Every breath we take affects and changes the universe. Every action and every thought does the same. Each of us is significant.

Oh yes, and death is an illusion.

This is something that is pointed to by religion, philosophy and science.

The oldest religion may be what is encoded in Sanskrit. Put simply (by my reading anyway) Hindu thinking has at heart a truth that all is one whilst we experience it in our own diversity.

Philosophers have also reached this conclusion. I would point to Maurice Merleau-Ponty with his observation about perception and embodiment. His final book talks of the “flesh” of the world which we build by our action and reflections. Carl Jung points to a “universal unconsciousness”. What we think of as separate is really like the peaks of icebergs sharing connection below the surface. Both of these draw on Eastern thinking, which does not share what looks like the philosophical mistake of Descartes (that there is separation between material and intangible).

Scientists working on Quantum Reality point to intimate connection with quantum entanglement. This was developed by David Bohm into a metaphor of the universe as a hologram – where everything contains the imprint of everything else. For him the facts point to an “implicate” universe alongside what we see materially – the “explicate”. Everything is a flow, a river, and one-thing. What we perceive of as material and separate in place and time is an illusion caused by seemingly stable eddies in that flow.

My own conclusion? We don’t understand the whole of reality of which we are part. To pretend that is a mistaken arrogance. However the likelihood and the signs are – that all is connected and we are part of all that is – now and across time. More than that therefore. Everything we do has universal significance. Death is an illusion.