Uniformity and Oneness: Two ways to engage

Last updated on: August 22, 2010 at 9:40 am by Desh Kapoor

Uniformity and Oneness: Two ways to engage 2010-08-22T09:40:15-05:00 Desh Kapoor

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Concept of Uniformity breeds Exclusivism. Oneness is inherently inclusive.

Obsession with the idea of “One” has been central to human mind since the beginning.

Two concepts of looking at one’s place in the cosmos has always clashed in the world. People often try to look at the way East and West has looked at the world and said the foundational precepts were way apart, although they tried to get to the same point to start with.

Both started with the concept of looking for “One Truth”. West thought the One Truth had to do with the “Way” because “form” – outer one – was the result of one’s actions, while East found that “way” and the “form” (that eye could see and mind could comprehend) wasn’t even important. Foundational, primordial “Element” of this creation was where we had to look for that “One Truth”.

To enfore “One Truth of the Way”, West looked for Uniformity. Scientific rules, Rankings, Academic prizes, and systems – all looked to create Uniformity of “a” way. This way was usually of the winner. There was the need in the West to look for the “Best”. And then enforce it.

Eastern thought couldn’t be bothered about “Best”. For definition of “Best’ depended on others. Not you. You could – without harming, subjugating or enslaving – only be responsible and accountable for your action. To qualify as the “Best” either you had to beat everything at the same time in the same way or make sure you made rules that suggested so. Latter was easier. Might can do a lot. Tesla was the real brain, but Edison got the tag for the “Best inventor”. He got it not because he was so. But he could afford to put others who really were better down long and effectively enough to be crowned as such.

In a system and society which pushed for Uniformity, and thus a singular definition of success, interaction with “Life” had to be on “concrete” terms. It didn’t matter that eye saw what the mind showed. Yet, “Seeing was believing”.

While biologists kept saying that eyes “don’t really see”, mind does. And mind knows what one has gathered and looks for patterns born out of the past accumulations. It didn’t matter that physicists kept asserting, accuracy and measurement are inversely propotional. Your confidence in a measurement is inversely proportional to the accuracy of what you say about it.

Yet, Science and “Truth” springing from it was to be defined by categorically.

When everything despite its outward differences is realized to be of One foundational element, then there is no “Best”. For, at the root of it all, everyone is the same.

Uniformity cannot be “enforced” but the Same-ness can only be “realized”. Eyes and Mind see the differences. Something beyond the limited sees the One-ness. Eastern sages learnt that looking for Uniformity was a sham. Realizing One-ness lead to bliss and Love of the highest level. For when you have realized that all is foundationally one with you, then you cannot but have complete and unequivocal compassion. One who see himself/herself as separate can never have real compassion. He can have pity or practice kindness. Compassion to all regardless of their outer differences can never occur in one to whom there is a “Me” that has to be enforced, ranked or to be made the “Best”.

Until we are engaged in the Walmartization – an epithet for Unformity – of Mind and Creation, we will create conflict and bloodshed. When we realize that at the root of it all, we are essentially One with the cosmos, the very urge to assert and enslave will disappear.

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