Are We One or Many?

Warning: Metaphysical musings. Stay away if it is not your thing

Photo by nooooodles 1337 on Unsplash

Through Medium writer Ulf Wolf I have been introduced to a fundamental difference between the teachings of Buddhism and the teachings of Scientology. To the Buddha, we come from Oneness. The impression that we are individual souls is just an illusion. To Elron, we are, and always have been, thousands upon thousands of individual entities. We were never all One. We will always be immortal, but we will always retain our individuality.

It seems to me that this is closer to the way in which Neopaganism views reincarnation. The basic concept of eternally recurring Cycles is the same in both traditions. The difference lies in Individuality vs. Unity.

General Geoge Patton seems to have been a believer in the Individual Soul theory, also. If you saw that wonderful 1970 movie starring George C. Scott, you may recall the powerful scene in the desert where he remembers having been a warrior in a former life. I’m sure you can find it on YouTube.

I gotta say — it sure feels like I have always been the same Conscious Soul living lifetime after lifetime. I mean, how else could I have impressions — even as short and incomplete as they are — of having lived before? WHO is it that identifies as having lived before? Why would I be calling myself “I” if the reality were that these are all made-up dreams of the great Oneness?

This is not to say that we remember every past life. There are reasons, evidently, for us to have amnesia while we are incarnated. My wife Nora was convinced that she had been Nell Gwyn; in fact, several people had told her so when she was a girl, before she had even heard of that first actress of the English stage. “What is a nelgrin?” she remembered having asked.

But her assertion that I, therefore, must have been Charles II rang no bells with me at all. I thought if anyone from our age had been Charles, it would have been George Sanders. They looked alike and acted alike.

Gee. I just referenced three Georges in four paragraphs. I wonder if that was a coincidence. Actually, come to think of it, my third name is George. That’s four Georges in five paragraphs!

Curiouser and curiouser. But I digress.

Maybe Oneness is the Truth. Maybe our perceptions of recurring individualities are the closest to Truth that most of us can approximate while we are here. Seeing through a glass darkly, and all.

Perhaps the miracle is that any of us has access to these subtler levels of awareness, to begin with. For many people, these considerations are the farthest things from their minds.