March 28, 2023
Continuing with the theme of the last Essay, “The Web of Life,” all the wisdom traditions throughout history have been based on the recognition of an underlying unity, a connectedness in the universe.
The revolutionary ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Kepler, Newton, and others in the 16th and 17th centuries ushered in a new era of thought, and the scientific revolution took off on a rapid and dramatic ascent. Importantly, though, all these key figures who set this ascent in motion continued to believe there was an overall unity in the universe and that a Divine Order provided the basis for that unity. Even the least religious figure among them, Francis Bacon, had this to say:
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity.”
Among the leading lights of this revolution, some were quite religious, including the most celebrated of all, Isaac Newton. Nor did their scientific ideas interfere with the belief in an orderly, unified universe. In fact, the idea that there was an order and connectedness underpinned all that they did — their shared mission was to understand it.
Yet the seeds they sowed led to a gradual focus on the material world — at the expense of giving attention to this broader connectedness. The easiest way to study the material world was to narrow one’s focus to individual parts, and the smaller the better.
This concentration on the small building blocks out of which the material world is made has led to incredible discoveries and breath-taking technological devices, and these achievements have been a major force in the creation of the modern world. The success has been so magnificent, in fact, it has led some to claim that focusing on smaller and smaller things will ultimately answer all questions about life, the world, and everything.
Alas, this has not proven to be true, for as scientists narrow their gaze on smaller and smaller areas of interest, no one is trained to understand how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. No one is educated about wise ways to tie the knowledge about details into an overview of what the larger world is like. In some ways, the greater the specialization, the less wisdom anyone has about the broader questions concerning life and how to live.
In addition, the more our brightest minds focus on specialized research about the material world and then try to answer all questions by studying smaller and smaller pieces of matter, the more the assumption takes hold that all answers can be found by examining material stuff alone. But studying the material world does not touch most things that are important in our actual lives, such as love, how to have good relationships with friends and neighbors, the values and meanings that make life worthwhile, how to find fulfillment, the best way to raise children, finding a balance between career and other areas of life, how much money is enough, and the power of art, music, and poetry and how they can touch us so deeply. In all these areas, scientists are no better at finding answers than anyone else.
Most scientists are aware of these difficulties, and most great scientists looked to one or another of the spiritual traditions for answers to these kinds of questions (see Ken Wilber’s Quantum Questions and Higher Creativity by Willis Harman for numerous examples). Yet modern societies have adopted many of the underlying tenets of materialism as a core foundation, and in the process have lost an understanding of the connectedness of things — and why it is so important.
The more materialism becomes the dominant worldview, the more we come to think of ourselves as isolated individuals adrift in a meaningless universe — vying with each other for as much of the good stuff as we can get. This extreme individualism leads to the belief that the world is, at best, a game to be won, or at worst, a “state of war of all against all,” as Thomas Hobbes put it.
The materialist view also leads to thinking that the natural world is made up of pieces of matter to be exploited for pleasure and profit, rather than integral components of a living whole on which we are dependent. No wonder our exploitation of the natural world is creating profound ecological and environmental crises and leading us to treat other people as objects to be used to satisfy our personal desires, without regard for them as persons.
The Case for Connectedness
Again, the belief in connectedness has been held by most of the great scientists. For instance, Albert Einstein said: “A human being is part of the whole called by us “the universe.” Einstein’s view of ultimate connectedness led him to the conviction that our task must be to “widen our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” Additionally, Einstein explicitly said that the way to do this is by honoring the teachings of the wisdom traditions:
“Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.”
Despite this clear advice from the most celebrated scientist of our age, many cannot resist the allure of thinking about life as a game in which the goal is to see who can get the most wealth, power, and material stuff for oneself, or for one’s interest group.
Along with Einstein, the case for connectedness has been made for millennia by the wisest among us, and remains as strong as ever. Today, many scientists and scholars are exploring it in new ways. Marilyn Schlitz, who has been a leader for more than three decades in studying the relationship between science and consciousness concludes that to be true to the larger reality that science is discovering, its organizing principles must be seen as “fundamentally relational.” In other words, to understand any one thing, we must understand its relationship to other things.
In an attempt to understand the relational nature of humans, of nature, and the universe as a whole, new fields of interdisciplinary study have been created, such as sociobiology, deep ecology, astrobiology, socioeconomics, and more.
