The First Principle of Peace

Recognising the Unity of Being as the Ground of a New Civilisation

Jun 12, 2025

What if the divisions we see in the world – between individuals, communities, nations, and between humanity and the earth – all stem from a single misunderstanding? And what if the remedy is not something new to be invented, but something ancient to be remembered: the simple recognition that we are not separate? This essay is an exploration of that recognition – not as a philosophical idea or religious belief, but as the foundation for love, justice, and the next stage in human civilisation.

The Unity of Being

Humanity has long struggled with suffering – in our own hearts, between our communities, and across nations. At the same time, we have degraded the earth – the very ground upon which we depend, and with which we are one.

Explanations for these crises often remain on the surface. As a result, our leaders seek peace through discussion and diplomacy – an effort that, at best, produces a fragile alliance. But the mind is restless and ever-shifting. Any peace built upon it cannot last.

The only lasting peace – within yourself or between people – must rest on something deeper than the mind, something unchanging. It must be founded on a truth that does not shift with opinion, belief or circumstance – one that holds for all people, in all places, at all times.

Not a local custom, nor a passing mood, but a universal reality.

What seems like a tangle of unrelated crises begins, on deeper examination, to trace back to a single thread: the presumption of separation. This is the belief that your essential self – the very fact of being – is limited, time-bound, and cut off from the whole. According to this view, each person stands alone, a solitary fragment cast adrift from others, from nature, and from the source from which all things arise.

Once you take yourself to be separate – a self enclosed within the body and defined by thought – that belief permeates your entire inner and outer life. It informs almost every thought and feeling, and finds expression in actions and relationships. Even your most noble intentions are marked by it. When your understanding is fragmented, the world you build around yourself will mirror that fragmentation. You continue to sow division even in the very attempts you make to heal it.

Much of the conflict and hostility in the world today – whether between individuals, communities or nations, or in our relationship with the earth – can be traced back to the overlooking of a single fact: that all people, animals and things share their being.

Any remedy that fails to recognise this will offer, at best, only a temporary reprieve. The seed of conflict – the belief in separation – will remain concealed in the very solution, waiting to ripen once again into division or destruction. This is why even the most well-intentioned movements, sustained by years of effort and conviction, so often fall short of the transformation they seek.

The Original Insight

We must return to something more fundamental – so simple and self-evident that it is easily overlooked. This understanding is not new. In the seventh century BCE, the words ‘Know Thyself’ were carved above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. A century or two later, the philosopher Parmenides suggested that all things arise from, and remain within, a single, unchanging reality – infinite, indivisible being.

At the same time, this same recognition was taking root in the East. The Upanishads spoke of it as the identity of the individual self with the ultimate reality of the universe. A few centuries later, it was echoed in Christianity as ‘I and the Father are one.’

This shared insight – that reality is one, not two – lies at the heart of all the great spiritual traditions. Though expressed in different forms and languages, each points to the same truth, shaped by the needs and culture of its time.

This being – this indivisible wholeness – is not remote or abstract. It is known directly as the simple sense of am at the heart of every experience, and the quiet is that shines through all things. Whole and complete in itself, it neither seeks nor lacks. It is untouched by division, and at rest in itself.

And you know it – intimately. For it is what you are.

Your being is not separate or solitary. It is shared – not only with all people, but with animals, with nature, with all things. This is the foundation of love: not the feeling, but the recognition that we are not truly other to one another.

What would it be like if this simple understanding – that we share our being – were the single principle upon which all relationships, communities, and governments were founded? What kind of society might grow from that one recognition?

Returning to the Experience of Being

How, then, do we come to this understanding, not only as individuals, but as a society?

Ask yourself: Am I aware of being? Am I aware that I am?

The answer is immediate and certain: Yes, I am. That knowing – I am – is not something you believe, achieve or construct. It is not a product of thought or circumstance. It is the background of all experience, present before anything else is known.

Before you knew I am a woman, I am a man, I am Muslim, I am Jewish, I am poor, I am rich – you knew I am. This primary knowing is the same in everyone. It stands prior to all identities and outlasts all roles.

Just as houses differ in shape, size and colour, yet are all filled with the same invisible space, so each of us wears a different name and form, yet remains imbued with the same silent presence. Just as the space in your bedroom is no different from the space in a room on the other side of the world, the being in you is the same as the being in all.

This shared being is what we call love – not a feeling, but the recognition of unity beneath appearance. That is why cruelty or violence feels like such a deep violation. You suffer when others are harmed because you feel that, in truth, what happens to them happens to you.

Acting from Unity

If we are to live in harmony – as individuals, as communities, as a civilisation – our thoughts, relationships and institutions must come into alignment with this understanding.

Before relating to someone as a man or a woman, as Muslim or Jew, as poor or wealthy, relate to the being in them. You both call yourself by the same name: I. That alone is a reminder of your shared nature.

Every thought and feeling, every word and gesture, every structure you create expresses the worldview from which it springs. Let that worldview express the simple truth that being is one – and that we share it.

As Saint Augustine said: “Love, and do what you will.” In other words – recognise the unity of being, and let your actions flow from that recognition.

This is not only the path to coherence within yourself; it is the foundation for peace and justice between communities and nations, and the beginning of a restored relationship with the earth. The next step in human evolution is not technological or political, but existential – a radical shift in identity, from the sense of being a separate self to the recognition that your being is shared.

Let the unity of being become the foundation of your life. Let it inform how you think, how you speak, how you act, how you live. In this way, you become part of a new humanity – not defined by race or creed, nation or belief, but by the simple recognition that there is only one being, shining in and as all things.

The world can only rest when its foundations are true.