1 Tat Tvam
Asi
Om!
May my speech be based on the mind; may my mind be based on
speech.
O Self-effulgent One, reveal Thyself to me.
May you both be the carriers of the Veda to me.
May not all that I have heard depart from me.
I shall join together day and night
through this study.
I shall utter what is verbally true;
I shall utter what is mentally true.
May That protect me; may That protect the speaker;
may That protect me; may That protect the speaker,
may That protect the teacher!
Om
!
Peace! Peace! Peace!
Nada-Bindu
Upanishad
Humans are
social animals. As members of the species, we are embedded within social
systems from the time of our birth to the time of our death. It has always been
so. We cannot survive our infancy without the support of a social order. Our
natural condition as adults is to engage in social interaction. If we’re ever
incarcerated, solitary confinement is the penultimate sanction for abrogation
of the rules of the social order, exceeded only by execution. Should we seek to
do so, our abilities to lead solitary lives devoid of social contact are
characteristics more tolerated than endorsed by the social systems in which we
exist. Personal isolation is not our normal posture. In the XVIIth
Century, John Donne expressed this social state of being in his Meditation XVII
(published in the Works of John Donne
by Henri Alford):
No man
is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part
of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well
as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own
were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and
therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
A social
existence is not the result of a lifestyle selection on our parts. We are
driven to seek social acceptance and social structure by our physiological
makeup. Our perception of the world around us is defined by our sensory system
and the stimuli for our response to that world are driven by needs that have
common form across all members of the species. Hence, Donne’s reflection
addresses not a personal choice, but rather a physiological condition of the
biophysical person. At least since the emergence of proto-historical records
and artifacts of modern humans more than 30,000 years ago, social structures
have extended beyond those based purely on