One creative approach was offered in the early 20th century by philosopher and mathematician Edmund Husserl, and his ideas led to the development of phenomenology. Husserl said that each and every thing is an intricate part of the Lebenswelt (Lifeworld). In this Lifeworld, cooperation is the matrix of existence, and connectedness the basis for understanding who we are. In fact, he described in great detail how there is no way to understand ourselves, the world, or even our thinking itself except as entwined with and defined in relation to the Lifeworld.
Another modern pioneer who is trying to put together a more comprehensive picture is evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris, who documents in her book EarthDance that flourishing life always involves cooperation and creative symbiosis. She makes a persuasive case that biological history shows that cooperation rather than competition has been the main factor leading to the success of individuals and species.
When I reflect on the necessity of cooperation, many examples come to mind. Bacteria learned to cooperate with each other to create vast colonies, with each unique bacterium supporting the others in complicated ways — and this mutual support is an essential part of the long-term success of bacteria. Ant colonies are successful because of an amazing level of cooperation. Flocks of birds have astonishing levels of cooperation, as do herds of animals.
Or consider a single human cell, which is an incredibly complex configuration of many parts. Each cell has an estimated 42 million molecules of protein, as well as many other components, and all must continually cooperate in intricate and almost instantaneous ways. One scientist went so far as to say that the best way to visualize a single cell is to view it as a small factory. One single human cell is so complex that after many years of study and research, we still have no idea how all the parts came together and learned to cooperate so exquisitely to create the marvel of cell life.
But this intricate cooperation is what makes a living cell possible, and thus is central to your life, as well as every other person. Each of us is made up of trillions of these individual cells. And at the level of your body, the cooperation is magnified almost infinitely — the trillions of cells that create you are constantly performing a dance of cooperation that has defied all attempts to describe how it works.
Moving to the level of human societies, it is only through complex systems of cooperation that a society can flourish. This is especially true of the great civilizations, for only those that developed a high degree of cooperation and coordination between the many constituent parts succeeded over long periods of time.
On a larger scale, oceans are vast ecosystems made up of trillions of organisms that cooperate in a myriad of intricate ways, and have for billions of years. The same is true of rain forests, whose living parts cooperate in an exquisitely complex fashion. For that matter, the whole Earth is a large, interconnected system of cooperation. So too is our entire galaxy. In fact, the whole universe is in some way a vast, interconnected web of connectedness.
Cooperation and connectedness are completely woven into the fabric of existence, from the smallest to the largest levels, so much so that it would be ludicrous to define individual human beings as the one and only exception. The concept of the rugged individual as an isolated entity, always making its own independent way, constantly competing with others for all the worthwhile stuff, is a modern idea that defies evidence and reason.
For my part, I find the idea of connectedness much better supported by science, as well as by every rational approach I take. Equally important, I have directly experienced connectedness thousands of times myself. This, however, has never occurred by rational steps. Rather, it has occurred when I focused my attention on the natural world, or on art, literature, another person, a group of people, an animal, or a project. Or when I stopped focusing and just let myself be.
Many times I have felt deeply connected to the natural world while hiking in the mountains, feeling a communion with the trees, a stream, an animal, or the Earth itself. I have felt deep stillness while meditating, praying, and chanting — and who I am was no longer limited to my “skin-encapsulated” ego self. I have felt deep absorption while listening to music, when experiencing a work of art, reading great literature, and being struck by a powerful idea. At such moments, my consciousness somehow joined to a broader world.
And I have been carried completely outside myself and felt a deep communion with others while playing sports and getting into sync with a team, and while working intensely on a project in business, politics, and service to others. I have been profoundly connected to another person during an intense conversation about our struggles, joys, and sorrows, as well as during passion with another with whom I felt love, care, and concern. And I have gone far beyond my personal self while sitting with a group of people who were sharing the raw edge of their life journeys with each other.
