Unity and Interconnectedness of All Things

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Blake On Religion

He moves on now to the bird world, to show us the relationship of the whole vast world, the unity of the world, that we are all actively related. That you can’t disturb anything at this moment in any way and not actually affect the whole. “A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage.” We think we can catch the little bird and cage it for our amusement, that which should be set free. He said: “How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?” So, the little “Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. A dove house fill’d with doves and Pigeons Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.” Then he moves on to the next state, in what the world would call evolution, but he doesn’t call it that. Now into another aspect of the animal world: “A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A Horse misus’d upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood.” Here is this mental giant who saw the complete relationship of all of us. So I think I could be isolated were I in a dungeon and I thought of you – my thought is affecting the entire universe. I thought of you with envy, or with hate, or with love, whatever the thought was as I conjured you in my mind’s eye and represented to myself as I want you to be, whether it is in hate or in love, I am affecting the whole vast world. And if I believe in the reality of what I have done, it will come to pass. And because we are all one, all interwoven, I will use you without your consent, your knowledge, to fulfill that which I have imagined at that moment. “A Skylark wounded in the wing, A Cherubim does cease to sing.” You wouldn’t think a cherub, one with the seraphim around the throne of God, would — at that very moment when we wound the skylark in its wing — would be silent. But in the inter-related world, all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. So you could not wound a skylark in the wing and expect a cherubim to continue to sing. All of a sudden things come to an end by our misuse of this fantastic power that is ours. For being all imagination, as we misuse the power that is imagination we cause cherubim to become silent. We cause the whole of heaven to cry out when we cage something that should be set loose and free in this world.

Neville, drawing from Blake, teaches that all things in the universe are profoundly interconnected. Every thought, action, or disturbance, no matter how small, affects the entire cosmos, including heavenly beings. This unity means that human imagination, when believed in, can influence and manifest reality, even using others unknowingly, and that misuse of power in the physical world has spiritual repercussions.

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