The following excerpt is taken from the book Life’s Operating Manual by Tom Shadyac. It is published by Hay House (May 1, 2013) and will be available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com.

dividing god
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The reason why the world lacks unity,
and lies broken and in heaps,
is because man is disunited with himself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

When preparing to film the documentary I AM, I told a friend I planned on asking two questions: What’s wrong with the world? and What can we do about it? She responded, “Wow. That’s going to be one long documentary!” With all due respect to my friend, I see things differently. War, genocide, greed, economic inequity, the environmental crisis, racism, slavery, bullying, school shootings, high murder and crime rates, high rates of depression and suicide—virtually all are traceable to a single, simple root cause; a root cause that has disconnected mankind from nature, reality, himself. This root cause is the story we are now telling ourselves: the story that we are competitive and corrupt; that we are not brothers and sisters; that we are not one with all of creation. Consider this: the word devil in Greek etymology, is rooted in the word, diabollein, meaning to tear apart, or to divide. So the devil,* beyond any ideas of good and evil, is the force that separates, that divides. In direct contrast, God, according to the mystical traditions, unites; God is indivisible; God is one. Thus, the poet Hafiz wisely observed, we have exhausted ourselves dividing God all day, and thus need rest.

Of course, politicians, the media, and a host of institutions advocate a very different message; that complicated factors have created the crises of the day. But like a body manifesting multiple symptoms—fever, chills, dizziness, upset stomach, sallow skin tone, vomiting—all of which result from a single poison ingested, so, too, the world’s symptoms are the result of ingesting a single toxic ideology. And if this is indeed true, then the most incredible idea isn’t this singular causal theory of separation, it’s this: if we can identify the cause of the world’s illness, can we not identify the antidote, as well?

* Author’s note: The term devil is not meant to refer to a physical being or to invoke mythological images of a man in a red suit with horns, a pointed tail, and a pitchfork. Here it simply refers to the idea or the energy that pushes us apart, that disunites.