Purpose of Quotes on Oneness

The Site and the Play

This site is offered as a way to share, discover, and celebrate oneness. The quotations and expressions you will find here and in the book are seeds of oneness. When you plant them in your consciousness and nurture them in contemplation, they grow into the experience of oneness. We believe any person, group, problem, situation, or anything at all can be nourished in recognizing and feeling the oneness that exists between things and people we ordinarily see as separate—from ourselves or each other.

We don’t have “answers” but we do have and are continuously growing a planet-wide wealth of declarations, poems, quotes, illustrations, and descriptions of oneness that we want to share. We have spent over 40 years collecting and now we are expanding the collection with the help of many others. Perhaps you will help, too.

We are searching for expressions on oneness of all kinds in all situations, settings, and nations. The ones we are sharing here are in some way mantric; they evoke the feeling or experience of oneness that the author is writing about. In other words, they help one feel the oneness.

So far we have over 1,000 expressions (with most published in our first book). We hope this website will help us build and share an even larger collection representing even more of humanity’s experiences with oneness, with more from women, youth, and children and from more nations and cultures around our earth.

Please join us in this thrilling work. After all, we’re already connected. We just need the connection to be more conscious and active. Email me (at billleon@geoeducation.org) your contributions and maybe we can add them to the blog.

Chopping Up the Whole

Saturated with it and surrounded, too, dwarfing my farthest reach, curling deeper into intimacy than any of my whispering dreams—is my experience of oneness. So how can one write an introduction to this book? Much more, how did the hundreds of writers in these pages express it?

A brilliant friend who declined to peruse this work told us, “It’s the wrong conversation.” Anything you strive to say about oneness is not only not it, it goes the other way—into pieces—so it’s better not said.

Hey, hey, hey! He and we both start in an experience that oneness is everything and everywhere at every moment for us; then there is nothing we can say that’s the wrong conversation. Not only are we in it, it is in us, so we can’t help but speak.

Our goal is to share these expressions of oneness with others who may feel jolted by the competition in much of life or by its fractional, contentious and tense landscapes. We are confident they may sense, beneath noises of disconnection, the harmony that bears it all which is usually missed in oversight.

The offerings are from numerous settings, and they open like surprising hidden doors into as many realms. The ages of the wise range from childhood to old age; they come from ancient through modern times right into the present; and the authors are from all the inhabited continents and nearly a third of the current nations on Earth—widely surpassing the representation in other international anthologies we have seen.

The People

A large number of people have helped with this project over the decades. We are most grateful to acknowledge them in the book and later here, too (along with you, should you come aboard). The co-editors are Ronald Jorgensen (Ron) and William Leon (Bill). Raina Imig and Maggie Greer have been invaluable editors and Raina has shared her artwork for the site. Robin Sherman designed the book. Before that, there were many people who found expressions and helped with the extensive research. Doug Bates spearheaded the effort to digitize everything. Olivier Barot provided the photo at right.

Ron began the work in 1974 when he saw the idea for it expressed in comments by a great yogi, the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in South India. He has brought to the project his studies of exotic cultures at Harvard Divinity School and elsewhere, his love of poetry, and his work as a behavioral change consultant and teacher of Tai Chi and Yoga (www.taichiandyoga.com)

Bill joined Ron in the work in 1984. He has backgrounds in geography, community development, and program evaluation. He manages a consulting firm near Seattle, Washington called Geo Education & Research (www.geoeducation.org, that helps nonprofits, government agencies, Tribes, and foundations measure and extend their success. He also volunteers for local environmental projects, a local self-governing homeless camp, and the global village of Auroville in South India (www.auroville.org)
For more information about this book, website, or collection, please contact Bill Leon at billlleon@oeducation.org or call him at 206.914.6663.