Part 3
Every count is at once both Fiction and Fact, both Imaginary and Real. Imagination is the re-creative, indefinite function of creative reality, the factor of Freedom operative in the field of Fact-law. The Squares of Real Mathematics evolve from the necessary “addition” of One more than the number of Things ac-counted for. This “added” One is the One who does the counting, but in the progressive “halving” involved in the process-progression it appears in every point (.), as Counter-Image, Counter-Object, and Counter Abstract-Concrete Symbol. The real count of 4, therefore, is the square of 5, of 5 the square of 6, etc. In simple-complex analysis, 25 points-images are involved in Abram’s account of 4 sheep. Had he counted 9 sheep, he would have employed 100 points-images, all of them both real and really imaginary. We now understand more perfectly why primitives experience much difficulty in learning to count beyond 3 or 4 or 5; their degree of psycho-somatic integration is not very high, and their power of reflection is very low.
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THIS note is no more than a brief, first survey of Simple UI, but in an Integrated Field there is no understanding of any Part, even the least/simplest, apart from the Whole, and so some account of both Complex and Dynamic counting is necessary here. The Complex and the Dynamic are present in all nodes-points. The Simple account is reflected in the Square, the Complex in the Triangle and the Cube, the Dynamic in the Circle-sphere-cube. The account of Real Mathematics becomes progressively complex-dynamic at each higher level of Psycho-Somatic Integration. The closer we approach the realization that the Counter is the prime source of the Account, the more complex and dynamic, or creative, the count becomes. Not even in the heeds of eminent figure-heads are there any figures apart from In-Organic Figures. When you realize this, all abstract-symbolic counting is absorbed in real-concrete-living accounting, and mathematics becomes, not a skeletal relation, but a fully embodied narration. There is more real mathematics in any good story than in the whole library of what the world still ignorantly calls mathematics.
The Shooting of Dan McGrew1, if you recall the poem (one of the greatest in English), is a rather crude example of simple-complex-dynamic mathematics. There is the square-cube-sphere of each 1 of the 3 real counts in the account, which in relation to the other two projects a triangle-sphere of emotion operative in a UI field of real action. Liquor, a very dynamic medium of psycho-somatic dis-integration, and music, the harmonies of real mathematics and a very dynamic medium of psycho-somatic integration, unite to precipitate the demonstration. The hypotenuse is drawn with a revolver shot, and is found to be the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides of the living right-angle triangle. There is, as is only right, the shadow of the Fourth Dimension, an element of pure fancy, and we are presented with a perfect demonstration of the obvious fact that the only real minus 1 is a dead 1. Robert W. Service, the author of the poem, should receive a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton, and J. Robert Oppenheimer will never learn what he has been talking about all the years of his life as a learned ignoramus until he masters Service and really understands The Shooting of Dan McGrew.
J. Robert’s contribution to the invention of the A-bomb, if he ever gets around to the study of Real Mathematics, might serve as an introduction to the higher mathematics of Robert W. Of course, before the end, I shall have a little more to say, in this Fiction about Fact/Fancy, about the Complex and the Dynamic fields of real accounting. Here, it will suffice to point out two or three of the basic facts. Imagination creates in the subjective world a perfect-but-indefinitely-free reflection of the three-dimensional, objective world. The contact of the free, subjective Mind with the fixed, objective world of Matter results in a square-cube of awareness, the product of a circuit, or circle-sphere, of Attention/Intention. The accounter’s attention goes out to the Object, returns in to the Image, reverses itself, produces the Counter-image, and then goes out again to project the Symbol-image. The re-creative imagination circles the square and spheres the cube in its account to itself of three-dimensional reality. The square-cube of counting reflects the order of static Art; the circle-sphere reflects the order of dynamic, or active, Nature. The two, Art and Nature, are present at every point in any account, mathematical or poetic, of Man’s relation to the Universe.
In a universe every point of which embodies an indivisible union of Form and Energy, of Motion and Emotion, of static Picture and dynamic Design, any exact Count is always balanced by an inexact Account; only thus can Freedom function under Law and Law be ultimately subject to Freedom. The cube of Art and the sphere of Nature unite in Living Integration in the body-mind of man. The cube reflects the integrating One in Many exact counts; the sphere reflects the integrated Many in One, in/exact count: the universe is neither flat nor curved; it is both and in a one-many, ideal-real manifold. Two or more objects cannot occupy the same place in the same present, but there is no end to the number of real images, or reflections, that can occupy the present attention of the head-mind. The ultimate nature of reality is to be discovered in the complex-dynamic field generated between the poles of Fact and Fancy, Law and Freedom, — between the Integrating One and the Dis-integrating Many. Primitives are so lost in the many facts that they find it hard to count more than One, and civilized men are so lost in the many abstract fancies that they find it almost impossible to count One. It is no wonder that the more vital persons in the field of the disintegrating civilizations evince a marked tendency to go native-primitive, in an effort to realize the basic facts of creation and exorcise the bedlam of illusion-delusions created by a world dominated by mad machines and madder mathematics.
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THIS should prove a good point of departure for our projected flight into the mystical realms of the Mathematics of Mathematics. Let us go.
