4.3.3 In what way are all the many separate aspects of this really that?

Is this a single thing?

When witnessed with a mind which has been awakened transcendentally, this is perceived in its true nature as a vast, organic, infinitely cross-connected living unity. All thinking minds, all things with life, all inanimate matter, are thought products of the one all-embracing mind. All processes, both natural and devised by humanity, all natural laws, both explicate and implicate, all moral, judicial and social systems are thought by that, and so come into existence.

That witnesses this without interference or desire. Mind in its unenlightened form experiences this within the terms of the karmically reactive system. Only with the dawning of enlightenment does the mind become freed from the thrall of karma.

Or is this a plural thing?

Things are seen, experienced and understood as plural and separate by the thinking mind. Inherently based on the ‘I’-thought, thinking creates an illusory experience of fundamental separateness, apartness and loneliness. The transcendentally awakened mind, clear, serene and filled with an awareness transcending thought, becomes conscious of the true, inherently unified nature of reality.

How can this be a single thing when it is manifestly innumerable separate things?

That is immanent in every component part and process of this. Every person is a unique focus of experience of this, capable of becoming conscious of the truth of reality, that this is that. Every living thing and every inanimate object is as much an integral part of this as you or I.

How can this be separate things, since in its true nature each thing is that?

This is illusory when experienced from the relative, separate and individual point of view; this is real when experienced from the absolute, integrated and transcendental point of view. The illusion that people and things are separate and real in themselves is a product of ignorance. The illusion that this is real in itself has been broken through sustained, committed daily practice of advanced meditation – transcendentally aware, you see only that this is that.