There Are No Others

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Here is a story I came across some time ago:

A small trader from a village used to sell butter in a nearby town. A shopkeeper there was his regular customer.

Every month, the villager would deliver butter in one-kilogram blocks and, in return, buy provisions like sugar and pulses from the shop.

One day, the shopkeeper decided to check the weight of the butter. To his surprise, each block weighed only 900 grams instead of a kilogram.

When the villager came the following month, the shopkeeper confronted him angrily and asked him to leave. The villager replied, gently:

“Sir, I am a poor man. I cannot afford proper weights. I place the one kilogram of sugar that you give me on one side of the scale and weigh the butter against it.”

The story is simple, yet it carries a quiet insight.

What we give often finds its way back to us.

It prompts a question—what are we really putting out into the world?

Are we carrying doubt, irritation, and restlessness? Or are we able to bring a measure of calm, acceptance, and clarity into our interactions?

There is a principle at work here that goes beyond simple reciprocity.

As Neale Donald Walsch puts it, “There is no one else in the room.”

A similar thought is expressed by Ramana Maharshi, who said, “There are no others.”

These are not merely poetic expressions. They point towards a deeper idea—that at some level, existence is not divided.

What we call separation may only be a way of seeing.

The universe, in that sense, is not a collection of parts, but a single, continuous being. It is not that something was created out of nothing, but that the same essence expresses itself as everything—the ocean, the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon, you and me, the tree and the animal.

There is, in truth, no “other.”

Seen this way, what we give and what we receive are not separate movements. They arise within the same field of being.

And perhaps that is why what we put out into the world returns to us—not as a transaction, but as a reflection.

Portrait of Ramana Maharshi with quote about the idea that there are no others
“There are no others”—a quiet insight into the nature of giving and receiving

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