V Finite Sense and Infinite Nonsense
THE mathematics of mathematics may be defined as the abstract analysis of abstraction-s. In theory-speculation, it is an inquiry into the properties and inner harmonies of numbers/series and formal abstracts; in UI, or real mathematics, it is a symbolic-factual integration of the many/one factor-s in the whole field of re-creative Matter:Form/Energy:Mind. In speculation, it begins in the ignorance of One and ends in “infinity”; in apodictic, it begins in the recognition of number-symbol as the Art of imagining the essential structure-relationship of three-dimensional Nature, and ends in the integration of the universal manifold of the Many/One. The focus of real mathematics is upon the living Finite in a perspective of positive Sense; the focus of speculative mathematics is upon the “infinite” in a perspective of negative sense, Non-sense. UI un-imagines the imagination and subtracts abstraction to realize reality; speculative mathematics de-materializes reality to approximate the unreal, or systematized fancy. UI is positive science, real knowing; speculative mathematics is sciolism, acatalepsy, an asymptote to no-science or not-knowing. Speculative M of M is a negative point of departure for a survey of Creative UI.
Enter the heavens of mathematical theory and speculation. At once we are in mental mirror land, with all the mirrors turned inward. There is no conscious reference here to any objective reality. The boys even forget that they have chalk-in-hand and a blackboard on which to romp. All is hyperspatial hocus-pocus. Here abstract songs and symphonies are sung and played by seemingly bodiless musicians on an all but immaterial stage. Played in silence; the score itself is the music. All is make-believe, the religion of the intellect, coldly divorced from the pulsating body, love for next to nothing in 0 weather. It is astonishing what mathematicians can make themselves believe, — and how elaborately and precisely they can deceive themselves. They can actually talk so cogently about what they do not know, in terms of what they imagine, as to cause nearly every one, including themselves, to forget what little they really know. The higher mathematics is the ultimate in practical sublimation, and psychiatrists could very well prescribe a course in calculus as a cure for love-sickness.
The cure, however, if anything, is more deadly than the disease. The life-force is not to be denied, and a fascination-flirtation with figures is more fatal, generally speaking, than any infatuation with a figure. No Byron of the binomial ever realized his predicament enough to cry, Maid of abstractions, ere we part, give, O give me back my heart! Once you have glimpsed the form-less form of the fatal femme, Fourth Dimension, you are lost for life. And lost to all real life. For there really is no end to the number of illusory clowns and pretty ladies of fancy that can be made to jump through the hoop of a O, if the right mathematician cracks the whip of a right formula. Just as there is no end to the machines that can be invented, so there is no end to the mathematical schemes that can be concocted, and just as the machines will work in their system of reference, so the mathematical schemes will work in theirs: as long as there are mechanics to serve and engineer them, the myths of machinery will go round most realistically, and so long as there are mathematicians devoted enough to put chalk-dust on the tail of a mechanical flight of imagination, so long will the illusory formulas go on astounding the unrealistic by completing the illusion of flight. And here the speculative figure-head has a great advantage over the practical mechanic; his ignorance is never immediately fatal, and his mathematical illusions pass for true miracles so long as neither he nor his confreres see through them.
The magician pulls a stageful of things from a single silk hat; the mahatma of mathematics bores an imaginary hole through a hyperspatial block and pours through it an endless stream of In-fallible messages from No-where about No-thing. Nature abhors a vacuum, but the Higher Mathematics is Pure Art and creates as many empty holes as there are X’s who don’t know their X’s from holes in the ground. Men have seemingly bottomless appetites for myth and mystification, and little or no taste for obvious reality. Their last passion is to realize the unrealizable, and the mathematician is their last prophet.
The whole “problem” or Reality/Imagination comes to its sharpest focus in the “problem” of In/Finity, and, apart from the fascinating doughnuts of the FD, the greatest illusion delusion is the mathematical “Infinite”. No such absolute negation as infinity can be found, either in reality or in imagination. You always think of something, not nothing, finite. The universe is full of a number of things, but neither the things themselves nor their number are/-is infinite. The finite things are practically end-less and un-numberable, like the leaves on Yang Cho’s willow tree, but they are not not-finite. The only real thing about the mystical-theological-mathematical Infinite is the word itself. Infinite is a finite word. And all the empty talk about it, from Plato to Einstein, is a matter of finite words/thought-forms.
Here in this “problem”, we now have under the scope of our in/attention the very heart of the human “problem”, major facets of which are formulated in such words as In/Corporeal, In/Sanity, and Im/Materiality. Such terms are manufactured by felling a Positive with one blow from a Negative. They are absolute contradictions, — non-sense, the negation of all sound sense. Only insanity (i.e., relatively negative sanity) could invent and seriously talk about such terms. What’s the matter here? Why has the race,for some two thousand and five hundred years, been so determined to beat its brains out with such straws? From what strange malady does man suffer? The mind can find no end of wonderful, real things to think about. Is that not enough? Seemingly not. From the moment Plato shot his “immaterial” idea into the balmy attic air, the race has been balmy, madly pursuing Nothing, plunging down an arc the finite end of which is absolute “insanity”! — absolute Negation of all sound sense and human values. The end of that arc was almost reached, during the past hundred years, in a cluster of events, the names of which are Christian Science, Evolution, Psycho-analysis, Relativity, the Fourth Dimension, Dada, Surrealism, Atonalism, E:MC2, A- and H-bomb, the Deification of Mother Mary, and Nowar War. I should have listed Spencer’s Unknowable (how did he know there was anything unknowable?), the philosophic end-product of the ancient Greek status to the Unknown God, about which that pious pest Paul had a few illusively positive things to say. How come? What goes on here?
