For three centuries, Descartes’ Cogito has led the world to think in terms of separation—cleaving subject from object, mind from matter. But this division is, ultimately, a fantasy.

As Merleau-Ponty recognized, everything is actually one. He spoke of the “flesh” of the world, where a simple act like sitting in a chair is a continuous process of co-creation as the body moves and interacts. Quantum physics tells us the same story: the Copenhagen interpretation reveals that the observer inextricably affects the observed precisely because they are part of the exact same system. The Indian Hindus have been right all along—the strict object-subject division is an illusion.

Thinking is plural. It involves subject (thinker) and object (idea). Reality is in the relationship between; it is not concrete or material. “I think, therefore I am” is incomplete. Better would be: I think ABOUT, therefore there is existence.

This isn’t my insight, but variously Einstein’s (relativity), Bion’s (the mind as apparatus to think pre-existing ideas), Whitehead’s (Process and Reality), and Buber’s (Ich und Du).

What we experience in this separated worldview is dis-integration. Alone we are: alone. Point-less. Together and between us lies the truth. Indeed, materiality is a chimera: we reflect each other, flowers of the same plant. Reality is in the honouring of the God in You, in the I-Thou rather than I-It.

“World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion A tangerine and spit the pips and feel The drunkenness of things being various.”

— Louis MacNeice