Individuality and Oneness?

Recently Dan Holloway wrote an article on Unity.org that was excerpted from the Association of Unity Churches' Contact magazine entitled "Honoring Diversity." Holloway sketches out the Unity understanding of diversity as something that is to be honored. This is affirmed in many of the official pronouncements or statements by Unity, the Association, or often both. Unity has always been a spiritual movement that starts with the individual and works outward, but also has always acknowledged the unity (hence the name) of all humanity, of all life. Holloway states,

"We seek harmony in a world of difference. It's an interesting truth that we teach: We have an individuality that separates us from any and all people in that there is no other person exactly like us. A more humorous observation might be, 'You are unique, just like everyone else.'"

He is bringing up an interesting tension that isn't extant only in Unity, for it can be found in the teachings throughout the world's religious and metaphysical systems. Philosophically it's often termed "the problem of the One and the many." There's obviously a plethora of phenomena in the world and yet many traditions affirm that there is a single underlying essence or one source from which the multiplicity has come. What exactly is the nature of the relationship of the One and the many?

Religiously, it's couched a little differently, more like Holloway has stated. There are many different people and yet all these different people are somehow the same or at least share a fundamental commonality. We can go through some semantic gymnastics, but there nonetheless exists a bit of a tension between the manyness that we are as unique individuals and the Oneness that harmoniously makes us a unity.

I like to attempt to answer this apparent problem in two ways - one rational and the other mystical. Firstly, we could use the prominent theologian David Tracy's method of similarity-in-difference. Both the plurality of people and things as well as their connectedness is upheld through the usage of analogy. We are all clearly different, but through the employment of an analogical imagination we can confidently say that there is a "likeness" that pervades all this differentiation. (See D. Tracy, The Analogical Imagination and Plurality and Ambiguity).

Secondly, I appeal to the mystical element of paradox. That is, we run into logical contradictions that defy normal reason when we say that everything is simultaneously One and many, same and different. However, I like to think that the reality of this relationship is one that transcends rationality and is a mystical truth of unity-in-diversity, where we are One yet plural simultaneously. As Unity teaches, we are each unique individuals united in Oneness, which is unity-in-diversity. In Unity, as in most religious systems, when attempting to speak of Truth our language fails and we run into tension or logical contradiction. So, I'm a firm believer in the notion of paradox pointing to mystical Truth.

See Holloway's complete essay.