The One and the Many: From Consciousness to Tawḥīd

“Indeed, you cannot guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills.”

Qur’an, 28:56

My Journey

Many years ago, I lived in Kerala, where I had gone for entirely different reasons related to my studies. It was an unexpected journey, although I had dreamed for a long time of finding myself in India, immersed in the traffic, the vivid colours of saris, and the complexity of a culture so different from my own. A few months later, that dream came true, without there having been, at least apparently, any previously cultivated desire or conscious plan behind it.

If the events of our lives can be traced back to our intentions, I can now say that there are also circumstances in which opportunities seem to emerge before we are fully aware that we were seeking them. The original purpose of my journey, when I was still very young, soon transformed into something entirely different. If I write and study Islam today, it is also because of a series of events that, at the time, seemed insignificant, but which eventually brought me back to India twice more—this time to study yoga and Vedāntic philosophy in greater depth.

Before arriving at Islam, therefore, I had passed through other religious and philosophical traditions. Even my childhood had already been marked by a particular relationship with the search for the sacred: as the daughter of an anthropologist, I was exposed from an early age to different cultures, cosmologies, rituals, beliefs in spirits, and the many ways in which human beings have sought God.

For me, a religion can be considered convincing when its overall structure holds together as a system. By a “complex system,” I mean its ability to offer a coherent metaphysical explanation of the different elements that make up our experience, without necessarily contradicting what we understand through reason and scientific knowledge.

And so, after a very long period of spiritual and intellectual “warming up,” and after leaving Christian religious education because I had never received an explanation of the Trinity that I found convincing, I increasingly focused on the study of yoga and Vedāntic philosophy. At the same time, I became interested in anatomy and, above all, in the nature of thought, consciousness, and our role as observers of what takes place within us and in the external world.

In Vedānta, and particularly in Advaita Vedānta, it is held that ultimate reality is not, in the final analysis, composed of a multiplicity of separate subjects and objects in the way we ordinarily perceive them. Ordinary perception presents the world to us as consisting of distinct individuals and phenomena; beneath this multiplicity, however, Advaita identifies a unified reality: Brahman, understood as the absolute and ultimate reality.

This idea inevitably led me to question the relationship between perception and reality.

Some experiments in quantum physics have shown that microscopic systems can be prepared in states of superposition, in which certain properties cannot simply be described as though the system already possessed one definite value independently of measurement. Such results are deeply counterintuitive when compared with our everyday experience.

This raises an even more radical philosophical question: How much of the separation we perceive actually belongs to the ultimate structure of reality, and how much depends instead on the way our minds organise experience?

It is precisely in this context that some mystical traditions have developed the idea that what we experience every day may be a kind of “projected reality,” in which events and objects appear to be separate in space and time while, at a deeper level, belonging to a unified reality.

But after years of practising yoga and studying concepts that, at least in my experience, were difficult to extend into a scientifically testable explanation, I began asking myself an even more fundamental question:

What makes us conscious?

In Advaita Vedānta, individual consciousness is not ultimately regarded as an independent reality. Fundamental consciousness is associated with Brahman and, in the classical formulation of Advaita, Ātman and Brahman are identical.

This idea can be illustrated through a traditional metaphor: the sun reflected in many mirrors. We may see many reflections and regard them as distinct, but there is only one sun. Likewise, according to this perspective, there appear to be many individual consciousnesses, while beneath their apparent multiplicity there would be one Consciousness.

It was precisely at this point that my journey began to take a different direction.

I found myself asking: If, at the ultimate level, all consciousnesses were truly one consciousness, what would ground the distinction between my thoughts and yours, between my intention and yours, between my choice and your responsibility?

The idea of a single universal consciousness is certainly fascinating from a mystical perspective. Yet, for me, it introduces a metaphysical difficulty: if the distinction between individual consciousnesses were merely apparent, then we would still need to explain what could genuinely ground subjectivity, deliberation, intention, and individual responsibility.

This is where Islamic tawḥīd began to appear to me as different—and, for me, more coherent.