Why are the monkeys so determined to crowd into Plato’s cave and then cave it in on themselves? Why all these verbal thunderclaps in an epistemological vacuum? How account for this seemingly endless tidal wave of irrational, philosophic suicide, that has so long been sweeping over the West? Forgoing on three millennia Western man has been sinking deeper and deeper in a bottomless ocean of Thoughts about Nothing. And billions of cyphers still sigh for cyphers. Can it be that non-sense really is in-finite? The “surprising” answer is, Yes. The Infinite is Nonsense, and Nonsense is Infinite. The first absolutely, the second relatively. The human appetite for Nonsense is bottomless. But not the human body. That has a bottom, and at the present moment that bottom is getting mighty sore. Something ought to be done. Perhaps U and I can do it. BEDROCK is the fact that ignorant human beings are abysmally fearful of the real one.
Every one is a one, but nearly all of the many ones are ashamed and afraid to be themselves, the ones that they really are. On to genetical unfoldment has dominated nothing, and phylogenetical culture stimulated to be everything. Progressively the individual has been sacrificed to the tribe-collective. From the Year 1, all religions, sciences, politics, codes and conventions have been costly, desperate, unrealistic attempts to justify and establish the tyranny-slavery of in human communism, — attempts to integrate the Many and disintegrate the One. So consistently has the Living One and his personal integrity been sacrificed to the Moloch of the mob that social order in every land today is a herd of finite Zero scringing under the lash of a hyper-spatial, non-existent, imaginary, fictitious and fantastic, infinite “One”. The symbol for organized humanity now could be “1”.000000000000…, were it not for the fact that it is absolutely impossible for Imaginary Communism ever to exterminate the Real One, either in the Zeros or in the figure-head of symbolic, collective Integration. Even dictators, EA’s and professors of mathematics have individual characteristics; even the most devout, communistic 022 has to live in his own skin and digest his own food. Sanity and self-hood are ultimately inescapable.
In-Sanity is not in-finite, but it is protean, subtle and all but indefatigable. Driven out of the temple, it takes refuge in the university. Mathematics, as presently understood and applied, is modern, technological medievalism, the secular, unconscious arm of the meta-physics that deifies 0 and disintegrates the 1. If dying religion fails to seduce you into hanging yourself to the greater Glory of an Infinite Nonentity, science-mathematics(in one form or another, — usually Money, –) stands ready to induce-compel you to blow your brains out to the glory of a Collective Fiction: if the preacher can’t hypnotize you with the glittering symbol of Nothing, the teacher stands ready to prove to you that you are Nothing: if the preacher and the teacher fail to rub out your stubborn Ego, the EA descends upon you, chanting, “You are an insignificant microbe on an insignificant planet revolving about an insignificant sun, one of an in-comprehensible multitude of suns!” If you are a sub-moron, impervious to all such non-sense, the Boss-Dictator sends you a greeting card, saying, “If you re-fuse to slave-fight for me, I’ll fill the hole of your 0 with lead and prove that the professor’s fiction of minus 1 can be translated into a dead reality.” The inscription at the base of the wooden totem pole of civilization reads: Everybody Is Nobody.
In spite of everything, the One reality refuses to disappear. Even in the most abject communism, some one has to assume to be The One. Even in the most insane democracy, personal superiority triumphs, though it be nothing more than a superior talent for juggling cyphers. The lust for oblivion and irresponsibility projects its own philosophers, prophets and generals of generalism. From Plato to Einstein, the race has crowned a long line of the Heroes of Zero, Neguses of Negation. In relativity and quantum mechanics, Non-sense becomes tremendously technological, and the pages of learned ignorance are filled to bursting with Assumptions, Probabilities, In-determinate and Unobserved factors.[marginal insert follows]Physics is now statistical meta-physics. The sub-atomic or elementary trinity of which is Proton, Neutron, Electron, verbal masks for ultimate unknowns as inscrutable as deity. Dis=order has been formulated, and the result is chaos to order.[end of marginal insert]Plato’s immaterial idea has borne its ultimate fruit, the H-bomb that can dematerialize everybody. The race has finessed itself to the brink of the cliff of If, where it now teeters, poised for the final plunge, while the Nero of Next-to-Nothing fiddles with the figures.
Which will win, Infinity or Zero? I “predict” that One has already won. But in the “meantime” the boys in the back room are still very busy peering into mirrors held before mirrors and formulating the formless. Their play is not utterly imponderable. Though they are unaware of the fact, negation is the relative function of the positive, and they also serve those who explore the realms of what isn’t. In the interest of freedom and variety, ignorance must undergo the ordeal of insanity. Let us glance for a moment at their infantile labors.
