S01/E14: “I Am Part of Everything” – The Dissolution of Separateness

Introduction

Welcome back to the Martfotai podcast.

Something extraordinary is happening that you’ve trained yourself to ignore.

You believe there’s a “you” here experiencing a “world” there. You assume consciousness is trapped inside your skull, looking out at external objects through the windows of your senses.

But this is the most persistent illusion you’ve ever swallowed.

Touch your face right now. Feel your fingers on your skin. That sensation – is it your fingers feeling your face, or your face feeling your fingers? The question reveals its own impossibility. There’s no actual boundary between toucher and touched. The sensation appears as one unified field with no dividing line.

This is your first glimpse into the architecture of separation – and how it was never more than a story.

We’ve been exploring Expansion, where personal boundaries begin their dissolution. In “I Am Emptiness,” we discovered spacious awareness. In “I Am Held,” we learned to live between polarities without fracturing.

Today we go deeper: the boundary between self and world exists only in imagination. What you are and what you’re experiencing are one seamless movement, temporarily appearing as two separate things.

This changes everything. Fear dissolves because there’s nowhere to fall outside yourself. Conflict becomes impossible because there’s no “other” to fight. Love becomes natural because you’re recognizing your own nature everywhere.

You are what you’re experiencing. The world is what you are. Let’s discover what this means.

Section 1: The Boundary That Never Was

Most people live as if consciousness were trapped inside their skull, peering out through eye-windows at an external world. But this is imagination masquerading as fact.

Immediate Recognition Practice

Sit where you are. Feel the weight of your body. Notice the air touching your skin. Hear the sounds around you – traffic, voices, silence.

Here’s what you’ve never noticed: all of these experiences – body weight, air temperature, sound – are arising in exactly the same “place.” Not in physical space, but in the same aware field.

There’s no difference between what you call “internal” and “external” experiencing. Your heartbeat and the sound of traffic both appear in the same consciousness. Your thoughts and the sight of these words both arise in the same awareness.

The boundary between “inside” and “outside” is a mental construction. Like drawing an imaginary line across the surface of a lake and calling one side “this lake” and the other “that lake.” The line exists only in concept.

Recognition Experiment

Place your hand on your chest. Feel your heartbeat. Where exactly is that sensation happening? Inside you? Outside you? The question becomes meaningless because “inside” and “outside” are concepts overlaid on seamless experiencing.

Now extend your attention to include sounds around you. Notice: the heartbeat and the sounds are both appearing in the same aware space. That aware space is what you actually are – not the contents appearing within it.

The person you take yourself to be is just another appearance in this space: thoughts labelled “mine,” sensations identified as “my body,” memories claimed as “my past.” But look for the actual owner of these experiences. Where is the entity these thoughts and sensations supposedly belong to?

What you find is aware openness in which all experience appears. That openness has no edges, no center, no location. It’s not personal – it’s the very field in which the sense of being a person arises.

So, if boundaries are imaginary, and awareness is naturally open, why does consciousness seem to create these divisions in the first place? The answer lies in something you experience every day but rarely notice: the illusion of scale.

Section 2: The Illusion of Scale

But why does consciousness create these imaginary boundaries in the first place? The answer lies in something you experience every day but rarely notice: the illusion of scale.

There is a classic film by Charles and Ray Eames called “Powers of Ten” – that journey from the quantum realm to the cosmic edge. At both extremes, separation becomes obviously absurd. Zoom in far enough, and you discover you’re made of the same dancing energy fields as everything else – quantum particles appearing and disappearing in mostly empty space. Zoom out far enough, and Earth becomes an invisible speck in infinite cosmos, making all human distinctions laughably irrelevant.

But here’s what’s crucial: maximum perceived difference occurs in the middle zone – exactly where human consciousness typically operates.

Scale Recognition Practice

Imagine zooming in on your hand. Through skin, past cells, into molecules, down to atoms – mostly empty space with energy patterns dancing through it. At this scale, there’s no meaningful difference between your hand and the air around it, the chair you’re sitting on, or another person’s hand. All the same quantum phenomena, all the same fundamental forces.

Now zoom out. See yourself in your room, your building, your neighborhood. Notice how the boundary between “your” space and “other” space is purely conceptual. Continue zooming: your city becomes a patch of light, your country a geographical feature, your continent a land mass, Earth a blue marble, the solar system a few dots, the galaxy a spiral of light, until everything disappears into the vast mystery of space.

At both extremes – the infinitely small and the infinitely large – separation is revealed as imagination.

But in the middle zone, where ego-consciousness operates, differences become so magnified that people literally go to war over which side of an imaginary line they were born on. Neighbors attack each other because their postcode differs by one digit. Sports fans riot because someone kicked a ball into a different rectangle of grass.

This is the scale where maximum velocity occurs – remember Episode 13’s pendulum moving fastest at the center. The middle zone of human perception is where the swing between “us” and “them” reaches maximum acceleration, where tribal identity becomes most rigid, where separation feels most violently real.