Islam simultaneously preserves two fundamental affirmations: God is absolutely One, and human beings are genuinely distinct from Him and from one another.

Allah is One, yet we are distinct creatures endowed with reason, will, and responsibility. Our consciousness is not a part of God, nor is God a part of our consciousness. Consciousness belongs to creation; God belongs to an entirely different ontological order: that of the Creator.

This distinction seems fundamental to me. Tawḥīd allows us to speak of absolute unity without turning the multiplicity of creation into a mere illusion and without identifying God with the universe.

This leads to a second, even more difficult question:

Where does intention arise from, before I consciously choose to have it?

If we were all, literally, part of a single universal consciousness, then our intentions too would ultimately seem to belong to a single subject. The distinction between “I want” and “you want” would then become merely apparent. This would make the explanation of free will, moral responsibility, and individual identity extraordinarily difficult.

The problem becomes even deeper if God is identified with the totality of reality.

If God were part of creation, then He would have to be situated within a reality upon which He depended. But that which is contingent and dependent cannot, by definition, be the ultimate explanation of its own existence.

The Islamic conception addresses this through a radical ontological distinction: Allah is the Creator, while everything other than Allah belongs to creation.

God is not an element within the universe. He is not an object located within space and time, because space and time belong to created reality. He is the foundation of the existence of creation without being a part of creation.

From this perspective:

·        Allah is the Creator, not an element of the universe.

·        Creation is contingent upon and dependent on Him.

·        Space and time belong to the created order and are not a container within which God must be located.

·        God is not a part of some cosmic unity; He is the ground of the existence of created reality.

·        The multiplicity of the world does not imply multiplicity in God.

·        Divine unity does not erase the real distinction between created beings.

This framework appears to me to be metaphysically more sustainable because it allows two fundamental requirements to remain together: ultimate unity and real distinction.

The Qur’an, moreover, does not reduce the human being to mere sensory perception. It speaks of an inner dimension of the human being capable of understanding, discerning, and recognising truth. At the same time, it establishes a limit to human knowledge when speaking of the rūḥ:

“They ask you about the Spirit. Say: ‘The Spirit is of the command of my Lord, and you have been given of knowledge only a little.’”(Qur’an 17:85)

This verse particularly resonates with me because it does not attempt to provide a simplistic explanation of consciousness. On the contrary, it acknowledges that there are aspects of our own nature that remain beyond the limits of our full knowledge.

Consciousness, therefore, belongs to creation, while God is its Creator and its ultimate ground.

The question of will can also be situated within this framework. In Islam, Allah creates the human being, their faculties, and the very capacity to act; nevertheless, the human being wills, chooses, and is held responsible for those choices.

The Qur’an holds both dimensions together:

“For whoever among you wills to take the straight path. But you do not will unless Allah wills.”(Qur’an 81:28–29)

Human beings therefore possess a real will, but that will does not exist independently of God.

We might represent the process, at least phenomenologically, as:

existence → perception → desire → intention → choice → action → responsibility

The ultimate origin of intention remains a complex question. But tawḥīd allows me to ask it without having to dissolve the individuality of the human person into a universal consciousness.

This, ultimately, is why tawḥīd began to convince me.

Not because it denies unity, but because it defines unity differently.

Absolute unity belongs to God; multiplicity belongs to creation. We may be profoundly interconnected, share the same origin, and depend upon the same Creator without therefore being a single consciousness.

Tawḥīd thus allows us to affirm simultaneously the absolute unity of God and the genuine individuality of human beings. And it is precisely this distinction that preserves the possibility of reason, choice, intention, and moral responsibility.

For me, the question is therefore not simply whether to choose between “unity” and “multiplicity.” The deeper question is: What kind of unity can account for reality without destroying the distinction between the one who knows, the one who chooses, and that which is known?

It is in the answer provided by tawḥīd—the Absolute One, distinct from creation, upon whom everything depends—that I have found a metaphysical framework capable, at least for me, of holding together consciousness, reason, freedom, responsibility, and the search for God.