Personal Gain Versus Cooperation
There is certainly competition at every level of existence, as well as cooperation and connectedness. So in directing our attention to the case for connectedness we must not ignore the positive side of individualism. (I present these in some depth in the Essays “Community and Freedom” on this web site:
Here, however, the focus will be primarily on the powerful forces in each organism for dominance, power, and control. Like other organisms, we humans have strong basic instincts to take care of ourselves, to get what we want, to dominate the environment and maximize personal reward. Many, many times I have felt the instinctual force of fear about safety and security or about not having enough; I have felt driven by sexual desire; I have felt an urge to dominate when confronted with a challenge to my position in a group (and even in an argument). In some of these cases, I responded from a strong self-centeredness.
Beyond these instinctual urges and desires, we all have egos that give us a feeling of individuality, of separateness from others. Our egos drive us to look out for number one and maximize personal gain. I have been fiercely competitive about winning contests, prizes, and acclaim that I hoped would help me feel like I was important. I have been deeply hurt when I felt rejected or criticized by someone important to me. I have responded powerfully when I felt I was about to lose something I thought I needed.
These kinds of actions and reactions have been driven by my personal ego. They have not always been inappropriate. Living often brings us into difficult terrain, and sometimes we need to look out for ourselves — and the ego helps us do so.
The fact is, the development of sophisticated egos has been an incredible achievement in human beings, and its development is an essential part of the accomplishments of individuals and cultures through the ages — such as written language, mathematics, science, history, literature, philosophy, spiritual thought, systems of trade and exchange, complex moral decision-making, and much more.
Instinctual and ego forces can move us to help others. For instance, we have instincts to protect and support those with whom we are closely related. They can also lead us to cooperate with others. As social beings, we are motivated to join groups to reach shared goals and to take care of those in our own interest group. And we are often motivated to take care of others because our culture says that is the right thing to do and we want to seem like a good person to those from whom we seek respect. Significantly, though, all these motivations to help and support others come from the ego or the instinctual level — they are based on self-interest.
Freud defined all motivations as coming from the id (instincts), the ego (the sense of I), and the superego (the feelings and beliefs into which we have been enculturated and which we have accepted at the unconscious level). And the briefest survey of human history demonstrates just how strong these forces can be. But these drives and motivations studied by Freudian and most other psychologies do not capture the whole of the human story. Motivations of instinct, ego, and social conditioning alone are completely unable to explain the countless examples of people who have helped, served, and taken risks for others in ways that go far beyond self-interest. Examples of the willingness to help others at a cost to oneself, even to sacrifice and die for others, fill our history books.
At another level, Freudian and ego psychologies have no explanations for why anyone would experience merging with nature or being swept into a different dimension by art or music, would practice loving those with whom they were not personally connected, or would attempt to become “one with everything” or make great sacrifices to experience the Divine more fully. The only way Freudian and ego psychologies can deal with these central human experiences is to call them fantasies, or regression, or escapes from reality.
How can it be, then, that so many of the best and brightest among us have chosen to spend their lives in pursuit of exactly these things? Were all the saints and sages of history caught up in fantasies or escaping from what reductionists think of as “reality”? A better answer is that there is another way of understanding reality, one that explains more clearly why highly gifted individuals through the ages have renounced personal wealth, or even chosen to live in poverty, rather than trying to gain power and wealth for themselves. This alternative theory is that we are all connected to the web of existence in some powerful way.
This view illuminates why so many have dedicated their lives to helping those with whom they had no blood ties or group relation. It can even explain why a significant number have chosen celibacy to further their spiritual journeys — in direct contradiction to the Neo-Darwinian notion that we all try to “maximize our gene-pool.” These choices by so many talented and brilliant people through the ages make reductionist theories that purport to explain all human experience seem absurd.
Again, self-centered forces are powerful in us. Competition is clearly present at every level of existence. Thus, any theory that is to capture who we are and what the world is like must include self-centered as well as altruistic urges; must take into account our competitive as well as spiritual motivations; must recognize the role of power, of greed as well as love and compassion.
In some parts of the modern world, however, the emphasis on self-centeredness and competition in understanding who we are has become dominant. This “dis-ease” is a clear sign we are over-emphasizing competition while ignoring the vital importance of connectedness and cooperation. This imbalance is one of the primary causes of the epidemic of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and despair we are facing — especially among young people. And it is a primary cause of the increasing destruction of the environment and many species who share this world with us.
The Wisdom of the Ages
Wise men and women have told us over and over through the ages that there are motivations in each of us that arise from a level beyond instinct, ego, and social conditioning, a level that is not organized around separateness. This “beyond self” knows that the only way to find true fulfillment is to leave behind self-centered goals, motivations, and concerns (at least sometimes) and develop a connection with something greater.
