One Is All, All Is One

I recently saw an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, and who would have known that you could pick up something profound from a Japanese cartoon show (popularly known as anime)? Although Animax has had several re-runs of the show, the few times I managed to catch an episode I didn't feel like following the series because it was already late in the season. However, recently Animax started running the show again and I happened to catch the beginning episode so I decided to watch it whenever I could.

Like most anime, Fullmetal Alchemist first started out as manga (comic book series) in 2001 before being adapted into TV in 2003, and then again in 2009 with Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. If you want to know more about the Fullmetal Alchemist universe you can just check out the Fullmetal Alchemist Wikipedia entry. Meantime, I would just like to focus on one particular episode, Episode 12: One Is All, All Is One (the same title I decided to use for this article). This episode details the time the Elric brothers (the main protagonists) were left in a small island by their alchemy teacher so that they could learn to survive and at the same time puzzle out the riddle of "one is all, all is one." How they answered the riddle would determine if they would be qualified to continue studying alchemy or not.

At one point, Edward Elric was already hallucinating from starvation (they had very minimal survival skills that time) when he happened to look upon a trail of ants that started to look like chocolate candy bars in his hallucinatory state. The moment he ate the ants, Edward made the connection between eating a life and living. Earlier in that episode, the Elric brothers caught a rabbit but they couldn't bring themselves to kill it. After the encounter with the ants, Edward then realized that if he had died, the foxes and the rabbits would have eaten him. His body would have been assimilated into the soil, the grass would get their nutrients from the soil, and the rabbit would have eaten the grass (and have indirectly "eaten" Edward's body).

Death is the transition from one form to another, but this transition also allows other life to be sustained when the transitioned form becomes the food that feeds the other. Paradoxically, death gives life. It is a cosmic cycle of life, all of us flowing inexorably from one state to the next, everything interconnected, with our movements governed by a set of cosmic laws.

From the point of view of the universe, we are even smaller than an ant would be to us. We are just "one" within the vast all. However, it is only when these small and seemingly insignificant "ones" are gathered together can an "all" exist. Creation is the totality of all that is. One is all, all is one.

In the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, alchemy is all about discovering the rules that govern life, and then using these rules in order to break things down and rebuild them into another form. Since the natural order of things is already a cycle of breaking down and rebuilding into another form, then life can be said to be one continuous process of alchemy. Alchemy is life itself.

Now how cool is that? I've been reading many different esoteric texts and they pretty much say or hint at the same things that were said above. And it's also so amazing because those short statements summarize the underlying philosophy of these esoteric teachings. There's more to it than that, of course, but for the esoteric student such insights are quite refreshing when seen on TV.

In the Hindu tradition, there are three aspects of divinity. There is Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. As per the teachings of Master Choa Kok Sui, these three aspects of divinity correspond to Light, Love and Power respectively. Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and sustains, while Shiva destroys and restores (also called "creative destruction" or breaking down in order to build up into another form). The interaction of these three aspects of divinity is what is being described in the above featured episode.

If you want to watch the episode itself, you can watch it through You Tube below:



It shouldn't be surprising that Fullmetal Alchemist contains a lot references to esoteric knowledge. Hiromu Arakawa, the creator of the series, once read about the philosopher's stone. She got so inspired with the idea of using alchemy in a manga that she read actual books on alchemy. According to the Wikipedia description, Arakawa was more interested in the philosophical aspects of the different treatises rather than the actual process, so understandably a lot of what we see in Fullmetal Alchemist will be the product of artistic license.

It's still interesting though that some hints of esoteric knowledge still bleed out into the series. For example, a couple of the sigils being used in the series (refer to the image at the start of this article) wouldn't look out of place with the Solomonic pentacles found in the Clavis Salomonis (Key of Solomon). I also saw a reference to the Tree of Life with one of the Names of God written on a sefira. But again, we shouldn't make the mistake of using Fullmetal Alchemist as a practical reference guide. It's interesting for its entertainment value, but to make it something more than what it is would be foolhardy and dangerous.

Nevertheless, a dose of insight in the midst of fun and relaxation is always invigorating. It just reminds me that life always finds an opportunity to teach us something if we knew how to take the hint. The lesson then is not to take life too seriously but remain sensitive enough to get whatever messages that life is trying to give us.

Here's to a fun-filled, but very informative, life!