On Numbers and Magic
A playful exploration of the history of numbers and mysticism
Numbers and Magic
I thought I’d start out my Easter post with a Bible quote and a written piece I did for a class last year. This piece draws from inspiration emanation style psycho-cosmologies. That is, mystical systems that posit that creation emanates from a single source, a kind of Absolute ground of being. My thesis in this post is that numbers and words create an apparent duality and how some practices can reverse that duality and help us enter non-duality. It also shows my current preference for energetic practices over path of knowledge. That is I currently resonate more with exploring the nature of the Absolute via energy rather than words or numbers. This isn’t a factually correct history of numbers either, it just shows the thought process I imagine to happen on the journey from the unmanifest to the reified manifest world.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." - 1 John.
In the beginning was no numbers. Numbers were not separate from God. People did not count and were with God.
Then suddenly some random guy, yes a guy because women are wiser, goes and grabs a fruit of knowledge and decides to start counting. (This is a joke in case it’s not patently obvious).
1, 2, 3. The natural numbers. Oh boom, suddenly we have reified form. Oh, there are now self, other (ohai Eve) and many others.
But where did we come from, what is before 1? 0. Oh, suddenly we are aware that we have an origin.
Oh sorry origin, I'm naked, I need to wear a fig leaf. Let's play hide and seek as well.
Oh, was there anything before the beginning? -1. Oh suddenly we have a past and we have to start documenting the past. Integers were invented.
Let's start planting plants on pieces of land. Oh I have 3 kids. Now how do I fairly give each piece of land to my kids.
N / 3. What is this weird quantity N / 3, let's call it rational numbers. Surely ALL things can be counted by natural numbers, 0, integers and rational numbers. Done!
Pythagoras decides to draw a triangle and this dude called Hipassus decides to calculate the hypoteneus of a triangle of sides 1. h ^ 2 = 1 ^2 + 1^2 = 2. What is h?
What's this weird number sqrt(2). Oh let's call it irrationals. Boom! Done, all numbers have been found.
Oh wait what happens when you just look at the equation y = x^2 and y is negative. What is x? Decartes says oh that's junk, doesn't exist, let's call this imaginary.
Descartes, Descartes, why call the imaginal junk, when you your self dreamt what philosophers thunk
Euler runs with these imaginary things and invents possibly the most beautiful equation on the planet that combines so many fundamental mathematical constants
e^pi * i + 1 = 0. Holy shit, we have natural logarithm, pi, the governing number of a circle, imaginary junk, unity and it all combines to 0. The origin of all things.
We can go on and on with Conway's work on surreal and transcendental numbers but let's stop here, how do I experience these things?
In a recent sit investigating Shaivist concepts of 0 I decided to look at the invariants of the universe. Shiva as pure consciousness.
Also influenced by the Platform Sutra from Zen, particularly this poem:
The mind is the bodhi tree,
the body the mirror's stand,
the mirror is itself so clear,
dust has no place to land.
Ok, so let's go and ask zero what it feels like.
What is absolutely free from numbers that is next to any number? What is completely unaffected by addition?
0 is next to 1 because 0 + 1 = 1. 0 is also next to 100 because 0 + 100 = 100. So the identity element of the universe,
0 + me = me. So I am not separate from 0.
But 0 is the ground of all things, has been there from before the start and after the end. Has no beginning and has no end.
It's also next to me, so I can visit 0.
But from 0 comes 1,2,3 oh that's form. It's next to all form everywhere.
Oh suddenly I see form is not separate from emptiness and emptiness is not separate from form.
Let me count again with my physical hand and my subtle hand what does my world simulation look like with the subtle simulation.
0 + 0, 0 + 1, 0 + 2 ... oh it looks like 1, 2, 3 but suddenly I am not alone. I never have been. 0 has always been next to me.
But 0 is perfect, so 1, 2, 3 is also perfect due to transitivity.
Are we done? Oh let me try Nagarjuna's four state logic. A, not A, A and not A, neither A nor not A.
Emptiness exists. It is perfect like the mirror, it has no form so no dust sticks to it.
But we established it's next to form, so form is also perfect.
Form is not separate from emptiness (heart sutra) so form and emptiness are perfect.
Shakti to Shiva, wanna Lila? 0 + 1, 1 + 0, 0 + 1, 1 + 0
Is this it, oh wait why am I just watching Shakti and Shiva, am I pure consciousness? Am I form?
I still exist and am watching outside the dance of Lila. What is not form and not emptiness? Not two, not one.
What happens when I let go of form and emptiness.
Let's cast one more spell.
Gate Gate Pāragate Pārasamgate Bodhi Svāhā
(heart sutra). Let's add a dash of "not this, not this" as well, let's see wha......
«Error, transmission suddenly vanishes into the void»
How is this magical practice useful in life? It makes you aware that space, akash is a vital part of being. That open, attribute less space is also emptiness.
Not the nihilistic emptiness alone, that is the contracted form of just lonely 0. The expanded form of emptiness is 0 + 0, 0 + 1, 0 + 2...
It is the identity element of the addition group for natural numbers. Identity being some object that when you add it to anything doesn't modify the thing.
When in conversation with others, there needs to be space. Space for ideas to grow, openness to interaction.
Space isn't visible, you can't point at it, you can't define it but it must be there for objects to exist in.
"Only a Buddha with another Buddha can understand ultimate reality" - Lotus Sutra.
The interaction of sentient beings with other sentient beings is on the way to ultimate reality. Humans and humans, humans and plants, plants and mushrooms
The cross product of all integers is still not enough though, Cantor's diagonal argument shows that there exists numbers in the real outside of even all possible interactions.
Furthermore, most real numbers are irrational, not rational. This a metaphor for scientific materialism capturing just a small piece of reality? Is life explained mostly by rationality?
Imaginary numbers show that even beyond the real there is the imaginal.
are defined as the union of real numbers and imaginary numbers. C = x + i * y, with x and y being both real numbers and i = square root of -1.
"Life is complex, it has real and imaginary parts" - I first saw this in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip someone sent me so I don't know the origin of the quote.
But both Calvin and his imaginary friend Hobbes are a metaphor for the template I am using to navigate life as well as the Euler identity
e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0. Life is so complex, it is the dance of Shiva and Shakti, Lila and me, and everyone else and also their imaginal counterparts!
How can words and numbers define it, life can only be experienced.