If you face an immediate survival need or a dramatic crisis, your choices are reduced and your attention likely focused. But if your life is moving along on a somewhat normal trajectory, your days are filled with many choices between competing goals and desires. This makes life complicated, and many of us spend a great deal of time and energy sorting through and managing the conflicts we feel between the motivations, urges, and desires that arise from the competing claims of our basic instincts, our egos, and our social conditioning.
And this is before the issue of how much time, energy, and discipline we will give to following the advice of the wisdom teachers — that we develop higher values and virtues. If we wish to follow a spiritual path, we must choose how much time and energy we will take away from fulfilling basic instinctual and ego urges in order to develop compassion, kindness, the higher forms of love, justice, respect for others, and connecting with that which is greater than ourselves.
Skeptico: I need to get back to the practical. How do we go about resolving all the conflicting currents within us?
Wisdom Seeker: It is a difficult and complex task, and one way forward is to reduce our understanding of who we are by embracing a materialistic or purely biological model. But all the wisdom traditions tell us we are much more, and they provide very different models as well as practices we can undertake to resolve the conflicts.
Skeptico: So it’s easier to see myself as just one material object among other material objects, all fighting to get what they want. Or else that I am just a biological machine following a program, and that I don’t really have any choices — so I can just do whatever I want?
Wisdom Seeker: Yes, that is usually easier. The problem is, those who have lived this way do never seem to find true satisfaction, happiness, or fulfillment. Nor does this approach have any support in science or reason. There is no evidence that any mechanism exists within our biological systems or our brains that can, or ever does, resolve the major issues in our lives. No one has discovered a place in the brain where important choices are made. In fact, no one has any idea how we make any important choices. Those who say it is purely biological are engaging in the wildest speculation without any proof.
The plain fact is we make choices every day. We make life-enhancing or life-destructive choices all the time. We decide to be kind or cruel, to restrain our anger or act on it, to forgive someone or seek revenge. We take what we want by force or try to be fair. And much more. In short, we constantly make value and moral choices, although much of the time we are not conscious that we are doing so.
Skeptico: What do you mean we are not conscious of the choices we are making?
Wisdom Seeker: Some routine actions occur at the instinctual level, and others are determined by the rules we were taught while growing up that have become internalized and somewhat autonomous. Other choices are made according to the personal habits we have developed over time, and others are driven by fears and anxieties of which we are not be very conscious.
It is actually a good thing that many choices are made at the sub-conscious level, for if they weren’t, all our time and energy would be spent trying to make the innumerable decisions we have to make every day. (What will I eat, what will I wear, when will I go to bed, what will I do in the next minute, and then the next, and the next?)
We let countless decisions be made all the time without paying attention to them, but of vital importance, once we reflect on a choice, we can make a conscious decision.
Once we choose to focus on a particular decision, once we begin to reflect on it, we can override our instincts, change our habits, go against cultural rules we have adopted, and examine our fears and anxieties while trying not being controlled by them. Once we have entered this process of reflection on an issue, there is no way to know what the result will be. There is absolutely no evidence that decisions we reflect on are determined by biology, and there is definitely no evidence that a mechanistic brain model can explain what will happen. There are some statistical averages that provide some useful information, but what will happen with any specific person in any specific case is totally unknown.
Thought Experiment — How did they choose?
Think of the most notorious villains in history. Then think about the great heroes and heroines, the saints and sages. How did each make the choices they made for good or ill; how did they decide to be kind or selfish, loving or cruel? There is nothing in brain research or ego psychology that provides an explanation. Factors that might have been involved can be catalogued, but this is speculation. And most importantly, inside the person, at the moment of choice, no one knows how each final choice for good or ill was made. But those choices were made. Going inside yourself, can you get in touch with how such choices are made in you?
How to make the most vital choices is exactly where the wisdom traditions come in, offering helpful guidance for how to navigate these waters. One of the clearest messages they give us is “Know Thyself,” as Socrates emphasized. This means, in part, learning to make our essential choices more conscious — to choose to consciously explore the deep currents and motivations within. Importantly, Socrates and all the other wisdom teachers said that we certainly can do this.
