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What’s the difference between unity and Oneness? Would you use these terms interchangeably?
In my native language there’s only one word for both, but I love having the choice in English. To me, unity suggests harmony and a very strong bond, whereas Oneness is conscious identity. For example, a marriage can be a long-lasting and fulfilling unity of two people without them ever experiencing the epiphany of Oneness.
Google says this: ‘Unity is the joining of diverse parts into a whole (like soldiers in a unit), while oneness implies a deeper, intrinsic merging where distinct elements retain their uniqueness while becoming one in essence or spirit.’
I’m happy with these definitions, but I’d be interested to know the connotations of the two words in a spiritual context and to hear people’s personal opinions. For instance, I found an article on a Christian blog that said Oneness is reserved for Oneness with God. Although I’m not a Christian, I agree that Oneness is ultimately identity with the One, which is why I like to capitalise it. However, I believe that we can find this identity within each other, without needing a preconceived notion of God.
Let me know your thoughts!
5 Comments-
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Eric, thanks for your response and for sharing such a detailed perspective! It’s so quiet here on Soulify, maybe we can initiate some conversation and activity!
It’s interesting that you mention sovereignty. In the tradition I’m most fond of, Nondual Shaiva Tantra, sovereignty (Svatantrya) is actually the highest goal.
You might be coming from a ‘Sovereign Soul’ or New Age perspective that views the individual soul as an eternal, autonomous unit that must protect its energy. Nondual Shaiva Tantra (NST) sees it slightly differently: In NST, Oneness isn’t about dissolving or losing your essence. It’s more about realising that the ‘I’ within you has always been the same ‘I’ within everything else. It isn’t a loss of energy. It’s an expansion into the Source of all energy. You don’t give up your sovereignty, you realise that your inherent sovereignty is already the sovereignty of the One. Protecting a small, ‘sovereign’ energy bubble is actually quite exhausting. It’s like a wave trying to be sovereign from the ocean. 🙂
From an NST perspective, the idea that you are a separate soul is the ‘Anava Mala’, the ‘taint of smallness’. This belief in separation is actually the biggest energy leak because it requires constant defensive work to maintain the ‘walls’. If you believe you are a separate instance of energy, you will always be afraid of being drained. I’d think of this as ‘dualistic anxiety’.
However, there is a subtle danger in adopting the concept of Oneness without a direct experience of it. Merely believing you are ‘one with everything’ can indeed be scattering. The mind attempts to spread itself thin across the infinite, resulting in a loss of integrity. True Oneness is found by moving deeper into your own core, the very point where your individual heart meets the Heart of the One and the All. It doesn’t disintegrate you, it grounds you. I’d say the experience of Oneness is very different from the idea of Oneness. Maybe the vulnerability you’re describing, the fear of being absolved and dissolved and losing your energy to belief systems, is exactly what happens when we mistake a mental idea for a spiritual realisation?
So all in all I agree that we are whole and complete, but I believe that wholeness comes from consciously being the one Self expressing itself in many forms. (NST would posit that the ‘sovereign soul’ is just one of the infinite masks the one Self wears for the joy of the game, ‘Lila’.) It’s less about merging into a collective thought form (which would indeed be a trap) and more about recognising we were never separate to begin with! We don’t ‘return’ to the Source, we simply stop the mental activity that pretends we left it and are separate, and this mental activity includes our belief systems and collective thought forms!
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Thanks for your detailed response and insight into your knowledge about these concepts, I am somewhat familiar with these teachings and other Buddhist practices and beliefs whether they say it eventually leads to a non-belief state of being or not, I still see it as logically deducing an outcome through beliefs, but I respect their experience and beliefs and logic along with yours and the path that all souls take with religious or non religious beliefs, so I am not here to argue or convince anyone from what they are here to experience 🙂
However from my personal experience non-duality or non-separation is still a belief to me and it’s interesting that they also tried to frame sovereignty within oneness at the same time claim it’s taking up your energy trying to maintain and protect it, I still see and feel that you can’t have sovereignty and be one with all at the same time, if you’re a part of the whole like a wave ir drop in the ocean you cannot maintain unique soverignty indefinitely as you would eventually merge back into the whole, yet the love energy from my own self-awareness / realization is contrary to those beliefs and self-liberating to know and believe that I’m an eternal soverign soul with no protection needed and my energy actually stays with me. I am able to focus and maintain all my energy while tapping into even more love because I’m not limited by any beliefs, essetially I have complete control over my energy.