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CYPHERS sigh for cyphers, but the fact that they have to use a finite word to express their sighs never causes a guffaw at high mass or a snicker from the rear in a higher mathematics class. Seemingly, figure-heads are as empty as their figures. When the mahatma and high priest of mathematics comes to the point where both his imagination and his grasp of reality give out, he chalks up a sign,00, infinity, and goes right on with his holy (or unholy) hocus-pocus, as solemnly pious as any prelate. He is as full of abracadabra-dabra as a theologian. He can say almost anything, except something sensible. He can say that one Infinity is “greater, or stronger”, than another Infinity. He can say that the Infinity of even numbers is exactly equal to the Infinity of odd numbers, that the same is true of the Infinity of integers and the Infinity of fractions. The Infinity of even numbers is equal to the Infinity of all numbers, he says. He says he has discovered Three Infinities, the second larger than the first, the third larger than the second:1) the Infinity of integers and fractions, 2) the Infinity of points on a line, in a square and in a cube, 3) the infinity of all possible curves. His nonsensical talk is almost but not quite infinite, so U and I have a real chance to plug the 0 of his mouth with a finite 1.
The disproof of Infinity would not be worth our while were it not that the alleged proofs illustrate the ignorance of One, which is the stone less keystone in the arch of all imaginary mathematics. For example, here is the “proof” of the equality of Odd and Even infinities:
1 3 5 7 9 etc. (1) (1) (1) (1) (1) 2 4 6 8 10 etc.
In other words, a one-to-one relationship exists between Odd and Even numbers as far as you care to count; you can’t come to the end of either. Etc. is a practical, verbal mask for infinity, but it is obvious that these Infinities are correctly defined as Indefinities, and are a concealed invitation to indulge in unlimited, unrealistic fancy. No half-bright scholar is going to devote a lifetime, or even an hour of it, to matching Odd and Even evenly. Not even the professor is going to be crazy enough to do that. Instead of proving Infinity, this design is a very cogent proof of Finity. It proves that every number is just one (1) number. The whipped cream of the jest is to be found in the trans-valuation of Etc. into Infinity, a far more impressive mouthful.
The “proof” that the infinity of Even numbers is equal to the Infinity of All numbers employs the same design, which both conceals and reveals an infinity of 1’s! By this design you can “prove” that there is an infinity of the multiples of any number, — an infinity of any number. The “proof” is an endless pun at the expense of the unimaginative or the literal-minded illiterate. You can count until you get tired of counting; that may be Etc., but it is not in-finite. The mahatma postulates that the infinity of the points on a line is greater than the infinity of all integers. The proof he offers proves that he got tired of counting integers a little sooner than he did in counting points, and the proof of this is to be found in the fact that he devotes more space-time-energy to the second proof. He draws one line on the blackboard, and undertakes to account for the line by computing the distance from one of its ends to the other end by endless decimal fractions. Endless decimals are other ends by endless decimal fractions. Endless decimals are asymptotes to 1, so it is obvious that you can never get from one end to the other end of the line in that way. Relative to an endless decimal, one line is a reality capable of devouring any number of imaginary infinities. The mahatma now reminds you that he has proved that the infinity of integers and the infinity of common fractions are equal.
The common fractions, he goes on to say, can be converted into “infinite”, periodic decimals,” so we must conclude that the infinity of periodic decimals is equal to that of the fractions, and therefore to that of integers; you cannot establish a one-to-one relationship between periodic and non-periodic, endless decimals; therefore the infinity of points on a line, no matter how short the line, is “greater, or stronger”, than the infinity of integers. (Class dismissed for a half-hour infinity of convulsive laughter.) There is an “infinity of infinities” in any finite 1; you can divide 1 endlessly, and you can multiply 1 endlessly: neither periodic nor non-periodic decimals of the endless variety can ever arrive at 1 or get away from 1: the only real “infinity” is the Finite 1, and you can find that in any integer, any fraction, any decimal, — even in the decimal point (.) itself. The attempts of medieval meta-physicians to compute the number of angels that could dance on the point of a needle were just a little more honestly childish than these proofs of un/equal infinities. I repeat, the word infinite is one, finite word, and the only real “infinity” is One (1). Take it or leave it, add or subtract it, divide or multiply it, reflect or project it, One is always One. And no one can ever find or make no-one, — can ever find or make anything more or less than One.
Infinity, as defined by the mathematicians, is the mirror of the mind turned in upon itself, with all the outer world shut out, gone insane in an endless flight from reality and an equally endless pursuit of endless shadows of the Real One. You can have an “infinity” of anything, if you are able to accept a say-so for a be-so. You can have an infinity of twelves, or an infinity of elves; you can have an infinity of you, or an infinity of blue; you can have an infinity of professors, or an infinity of confessors….. You can have all of this, if you can halve yourself indefinitely and pursue the tail of your imagination with the bark of your say-so in vicious circles of closed imaginings. The only practical way to achieve infinity is to come to yourself and be the One that you really are. All other ways are impractical. For more than two millennia both religion and science have been attempting to practice infinity without coming to the obvious, practical end of their negation of sanity. But today (7 June 1958) the inevitable end is upon all finite men, — and there are no men who are not finite. All must now blow themselves into the oblivion of “infinity” or come to the realization that every One is One, neither more nor less.
