Unity and Division

One of the sacred cows of the modern world, especially the modern spiritual world, is unity but if we look back we see that while unity was always valued in the past, it was not under any terms. In other words, unity was important but other things were more important. Chief among these, of course, was truth. What good is unity if it is based on falsehood? But now we put unity above all else and inevitably sacrifice not only truth but any ideas of higher and lower as well. For unity is based on quantity and, if enforced, will result in the loss of quality which is what we increasingly have today.

So sometimes in order to protect truth what matters is not unity but division.

I am aware that this is a heretical thing to say in the modern world but this conclusion had been forced on me by the current state of the world as an ever greater push towards unity results in an ever greater loss of truth in its higher aspects.  And I am comforted in this conclusion by the fact that Jesus said he did not come to bring peace but a sword.  What does a sword do? It divides, specifically, in this sense, it divides truth from falsehood.

Unity is good and much to be desired but not at any cost. There is a higher unity and a lower unity and only the former is worth having. For unity is primarily a spiritual thing which means it operates at an inner level and not necessarily on an outer one.  Indeed it may be wrong outwardly if it results in a falling away from truth and leads to an undifferentiated uniformity of ignorance. Quality, which is spiritual, is always to be valued over material quantity as long as life exists in an expressed form. Creation itself is based on quality and if we envisage the world of created beings as a ladder stretching from earth to heaven we see that there may be one ladder, the ladder of life, but there are many rungs. Sometimes we are led to ignore the oneness of the ladder. At others we ignore the reality of the rungs. Both matter.

To sum up. Truth is more important than unity and, though unity may be part of truth, it is not the whole of it