Understanding Oneness

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The Teacher said,


In order to understand Oneness, you must learn a new way of visualizing yourself in relation to God.  You say to yourself, "How can I be one with God?  God is infinite and I am limited; God is everywhere and I am only here." You can accept yourself as a part of God; yet God as the infinite unbounded Oneness has no parts.  In God there is no great or small, no here nor there; for those are dualistic concepts that cannot describe attributes of Oneness. Indeed Oneness has no attributes, because attributes exist only for purposes of comparing one thing with another.  All That Is comprehends all attributes and therefore has none.


What is here is everywhere.  You draw a circle around yourself and say, "The part of the Universe that is within this circle is me; the rest is not me," even though God is both inside and outside. With this limited image of yourself, it is no wonder that you cannot understand Oneness.


It can be shown mathematically that every point outside a circle corresponds to a unique point inside the circle.  This means that there is just as much infinity within the circle as without.  But you say, "I can easily measure the distance across my little circle -- I can never measure the distance to infinity outside it." This is purely because of the limitations on your own artificial conceptions of distance and time.  It is quite easy to define time and distance in such a way that the distance from any point outside the circle to its perimeter is equal to the distance from the perimeter to the corresponding point on the inside.  Then the depth of the Universe within equals the infinite breadth without.  You can no more plumb the depths within you by limited ego-based thinking than you can travel to the end of the outside Universe.  The journey would be endless in either direction. 


Only by abandoning time and distance altogether can you realize Oneness.  If every point outside your little circle equals a point on the inside, then it is only a matter of perspective whether what you consider to be "yourself" is on the inside or the outside. Try to visualize yourself being the outside rather than the inside; your own being extending without limit in all directions.  Then expand yourself even more to include the infinity within the circle.  Now the circle that is the limitation that your ego placed on your being can be seen as artificial and unnecessary, and dissolves back into nothingness.  What remains is you, and also is God, and All That Is.  This is Oneness.