The traditions offer suggestions and practices for how best to do this, but they do not tell us what to do. They simply offer ways to approach important choices and decisions that have been used with great success for thousands of years. But all their suggestions require work on our part.
Some of the ways they suggest going about this inner work are: to listen to the “still small voice” that gives guidance about what is truly important; to try to get in touch with a higher “Self” and follow where it leads; to be open to the deep moral ground of conscience; to study the values and morals of a tradition and open to a direct personal experience of how those teachings apply to your life; to meditate on and open to the dharma and let it guide your actions; to recognize the Atman within and live by its guidance.
Once we get in touch with guidance in any of these ways, the next step is to do the hard work of ceasing to follow the self-centered currents within us all and beginning to align ourselves with the higher law that comes from a source greater than ourselves. All the practices offered by the wisdom traditions are tools to facilitate a direct personal experience of these deeper levels of our being, a dimension in which the forces of cooperation and connectedness are alive in us.
Modern biology and ego psychologies deal with how the conflicting currents first arose and offer techniques, and sometimes medications, for dealing with the resulting emotional turmoil they cause. Various techniques are given for making unconscious motives more conscious and for analyzing problems rationally. These are often helpful. But they do not touch the level of ourselves at which we make our most important choices. To make these choices we must get in touch with deeper currents and choose to follow them — the currents that lead to the values and moral standards we will try to live by that will provide the greatest meaning for our lives.
In his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck captures this process in a down-to-earth way:
“Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last. … A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?”
To move toward the highest possibilities of goodness, of doing well, a key step is convincing the ego that its motivations are not the ultimate meaning and purpose of life. If this can be done, then it is possible to gain the ego’s support for moving toward the possibilities envisioned by the larger Self. Some traditions even suggest we can use the energy of the instinctual urges in service of higher possibilities, and have developed practices to do so, such as fasting, sleep deprivation, celibacy, and dramatic physical challenges. The hope is that by denying or overcoming basic urges and desires, the energy of those drives can be directed to higher possibilities.
Societal Values and the Web of Life
The conflicting currents within pull us in different directions from our earliest years, and communities have a strong motivation to try to direct how members make their choices. The result is that one of the primary roles of human societies is to pick a set of guidelines for making key decisions and teaching those to children, with the hope that life of the community will then go more smoothly.
Because most children develop life patterns based on the guidelines they have been taught — including values, moral beliefs, and meanings — when a community has a fairly healthy system, it will tend to flourish. When a healthy system is not taught in a reasonably efficient way, both the children and the community suffer. If the rules and guidelines are too rigid, some children will become resentful while others will become the culture police, trying to force everyone into the one “right” pattern. This stifles creativity and leads to even more rebellion from strong-willed individuals.
On the other hand, children who have been given too little guidance are likely to adopt selfish and harmful patterns of living rather than caring and cooperative ones. Children who are forced to take care of themselves, to develop value and moral systems without positive role models or healthy guidance, seldom develop healthy life patterns. Cultures have always known that just waiting for children to grow up without guidance very seldom results in adults who are good members of their communities, or good people.
This does not mean that tendencies of connectedness and goodness do not exist in children, for they will often act spontaneously from kindness, fairness, generosity, and consideration. But in the next moment the same children can be selfish, mean, self-centered, and even cruel. Both currents are present in children. But few young people will automatically choose the currents of connectedness and cooperation when faced with difficult situations — unless encouraged to do so. Most of us will not become good or kind or cooperative without guidance. Instead, our instinctual and ego drives will often take over when we are faced with a hard choice.
All successful cultures have understood this, so each developed meaning and value systems and taught them to their children. There are certainly a few examples of individuals who had terrible childhoods, yet found their way to deep virtues and values, but this takes a very special person. And in every single case I know, there was one adult who provided positive support and guidance at a vital point for those who made a positive turn.
Given that most people throughout history have been brought up in organized tribes or communities, most of us began our life journeys following the values, meanings, and moral attitudes we were given by our group. Some alter or change them a little, and a few try to break away completely — fleeing to another place or joining a group with different values. But we each begin life within a specific cultural system, and most stay within it to a significant degree. Those who break away are often still controlled by their birth systems, for rebellion against a system is to be powerfully influenced by it. As long as you are rebelling, your actions are guided by whatever seems different, or the opposite of what you were taught.
