This past summer I was scanning my bookshelf for something to read just to pass the time. My eyes grazed over the covers for something that looked intriguing. Wedged in the corner, I found my goal. It was a small book with crisp yellowed pages from age. There was never a time that I remember this book not being on the shelf, collecting dust for years as I overlooked it each day, but this time it caught my attention.
On the cover was a simple word in white cursive-like letters that stood as a bold statement against the blue background; ‘one‘. Underneath the title was a golden lemniscate, beckoning forth an infinite amount of knowledge that I had yet to discover. This book is a creation of a man named Richard Bach. I don’t know when it was written, nor who this particular copy belonged to before I got my hands on it, but what I do know is that I found it when I needed to. I was finally capable of understanding it.
The short novel contains many lessons inside of it, but I don’t have the time to discuss them all. However, there is one lesson… one secret to life in particular that I feel the need to share. It is the overlying moral of the story as a whole; and as the title imposes, it goes as follows: We Are One.
See, in the story we follow two main characters; Richard (the author), and his wife, Leslie. They are flying their plane and after a fluke accident they wind up in this sort of ‘grid’ that shows all pasts and all possible futures of the couple’s lives. It’s a concept centered around the butterfly effect that states; every decision we make causes a branch or different life path that continues as though you made a different decision than the one had had in this life. It creates an elaborate system of alternate universes that are all laid out in front of them to explore.
Overwhelmed by the amount of paths that the two of them held alone, Richard asks the guide who is leading them through all of this how many lives could possibly be in the universe. The amount seemed endless… uncountable. The guide looked at him as if the answer were obvious… hadn’t they realized by now? There was only One.
I closed the book then, astounded by this concept and in need of a moment to digest it. It declared that we were all pieces of one species… one entity. ‘I am you, you are me, and together we are one’, it said. It decreed that you should love each other because the one beside you is also a version of you, just with different circumstances, different choices that shaped them and led them to this moment. It demanded that we love even those that are full of hatred for the fact that hatred is love without the facts. “Why tell lies to separate and destroy ourselves when the truth is we’re one?”
Looking back now, with a different book in my hands, I realize that this method of thinking had always been in front of me, only I hadn’t been listening yet. It was contained within the pages of one of my favorite books; a collection of poems and reflections written by Michael Jackson called Dancing the Dream. One poem in particular, “heaven is here”, held two stanzas that showed me that he knew this concept to be true as well. He wrote:
“You and I were never separate, It’s just an illusion, wrought by the magical sense of perception. There is only one Wholeness, one Mind. We are like ripples in the vast Ocean of Consciousness. Come let us dance, the Dance of Creation.[…]
“There was never a time when I was not or you were not. There never will be a time where we will cease to be. Infinite — Unbounded.”
It’s the idea that we all exist as one entity… one source of divinity if you so choose. An entity unbounded by time and space, we exist eternally together and as one in this cosmic dance of life…
Take what you want from this, but if nothing else, take this: No matter what color or creed, no matter where we call home, our hearts beat the same, our blood runs the same, our souls love the same… take each day as it comes, look forward to the promise of tomorrow, and always remember; We Are One.
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