Separation or Unity – What is the Nature of Reality?

    The Western world loves to compartmentalize, creating boxes of separation so that the complexities of life are easier to comprehend and simpler to cope with. We separate work from family life, spiritual practice from sexuality, social policy from corporate profit, and art from infrastructure. We manifest these divisions not only in society at large but also within ourselves, separating our minds from our hearts and our bodies from our souls.

    Although there are many who have helped instill this pattern of separation, one of the most influential was the seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes. Descartes divided everything into two mutually exclusive but interacting categories, “res cognitans” (the subjective realm of consciousness and thought) and “res extensa” (the objective realm of the material world). His distinction was very useful, clearing the way for science to progress rapidly, free of interference from the dogma of religious doctrine.

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