Skeptico: Remind me how cultures come up with the meanings and values they teach.
Wisdom Seeker: Every culture we know much about grounded its meanings and values in a universal order. None have understood the universe as meaningless or random; all have viewed it as governed by laws and principles held together in a meaningful way by a force or intelligence variously called Great Spirit, the Tao, Brahman, Consciousness, the Dharma, the Numinous, the Laws of Nature, God, and many other names. The great wisdom figures of history were those rare beings who said they had been in touch with this transcendent order, who shared with the tribe or community what they had experienced, and were taken seriously by a significant number.
Of course, a lot of people through the ages have made claims about being in touch with the transcendent and knowing what is really true, but in each place and time, only a few have had a ring of authenticity to a significant number of those who heard their message. Among those who were taken seriously, an even smaller number have had their teachings and visions become the building blocks for the values and meanings of a culture that flourished over time.
We know some of their names: Moses, Confucius, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Zoroaster, a handful of Greek philosophers, the primary Hebrew prophets, a few Taoist sages. Other names have been lost, including important Vedic sages in South India, Egyptian visionaries, Sumerian teachers, and various tribal shamans over thousands of years.
Then, following the basic framework of the primary wisdom teachers, in each new generation a few wise ones have come along who have given the teachings a fresh expression or an interpretation that adapts it to the changing times and situations. Of course, the teachings of the original wisdom figures were different in various ways, as have been those of their followers. But all that have been successful, that have been able to provide healthy life patterns to communities and the lives of people within them, have had in common an understanding that there is an order in the universe.
And the guidelines they all taught were ways to live in harmony with that order. But of equal importance, ways to live in harmony with each other. All the wisdom teachers emphasized some version of the Golden Rule, and most placed a special emphasis on compassion, love, justice, cooperation, respect for the rights of others, forgiveness, and other key virtues. Crucially, only in places where enough people have tried to live by some set of these core teachings have societies flourished over long periods of time.
In sharp contrast, there are numerous examples of societies in which leaders focused on personal power and control for themselves. To gain personal benefit, they have frequently manipulated and distorted the teachings of the wisdom traditions, and by doing so have sometimes had short-term success. There have also been times and places where large numbers of people have been caught up in support of charismatic charlatans and demagogues.
But the reassuring record of history is that all cultures that strayed very far from the teachings of the main wisdom traditions have not endured. Some have wreaked havoc on their countries before being swept away. But they have been swept away.
Ancient Greek tragedies provide powerful literary illustrations, as do Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. There are many real-world examples as well. The best one I know is the case of Adolf Hitler. He and his allies in the Axis countries in the 1930s accumulated what seemed like overwhelming power and resources, enough so that, by most practical measures, they should have prevailed in the war.
But after dramatic initial success, they did not win. Instead, more and more people — in the United States, Europe, parts of Asia, and even Germany and other Axis countries themselves — stopped focusing on their own narrow self-interest and joined in the effort to prevent the victory of tyranny and cruelty. Churchill rallied his country in the face of what seemed like overwhelming odds — and he did it by appealing to deep values and meanings.
All over the world, countless people began to make personal sacrifices, take risks, and even fight and die because they had a sense that something momentous was at stake. As the war went on, there was a growing commitment to preserve the deep values and meanings that Hitler was trying to destroy, and an increasing number of people risked their lives and fortunes to support what the felt to be good and right.
By 1944, enough people had rallied in support of the higher moral ground, were standing together in defiance of the power Hitler and his allies had gathered at the beginning of the war, that the scourge was defeated. The good prevailed.
There is no question that some of the opposition to Hitler and his allies came from the self-interest of other countries and the perceived self-interest of some individuals. But this would never have been enough to defeat the overwhelming material strength Hitler had amassed. Without the moral choices made by countless men and women all over the world, including within the countries Hitler and his allies controlled, a different outcome would very likely have unfolded.
In fact, if most people had followed their personal urges for pleasure and satisfaction, for personal safety and convenience — had taken the immediate rewards offered by the dictators and demagogues — the victory of the allies would never have occurred.
