All is one
Would it seem odd to you if I suggested everything in existence was one being?
I was catching up on some reading and finished an article in Discover magazine about how Albert Einstein rejected a lot of the conclusions of his ideas. Singularities, the underpinnings of black holes; entanglement, or action at a distance; and the expansion of the universe were all initially rejected by Einstein. Even though they were all based on his theory of relativity the ideas just seemed too weird to accept as true. The article made a point of mentioning how today's physicists should be mindful of the limits of their own vision. Not assuming that what you know is all that there is to know.
I've mentioned on this blog some supernatural experiences I've had in the past. One of the more interesting among them was my experience of everything in my immediate vicinity as being me. There's no way you can prove what I experienced happened and there's no way I can prove to you that it did happen, so if you think I'm crazy I won't object. :) Nevertheless it did happen. It also happened after I had read a few years back that all of existence is one being. Having directly experienced a portion of this oneness for a few seconds has really influenced my idea of self. Exactly who are you if it's possible for you and another to be, essentially, the same being?
Something else I came across since that time described incarnations here as foci. That one word, focus, has been like a light bulb for me in trying to understand oneness. If you accept the idea of a soul being separate from a physical body then an incarnation, or focus, would be a focusing of attention on one point: your body. All of who you are wouldn't be "contained" within your physical body, it's just you're focused on or enamored with it. If you think about it it's not too unlike how galaxies, stars, planets, or other things come about. In the case of a star a tremendous amount of gas is attracted by gravity, heat and pressure eventually produce a star. You could liken the attractive force of gravity as like the focusing of attention.
It's certainly been an interesting theory to hold. It has explained to me the ideas of monotheism and polytheism. A singular god would be a misunderstanding of oneness, the connectedness of all, rather than there being some all-powerful being separate from us all. Polytheism I see as identifying more powerful foci as gods, perhaps how an ant might view a human as a god. Still there is the fascinating subject of awareness in regards to this idea of oneness. You are who you seem to be. The bounds of your awareness seems to define your individuality. Fascinating stuff. :)