[Glass Joe]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

The tao that can be named is not the tao.

Originally Posted by moviestar

No. If something is to be experienced, there must be something that experiences. So that which experiences and the experience are two different things. Hence there is a duality, oneness cannot be experienced.

Originally Posted by Frans

To experience something, you must have the ability to compare that experience with other experiences, there must be a reference.
In this model where "all is one", it is impossible to experience oneness, because there are no references to other things.

However, it is possible to experience oneness indirectly: if you bring yourself in illusion.

To do so, create an illusory world in your imagination.
Enter that world as one of the millions of living beings, not knowing what your real identity is.
Let all kinds of things happen that make you think about your existence, until you realize what
your real identity is.
Then you can experience oneness.

Great stuff. Thank you.

I think it's impossible too. But if oneness can be experienced at all, I'd say that oneness would have to be like an everyday ordinary experience. Like engaging in a long passionate kiss, or sitting in traffic, or taking a dump. Oneness would be no big deal. Nothing particularly unique or special.

I say this because it seems like a lot of people can already accept the idea that "oneness" would have to mean the total collapse of any concept or sensation of a physical existence. Concepts like "here" or "there", "outside" or "inside", "figure" and "background", "all" or "nothing", would be totally meaningless and cease to exist in a state of oneness.

What's a little harder, at least for me, is to realize that oneness would also have to include the total collapse of any concept or sensation of time. Concepts like "now" and "then", "past", "present", and "future" would be meaningless. Even the experience of "The Now" that's talked about in books like "The Power of Now" wouldn't exist for you and would be totally meaningless in a state of oneness. With oneness it's all the same. Time would have no meaning and is just a mental construct that no longer exists for you. Just as with how the three physical dimensions would have no meaning and would cease to exist for you.

So, with this collapse of these three spatial dimensions, along with the temporal dimension, not to mention any other dimensions that we can't even experience directly (aren't there theoretically 11+ dimensions or something?), the "experience of oneness" would have to be always and everywhere. And, for that matter, this "oneness experience" would also simultaneously have to be never and nowhere as well.

If you say you "experience oneness", that means you'd have to also experience oneness each and every nanosecond of your life. You'd also have to experience it before you were born and after your death. You'd even have to experience it before the Big Bang and after the Big Crunch.

So in summary, along the lines with what Frans already said, I guess it's simultaneously totally possible and totally impossible to "experience oneness". It just comes down to who/what is doing the experiencing. But answering that question - trying to pin down exactly "who" or "what" - is a whole other can of worms.