U and I have now done all that we can do in words to exorcize the ancient-modern-medieval insanity of infinity.
See what the boys in the back room will have. If I know them, they’ll have another, last shot of infinity.
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THE in-sane study of positive reality in negative terms has come to an end. We have much to learn about the structure-nature of the Real One, but it is now obvious that we can never progress in knowledge of that One either by ignoring it or by trying to imagine-mathematize it out of existence. Real counting is an ac-count, every node-point of which involves a Universal Integration of the Order of the Whole. You, the counter, is the I that reflects the necessary Integration. Knowledge (real science) is absolutely personal and empirical. You-I either know or I-You don’t know, and we can always know that which we do not know, — if we are honest and not in-sane. Any theory-speculation that undertakes to account for what we simply do not know in negative or in-determinate terms is obvious myth, illusion, delusion, — a patent fraud, –which only the unwise and the other-wise can ever entertain for more than the moment it takes to see through it. Any page of presumed science that contains assumptions, probabilities or prime negations is in reality a page of absurd sciolism. The human propensity to feed on fiction-s and substitute symbols for reality is not endless. One is universal, obvious and inescapable, and every One is One.
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NOW, this brief survey of the Simple field of Universal Integration, or Real Mathematics, begins to conclude. All that remains for me to do is to give you some account of the more Complex field and the Dynamic-Creative field. A survey of the Complex field comparable to that which I have just given of the simple would be twice as long as this, and a similar survey of the creative would be four times as long. The design of this note does not include consideration of the second and third fields, except insofar as an understanding of them is necessary to a comprehension of the simple field itself. And some understanding is necessary. Complex UIis to Simple UI as algebra is to arithmetic, and Creative UI is to Complex UI as the higher calculus is to algebra. However, the comparison is in-exact. You can understand arithmetic without understanding algebra, or the higher calculus, but you cannot really understand S-UI unless you have some definite idea of Com-UI and Cre-UI (or Dynamic UI). Universal Integration is a symbolic reflection of reality that ignores Nothing, and neither adds to nor subtracts from three-dimensional Something, and therefore does not pretend to account for any Part, even the simplest and the least, apart from the Order of the Whole, One. It recognizes no fractions or percentages. In the interest of the whole-some coherence, before I say what it is in order for me to say about the second and third fields, let us summarize our discoveries in the first. Consider:
A. Five Particular Nodes of Accounting The simple elements-order of Universal Integration, or Real Mathematics, are: 1-2-3-4 (1-11-111-1111) 5.
1. The universal Whole is One, a finite or three-dimensional Something, and every Part of it is One finite thing. The first prime factors of (every) One are Two, — Structure and Nature. The prime aspects of structure are Inner and Outer, the complementary “halves” of the whole One. One that is Two is obviously Three: the three dimensions are inseparable in the order of the whole One. The three dimensions embody the nature of the One, the prime aspects of which are Static and Dynamic. The One has position and motion, both within and without. One that is Two that is Three obviously is Four: 1)structure-nature (11), 2) three dimensions (111), 3) four mentions, –1) inner, 2) outer, 3) position, 4) motion. The four mentions are the third, the three dimensions are the second prime factors of One. There is One who reflects this 1234 order: that One is the Accounter: the accounter may be termed the Fourth Dimension-Fifth Mention. Reflective awareness, as distinguished from motion, is Life. The 31 that is 11 (structure-nature) that is 111 (length-breadth-thickness)that is 1111 (inner-outer-position-motion) is Self-active-reflection.
II. The Living One, or vital thing, 1) acts and 1) reacts. These Two prime modes of self-expression may be termed Projection and Reflection. These “halves” of the One in Action give rise to Two fields of Manifestation, — an outer world of Concretion, and an inner world of Abstraction, more general terms for which are Objective and Subjective field-s. As the dimensions are 3-in-1, so Objective and Subjective fields are 2-in-1: One projects to reflect, and reflects to project; One acts to think, and thinks to act.
III. The foregoing 1 and 11 realistic ac-counts symbolically formulate the Order of the Universal Whole and each of its Parts by taking the Vital Factor for granted in all. All the confusion and controversy in the world of men revolves about the What, the How and the Where of the vital factor. This confusion-conflict arises from the ignorance of the obvious fact that motion and life are basically synonymous: life-motion is present in all Parts of the Universal Whole, in a vast scale of manifestation, beginning in the 1)unconscious atoms-elements, rising to 11) unself-consciousness in plant-animal organisms, achieving 111) self-consciousness in man. As realists, not theorists, U and I accept the obvious, and confine ourselves to the study of its forms and modes of action; for only thus can we progress in positive knowledge of the What, How and Whereof vital reality. It is obvious that reality is Form/Energy: Matter. It is equally obvious that is Projection/Reflection:Mind. A third obvious fact about the living One is that it is E/Motion:Propagation: it Projects, Reflects, and Regenerates itself. It is a Self-Multi-plying One, both in the unconscious and the conscious systems of reference. The Universal One is a Living Mirror, the unconscious and relatively in-organic manifestations of which makes relatively conscious, organic manifestation possible.
