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This is the transcript of the speech delivered in October 2023 at New York Khaniqah to the members of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order by the Master.
Before starting the silent meditation tonight, I would like to say a few words about the topic of Unity of Being. This is a subject that I have been thinking about since my adolescence — unity of being or the oneness of being. My father [the previous Master of the Nimatullahi Order] gave a speech some time ago, illustrating this concept with the analogy of water and the many forms it can take. An individual bubble, drop, or wave — or an ocean where there is only one reality. It is all water, but appears in many forms. He said two things about unity of being in that speech: One is that it’s not a philosophical point that one can establish by argument, and the other is that it’s an experiential truth, meaning one needs to experience the unity of being to understand.
… the analogy of a bubble, a drop, a wave and an ocean where there is only one reality: that is water but appears in many forms
The principle of unity of being means there’s only one being, and that everything is a manifestation of this one. The whole of existence is an emanation of one single entity. Historically you can find the doctrine of unity of being first presented by the Greek philosopher Parmenides in 400 BC. He talks about oneness of existence in the quote, “What exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete.” Plotinus, another Greek philosopher, who died in 270 AD, alludes to the same thing. “If a man could only be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All. It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.” And of course, the great Islamic philosopher Ibn Arabi also talks about the unity of being. “If you hold to multiplicity, you are with the world; and if you hold to the Unity, you are with the Truth” and “When the mysterious unity between the soul and the Divine becomes clear, you will realize that you are none other than God.”
…the manifestation of oneness which permeates through existence enables us to love everything.
In Sufi literature, oneness of being is a key concept and it is very significant. I always asked myself two questions about the oneness: how do you know that the unity of being is true?; and, how do you experience the unity of being? And both answers that I give to these two questions are based on love.
So, how do we know that unity of being is true? I came to the conclusion we as human beings have the capacity to love almost everything. From animals to inanimate objects. And the fact that we are capable of loving everything alludes to the fact that there is commonality between us and the rest of the existence. That’s because similarity and likeness is usually the ground for love. We are attracted to people, for example, that are very similar to us. There is a similarity in some sense between us and everything in the universe. And that commonality, or sign of oneness, or the manifestation of oneness which permeates through existence, enables us to love everything. That is the basis of why we know that oneness of being is true.
What I’m saying about this ability to love, is that even if an alien comes to this planet from outer space we still have the ability to love that alien because, again, it’s a manifestation of one. So that’s the answer to the question of how do you know oneness is true, because if there are two different consciousnesses, so to speak, the basis of this creation or things that exist in this universe would be completely and drastically different. We’d have to imagine a situation where there are certain things we come across in this universe that we are unable, in principle, to love. And to me that’s not possible. For some people perhaps that’s possible…
You experience the Unity of Being once you expand the scope of your love to everything.
So the second question is how do you experience unity of being? Again, it goes back to the commonality or similarity between us and the rest of existence and our ability to love. We are not only capable of loving our relatives and all those who are genetically related to us, but we can expand the scope of our loving to animals and things that are farther removed from our genetic makeup. And the more we expand the scope of our loving, the more we experience the oneness in existence.
Sufism is based on love and the experience of unity of being is also based on love. You experience the unity of being once you expand the scope of your love to everything. But there is also a more direct way to experience the unity of being, and that is the experience of unity between the lover and the beloved. It could be the profound love between two human beings or between the spiritual traveler and one’s spiritual guide. Rumi, in one of his poems about his master Shams Tabrizi, describes his experience of unity through love of Shams:
خنک آن دم که نشینیم در ایوان من و تو
به دو نقش و به دو صورت بی یکی جان من و تو
من و تو بی من و تو جمع شویم از سر ذوق
خوش و فارغ ز خرافات پریشان من و تو
What a lovely moment it would be when you and I sit together on the veranda,
We will be two separate images and faces but one in spirit.
By pure love you and I will be one without I and you,
Free from scattered fantasies and superstitions.