BEGINNING ARITHMETIC

(Warning! Relates to Mathematics)

In laying out the undergirding of the universe, Consciousness scares up a few cute little numbers, imbedded in the process, that play around with each other and trade hats.

1+1+1=1, as apple+apple+apple=apple.

It is only one plus not-one that equal two. Male and female equal two. Yin and Yang equal two.

In symbolic logic, “not-one” is notated “-1”. So 1+[-1]=2; but of course 1+[-1]=0, also.

So duality, balancing opposites, are generated from No Thing, creating greater love.

One is all, one is none. If “oneness” is in a sense beyond qualities, then it is not black only, not white only, not homogenous or void. When a black and white spiral is sent whirling on a pinwheel, we suddenly see colors. We may see black, white, colors and varied dualities within oneness, while they might not “really” be there. They may “cancel out,” not to zero or oneness, but to asymmetric, dynamic shiftings, a magic show, the Tao.

Yin and yang are as much oneness as they are two or none.

None is one. When God is one, God is zero. God is a full and loving Nothingness, beginningless uncreated Being, and omnifertile parent, and rest, and peace that has no end.

In meditating, I know the God that Is, the Nothing that Exists. This phenomenal theatre of ours with its Oneness is the shadow-play of No Thingness.

Everything tends towards the neutral. On the grand scale, the opposite complements balance out to zero. Yet remember, they don’t lock us in, they simply open out.

And individuals tend to the neutral, too. Heavenly bodies tend to a global shape. Plants and animals tend towards symmetry. Throughout nature, males and females only slightly differ physically. A piece of music plays until the highs and lows of the notes have evened out. The day casts deep shadows to sleep in, the night is bright enough to see, death is in life as life is in death.

So the ledgers are kept balanced. Yet within all the shades of difference lies the wonder of encounter. As much as we feel trapped by karmic or physical laws of equal and opposite reaction when we’re at the human level of appearance, we really aren’t bound or constrained or indebted in any way. Realizing this is a spiritual universe, we see that we spin out from the circle of reaction with a free play of opposites, lovingly embraced by sacred relationship in Oneness. Such is our divine nature.

The yin and yang qualities within each of us, as we’re each our own opposite:

0: Yin, feminine, perfectly balanced. A necklace of pearls all touching. A resting place.

1: Yang, masculine, phallic, imbalanced, odd and at odds, swerving through difficulties, the rectangle of the golden mean which spirals out. Fence posts separated.

Again, “All is one, one is none, none is all.” “0” and “1” are both forms of infinite No Thingness, complementary, really one thing, both needed, neither better, both divine.

There isn’t a separated zero or one, what happens is a spiral.

What does “God is One” encompass and surpass? Separation and opposition, kingdoms of good or evil: these temporary visions serve their purpose.

“One” also means limitless unity, containing both No Thingness and our entire fall collection.

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So all the things in this universe of duality add up only to two. 0=1=2. Three is the number beyond the human world, the third time is the charm, the fairy tale number of completion we all remember. “Three” is “one” transmuted, lifted up. “Three” is the journey from Beyond-form, through this human interim, to the tenderly apocalyptic completion, the Renewed World.

Three is a number at the mystic center of all religion. Different religions concentrate on different aspects of 0, 1, 2, 3, interweaving and building on each other. We need to know each deeply.

Vedanta/Buddhism teaches us Zero, the underlying perfection.

Islam/Judaism teaches us One, the unity of manifestation.

Taoism teaches us Two, how Beyond-form splits into balancing, active opposites.

Christianity teaches us Three, how the opposites marry and give birth to the Child, to sacred relationship within the spiritual awareness of Oneness. The illumined branch of each faith grasps this. Which returns us to the Zero of the Source, which we drink up, meditatively.

God appearing. As the One individual, symbolizing everything in the universe and beyond. As the Couple, things balancing in a Taoist way. As the Couple and Child, the birth of a Conscious world, returning, reconciling, incorporating, transfiguring all that’s gone before.

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Music springs up out of Nothing and its intuitively balanced form is consonant with Nothingness.

Each piece of music emanates from and returns to the source, and reflects the source as a living mirror image, with all the surrounding lines of sound likewise mirroring each microcosm strand. As in physics or math, the metaphysical principles are found to underlie every metaphor in the world.

All musical harmonies are supposedly in ratios using only numbers to five. The vast complexities, in our sleep, boil down to such simplicities. The simple meanings of 0, 1, 2, 3---they’re metaphors as in fairy tales and religion.

