People say that once you are spiritually awakened, you feel as if we are all one, and that we are all connected. What exactly does that mean? My awakening has started, and I’m halfway in it. I can feel the happiness or sadness of the plants or animals, or i see a living being behind the structure of plants, or the construction of the body of an animal or insect. So what does being connected o specifically “we all are one and we all are connected” mean?
—Rusy Shah, India
Dear Rusy,
There are different stages of realizing that we are truly connected, and that all life is connected.
One stage is that you have the hunch, or intuitively feeling, that all is indeed one. That is already a wonderful experience, and way of life.
There is also a state in which you feel the sorrows and happiness of others, as if they were your own, since on a deeper level you are connected with everyone. That is a beautiful and notable spiritual achievement.
In another state you don’t only feel their emotions, but you experience that the divine life (the essence) that is in you is the same divine Life that is in the plants, all animal, all humans, and all living creatures, including people. If this is not philosophical but a true experience, it is an advanced stage.
In the highest stage you don’t only feel connected, or feel the happiness or pain of plants, animals, humans, but you ARE them. Your sense of identity expands, and you enter into One-ness. In other words, your sense of identity shifts from being a person, “I am Rusy”, to being the Spirit that lives in everything: “I am Brahma”. That is the highest connectedness. It is the state in which the true Master live, which we too are trying to attain.
If we want to attain such high stages, we need to meditate daily with proper techniques, which are able to withdraw the life force from our body, withdrawing also our mind and awareness inside, into the spine, and rising us upward into the One Blissful Spirit that unites everything.
All the best in your voyage toward true connectedness,
Jayadev