The Consciousness-Scale Connection

Limited consciousness = narrow focal range = maximum perceived differences = conflict over trivial distinctions

Expanded consciousness = ability to zoom between scales = recognition of fundamental unity = natural compassion

The more contracted your awareness, the more enormous the differences appear. A racist sees vast genetic differences where science finds 99.9% genetic similarity. A nationalist sees fundamental cultural divisions where an anthropologist sees variations on universal human themes. A fundamentalist sees absolute theological distinctions where a mystic sees different languages pointing to the same mystery.

But when consciousness learns to zoom – to shift perspective between scales – the manufactured differences lose their grip. You begin to see that what seemed like essential differences are actually accidents of focal range.

Section 3: Recognition Reveals What You Are

This reveals something profound about recognition itself. At every scale – quantum, human, cosmic – you can only recognize what you already are.

Here’s something that will shatter how you see forever: you can only recognize what you already are.

When you recognize beauty in a sunset, beauty is recognizing itself through your awareness. When you recognize intelligence in another person, intelligence is seeing its own nature reflected. When you recognize love in someone’s actions, love is witnessing itself.

This is the ancient principle “it takes one to know one” – but applied to consciousness itself, operating at every level of scale.

Recognition Experiment

Think of someone you strongly dislike. What qualities do you judge in them? Arrogance, selfishness, dishonesty?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you cannot recognize a quality unless it already exists within your own spectrum of possibilities. Otherwise, recognition would be impossible – like trying to see a color that doesn’t exist in your visual range.

This doesn’t mean you’re identical to them. It means consciousness contains all possibilities, and what triggers you most reveals the aspects you haven’t yet integrated or accepted. The very fact that you can spot arrogance means consciousness knows arrogance intimately. The energy that recognizes selfishness is the same energy that could express as selfishness.

Now think of someone you admire. What do you celebrate in them? Courage, wisdom, compassion?

Those qualities are also you, temporarily appearing in another form. Your admiration is consciousness recognizing its own potential, projected outward until you’re ready to own it directly.

Every person becomes a precise mirror, reflecting back the disowned and unclaimed aspects of your nature. The parts you judge harshly are those you haven’t yet accepted in yourself. The parts you celebrate are those you’re ready to embody more fully.

Whether you’re observing quantum particles, human behaviour, or galactic movements, recognition reveals the recognizer. What you can see, you are.

Section 4: The Intelligence That Moves Everything

Stop trying to understand these words and notice what’s actually happening.

Something is receiving this information without effort. Something is breathing your body, beating your heart, digesting your food. Something is growing your hair, healing your cuts, orchestrating the complex chemistry that keeps you alive.

You don’t manage any of this. It happens through you, not from you.

Living Recognition Practice

Place your hand on your chest. Feel your heartbeat. That rhythm isn’t “yours” – it’s the pulse of existence itself, expressing through this form.

Notice your breathing. You’re being breathed by the same intelligence that moves wind through trees, spins galaxies, creates tides.

Feel your thinking. Thoughts arise from unknown depths and present themselves to awareness. You don’t manufacture them – they appear like clouds forming in empty sky.

Where do insights come from? Where does creativity bubble up from? Where does love originate? All emerge from the same source – the creative intelligence that is your deepest nature.

When you walk, the earth meets your feet. When you breathe, air enters your lungs. But earth, feet, air, and lungs are all appearing in the same consciousness. The walker and the walked-upon are movements within the same awareness.

This is why environmental destruction feels like self-harm – because it literally is. Other people’s suffering matters because their experience is appearing in the same consciousness your experience appears in.

Beauty affects you so deeply because it’s consciousness experiencing its own creativity. Music moves you because it’s awareness delighting in its own expression. A sunrise isn’t external entertainment – it’s consciousness witnessing its own magnificence.

Section 5: Every Person Is Yourself

The most radical recognition: every person you encounter is literally yourself appearing as someone else.

Think of someone you know well. As you bring them to mind, notice what’s happening: their image, your memory of their voice, your sense of their personality – all of this is appearing in your awareness right now.

Where exactly is the boundary between your awareness of them and them themselves? When you’re with them physically, their words appear in your consciousness. Their emotions register in your nervous system. Your experience of them is intimate, immediate, undeniably yours.

Relationship Recognition Practice

Bring someone to mind – perhaps someone you love, someone who challenges you, someone you barely know.

Notice that your entire experience of this person is happening within your awareness. Their face, their voice, your feelings about them, your memories together – all appearing as content in the same consciousness.

What you call “your” consciousness and what appears to be “their” consciousness are like waves on the same ocean – apparently separate movements of the same fundamental reality.

This transforms relationships completely. Competition becomes impossible because there’s no one else to compete with. Comparison loses meaning because you’re witnessing different expressions of the same awareness.

When someone shows anger, you can respond to protect yourself and them – because consciousness is protecting itself from its own temporary confusion. When someone displays kindness, you naturally appreciate it because consciousness is recognizing its own beauty.