The Two prime ac-counts of the What-Where-How are: Object/Subject. The Three prime accounts are: Self/Many/Dis-Integration (Re-Generation). One being becomes Many by disintegration; the Many reflect the prime integration of One.
1111. Operating in the three dimensions and the two fields, objective and subjective, the self-dis-integrating One projects and sustains a manifold of Many un/conscious manifestations. Embodied in the three dimensions and embodying the four mentions, these Many parts of the whole One appear in four basic orders of manifestation, each composed of three subordinate orders of be-coming, as follows:
1) General 1) gas-es, liquid-s, solid-s 1(½: F-E33 1) planet-s, sun-s, galaxy-ies34 :½)1 MATTER MIND 1) Particular 1) element-s, compound-s, X F-E 1) un-self-conscious organism-s
The symbol X calculates the particulars, whether conscious, unconscious or self-conscious, of the Whole (1), — atoms or suns, pebble-s or person’s, rain-drop-s or rain-bow-s, ameba-s35 or elephant-s, poets-or professors, each 1 reflecting in its order the whole 1.
V.36 The simple account of the Universal Many-One is completed in the realization that U-I are-is the local Prime Ac-counter.
B. Several General Nodes of Ac-Counting
1. Reality is One. 2. One dis-integrates to project Many one-s. 3. Each of the Many ones reflects both the order of the Many and that of the integrating One. 4. The real One/Many is Matter:Form/Energy:Mind. 5. Projection-Reflection is endless but not in-finite. 6. Subjective counting divorced from Objective Ac-counting is un-realistic, in-sane, illusive, delusive. 7. Real counting is a subjective-objective ac-count of the Order of the Whole One and all its Many Parts, every point-node of which involves a Dis-Integration of the Whole Universe: to know any One, you must know All.
In this summary I have made explicit the Complex and Dynamic factors that were more-or-less implicit in the survey of Simple UI.
V I The Real One
IN conclusion, for a few minutes, I shall deal directly with three or four of the Complex and Dynamic factors. My focus of integration here is, — The Creative Individual in unconscious command of the Universal, Objective-Subjective Field. In these sections the What-Where-How of the Vital Factor becomes more obvious-evident. The Vital Factor, the Living One, is the prime focal point in all three fields, simple, complex and dynamic. It is most obvious, and most ignored. It is in all, through all, over all; it is all. It projects the three dimensions and the four mentions, and they embody it. Even in the simplest unit, a pebble or a volvox, life is most complexly dynamic and dynamically complex. The simple, confronted with this prime factor, say, “There is no ac-counting for it,” and the complex mind, taking the hint, has at-tempted to account for it in negative terms, saying that it is not this, that or the other thing, all of which it most obviously is.If you ignore its presence in every part of the universal whole, you condemn yourself to ignorance. As realists, U and I are positively interested in avoiding ignorance. We ignore Nothing, to study the real Something.
Obviously, the Real Thing is, at once, simple, complex and living, or dynamic. In many forms, the real thing is relatively in-organic and unconscious, but it moves, and motion is the first sign of life. The Vital Complex of the Real One is most simply formulated in the four, general mentions:Matter:Form/Energy:Mind. Or we can say that the Real One is Un/-Conscious Form-Energy. Both conscious and unconscious form-energy are plastic, impressionable, expandable, contractible, reflective, projective. Mind, or conscious form-energy, is the most plastic-reflective and form of relatively unconscious form-energy, or Matter; and Matter is the most implastic and non-reflective form of Mind. The difference between Matter and Mind, between un-conscious and conscious form-energy, is relative, and at the extremes (say a boulder and a human being) is almost but not quite absolute. This is true, but symbolic abstracts are not to be found in actual things anymore than actual things are to be found in the reflections thereof in wall and mental mirrors. Complex UI is concerned with the progressive Dis/Integration of Abstraction/Concretion (Reality/Imagination). Dynamic UI is concerned with the progressive control of the Dis/Integrative process.
Simple, realistic accounting becomes complex the moment you go beyond the first reflections. You can’t count realistically without becoming conscious of the second reflections (of the one moon and its three reflections, of the four sheep and their flock of 1,11,111,111 images), but, just as you did a lot of unrealistic and relatively unconscious accounting before you began to be aware of what you were really doing, so you can do a lot of relatively realistic accounting before you become fully conscious of the third reflection-s and all the complexities it-they involves. Men are more like stones and stones more like men than men at first imagine. Men are pretty unconscious creatures, at that, hardly at all realistic, and perform their miracles of “thought” and “invention” pretty much as the spider spins its web; thus far, there is far more of mechanical instinct in art-science-religion than there is of conscious control and living design. The human mental-mirror does its work almost unconsciously, and men become deeply confused when they begin to look into the complex workings of both the imagination and reality.