To expand on the eternal soul, my understanding is that our souls like energy have always existed, were not created, and cannot be destroyed or merge back with source or attain non-duality, you will be in a cycle of whatever belief system until you break free, so we all grow up to become a God / universe of our own, eventually become a multiverse, holy spirit, architect and so on, an infinite journey of soul evolution through love 💚 🙏
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Sounds like you’ve reached a place of great internal clarity and self-reliance, which is a massive achievement on any path!
It’s fascinating to look at where our ‘maps’ diverge. From the perspective of Nondual Shaiva Tantra, the reason it’s possible to have sovereignty and Oneness simultaneously is that they aren’t two separate things. In NST, the ‘Ocean’ doesn’t swallow the ‘drop’, rather, the drop realises its own substance is, and always has been, the Ocean. Its sovereignty doesn’t come from its boundaries, but from its fundamental nature.
‘they also tried to frame sovereignty within oneness at the same time claim it’s taking up your energy trying to maintain and protect it’. – I think there might be a slight misunderstanding of which ‘sovereignty’ I’m referring to! I’m certainly not suggesting that the sovereignty found in Oneness needs protection. In the Nondual view, that sovereignty is absolute and effortless because there is nothing ‘outside’ the One to defend against.
The ‘energy drain’ I mentioned refers specifically to the sovereignty of the separate soul – the effort it takes to maintain a boundary between ‘my’ energy and the rest of the universe. When we believe we are an autonomous unit that must control and maintain our energy to stay sovereign, we are essentially building a fortress, and even a beautiful, love-filled fortress requires a sentry at the gate. The act of maintaining the walls is, from an NST perspective, a subtle but constant expenditure of power. True sovereignty needs no protection, it’s the realisation that the walls were never there to begin with.
So, in my view, Oneness can’t be a ‘program’ that drains you. The ‘program of separation’ is what requires the constant defensive work.
I love your vision of the soul evolving to become a God, a Universe, or a Multiverse. It’s a beautiful, expansive ‘horizontal’ journey. The Tantric view is more ‘vertical’. It suggests that you don’t need to travel through time or evolution to become an Architect because the ‘I’ that is currently looking through your eyes is already the Architect, and awakening is just a matter of realising that. The journey is one of recognition rather than ‘becoming’.
You mentioned that non-duality feels like just another belief system or ‘program’. I think you’re right that many people treat it that way – as a mental concept they try to fit themselves into. But in an experiential sense, Nonduality isn’t a belief. It’s the state that remains when all belief systems (even the one that says we are eternal sovereign souls AND the philosophy of Nondual Shaiva Tantra) are seen as part of the Great Play.
I am by no means an NST fundamentalist, btw, it just happens to be the framework that resonates best with my personal experience. 🙂 In the end, we all just need to trust our personal experience. How we frame it is secondary. It sounds like your sovereignty is giving you a profound sense of love and freedom, which is the ultimate litmus test! Whether we call it an infinite journey of evolution or the timeless recognition of the One, it seems we’re both looking at the same light, just through different lenses. 💚-
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Thanks again for your in-depth explanations and kind words, yep that’s where we diverge, my heart and energy is telling me and resonates with sovereignty and oneness being separate because you can’t be both at the same time, one with yourself / soul, but not with God / source. My view is that like energy and love, sovereignty and free-will of souls always existed and was not created, so before God / source existed as a universe we all existed and evolved as souls, which means God was a lesser evolved soul like us at one point in a completely different universe, but we chose this universe to grow and evolve as souls through love. Yeah I feel the exact opposite, sovereignty is effortless to me because its a state of being not a belief, I am actually preserving all my energy and have unlimited connection to God and my soul, I also retain all my power and free-will so there’s nothing to defend yourself from unless you give your energy away to belief systems. Yes I agree it comes down to what resonates with your heart and soul, we’re all here on individual paths for growth through love, eventually all souls will evolve and grow to the state of being required to complete the next soul form…
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My thoughts and feelings and experiences are that everything is energy, including your individual soul / consciousness and God’s consciousness / soul which makes up everything in the universe including your body, so your energy (thoughts, words, beliefs, actions) create or program your reality and timeline, and with oneness beliefs you have to be aware of where your energy is going. For example, believing you are one with all or all one, or a collective consciousness gives your energy to and opens your energy up to that collective thought form, you absolve and dissolve your self and your sovereignty because you believe you are everything and nothing at the same time (oneness). However we as souls can be unified and connected through love and this quantum field of consciousness(God), which contributes to collective agreement of reality and timelines.
You as a soul are whole and complete as you are you are one with yourself granted we collect pieces of our souls to our higher self, but we are eternal and sovereign so we don’t merge back with God source at any point, so believing and knowing or being self aware and having self realization of your sovereignty programs your reality with sovereignty while you keep and maintain all your soul’s energy because it’s no longer going to belief systems or giving them access to your energy 💚 🪽