So here’s the thing.

We are not really separate beings; we just think we are. We think we are separate because we can’t see the connections, and because there’s so much noise in our brains, we can’t feel them either.

Humans originally knew intuitively that we are part of the world – read Vine Deloria’s God is Red for a modern understanding of that – but then language and math, symbolic culture in general, science, and religion gradually convinced us that we are separate

Here’s some astounding rumination:

“I think the discovery of nonlocality is touching in on the whole. So that these seemingly separate events are somehow connected through the whole. … you have this larger enveloping field and we’re, you know, just beginning to understand something about that… so I love that discovery although I don’t think we’re anywhere near really knowing what we’ve come upon. —Brian Swimme

“nonlocality: In physics, nonlocality or action at a distance is the direct interaction of two objects that are separated in space with no intermediate agency or mechanism. Regarding the unexplained nature of gravity, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) considered action-at-a-distance “so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it”. Quantum nonlocality refers to what Einstein called the “spooky action at a distance” of quantum entanglement.”
—- These are both from Wiki.

I.E.: particles that are vastly separated by distance will exhibit the same response at exactly the same time. With nothing we know of connecting them!  And we have no idea how or why this happens. But it’s been known for some time now…. over 50 years and no answers coming from the scientists to explain this anomaly, this thing that doesn’t fit with the rest of the theories. Like much of quantum mechanics, it essentially says all that Newtonian science is just wrong. At least at the quantum level, which is where everything starts…

The significance being: though we are still stuck with ideas from old science ( things in the world are discrete, separate) the new science – well, data – agrees with the pre-scientific notion that everything is CONNECTED! “…this larger enveloping field…” Indeed!

We started out, we humans, knowing our place in the world, understanding ourselves as part of the natural order. We knew that everything was divine, worthy of respect and honor, as it was all part of this whole.

But the process of seeing ourselves as separate began long ago, embedded in the process of evolution and development of consciousness, and as symbolic culture came along it exploded those old understandings. Then, with Galileo and later Descartes, this separation became the intellectual context of our lives. Even in religion, the divine was separated from us, from the world of nature. God lives in heaven, not in things.

Those who oppose science and cling to religion are really reacting to this false notion of separation, and what they’re really seeking is return to that understanding of connection, of the essential unity of existence.

The challenge for moving into a new world, a new consciousness, is to find a path to return to understanding of our unity without abandoning the knowledge that science has brought us, the practical knowledge of how things work in the physical world.

Those of us who have come to understand our true nature as part of the natural continuum rather than as a separate, discrete self must help in this process. And part of that is helping people to have a direct experience of this truth. Face it, no one will change because of what you and I say.

There are, I suppose, a number of ways one can come to have some experience of this new consciousness, this seeing thru the illusion that we exist separately. For me, meditation has been the primary vehicle, but it seems to me – and I am just beginning to intuit the outlines of this part – that it is highly important what the context of one’s meditational experiences are. Not just the external context, but the emotional and intellectual context… having taken acid may help! Seriously, anything – skydiving for example – that shakes up one’s conditioned grasp on consensus reality is probably helpful to bring with you into meditation. Lots of experience in the natural world is an important aspect of it, I think.

I’m hoping to bring more thought to bear on this as I dig into the whole thing…