Unity: The Universal Principle Inherent in All of Creation

By Reynaldo Pareja

Is there an underlying, unifying factor that could give us a frame of reference to grasp into one holistic view, an explanation, a description that would give us a unifying understanding of all physical reality as well as our physical-spiritual human reality?

This question becomes evident when we contemplate the immensity of outer space as shown by the photos taken by the Hubble telescope. They elicit from us a spontaneous exclamation of admiration and awesomeness at the magnificence of its immensurable vastness populated by billions and billions of stars grouped inside several million or more galaxies.

No less is our wonder when scientists have found unpredictable behavior of electrons at the quantum field that is determined by the intention of the observer opening up the question of how much do we define reality.

A similar experience of admiration surges when one sees an animation of the neural activity of the brain showing the firing of thousands of neuron sparks dispersing a million and more electrical impulses filled with biological information required for the body to perform continuously in a never-ending, life-sustaining energy current.

No less is the admiration one must admit before the complexity of a human or animal organ, a single cell, a DNA strand, or even a gene. All these physical realities contain a mini universe as grandiose and complex as the one shown by the photos taken by the Hubble space telescope.

If all the above levels of perception were not enough, there is also the human realm of emotions, intuitions, insights, imagination, creativity, moral judgments and immoral behaviors. He manifests deceit, sacrifice beyond explanation, unconditional love and unbearable hatred, all mixed in a reality that seems to be far too complex to be fully understood, controlled, or directed.

Before this mind boggling universe, is there in Creation a Universal Principle that can give us a point of view from which we can obtain a minimum sense
of understanding of where we are at in the cosmic dance of our existence?

This book-essay makes an effort to find and present the reader with such Universal Principle. Welcome to discover it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796091441

Reynaldo Pareja

Reynaldo Pareja, PhD en Comunicación y Sociología del École des Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. Maestría en Comunicación por la Universidad de Cornell, Estados Unidos. Licenciatura en Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Todos los libros en español del autor se pueden ver y adquirir en: amazonbooks.com

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Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

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Rev. date: 03/06/2020

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CONTENTS

Terms of Use

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Unity of the non-organic world

Levels of the physical world

The macroscopic level

Rocks are composed of minerals

Composition of water

Composition of the atmosphere

At the microscopic level

At the atomic and subatomic levels

Chapter 2 Unity in organic life

The DNA

Unity Principle in the cell

Unity Principle in the composition of organs

Unity Principle in animals

Chapter 3 Unity of the Cosmos

The multiplicity of the Cosmos

Our solar system

Our Galaxy

The cosmos is filled with galaxies

Unity of the Cosmos

The cosmos is not an empty space

Chapter 4 Unity of the human body

Unity of the human body

The Skeletal Muscular and Integumentary System

The integumentary system consists of the outer layer of the human body

The Circulatory System

The Respiratory System

The Digestive System

The Urinary /Excretory System

The Endocrine and Immune Systems

The Reproductive System

The Brain and Nervous System

Chapter 5 Unity of the Mind

Clarifying the definition of mind

Brief overview of the term mind in history

The mind as the producer of thoughts and knowledge

Conceptual knowledge

Logical Knowledge

Intuitive knowledge

Creative Mind

The emotional Mind

Mind and Consciousness

Existential Consciousness

Unity of consciousness

The conscious-I – the permanent, silent witness

The I-Witness exists in a no-space, no-time dimension

The unity of I expresses itself

Chapter 6 Unity of the Soul

The soul

Soul according to philosophers of past and present

The soul from a religious perspective

Hinduism

Zoroastrianism

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

The Bahá’i Faith

Chapter 7 God’s Unity

God per philosophers and outstanding thinkers in history

The Egyptian god-myths

The Greek god-myths

The Roman god-myths

Independent thinkers

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Plotinus (204- 270 AD)

Averroes (1126 - 1198)

Rumi (1207-1273)

Eckhart von Hochheim OP (c. 1260 – c. 1328)

René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

Hegel (1770 - 1831)

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 –1947)

Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941)