What the mathematicians call the fourth dimension is one example of the complex confusion and confused complexity which result when shrewd but unrealistic minds start monkeying with the vital mechanism of the imagination. The most knowledgeable of the mahatmas pontificating in these premises are not so dumb, — pardon, I should have said unconscious, — as not vaguely to apprehend, at least, that what they are doing is dividing the mental-mirror in“half” to confront Reflection with its own Reflection-s. But they are unconscious enough, — pardon, I should have said dumb enough, — not to realize the utterly illusory and delusive nature of formulations derived from such intellectual incest. The fact that their formulas work out on paper (that the imagination can graphically-accurately reflect its own imaginings) deceives them, in the first place, and then the material plasticity of the universal complex plays a practical joke on them by subtly reflecting their reflections in such an ambiguous way that either proof or disproof is either certain or uncertain and a matter of pure believe or unbelief, — and whoever heard of a proud theorist who was eager to disbelieve in his preferred theory?
If you can get spectacular results by ignoring obvious reality, it takes a truly humble realist to stick to his senses and conscientiously confront his simple ignorance, his honest not-know. When, not so long ago, the mahatmas became a little more acutely aware of the second reflections involved in their highly abstract account of things, they divided numbers into “Real” and“Imaginary” numbers, and revolved their formulas back and forth between these two un/real fields. From these revolutions they hatched the Fourth Dimension, so-called, — more particularly, formulas for the relation of things imagined as extended in “time” as well as space, or the three dimensions. They set up an Imaginary Reality in opposition to an Imaginary Imaginary system of accounting, a triple ignorance of the obvious, prime Reality. If, in doing this feat of ignorance, they did not really know what they were doing, it is hard to understand how they happened to be sane enough to do what they did. It is so obvious that they do not know what they are talking about (they admit it themselves) that one must wonder how they can go on talking at all.
Trying to imagine reality in terms of the imagination divorced from reality is the favorite occupation of the inmates of Oriental ashrams and the occupants of Occidental padded cells. Only children can innocently pass time by filling the abyss of their ignorance with what they merely imagine. However, if you can imagine what the mahatmas have imagined, their formulas will actually prove that your imagination and theirs exactly coincide. This chimera is a far more cunning, formidable, persuasive and destructive chimera than the original.
Much of the work in Complex-Dynamic UI is devoted to abstracting abstractions, — in keeping the imagination from obscuring the picture of reality. In real mathematics, the imagination is controlled to reflect nothing more and nothing less than reality. In real mathematics, ignorance, or what is not known, is honestly recognized and included as a real factor. The real accounter does not fill those portions of the picture of reality with imaginary factors, — with assumptions, probabilities, hypotheses etc.; what he does not know is what he really does not know, and he allows for it without imagining anything about it: in this way only can he expand what he does know positively, and make sure that every step forward is not a fancy which he will have to unfancy, but a fact, a real part of the whole picture, on which he can rely.
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FOR example, consider the factor called “time”. Clocks and calendars do not exist in reality except as manufactured realities. The past and the future do not exist apart from the present; one is a present memory, the other a present prospect. All real events take place now, — in the universal manifold of the omnipresent. You cannot really imagine any time but now; all times save now are illusion-delusion. If you can realize that obvious fact perfectly, you are master of the first node in Complex UI. If you can’t realize that perfectly just now, perhaps the following realistically imaginary formulation will help you to realize it in some subsequent now.
Here on the table is that record of the sixty seconds you made a few minutes ago. Turn it over, take this rule, and draw a square 6 by 6 inches in dimension. Now draw two axes, dividing the square into four squares, each 3 by 3 inches in dimension. Now, in imagination, place the third perpendicular axis through the center of the square, and mentally draw the lines that convert the square into an imaginary cube. Very well, Now imagine a sphere, 6 inches in diameter, exactly contained in the imaginary cube; the axes of the square are the axes of the cube. Have you imagined that? Yes. Now forget the cube, lift the sphere up 3 inches, and set this imagination on the sheet of real paper. I now ask: What is the sphere really made of, and where is it? Answer: It is made of “imagination” and it really exists in the electromagnetic field of my unconscious body-mind. (Who gave that answer, U or I? I did? Thank U. Your UI is progressing rapidly.)
Now, place the sphere, not forgetting its three axes, in the center of the room, half way between ceiling and floor. Can you imagine that? Yes. Very well, then try to imagine the following. Now, at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, expand the sphere until it includes the farthest star. Did you imagine that? Certainly not. First, there are no miles or seconds in reality. Second, you don’t know the distance to the farthest star, and you do know that what you call the stars are reflections in the atmosphere of the earth not so very far away. Third, the imagination works instantaneously: the moment you were commanded to imagine the farthest star, that moment you imagined it, whether very far away or relatively near. Even if you tried to control the imagination, to imagine the sphere gradually expanding to reach the farthest star, you first imagined the ultimate destination. You are now testing out the design in your imagination, in an effort to see how you can make it work. The best you can do is imagine a gradual expansion of the sphere to include the farthest star, both “time” and “space” being contained instantaneously in the One omni-present manifold of your body-mind.
