinate our good will, even among and between our separate selves.
All and each of us is simultaneously separate and in union and our powers of action and perception engage in both. Our identities are finite as separated entities. However, each of us, in our individual and collective identities, is more than finite, through our connection with and essential identity with union. Our separated identities are figures of the dance of being extending the surface and enriching the content of union. Our experience is our offering to the always developing perfection of union. Each separate one being one of one, each one is the all of union. From the view of union, absolute identity resides between each separate entity and the union of all. Separation is a play, a thing unto itself, without which union would be incomplete. The all, being all, includes separation. And the all, being union, validates both individuality and connectivity. It is the distinctions and differences of people and other entities that articulates meaning, content and significance in the union of all. An entirely homogeneous all would have no one to care about it nor could there be union without the connectivity of separation.
Separation has boundaries, beyond which is the other. The boundaries may or may not be hard and distinct but, unless they occur, there is no separation. Union has inner, but no outer, boundaries; there is no other. Separation indicates multiplicity, because, one with the other, there must be at least two. Union, having no other, no outside, is itself one; although we can see that union, necessarily, is internally capable of multiplicity. Separation is included in union, but it is a more subtle thing to say that union is included in separation; although that also is true, in that each entity of separation is fully connected with union, and in that sense includes union. Separation can occur and can disappear, either in time or upon other occasion. Union, however, is both timeless and indissoluble. Separations occur as figures inside union but union itself cannot be separated or diminished.
The finite may appear as vibrations of the central unity, but in what way is that essential? Attempt to imagine the central unity without the finite. All is whole and all is one and there is no distinction. Forget for a moment, that in our context of referral there is already the distinction of naming the central unity in the text; we become that impossibility, the observer who does not affect the observed. But wait! That is impossible! The central unity once called cannot be uncalled. Still, if there were a place and time, outside of space and time of course, where the central unity was uncalled, then we must imagine infinite stillness and homogeneity. If there were any way to escape from absolute rigidity then some flaw, motion or vibration would occur. As soon as anything at all occurs, any parting of the absolute, any parting of the absolute symmetry, then the game is up.
We can imagine a collection of lenses, alternating between union and separation, all lined up, so that when we look through a lense of union we see next a lens of separation and when we proceed to look through the lens of separation we see again a lens of union; we might instead image a pair of mirrors, labeled separation and union, which face each other; although with both images we should remember that we are describing only a small part of the whole.
How can we use the knowledge of our connection in the union of the all to focus and deepen our experience of life? Knowing, we can find and touch the inward flowing currents of the all. Touching, we can flow onwards around the roots of other beings and our own, connecting from the source. Flowing, we can rest deeper into quiet unity of all where being and void are one, where stillness and motion are one. We can practice and learn to inhabit the superficially dual but deeply unified worlds of our separate and individual consciousnesses congruently with the wider world of union. We can learn to practice aware and intentional correspondence among our private selves and the communicative realm of unitary awareness. We can find each other as one in the most prior, primary and central essence of unitary awareness and of all.
Knowledge of the union of all does, and ought to, enhance individual freedom. While each of us remains connected to the all and to each other, it is the diversity of our own encounter with separation that gives value to our personal being, both value for the life of the self as it is experienced and also value as contributing to the fullness, wonder and enchantment of all. Where we differ, we delight the richness of being; where we agree, we comfort us mutually at home in the all.
There has been a common misunderstanding of the completion of being inducing determinism. It goes like this: if being is complete and whole, if it is the all, then everything exists timelessly, everything that will be (as well as all that was) is already (and still) there and so, because the future is already contained in being, it is also determined. All of our actions and experiences are set in the stone of is. But this conception involves an elementary mistake in logic. In the timeless all, neither the future nor the past are defined, but the timeless all is not to be seen as some long stretch of filled parchment of which we are some already written word in a sequence, but as radically nonlinear, not temporally ordered at all. From the viewpoint of separation, there is separation, time and change. From the viewpoint of the all, there is no difference.