Alfred W. Adler (1870 – 1937)

Paul Tillich (1886 – 1965)

Richard G. Swinburne (December 1934-)

God is the only One God

There is no other God besides Him

God innermost Essence is one of Absolute Unity

God’s Unity is Indivisible

God is Self-subsisting

God, the Creator

God’s Unity is reflected in all of Creation

Chapter 8 Unity in Revelation and Religion

Attempted annihilation of religious groups by other religious groups

The imposition of religion on people conquered

The persecution and execution of those labeled as heretics

Persecution of Jews in Europe

The Klu Klux Clan

The extermination of Jews during WWII by Nazis.

XXth Century materialism

Materialism has created a new form of false morality

Search for a new perceived meaning of religion

The dynamic of Progressive Revelation

The Unity of the Manifestations

No exaltation of a Manifestation over another

The teaching role of the Manifestations

Present efforts to establish Religious Unity

Summarizing

Chapter 9 Unity of Humanity

Social obstacles

Prevalence of oppressive manmade institutions-organizations

Forced child labor

Human trafficking

Unjust immigration laws

Lack of free education for all low-income children, and young adults

Lack of accessible basic health system

Economic obstacles

Excessive disparity between the rich and the poor

Unregulated salary disparity and abuse

Inhuman treatment of the labor force

Cultural Obstacles

Widespread inequality between women and men

Cultural Prejudices

Lack of legislative practices favoring equality of humans

Disunity among nations

Religions’ Guidance to achieve Unity of Humanity

Religion’s Basic Golden rule

Bahá’i Revelation’s Key principles and steps to attain Oneness of Humanity

Creation of an international governing body

Global disarmament

Abolition of racial prejudices

Creation of an auxiliary international language

Diminishing the gap between the very rich and the poor

Establishing universal education

Harmonizing science and religion

Establishing an international standard of weights and measures

Responsible management of the environment

Creation of spiritual communities at the local level guided by virtues and service

A long term endeavor

Conclusion

References

Bibliography

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Last updated 21 June 2018.

To those genuine individuals,

who are seeking at all levels

of the material world,

the sentient plants and animals,

and the physical and spiritual reality of man,

a Unifying Principle

that will illumine

their connection to the

wonderful web of Universal Unity

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No book is ever the creation of one individual, much less in today’s integrated communication world information system. No one individual is able to produce a fresh new idea or concept that has not had birth in the collective knowledge accumulated over millennia. Such is the case of the great Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle; the Renaissance thinking giants like Copernicus and Galileo; the modern mystics like Rumi; the spiritual giants of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalia Lama, and Deepak Chopra; and the spiritual scientists such as Gregg Braden and Ken Wilber. This book has undergone the same process that most books have. I have tapped into the magnificent ideas of the cited authors about the Universe, the material world, and the human condition and how to best understand it.

The book has also come to life thanks to the free and generous hours of proofreading my drafts of many people which I have to acknowledge their input. At the top of the list is my longtime friend and Bahá’i colleague, Joe Coblentz, who had the patience to comb the draft so that it would read smoothly avoiding those unwanted grammatical errors that would impede appreciating the content. Another Bahá’i, Jose Luis Marquez, helped me refined the difficult concepts of mind, soul, and spirit that are so essential to the human condition and which are key to understand how they can be conceived within the context of the Unity Principle that the book seeks to construct. Another dear friend, Rodolfo de Roux, helped me to refine logical concepts and links between Judaism and Christianity. The cover page of the book is the creative art of another Bahá’i friend, Heitha Beane, whose expertise in webpage designs has proven to be an extraordinary image creator.

Last, but most important, my most patient wife, Patricia, who, as with previous books, has given me the free moments necessary to be able to write for long periods of time without having to worry about the administrative essentials of the household, the financial aspects, and the doctors’ appointments. She has been an excellent caretaker of my post surgeries recoveries, so that I could continue the writing process, which is a never ending endeavor because there is always a correction to be made, a modification to be introduced, a concept to be clarified.