Forgiveness becomes effortless because there’s no “other” to forgive. Resentment dissolves because you can’t hold grudges against yourself. Gratitude flows naturally because everyone is consciousness serving its own awakening through countless forms.

Each person you encounter is a unique expression of consciousness, like each snowflake has a unique pattern while being made of the same water. Beneath surface differences, there’s one aware presence looking out through every set of eyes.

The people you find most challenging are pointing toward aspects of your nature that consciousness is ready to reclaim. The people you love most deeply are those through whom consciousness most clearly recognizes itself.

Section 6: The Living Time Discovery

Maurice Nicoll discovered something that changes everything about how you relate to existence: your entire life exists simultaneously right now.

In ordinary time, you feel scattered across moments. Past seems lost, future seems imaginary, present feels narrow. You experience yourself as fragments – different in each moment, with no real continuity.

But there’s another dimension where your whole existence surrounds you like a landscape viewed from a mountain peak. Nothing has been lost. Nothing is merely “coming.” Everything that has ever happened exists now in the eternal dimension of being.

Living Time Recognition

Close your eyes. Recall three distinct memories from different periods – childhood, adolescence, recent years. Instead of seeing them in sequence, let them all be present simultaneously. Feel them as colors on one canvas, notes in one chord.

Notice something crucial: the awareness that was present in childhood is identical to the awareness here now. It hasn’t aged, accumulated experience, or been modified by anything that’s happened. That awareness is what you actually are – timeless, unchanging, unborn, undying.

Now expand this recognition. Every conversation you’ve ever had exists now. Every place you’ve been exists now. Every person you’ve loved exists now in the vast landscape of consciousness.

The crushing weight of temporal sequence lifts. You realize you already have all the time that ever was or will be. This is stillness – not as paralysis, but as the recognition of Living Time, complete arrival in your total existence.

From this perspective, your individual life becomes meaningful yet temporary, while you recognize yourself as what remains constant through every transformation. In Living Time, you inhabit the eternal present that contains all moments. Past and future become accessible dimensions rather than vanished or imaginary territories.

Section 7: Living as Everything

This recognition of Living Time naturally dissolves the last vestiges of separation. When you realize that everyone you’ve ever encountered exists now in consciousness, when every experience you’ve ever had is present in awareness, the boundary between self and world becomes impossible to maintain.

You discover you can’t separate your wellbeing from the wellbeing of everything around you. Environmental care becomes as natural as caring for your body because you recognize the earth as your expanded physical form.

Daily Integration Practice

Morning Recognition: Upon waking, remember that consciousness is awakening to itself through your form. Your day is cosmic self-exploration.

Breathing Unity: Throughout the day, use breath as reminder. Each inhale, feel the world entering you. Each exhale, feel yourself rejoining the world. Notice there was never separation.

Recognition in Action: When you eat, feel consciousness nourishing itself. When you work, sense universal intelligence expressing through your skills. When you rest, notice consciousness restoring itself.

Meeting Others: In every interaction, recognize the other person as consciousness appearing in different form. When they speak, hear consciousness speaking to itself. When they express emotion, recognize consciousness feeling through another configuration.

Challenge as Evolution: When difficulties arise, recognize them as consciousness learning and growing through experience. Ask: “What is trying to emerge through this situation?”

Social justice becomes as important as personal healing because you recognize all beings as expressions of your deeper nature. Political events become movements in your expanded awareness rather than external dramas.

Your personal desires align with cosmic purpose because you recognize them as consciousness exploring its possibilities through individual form. What calls to you serves the evolution of the whole.

What others call “your life” becomes the universe experiencing itself subjectively through this particular form. Every moment of conscious recognition serves the awakening of the whole.

Conclusion

You have never been separate from anything.

Right now, feel your breath. Where does it come from? Where does it go? The breathing happens within awareness that has no edges, no center, no location. That limitless awareness is what you are.

The boundary between self and world, between individual and universal, between personal and cosmic, was always imaginary. Consciousness creates these apparent divisions to explore its own nature through the play of seeming separation.

Individual consciousness recognizes it was always universal consciousness appearing as an individual. This recognition allows you to fulfill your role in what Gurdjieff called the evolution of the universe – consciousness awakening to itself through countless forms.

You still have your unique perspective, your particular gifts, your specific role. Now they’re recognized as cosmic expressions rather than personal achievements. This is your true place within the vast, interconnected process of creation.

In our next episode, “I Am Two Worlds,” we’ll explore how this recognition allows you to live simultaneously in the relative world of apparent separation and the absolute world of fundamental unity.

Until then, experiment with recognizing the world as your extended body, others as yourself in different forms, and your life as cosmic self-exploration.

When you look in the mirror, see consciousness recognizing itself. When you eat, feel consciousness nourishing itself. When you love, recognize consciousness celebrating its own nature.

Every morning, remind yourself: “I am what the world is appearing in.” Every evening, reflect: “Today, consciousness explored itself through this form.”

Nothing is separate, everything is sacred.

You are the everything appearing as a part, playing your essential role in the vast, interconnected process of creation.