Throughout history there are many such examples. In fact, it is not unusual for the powerful to take over and usurp the benefits that have been accumulated by successful societies. Usually, however, this only lasts for a short period, and then those who have broken the moral framework are swept away. Many of the great stories and myths of human history recount the fall of those governed by hubris, greed, fear, or anger — from fairy tales to Shakespeare’s MacBeth, from Sauron in Lord of the Rings to Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.
It is the same in the actual life stories of tyrants and dictators (besides Hitler and Mussolini in WWII, other examples are Caligula, Robespierre, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and many more). In fact, there are few, if any, stories of those who gained power through pure self-centeredness who had a fulfilling end in their lives. Even if they were not overthrown, their lives usually ended in paranoia, alienation, suspicion, and fear. In radical contrast, there are countless stories of saints and sages who followed the moral guidelines of the wisdom traditions and whose lives ended in peace, honor, respect, and even joy.
Connectedness as the Common Thread
In trying to understand why so many people have made positive value and moral choices, the best answer I know is the deep intuitive feeling in us that we are all connected to a universal order, and to each other, in some fundamental way. This is the common theme of all the wisdom traditions. All speak of a dimension of reality beyond the physical that is the foundational ground constituting the underlying reality, and its nature is the connectedness of all things.
One powerful image of this interconnectedness is the “Net of Gems” in both Buddhism and Hinduism. In this image, the universe is seen as one vast net, with a jewel located at each intersection of all fibers on the net. Because all the jewels are highly reflective, each reflects all those around it. Further, each jewel reflects the reflections in the jewels close by, so every jewel contains a reflective trace of every other jewel in the whole net.
This is a powerful symbol of the infinite connection of all things. In Buddhism, this idea is further developed by the teaching of the dependent arising of self and other, in fact, of all things. In this understanding, there is no such thing as a separate self, for each person is an intricate and inseparable part of the whole. Everything arises continually as part of that whole, and awareness itself depends on the fact that everything is part of one whole.
The interconnectedness of all people is certainly present in Christianity, with Jesus saying, “I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you,” an image of a unitary, shared reality and being, not only with the Divine, but with other beings as well. This shared world with all other individuals is made manifest in his saying that one of his primary missions was to care for those at the bottom of the ladder: the poor, the brokenhearted, and the sick. And St. Paul reinforces this interconnection of all by suggesting that there is one great consciousness, the mind of Christ, in which we each have the opportunity to share: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Huston Smith, the best-selling author of The World’s Religions, tells a story about a friend named Oren Lyons that vividly conveys the connectedness of all things. Oren Lyons was the first Onondagan Sioux to enter college.
When he returned to his reservation for his first vacation from college, his uncle suggested a fishing trip to a nearby lake. When they were in a small boat in the middle of the lake, his uncle began to interrogate him.
“Well, Oren,” his uncle said, “you’ve been to college; you must be pretty smart now from all they’ve been teaching you. Let me ask you a question. Who are you?”
Taken aback by the question, Oren fumbled for an answer. “What do you mean, who am I? Why, I’m your nephew, of course.”
His uncle rejected this answer and repeated his question. Oren came up with several more answers, saying that he was an Onondagan, a human being, a man, and a young man. Every one of his answers was rejected.
When his uncle had reduced him to silence, Oren finally had the good sense to ask his uncle to help him understand who he was.
His uncle said, “Do you see that bluff over there? Oren, you are that bluff. And that giant pine on the other shore? Oren, you are that pine. And this water that supports our boat? You are this water.”
There are many, many other illustrations of connectedness in the wisdom traditions. In some Jewish Kabbalah traditions, for instance, the soul of each person is a spark of the one Divine Light — we are each a part of the one Light.
The poet Rumi captures this connectedness in his poem “Admit It and Change Everything”:
You say you see my mouth, ears, eyes, nose — they are not mine.
I am the life of life.
I am that cat, this stone,
No one.
I have thrown duality away like an old dishrag,
I see and know all times and worlds,
As one, one, always one.
In some way, within this worldview of connectedness, each of us is like one cell in a single body. One single cell in your body can be thought of as a unique entity, and it competes in some ways with other cells for nourishment, for warmth, for protection. But each cell is also intimately connected to and interactive with all the other cells in your body. For a body to thrive, all the cells must work together in a harmonious way.