To all my friends who have contributed with their words of encouragement to continue with my writing, I give them credit and my most sincere thanks for their faith in me that I would be able to finish it.

INTRODUCTION

When one contemplates the magnificence of outer space as presented by the photos taken by the Hubble telescope nothing less than a spontaneous exclamation of admiration and awesomeness arises from all sincere observant individuals. One is taken by the magnificence of its immensurable vastness populated by billions, and billions of stars grouped inside millions or more galaxies. These dimensions overpass our capacity of apprehending them, unlike how we can capture the whole of an orange or an apple.

A similar experience is obtained when one sees an animation of the neural activity of the brain showing its magnificence of energy fluctuations of thousands of neuron sparks dispersing a million and more electrical impulses filled with biological information required for the body to perform.

No less is the admiration one must admit before the complexity of a human or animal organ, a single cell, a DNA strand, or even a gene. All these physical realities contain a mini universe as grandiose and complex as the one shown by the photos taken by the space telescope, the Hubble.

There are still levels of physical reality that scape our immediate comprehension as is the sub-atomic reality of matter, the unpredictable behavior of electrons at the quantum field, the relationship of observer and the object observed to the point of influencing matter at that level to manifest the intention of the observer.

If all the above levels of perception were not enough, there is also the realm of emotions, intuitions, insights, imagination, creativity, moral judgments and immoral behaviors, deceits, sacrifice beyond explanation, unconditional love and unbearable hatred all mixed in the human reality that seem far too complex to fully understand, control, or direct.

Before this varied and at the same time incomprehensible complexity one is compelled to ask the spontaneous question, "Is there an underlying, unifying factor that could give us a frame of reference to be able to grasp such richness into one holistic view, an explanation, a description that would give us a sense of understanding the physical reality as well as our human reality?

It is obvious than many deep thinkers in the past have made extraordinary efforts to find such a unifying force, factor or principle that could give us a minimally satisfactory vision of everything that exists. Of the many that have tried, the one probably most well-known was Albert Einstein who attempted to unify his general theory of relativity combining gravity with electromagnetism. Although he did not succeed in doing it while alive, he laid the foundation for many theoreticians to make an attempt in finding, describing and formulating such a unifying theory.

The ones who followed his tracks concentrated in the physical aspects of nature since it was their most familiar ground. The effort was continued during the twentieth century when the strong and the weak forces were discovered. In 1967–68 Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and Abdus Salam combined them and named them as the electroweak universal force. The work was amplified to include the three quantum forces: electromagnetism and the weak and strong forces. The electromagnetic and weak forces appear distinct at low energies because the particles carrying the weak force, the W and Z bosons, have non-zero masses whereas the photon, which carries the electromagnetic force, is massless. At higher energies Ws and Zs can be created easily and the unified nature of the force becomes apparent.

Today this theory of everything (TOE[1] or ToE), attempts to offer an ultimate theory, or master theory as a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. A Theory of Everything would unify all the fundamental interactions of nature: gravitation, strong interaction, weak interaction, and electromagnetism. Because the weak interaction can transform elementary particles from one kind into another, the TOE should also yield a deep understanding of the various different kinds of possible particles. (1)

Not being a theoretical physicist, I asked myself if there was an alternative approach to finding a unifying explanation that could be understood by anyone that is not a professional in physics and its laws, but could grasp a concept, a principle that not only could be found at all levels of physical reality, as well as in all levels of human reality?

In order to achieve this intent, I looked for a more encompassing principle other than the one offered by the physical laws discovered, explained and applied by those specialized individuals dedicated to the fullest understanding of physical reality.

I found a principle that seem to be able to give such a holistic view of all reality. It was the Principle of Unity.

Before entering into an analysis of how this Principle of Unity can be found in all levels of material and human reality, I had to find a justification to use the word principle rather than theory.

According to the internet Merriam Webster thesaurus, a theory can be defined as:

- a formula derived by inference from scientific data that explains a principle operating in nature.

