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The World is One THE world is one, in fact and in potentia. There is already a realised unity; that unity
runs as the fundamental chord in and through differing and discordant notes.
These different and discordant and even denying notes have to be
re-conditioned, blended, harmonised; that is the effective and patent unity
that lies in potentia and has to be brought forth in front. The world is one at
bottom; it is to be made one upto the brim. The material world is a factual unity. For it
is one matter that exists everywhere; the same fundamental elements constitute,
although in different degrees, the earth, the sun, the stars, the distant
galaxies and the extragalactic rays. It is in the last analysis charges of
electricity – infinitesimal and infinite charges of electric force, points of
energy that form the entire creation – pullulating particles that fill the
universe; but they are not isolated, disconnected, disunited, they are a
continuum. This continuum was called 'ether' at one time, it is now called
'field'. This material unity consists in the one extension that turns and
swirls into creases and eddies giving the impression of separativeness and
disunity. The task of the scientist is to know how to recondition the swirling
dispersing expanse so as to as similarise, polarise the disparate elements. That
is the meaning of what the scientists are now handling as the 'laser' or
'maser' beams.¹ Likewise, the vital world is also one. It is one life that pulsates in and through all living formations – one sea as it were, swaying and heaving and breaking into innumerable waves and
¹ Laser: Light amplifications
due to the stimulated emission of Radiation. Maser: Multiple
amplifications, etc. The result is that the light
ray cuts diamonds, bores rocks, welds metals, and works as a surgeon's knife.
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195 ripples. In spite of infinite variations there is one overall pattern
that persists through the living creation. Anatomy and more clearly physiology
links in a strange way even the plant and the animal and man. And in humanity
if there is a great vital upsurge somewhere, it spreads its vibration far and
wide like a seismic motion. And it is because of this vital unity that there
arises the phenomenon known as contagion or pest and pestilence – that is to
say, mass-movements are occasioned by one indivisible life-urge. A common
suffering or a common elation is normal to human life. The fundamental unity, here too, works
through discord and disunion, battle and conflict, denial and negation. Here
too the drive or purpose of progress and of evolution is towards the same
polarisation, that is to say, reorientation, evocation of vibrations that are a
pure or harmonious expression of the unity. Coming next to Mind, the unity here too, is
quite marked, clearly discernible. There is only one Mind that rules the myriad
mentalities of this world. Thoughts and ideas are not in reality personal creations, they are various formulations of the one
universal Mind; they enter into and possess individual minds as receptacles,
and no doubt in the process undergo particular modifications in their general
character. It is a very common experience to see the same or very similar ideas
and thoughts expressed by individuals (or groups) living far from each other,
having practically no mutual contact. We have known of "independent
discoveries" of the same truth or fact and innumerable instances of this
kind has history provided for us. It is not a freak of nature that we find
Socrates and Buddha and Confucious as contemporaries. Contemporaries also were Now if one goes to the very source, the very root of the matter, the cardinal fact of unity is that of the supreme Consciousness,
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the original oneness of the one Divine Existence. It is the
Ultimate One, inviolate, inviolable – ekam sat. That unity is
transferred or translated or imaged on all the levels and strands of creation.
That is the basic reality that holds together all tiered multiplicities. True,
there has been side by side a movement of aberration, denial, disjunction in
the multiple formulations and translations of the One. A reunion remains to be
achieved conveying and embodying the basic unity. The disturbing factor in the universal sway
of unity is the sense of individualisation, the sense of ego. That is the dark
ray that cuts across the radiant harmony and produces the apparent discordance
and disunion with all its attendant and consequent evil and bale. The sense of separated and isolated
existence, the feeling of a closed system that one assumes in opposition to
others is the Maya of which the Vedanta speaks. It is real so long as it is
taken to be real. But it possesses no inherent or absolute reality. A re-orientation
or a remodelling of the individual self is the way towards reestablishing in
the forefront, the background unity. Egoism, as it happens to be now, is the
broken-up and scattered unity. Polarisation means precisely re-ordering and
re-orienting the dispersal movement of ignorance and bringing into a new
purposeful existence the unity that already exists.
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