All is One
How the pieces of life’s puzzle fit together
by
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7.1 Why are we in need of opening up at all?
The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.[i][i]
Thomas Aquinas
There is a fine story about a student who came to a rabbi and said, “In the olden days there were men who saw the face of God. Why don’t they anymore?” The rabbi replied, “Because nowadays nobody can stoop so low.”[ii][ii]
Carl G. Jung
The inward person is not at all in time or place but is purely and simply in eternity.[iii][iii]
Meister Eckhart
During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. ... Among all my patients in the second half of life—that is to say, over thirty-five—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. ... none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.[iv][iv]
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About the Book
Like so many others upon reaching adulthood, the author abandoned the fundamentalist church of his childhood and studying electronics and physics confirmed him in his belief that religious faith belonged to the past, and that science would ultimately be able to give all the answers and solve our problems.
But that belief was seriously undermined by a 'synchronistic' experience during a skiing holiday in the French Vosges, which triggered his search for an answer by reading widely. He also experimented with a meditation technique and when pondering about several 'impossible' experiences during retreats he participated in, the pieces of life's puzzle suddenly fell together into their proper places. He is now convinced that religion (in the true sense of the word) is the most important pursuit we should be involved in.
Using an ocean model in which the material world can be represented as waves on the surface of the ocean of the One, the many facts that cannot be accommodated within a scientific framework are explained. Many of these are described, supporting his claims with extensive quotations and references. He also discovered that many spiritual teachers have taught the same basic insight, viz. that the truth cannot be found by using our heads (investigating the ocean's surface 'horizontally'), but that we have to follow our hearts (explore the ocean's depths 'vertically').
So if you are just curious, or have a personal experience that cannot be fitted within the confines of a (horizontal) scientific framework, the book ‘All is One’ is Joop van Montfoort’s answer to the question of ‘How the pieces of life’s puzzle fit together’.
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About the Author
The author grew up within the well-protected environment of a fundamentalist church, which also implied him going to schools and clubs with the correct denominational labels.
But in his teens, during catechism instruction, he refused to accept the teaching, expounded by their minister, that everyone who was not a Christian would go to hell. Although the other churches were clearly mistaken in their teachings, for their members the gates of heaven might still be opened when they arrived there; but for those who had not been saved by the ‘Blood of the Lamb’, there was only eternal damnation in the fires of hell. This made the break with his family’s religious tradition unavoidable.
During the 1940s he progressed from building a crystal radio to those using radio valves, and this led to him studying electronics at college. After fulfilling his National Service obligations, he joined Philips where he worked on the design of electronic solutions for problems, for internal as well as for external customers. There he was also given the opportunity to study physics, and ended his industrial career, travelling widely to promote the sales of their range of digital Circuitblocks. Subsequently from the early 1960s onwards, he joined different nuclear research programmes, ending up at JET in Oxfordshire, UK.
A number of experiences that could not be fitted within a scientific framework, led to reading widely and participating in relevant symposia. Because of his interventions, he was asked in the 1980s to run a course at Oxford, covering in outline the material presented in his book. After early retirement, he helped his wife running a spiritual retreat for some twenty years on Exmoor, where he wrote the book ‘All is One’.