Everything and Everyone Really is Connected

I’m on the 7 a.m. Eastern Shuttle to New York from Washington, a trip I’ve taken countless times. Today I’m scheduled for a 10 a.m. meeting with AT&T managers at 22 Cortlandt St., across from the World Trade Center. It’s mid-1979.

We’re at cruising altitude, and I’m in a window seat. Outside are clouds — pleasant, white, puffy ones. It was a little chilly on the way to the airport, but the sun is out, and it should be fine as the day moves along. I’m gazing at the clouds — not really thinking. Then I begin to notice that I’m part of the clouds, and the clouds are part of me. The plane, too — the plane and the clouds and each of the other people in the plane is a part of me and I am part of them. We’re all connected. I become aware of more and more aspects of my surroundings that are part of me: the seat back in front of me, the tray, the food, the magazines, all the other people’s clothes and belongings. Everything is connected, everything is really one. I am deeply comfortable and relaxed, and very happy (not a usual state for me at this time in my life). This is an inner awareness, a fundamental knowing, that is more real than anything I have ever experienced with my senses in the outer world.

We arrive at LaGuardia, and it all continues. I walk off the plane, get my bag at baggage claim, and go out to the taxi stand: everything I see or touch is connected to me, part of me, and I am connected to it. We are all one. I hail a taxi, tell the driver where I’m going, and sit back for the ride into the city, noticing that the taxi and the driver and my bag and everything in them are all connected to me, and I am connected to them. There’s grass growing in cracks of the expressway, and that’s part of me, too, as well as the concrete roadway and the other cars. There’s nothing that’s not connected to me and me to it. I’m feeling deeply joyful, euphoric. When necessary, I talk with the driver, and I notice with wonder that I can do that without losing this awareness.

We arrive at 22 Cortlandt St, and I pay the driver, take my bag, enter through the revolving doors, and ascend in the elevator to the AT&T conference room floor. The receptionist directs me to my room, one with big picture windows that overlook the plaza of the World Trade Center with its big, metal, cut-out sculpture of the Earth. I watch people down there strolling to and from the WTC buildings and sitting on the circular wall around the metal Earth, drinking coffee and eating pastries in the sun. I’m a part of the building, the elevator, the conference room, the receptionist, all the buildings, that big Earth and all the people I see, and they all are connected to me. I’m so happy that the tears are flowing down my cheeks.

I call my friend Jack back in Maryland and try to explain to him what’s happening, but he cannot make sense of my words. I call Jesse and try to describe it to him. He doesn’t understand either. They hear my words, but they don’t seem to be able to understand.

The clock on the wall says 9:50, and the AT&T managers are due to arrive shortly to meet with me. I begin to worry that I won’t be able to conduct the meeting properly while I’m in this state. Maybe I could, but I’m afraid to take the chance of appearing deranged in front of these people that I’m doing business with.

This state is very deep, it has possessed my awareness for almost three hours now, and all of me wants to stay in it for as long as it will last — maybe forever. But I dry my tears and forcibly pull myself out of it.

***

But I now know in my own experience, at the deepest level, that we truly are all connected, we really are all One.