Blow Your Mind With Numbers: It's all about the One-ness

This is an extract from my new book Soul Strong (Volume One). Many thanks to all those from around the world who have already ordered this. We are now on the third printing of what some have already called "an important book". Thank you for your support!

We can understand more about the Soul through numbers. But rather than using them to count stuff, to establish quantities, we are going to use them to examine what stuff is like, its qualities. Welcome to the art and practice of numerology, employed in modern times for character analysis, life guidance and divination, but used by the Ancient Greeks as a secret language with which they could examine the Soul and look upon the face of God.

Imagine a horizontal number line, with zero at the left-hand end, followed by 1 to its right, 2 to its right and so on forever. Place God at position zero, the space of nothing and everything, a number and the absence of number at the same time. This zero represents the invisible, formless God, the God we cannot know anything about, the God who does not even have a name.

Now, imagine 1 as the God that we can see, or at the very least imagine as a ‘something’. This may be the Islamic Allah, the Christian Lord or Father, the Hebrew Yahweh or the Hindu Brahma. This is what the Neoplatonists called the One. We now have the great mystery of the unknowable God (0) followed by all our attempts to know the unknowable (1). After this the numbers 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on to infinity proceed along the number line. Note that every number after 1 is just a multiple of 1 and can therefore be divided by 1, without anything left over. All numbers therefore contain a knowable and recognisable presence of God.

Then say that every number greater than 1 and which contains the One, represents something that exists in this world. It could be people, their thoughts, the number of trees, plants, species, books ever written, kisses ever given or wars fought. The One – 1, the knowable God – is therefore present in everything and everyone. Everything in existence has a number, every number contains 1, so everything contains the One, the knowable God. God is therefore everywhere, and in everything.

Now imagine that every human ever born takes a different numerical position on this ever-expanding number line, but that all of them contain the One, even though there are in fact Many of them. Many is written with a capital M to connect it to the fundamental philosophical question of the One and the Many. This is something else for big-brain thinkers to get lost in but it boils down to this - should we, as individuals, communities and societies, focus on the fact that we are all One, or that we are Many, distant from the One?

If we take a moment with this we can perhaps we can see where fans of One-World-consciousness fall down. Though they easily see the One-ness in everybody and everything, they ignore the very real differences between the Many. Separatists fail too, but for the opposite reason, their obsession with the differences between the Many obscuring their vision of the One. The way forward of course is to be found in an appreciation of both views, by recognising the separation between each of the Many, as well as the common thread between them. All of the Many are part of the One.

We can get a stronger hold on this by thinking of the Planet Earth. Two hundred and fifty million years ago there was only one continent, Pangaea. Over the subsequent millennia that one land mass divided to create separate continents, and then humans got involved to create separate countries. Overall it took the planet millions of years to take the journey of separation from One to Many. Until now where it is both, One World, Many countries. One humanity, Many languages. One people, Many Souls.

This idea of the One and the Many can be a head-scratcher, but it repays study and reflection. As a member of the Many, if you try to adopt the perspective of the One you will see that there is no here or there, no you or me and that all things are part of the same thing. But if you remain immersed in the Many all you will ever see is difference, you not me, here not there. This obsession with the differing conditions of the Many is the cause of conflict between peoples. In general, those who speak endlessly of the Many (or even the few) are playing a conflict game, while those who speak of the One are in the business of Unity. Of course, it’s never so clear cut in daily life, for as I wrote in a previous book Darkness,

“One-ness with God is different from One-ness with Man.”

When people talk about One-ness, what kind of One-ness are they talking about? Human day-to-day life becomes the domain of separation the moment the cord between child and mother is cut. But if we recognise the reality of the One and the Many we might enjoy this separation, in which God appears everywhere differently. Each of the Many Souls on this planet is different, unique. The thing that binds us is that we are all part of the One, not that we are all the same.

Not every chapter of the book is as mind-blowing as this. The book is broken down into many short chapters and explores many different aspects of the Soul. It contains theory AND practice, with plenty of exercises and different approaches to help you connect with, develop and strengthen the most important thing of all, your Soul.

Photo by Evelyn Semenyuk on Unsplash