The One Watching the Many

“Who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?” -Hua Hu Ching 38

The quest for unity in oneself implies a movement away from plurality. Often, there is an expectation that the lower self, with its legion of fleeting ‘I’s will somehow become more unified, that the person I see in the mirror will become more consistent and stable and ultimately awaken. But a machine cannot awaken, as Gurdjieff said.

The machine cannot stop producing ‘I’s. ‘Generation’ is a law for it, and it will continue to generate ‘I’s until its last breath. Unity then, must be some presence or faculty that can co-exist with plurality without being moved by the myriad allurements of our sensory existence here. Something completely still and silent, suspended in the tiny space between craving and aversion, watching and accepting the reality of this moment now.

It is a long, inner journey, one which our own awareness must make. It is our own sense of ‘I’ which is fragmented, and from this angle, unity is the gradual pulling back of one’s sense of ‘I’, out of the many, layer after layer, until there is only a watcher and all of the ‘I’s are outside of it.