In sacred mathematics, as in science, the divine experience is encountered by using the intellect as both buffer and scout. Also, Beloved, the inherently perfect proportion emanating from O can be further sensed in a meditation, a marriage, a wave, a tree dancing.

Now Now: The simplest repeating produces awesome intricacy.

Chaos math: that a slight nudge to a couple of simple factors results in unending complexities.

Life isn’t overtly precisely equipoised like a mandala; its mobile composition, both grand and fine, slinks with superb subtlety. Life unrolls unpredictably, yet we see the appropriate lessons and patterns in retrospect---this shows how we need to learn substantially, filling in what is sketched there in principle, in blueprint.

Strict mathematics suggests the hidden ordering power of the realm beyond form descending as the supposed “laws of nature,” while chaos math shows the unpremeditated character of the unfolding. A very simple system can rapidly generate incalculable complexity which still contains various special properties or tendencies, the “strange attractors.” Even though we are omniscient, it becomes supremely easy to generate such an unforeseeable, free, yet regulated system, if it’s our intention to do so. God is like mothers at a playground, both the mothers and the kids at play.

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Seven

The number seven is a skyhook balancing impossibly, for our trekking through human awareness in Operation Bootstrap, a chess knight trickily jumping around the multiplication table.

Seven shapes into an ocean wave. It builds up lengthily, then suddenly breaks. So the history of the world, the history of a life. The sleepwalking goes on long enough for us to prepare everything, then things overturn. “Seven days” are enough to work through the permutations and reach the lazy eight of infinity.

If the human eye is shown dots on a screen so quickly it can’t move, the eye can count up to 7 dots. A crow can tally up to 7 men who go hide behind a wall.

The catchy syncopated little number that asymmetrically turns an instantaneous volleying twixt yin and yang into the beauteous waves. In its completing of things, 7 reprises the job of number 3, but as we Sufis point out, it does it with enough complexity (all the mind can grasp, you see) to make a lengthy universe along the way.

There’s an unboundedness to everything. Counting past about seven: The shepherd immediately scopes out the missing sheep from a large flock, as does the pastor; the news picks up the massiveness of a march; but is this counting exactly?

Like the sine wave, mathematical design in the world embodies the principles beyond. In music, art, or watching a slamdunk, we sense the correctness, the proportions. Yet it isn’t finalized or boxed, we have no uniformity in measurement. We are both tiny and huge; one second may vary wildly from the next.

Yellow stripes on the road flash by, lap each other, are used up, leave. When we count in this human dream, we tick round a cramped knotted pen. We find no safety in numbers. Awakening to infinity is bracing and liberating, fluctuating. Each item in a series is unique. Loaves and fishes can multiply, they have no constraint.

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It’s ambiguous whether 7 or 8 notes make up an octave--- does the last “do” belong to the next octave?---we’re all aswoon. Just beyond seven, past understanding, is 8. The sacred symbol 8 depicts the reconciling and joining of two globes, such as alpha and omega, or divine and human awareness.

Beyond the completion of this human world, at the end of the hourglass, everything is raised up from lazy eight ∞ to 8, from the endless repetitions of this world to eternality in the moment, and everything is overturned, transmuted, born, chosen, the glass is turned.

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People have a sense of infinity, which makes grasping the principles of 0, 1, 2, 3, of mammoth 7 and 8 easily imaginable.

The space between two touching fingers,

Yawning nightsprawled galaxies

Consider the difference between no dimensions at all, and the most infinitesimal smidge of space. Did you ever lie in bed, sensing your body enormously expand, minutely contract? Herein lies infinity.

When I was three, I lived in a set of apartment houses surrounding a playground. One day, Father took me for a walk. Here was another set of buildings encircling another playground, then another and another. As in a dream, we open a door and find new rooms in the house. A suddenly enlarging awareness, with no end to it felt. Herein lies infinity.

Symbolisms of the Infinity Sign

First. ∞ In our finite fears: A flow with no destination, swallowing its tail, birth only prefigured, just a sinewave of O’s.

In our fears: Mitosis, the beginning. Then the nightmare end of the cosmos. The lax eight, a rubber band, pulls apart, the farther stretched, the more urgent to snap back.

Second. Going deeper: When a system seems complete and understood, we’re trapped in a circle. When the O loops over admitting a mysterious Other, infinite multiplicity appears.

By looping over, instead of the solitary confinement we fear, two facing identicals become reverse images, your left my right. The unseeable and the visible world are One, two identicals looping over and creating distinction. Me facing You, receiving and giving Love.