-

THEORY

implies a greater range of evidence than a hypothesis and offers a greater likelihood of truth. theory of evolution>

- implies a statement of order and relation in nature that has been found to be invariable under the same conditions. law of gravity>. (2)

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, a theory is:

- a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena such as the wave theory of light.

- an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances —often used in the phrase in theory - in theory, we have always advocated freedom for all

- the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art – such as music

The same dictionary offers an interesting nuance to the word principle that gives base for preferring using it as the key word that best fits our intent of finding such a holistic approach to the quest I want to share with the reader. This is how the dictionary defines a principle:

- a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption

- a rule or code of conduct

- a habitual devotion to right principles as a man of principle

- the laws or facts of nature underlying the working of an artificial device

- an underlying faculty or endowment such principles of human nature as greed and curiosity

- an ingredient (such as a chemical) that exhibits or imparts a characteristic quality

The elements included in this definition of principle encompasses the levels of analysis that I wish to explore and present as a potential holistic view of both material and human reality, which goes beyond the physicists’ desire of finding a theory applicable to the understanding of physical reality in its innermost essence.

Since I am pairing up principle with unity as the overall frame of reference of this essay, it is imperative, once more, to present a definition of the word unity as given by three well known dictionaries to extract from them the common elements on which we can build the whole approach of this book.

Let us first present the internet Oxford dictionary definition of ‘unity’ as:

- the state of being united or joined as a whole

- the state of forming a complete and pleasing whole, especially in an artistic context

- a thing forming a complex whole

Synonyms: oneness, singleness, wholeness, uniformity, homogeneity, the organic unity of the universe

The internet Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers the following definition:

- the quality or state of not being multiple: oneness

- a condition of harmony: accord

- continuity without deviation or change (as in purpose or action)

- the quality or state of being made one: unification

- the combination or ordering of parts in a literary or artistic production that constitutes a whole or promotes an undivided total effect; also, the resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and consistency of style and character

- a totality of related parts: an entity that is a complex or systematic whole

The internet Collins dictionary is basically in agreement with the previous definitions:

- the state or quality of being one; oneness

- the act, state, or quality of forming a whole from separate parts

- something whole or complete that is composed of separate parts

- mutual agreement, harmony, or concord

- uniformity or constancy

Some of the common elements that we can obtain from these definitions are that ‘unity’ is:

- An entity that has many parts joined intrinsically as a complex whole.

- That there is a resulting singleness of effect or symmetry and a consistency of style and character.

- That the structure that unity has creates and entity that is whole, complex and systematic.

- That the organization of its components radiates harmony, accord, unification, constancy, and a totality of related parts.

- This organization produces a state of not being multiple, rather a state of oneness.

The Concept

Combining all the above elements and some additional ones offered by the Britannica Encyclopedia, we can create a rather complete concept of how unity can be understood. These are some additional aspects that the encyclopedia offers:

- Unity as intrinsic to human evolution: Teilhard de Chardin, was a French philosopher and paleontologist (1881- 1955) who became well known for his theory that mankind is evolving, mentally and socially, toward a final ‘spiritual unity’ that he called the Omega point.

- Unity can be considered as the core of a necessary organization such as it was the Council of Europe, an organization of more than 40 European states formed to promote European unity, protect human rights, and facilitate social and economic progress. Established in 1949 by 10 western European states, it has devised international agreements on human rights.

- In metaphysics, unity is considered as a doctrine opposed to monism. Whereas monists such as Parmenides, Benedict de Spinoza, and Hegel maintained that reality consists of only one ultimate substance. Pluralists, on the other hand assert that reality consists of manifold entities of many different types and that the diversity of things is more striking and important than their unity. In A Pluralistic Universe (1909), William James held that it is characteristic of empirically minded thinkers to note the changeability of things, the multiplicity of their being and their relations with one another, as well as the unfinished character of the world.

Thus, using this rich input, we can ascertain that the concept of ‘unity’ is not one composed of a single idea, but rather it is the fusion of different ideas that project a holistic whole that is made up of different components that could be studied and analyzed individually, but their combined coordination is the one that achieves a function, an outcome, or a