Seeing the One in the Many
Sometimes the deepest spiritual truths arrive through the simplest things.
For me, recently, it was soil.
Consider what can emerge from a single patch of Earth.
A rose.
An oak tree.
Grass.
Wheat.
Moss.
A forest.
From that same Earth arise ecosystems, animals, and eventually human beings.
The forms could hardly be more different. Their colours, structures, purposes and lifespans vary enormously.
And yet beneath all that diversity is something shared.
The soil is one.
That simple thought brought me back to one of the most profound ideas in Sikhi:
Ik Onkar โ Oneness.
Perhaps Oneness does not mean that everything is the same.
Perhaps it means something more subtle:
Difference does not require separation.
One Clay, Many Forms
Guru Ram Das Ji says:
เจเจเฉ เจชเจตเจฃเฉ เจฎเจพเจเฉ เจธเจญ เจเจเจพ เจธเจญ เจเจเจพ เจเฉเจคเจฟ เจธเจฌเจพเจเจ เฅฅ
Eko pavan maatee sabh ekaa, sabh ekaa jot sabaaeeaa.
One breath.
One clay.
One Divine Light within all.
โ Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 96
It is difficult for me to read those words without returning to the image of the Earth.
The flower and the tree appear separate. One may blossom for a season; another may stand for centuries.
Yet both emerge from the same ground.
The flower can truthfully say:
โI am a flower.โ
Its mistake would begin only when it concluded:
โTherefore, I am separate from the soil.โ
Perhaps something similar happens to us.
I am given a name.
I develop a profession, opinions, relationships, achievements and possessions. Over time these accumulate into an elaborate story called โme.โ
There is nothing inherently wrong with individuality.
The problem begins when individuality becomes separation.
When:
โI am thisโ
quietly becomes:
โI exist independently of you.โ
Perhaps this is where haumai begins to take hold.
Not merely pride in the everyday sense, but the deeper illusion that this temporary form called โIโ somehow possesses an existence entirely of its own.
The Clay Is One
Bhagat Kabir Ji expresses the idea with astonishing directness:
เจฎเจพเจเฉ เจเจ เจ เจจเฉเจ เจญเจพเจเจคเจฟ เจเจฐเจฟ เจธเจพเจเฉ เจธเจพเจเจจเจนเจพเจฐเฉ เฅฅ
Maatee ek anek bhaant kar saajee saajanahaarai.
The clay is one; the Creator has fashioned it into countless forms.
โ Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1350
One clay.
Many forms.
Suddenly, diversity begins to look different.
Human beings have spent much of history categorizing those forms.
Mine and yours.
Rich and poor.
High and low.
My caste and your caste.
My nation and your nation.
My religion and your religion.
My people and the โother.โ
Yet Gurbani repeatedly directs our attention beneath the vessel toward the clay.
Kabir goes further:
เจเจพเจฒเจฟเจเฉ เจเจฒเจ เจเจฒเจ เจฎเจนเจฟ เจเจพเจฒเจฟเจเฉ…
The Creator is in the Creation, and the Creation is in the Creator.
โ Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1350
The forms are genuinely different.
But their Source is One.
Unity Is Not Uniformity
There is an important distinction here.
Oneness is not sameness.
A rose does not cease to be a rose because an oak grows from the same Earth.
The oak does not need to become the rose for unity to exist.
Unity can contain difference.
Perhaps that is one of the great misunderstandings surrounding the idea of Oneness.
The universe is not monotonous.
It is astonishingly plural.
Different people.
Different cultures.
Different languages.
Different species.
Different worlds.
Different stars.
Multiplicity is everywhere.
But multiplicity does not necessarily mean ultimate separation.
The branches may be many while the tree remains one.
The waves may be countless while the ocean remains one.
The flowers may differ while the soil remains one.
The Light Within the Forms
Guru Nanak Ji takes the idea deeper still:
เจธเจญ เจฎเจนเจฟ เจเฉเจคเจฟ เจเฉเจคเจฟ เจนเฉ เจธเฉเจ เฅฅ
เจคเจฟเจธ เจเฉ เจเจพเจจเจฃเจฟ เจธเจญ เจฎเจนเจฟ เจเจพเจจเจฃเฉ เจนเฉเจ เฅฅ
The Divine Light is within all.
By that Light, everything is illuminated.
โ Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 663
This changes the question.
Instead of asking only:
โWho am I?โ
perhaps Gurbani invites us to ask:
โWhat is it that I share with everything else?โ
And if the same Jot pervades all beings, then compassion, equality and seva are no longer merely moral instructions.
They become consequences of seeing reality more clearly.
Why demean another person if the same Light shines through them?
Why should caste determine human worth if the clay is one?
Why should race, nationality, wealth or status persuade me that another human being is fundamentally โotherโ?
Perhaps cruelty sometimes begins as a failure of perception.
We become mesmerized by the flowerโ
and forget the soil.
Earth as Mother
Guru Nanak Ji closes Japji Sahib with another image of extraordinary beauty:
เจชเจตเจฃเฉ เจเฉเจฐเฉ เจชเจพเจฃเฉ เจชเจฟเจคเจพ เจฎเจพเจคเจพ เจงเจฐเจคเจฟ เจฎเจนเจคเฉ เฅฅ
Air is Guru.
Water is Father.
Earth is the Great Mother.
โ Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 8
There is something profoundly humbling in this.
We commonly say that we live on the Earth.
But perhaps it is more truthful to say that, for a short while, Earth becomes us.
The minerals in our bodies came from this world.
The water within us has travelled through clouds, rivers, oceans, plants and other living things.
The carbon composing us existed long before our individual lives began.
For several decades, we borrow these materials.
Then we return them.
And yet during that brief borrowing, we say:
My body.
My land.
My possessions.
My achievements.
My life.
There is almost something gently humorous about it.
A flower emerging from the Earth and claiming ownership of the garden.
From Shams to Nanak
This reflection began for me through another spiritual voice: Shams of Tabriz.
The question was simple:
What remains when the identities we spend our lives constructing begin to fall away?
Profession.
Status.
Possessions.
Achievements.
Opinions.
Even the story we tell ourselves about who we are.
What remains?
Following that question brought me, perhaps inevitably, back to Guru Nanak.
Because beneath the constructed self lies a much more unsettling possibility:
Perhaps we have mistaken individuality for separateness.
The wisdom associated with Shams seeks to dissolve the ego through Divine Love.
Guru Nanak speaks of transcending haumai and awakening to Ik Oankar.
The traditions are not identical, nor should they be collapsed into one another.
But they seem to stand before the same great mystery and point toward a remarkably similar danger:
The self becomes distorted when it imagines itself disconnected from the Whole.
Seeing the Flower Without Forgetting the Soil
Perhaps that is the thought I want to carry forward.
I do not need to stop seeing individual people.
I do not need to erase difference.
I do not need to pretend that every flower is identical.
Instead, I want to learn to do something harder:
See the flower without forgetting the soil.
To meet another human being and hold both truths at once:
You are uniquely you.
And:
At the deepest level, you are not entirely other than me.
One Light.
One clay.
Countless forms.
Perhaps this is where Ik Oankar moves from something recited to something lived.
Because if there truly is One underlying Reality, then the great spiritual question is no longer simply:
Do I believe in Oneness?
It becomes:
Can I recognize the One when it appears before me in a form different from my own?
A different religion.
A different colour.
A different language.
A stranger.
An adversary.
An animal.
A tree.
A flower.
Perhaps enlightenment does not require us to stop seeing the many.
Perhaps it is learning to look upon the manyโ
and never again forget the One.