Further, when any one cell gets out of balance in the human body, taking too many resources and multiplying too fast, we call it cancer. If it spawns too many other cells like itself, it kills the whole organism. Ironically, by getting out of balance and destroying the functioning of the whole body, it thereby destroys itself. In a similar way, when self-centeredness becomes too dominant in a human community, destruction cannot be far behind. For a community to thrive, each individual must learn to communicate and work with the other parts — just as all the cells in a single human body must communicate and work together if a person is to thrive.
Thought Experiment — An image that helps me get in touch with my connectedness.
I am both an individual person and part of many circles of connection. In a similar way, an individual cell in my body is both an individual cell as well as part of many levels of connection within the body. There is no way to fully understand a cell except as a part of the whole. To cut it out, isolate it, and study it by itself will provide some information, but this will also destroy its function as part of one living essence. In a similar way, consider that each of us is a cell in the total body of the universe, connected to everything in it in some unknown way.
Can our connectedness to the whole be proven? Not by any scientific instrument. How does it work? We have little idea. But neither do we know how the individual parts within a cell learned to cooperate, or how vast numbers of cells cooperate in exquisite ways to form a living being. We do not understand how groups of animals or vast ecosystems cooperate. And we certainly do not understand how everything that exists came together to form a universe governed by a set of laws that had to be present from the beginning if there was going to be a universe at all.
Our failure to understand connectedness and cooperation at all these levels does not diminish their importance. In the same way, our lack of understanding of how humans are deeply connected to each other and to the Lebenswelt (Lifeworld) does not diminish its reality or importance either.
Connectedness is a core element of the meanings, values, and moral guidelines handed down to us by the saints and sages of history, and these have given structure to all the great civilizations. No culture has ever implemented these guidelines perfectly, for human beings have self-centered urges that lead to corruption, manipulation, and grandiosity. The teachings of the great wisdom traditions take this into account, trying to balance self-centeredness and individual creativity with cooperative instincts in a shared world. Those cultures that have used the teachings of one of the great traditions reasonably well are the only ones that have had a decent amount of peace and harmony over long periods of time.
Equally important, the web of connectedness is the basis for the meanings and values that offer an individual a way to move toward true fulfillment. Self-centeredness always ends with dissatisfaction, with wanting more, and thus with failure to get all one wants. On the other hand, many have found fulfillment by making love, service, compassion, kindness, humility — or directly experiencing oneness with nature, with the sacred, with all things — the organizing center of their lives. The great saints and sages who found fulfillment say this is the only worthy path for a human life, and they have provided practices for how we might come into harmony with this underlying truth ourselves.
There are millions upon millions who have endeavored to follow their guidance, who have attempted to walk one of the paths the wisdom teachers marked leading to the top of the mountain. Most have not made it to the summit. But a certain number, although small, appears to have reached the top of the mountain and found the peace, love, freedom, fulfillment, and joy they sought. They have been able to attune themselves and their lives to the larger harmony in which we exist. As far as I can discover, they are the only ones who have ever reached true fulfillment.
In the different traditions, this highest level of the journey has many names, among them developing a mind that is pure, becoming one with the “Mind of Christ,” fully awakening, becoming “pure in heart,” realizing and living from the Higher Self, finding one’s Buddha-nature and centering one’s life around that, fully identifying with one’s Atman and realizing that it is one with Brahman, living from the soul, becoming fully conscious, coming into harmony with the Tao, and becoming a person of Jen.
Whatever it is called, this is the message of Jesus and the Buddha, of Confucius and the Tao Te Ching, urging us to realize how connected we are to others, and to all that is. And this is the meaning of the famous Hindu saying, Tat Tvam Asi, “That Thou Art” — meaning each person’s true identity is ultimately That, is one with all that is.
The fact that most of us have not reached this ultimate state is no reason for discouragement, for life is about doing the best you can, traveling as far as you can toward the highest possibility.
Thought Experiment — Expanding into That
Is it possible, as the mystics have said, there is one field of consciousness, of being, of bliss, and each of us is an integral part of That? Hold the possibility in your heart-mind for a moment, letting yourself expand out, into the possibility of experiencing without boundaries or limits, allowing yourself to be pure consciousness, to take on the “Mind of Christ, to realize you are one with the Buddha, to know and listen to your Higher Self. Let your consciousness move out until it is without limits, including “all that is.”