In reality, all events, whether in the mind or out there in matter, happen, present moment by present moment, here-now. We are face to face with the realities of time-space-motion, the source of many paradoxes. We do now know much about those realities, but we do know enough not to let our imagination fill the gaps of honest ignorance with unrealistic fancies. And we do know that, while there are Many, different points-places in the universal manifold, all are contained in the One here-now. (I daresay you will find it hard, perhaps impossible, to imagine that reality, but it might help if you imagined every star as occupying its own here-now.)
Now, forget the sphere but remember the three axes as long as possible in the course of the following experiment in real imagination. The project I propose is that U use your mental-mirror to reflect, not what U suppose or infer or fancy, but what U really know about Reality. I divide the experiment into two parts, the first Negative, the second Positive.
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DE-MYTHIFICATION (-). — The question is, What do U really know? The first half of the answer consists in a rigorous exploration of what U do not know. Let us begin with the universe as a whole.
You have in your mind a picture of the universe, a picture painted by an artist U often refer to as I, with the two hands of Memory and Observation. Much of this picture is composed of memories of what you have read in books. You have read that the universe is a galaxy of many suns occupying a vast amount of space. Perhaps you can recall the estimated number of the suns, the estimated diameter of the galaxy. You have read that “our sun” is 93,000,000 miles distant from the earth, that the earth together with eight or nine other planets are revolving about the sun, each in a separate orbit at a different rate of speed at a different distance from the solar center. You have been told that the earth revolves on its axis as it revolves about the sun. This part of your picture of the universe is pure myth, fiction, a story you have been told.
Even if the picture is reasonably close to the reality, it is pure myth. If you are honest, you know that this picture is merely hearsay information, a painting that covers a vast area of what you simply do not know. You also know that, short of a miracle, no other honest man on earth knows any more than that about the real universe. You also know that the “scientists” who imagined this picture of the universe and pretend to themselves and to others that it is a true picture of reality are either very dishonest or very stupid.
We now narrow the focus of attention to the earth itself, and consider, first of all, what you have been told about its past, historic and prehistoric. You have been told that it is so many millions of years old. Myth. You know that you do not know how old the earth is, and you also know that any man who pretends that he knows is either very stupid or very dishonest. You know the same thing about all the stories in the history books. Myth. You cannot verify one event. And you do know that anyone who asks you to believe the myth of history is either very dishonest or very stupid.
Now, what do you know about other lands than your own? The answer is, Next to nothing. You have traveled some, visited numerous lands, but what you really know about them is next to nothing. You do know that anyone who asks you to believe what you read in the newspapers and the reviews about other lands must be very dishonest and hopes that you are very stupid. What do you really know about your own country? Same answer, — Next to nothing. No matter how much you know, compared with the reality, it is next to nothing. Next question: What do you really know about biology, psychology, physiology, botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, geology, anthropology, etc., etc.? Unless you are a very exceptional person, the answer is, Almost nothing. You do know that you know almost nothing about the realities beyond the fictions in the books on these subjects. You also know that anyone, — professor or EA43, –who expects you to believe the fictions in the books is either very stupid or very dishonest.
Now, you have heard a lot of talk about God and Jesus Christ. What do you really know about them? Unless you are a very, very exceptional person, the answer is, Nothing, — absolutely nothing.
The last question is: What do you really know about yourself?
The first answer to that question is: I know that I am an honest, intelligent ignoramus.
Did U forget all about the three axes? I did.
The second half of the experiment follows.
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REALIZATION (+). — In clearly knowing (+) all that you do not (-) know you use the mirror of the mind realistically and truly scientifically. Negative knowledge clearly defined-realized is the be-ginning of positive knowledge. If you do not know what you do not know, you are in no position to know for sure even that which you do know. If you mistake fiction for reality, you are not only an ignoramus, but a self-deluded chump. Personally, I have no desire to deceive myself, and no desire to be any more ignorant than I really am. The idea that I cannot know anything that wasn’t handed down in the form of fiction authorized by the preacher, the professor, the eminent authority, the boss and the dictator, — that idea strikes me as being the most in-sane idea ever entertained by the animals who call themselves men.
Let us reverse the poles; U ask me the next set of questions, and I will answer them. Very well? Fire away. What do you really know about yourself? I really know a whole lot about myself. From the first word of this discourse, I have been telling you what I really do know about myself. First, I know that I am. I am the real one, the living one, that integrates my body-mind. I know that I am that particular embodiment of Matter:Form/Energy:Mind called a man. I know that there isn’t anything that keeps me from knowing anything except myself, — except my own stupidity and/or willingness to be deceived. I know that no other one can know for me (just as no one can eat and digest my food for me). I know that if I know anything it is I, and not another, who knows it. I know a great deal about my body-mind, and the facts that are pertinent to this discourse I have told you or will tell you.
What do you really know about biology, psychology, physiology, chemistry, physics etc.? I know a very great deal about them. First, I know that each one is a word, a sign, a symbol, a fiction. Back of each one of these fictions is a reality. The one reality back of all these and all other fictions is I-Universe. The real answer to any question in any of these fields is known to I-Universe.
Read Part 4 http://planetarydynamics.com/2024/01/02/ignorance-of-one-part-4/
