I and Thou

When we look at people, what do we see? Do we see them as robots or cardboard cutouts? Or do we see people who are equally as real as we are, equally as human as we are, people who have self-awareness, an inner life, hopes and fears, and spiritual potential, just as we do?

Yet the questions of our attitude toward and relationship with people go well beyond whether we consider them to be real just like us. The questions are not only whether they are in some sense similar to us, but whether that similarity extends into sameness, and whether that sameness extends into non-separateness.

In the hustle and bustle of life, in the full light of day, in the world of mine and yours, ours and theirs, we are separate. This is my body, not yours. This is my mind, not yours. These are my emotions, not yours. But we pile onto those truths the reasonable assumption that I am my body, my mind, and my emotions. And since those are all separate from you, then I am separate from you. That is how it must be in our ordinary world of bodies.

In the practice of meditation, our body, thoughts, and emotions settle down. Without them clamoring for attention, without them creating a foreground of inner perceptual scenery that utterly captivates us, we start to notice the stillness behind all those thoughts, emotions, and body perceptions. We notice that the stillness is aware, cognizant. And then we notice that it has no boundaries.

This fundamental consciousness, this pure awareness, does not arbitrarily stop at our skin. Consciousness is not in us: we are embedded in it. We may think of it as "my" consciousness, but what that really means is that when we are conscious, we are open to the vast, boundless, continuous field of conscious energy that encompasses all of us, all of life, all of space. Consciousness is a layer of shared awareness beneath all appearances, beneath all differences, beneath all thoughts and emotions, and prior to its display of all our sensory perceptions.

In consciousness there is sameness. Everyone's experience is based in the same field of consciousness, based in being a node in the field of consciousness. Our differences are layered on top of that. We can work to be open to awareness as a shared and common field. When we are with one or more other people, we open to that fundamental, cognizant, and boundless stillness beneath our thoughts, emotions, and sensory impressions. We see that the people we are with are in that same fundamental awareness. In that moment, we occupy the same space as them, inner and outer, the space beneath our differences, the space of our humanness, the space of our common being. In that silence, we simply are, timeless and inseparable. By paying attention to this shared cognizant space, we can make it more than an idea. We can make it a lived experience of I and Thou.

There is yet a deeper unity among us, a unity that transcends our perception of humans as separate beings sharing the same consciousness. That unity is the unity of will, more particularly, unity in the Divine source of all will. At our ordinary level, there is little evident unity, but there are exceptions. In a real family, each person wishes the best for the others and is committed to them. That mutual commitment is a shared will that binds the family more closely than shared consciousness. With the shared will, their very identities are shared. They are both fully themselves and fully each other. The same can hold with all sorts of close-knit groups who share a common purpose. For every member of the group, serving their group purpose is part of who they are. Thus, the shared identity, the shared will, the non-separateness. We can experience this if we pay attention to it, in our family, and in our groups.

At a deeper level, that non-separateness, that unity does not depend on any shared external purpose. Though it may be buried under layers of conditioning, we all have the will to be fully human, which includes the will to live, the will to be, the will to know, the will to do, the will to love. These devolve into us as our inheritance from the Divine Will. Sharing in that one will, we are all equally children of our common Creator, brothers and sisters all, with all the Divine qualities in potential. If we pay attention, we can catch glimpses even of that unity, in ourselves and in each other. We can catch glimpses of Love.

For this week, notice the reality of I and Thou [1] in your relationships, be they long-term or momentary.

[1] See Also: the book "I and Thou" by Martin Buber

Follow @innerfrontier

About Inner Frontier Send us email