Lillian DeWaters · The One (1937) · Infinite Way Metaphysics

The Hidden Mysteries of Oneness: The Nothingness of Personality and the Allness of Being

A reading of Lillian DeWaters' "The One" — presented by Mike Spirit Ademola

What if the very thing you call "yourself" — your name, your history, your personality — was never the truth of your being at all? In 1937, the mystical writer Lillian DeWaters published a small book called The One, distilling nearly thirty years of spiritual writing into a single, startling claim: there is only one being, one life, one presence, appearing as every person on earth. Not a metaphor. Not a nice idea. A fact to be known.

This teaching sits at the root of the Infinite Way tradition that Herb Fitch would later carry forward, and hearing it in DeWaters' own words shows how far back — and how deep — this vision of oneness actually goes.

The Nothingness of Personality

DeWaters opens with a claim that unsettles before it heals: personality — your habits, your history, your name — is not who you are. It is simply "man as he appears." Truth, she insists, is impersonal, and since man is made in the image of truth, man is impersonal too.

"To perceive the nothingness of personality brings speedy deliverance, for it is the angel carrying healing in its wings... In the glorious vision of the One, is there any room for jealousy, for strife, slander, misunderstanding, unforgiveness?"

This isn't a call to erase yourself. It's an invitation to stop mistaking the costume for the wearer — to see that beneath every difference of name, race, or history, the same one life is looking out through every pair of eyes.

What One Sees, Another Sees

DeWaters makes a striking observation about spiritual progress itself: as humanity draws nearer to truth, people everywhere begin thinking and feeling more alike on the subject — proof, she says, of the oneness she's describing. She illustrates this with the story of the first solo Atlantic flight, after which others quickly followed with "the same vision and intent."

"What one sees, another sees; what one is having revealed to him, another is also having revealed to him... this vision will continue until mankind forgets to struggle, forgets to be selfish, forgets to think of personality."

Insight, in this view, isn't private property. Once truth is seen clearly by one, it becomes available to all — because there was never more than one seer to begin with.

There Is No Other to Injure You — or to Blame

Perhaps the most practical (and most challenging) section of DeWaters' teaching concerns how we treat one another. If there is truly only one being, she argues, then injuring another — even in thought — rebounds entirely on yourself, because there is no "other" being injured.

"To be robbed by another is to be a robber in one's own heart; to be killed by another is to be a murderer oneself... if one actually knows and asserts the oneness of all being, he will not see another, but will see the oneself only, and herein is his protection."

She follows this with vivid anecdotes — a man who mentally held off an armed threat, another whose ticket vanished from a policeman's hand — offered not as guarantees against consequence, but as evidence that seeing truly changes what we are exposed to.

The Maple Tree: A Healing Through Vision, Not Effort

DeWaters shares a personal account of her child's persistent cough, worsening whenever DeWaters entered the room. Sitting by a window one day, her attention settled on a great maple tree outside — thousands of leaves, each touching its neighbors, none depending on any other for its life, each simply joined to the branch and the branch to the trunk.

"No individual on earth depended in any way on another, nor could the life or harmony of anyone be influenced by another, for each belongs to the One. With this insight came the instantaneous healing of the child."

The healing didn't come from trying harder to think positively about the cough. It came from a shift in vision — seeing the actual structure of oneness so clearly that the belief in dependency and vulnerability simply had nowhere left to stand.

The Mirror and the Dream: How Truth Is Known, Not Manufactured

How does one actually practice this teaching? DeWaters offers two images. The first is a mirror: you don't force yourself into a mirror to see your reflection — you simply stand before it, and the reflection appears without effort. Truth, she says, is known the same way: not manufactured by strenuous thinking, but reflected the moment you stand before it.

"As one gets into the mirror, so to speak, without effort or strain, so does one know the truth without an actual process of thought taking place at all. This is what is called spiritual consciousness."

Her second image is a dream: a sleeping man dreams he is starving on a street, while his well-fed body rests safely in bed. No amount of describing food to the dream-figure helps, because the dream-figure isn't real — only the sleeper is. Likewise, she teaches, spiritual man was never actually born into a world of sickness and lack; he only dreams that he was, while his true being rests, whole and untouched, in what she calls heaven — the ever-present reality underneath the dream of mortal life.