"Each human being is a true and comprehensive unit of Existence."

Hazrat Salaheddin Ali Nader Angha

For more than three hundred years, the notion of "Newtonian" images of the universe dominated our understanding of the individual and society. Newton’s model of the universe reflects a machine consisting of many parts. To understand the whole machine and its overall function, he suggests that one needs to separate the parts and analyze each piece in detail. Then by putting it back together, the whole can be understood. We used this model to understand our universe and ourselves. We created limitations and boundaries in all directions. By becoming expert reductionists, we lost the big picture.

Now that we are at the beginning of the new millennium, at least the science of our time should be applied. We have now been introduced to the Quantum view of reality, the subatomic world of relations and connections. Quantum physics unfolded these invisible connections between parts that were previously thought to be separate. It makes us realize that space in not empty and everything in the universe is naturally connected, but it is invisible to the individual at his/her limited state of being.1

The science of our time is now beginning to realize the wholeness of the human being and his connection to the essence of existence or in another word, the Being. In limitation, we focus only on the physical aspect of our being and overlook the infinite, boundless dimension within us. We do not focus on the individual as a true and comprehensive unit of existence. University of London physicist David Bohm states that "everything implicates everything." According to Bohm, there is a deeper level of reality and an underlying unity that we are not aware of.2

This discovery is in agreement with the most basic teachings of Sufism: that there is an underlying reality and an infinite aspect of our being that is as vast and unbounded as existence itself. Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram states: "the writings of the mystics demonstrate that they have discovered techniques to move beyond the 'explicate order' to behold the true nature of our reality as human beings." 3

Sufism provides the roadmap to re-discover our reality as a whole person, and realize the unity within.