The Wholeness Principle

All things are part of the same web of wholeness, yet we live as if all things are separate, and even at odds with each other. This illusion of separateness causes just about every problem, conflict, and even war, that humanity has ever known. It is also what has sustained a dominant divided consciousness.

Within this web of wholeness, all living things in the universe find realization through just one power that sustains all things. As Teilhard de Chardin noted, a single energy is at play in the world.

Reality—the entire Creation—and everything in it is always a whole. This holistic, nondual principle is at the heart of the world’s mystic traditions. Because of this unified organization, consciousness evolves by the pull of this single energy toward this inherent wholeness. This is also why we innately respond to guiding principles that help us grasp the wholeness of the reality we live in.

The challenge we have in seeing the whole through its parts, bringing the whole back together, and living in the understanding of this wholeness, is that uniting a divided consciousness into a consciousness of wholeness largely depends upon experiencing the wholeness that is always all around us.

As Deepak Chopra notes, “wholeness lies beyond any kind of split or fragmentation. Wholeness is everything. It is the One, the All, or Brahman, as it was known in Vedic India. Wholeness offers only the experience of yourself as whole: as pure existence and pure consciousness.”

This understanding brings us into the reality of wholeness. Consciousness, he says, ties everything in the entire universe together; it gives light its brightness and color, creates images in our mind’s eye, and adds meaning to everything. Our overarching challenge in healing this false separation, which is the cause of all suffering, is making a complete shift in how we relate to reality.

If we can see the outer world as a distraction, an illusion, as ancient spiritual traditions did, we can focus on the one reality, which is a complete wholeness already, with everything existing within it.

It is the innate nature of consciousness to evolve toward its own inherent potential. When the acquired illusion of separation is replaced with innate wholeness, we open up to the experience of ourselves and the entire Creation as whole.

The voice of our collective soul calls out to us to wake up to the story of who we really are. We see this story unfolding now, being told every day through every act of kindness and compassion. This new story is showing us where we came from and what our common destiny is. Even while we experience fear, anxiety, tension, and conflict all around us now, this is preparing us for something greater. Emerging through the evolutionary impulse is a bright future.

The very nature of the evolution of consciousness—and the completion of the universal pattern embedded within transformation and renewal—gives us an abiding sense of hope, a living active hope that engages us with the process we are participating in, to assist it along, toward its fulfillment.

Humanity is coming of age. We’re going through the turmoil of transition, from a difficult in-between period to our collective maturity, a time when we will live with a common purpose, in a just, prosperous, and peaceful world.

The Wholeness Principle states: Reality is one, and all of Creation is a whole. Consciousness evolves toward this wholeness. This mystery of oneness is at the heart of Creation. All things, counter-balancing parts of the same unified whole, are energized and held together by the same force throughout the universe. This connective, creative energy, known as Love, the divine spirit, or Grace, is the unifying force expressed in every dimension of reality.

Wholeness, and its inherent unity, is the underlying principle defining reality. Living into this wholeness is vital. Becoming familiar with the pattern of this story of wholeness is the next step.

Adapted from A New Story of Wholeness: An Experiential Guide for Connecting the Human Family by Robert Atkinson (2022)