THE PART and THE WHOLE

synecdoche, identity and non-duality

synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something refers to the whole of something or vice versa.

Your body is made up of cells. Those cells each have a metabolism, molecular machinery which goes
on without your effort or awareness. Those cells only live as a part of you; separate them from the rest
of your body and ordinarily they will quickly die. A single cell can be pointed to, and assigned a label.

If we point at a single cell, can we say that cell is YOU? Not really. Nor can we say you are that cell.

Those cells are organized into various physiological systems: your cardiovascular system, endocrine
system, nervous system, voluntary muscles, skeletal, and so on. The cell is not the system of which it
is a part; the system is not you, although you won’t do very well without it.

So what does it mean when a non-dualist says “I have no self; there is only one thing”? Of course
there’s a problem already in using the word “I.” If there is an “I,” is there not a “thou”? If not, what
can “I” mean besides the one thing that is the universe? Then the sentence “I have no self, there is only
one thing” is a tautology and doesn’t help us experience the universe as one thing.

You shop for groceries; you buy gas for your car. You are an economic actor, and each of those actions
is a part of the economy. But you don’t say “i have no self; I am the economy.” Nor do you claim to
be the demographics, the sociology, the political system, a whole ethnic group, and so on. Of course, if
there is only one thing, you are as much those things as anything else.

Does a cell have “free will”? Does a physiological system have “free will”? Do YOU have free will?
What makes you think so? And if you have no “self,” if you are non-dual, what is it that has this free
will?

There is no self, no separate “you.” Then how do we understand that “you” can only see the small part
of the universe that is immediately in front of “you”? “You” are localized. How do we understand that
“you” have a consciousness , and literacy, that allows you to read this sentence?

Your right index finger, assuming you have one and are neurologically intact, has sensation. It can
sense touch, pressure, pain, temperature. Let’s leave aside for the moment that this is done via
specialized nerve endings, the signals from which are decoded in the cortex of your brain. Anyway, the
sensing is experienced as localized to the finger.

We, you and I, are specialized organs of awareness. That awareness, and the recursive self-awareness
that we call consciousness, is experienced as localized to our “selves.” But that self is no more
independent of the one universe than your finger is independent of your body.