Monotheism and Monohumanism

We call monism the vain attempt to assemble the broken fragments of the universe. --Dávila

Schuon, in one of his abstract moods, wondered if Unity "is really a number"; for if you want to be pernickety about it,

number begins only with Duality, which opens the door to that projection of the Infinite which is the indefinite. Nonetheless, to say Unity is to say Totality; in other words, Unity signifies the absolute Real, and likewise with Totality, which represents the Real in all its ontological "extent"; Reality and All-Possibility meet.

Mono-theism. Despite being mono, it seems that it's not exactly a quantity, being that it signifies a reality that must be ontologically prior to number. For even to say "one" implies a containment of what is in principle uncontainable. 

Two comes "after" One, only at which point can the One be apprehended and reduced to a concept. Thus, prior to Two there can be no number per se. Which immediately brings to mind male-and-female He created them, or they shall become oneflesh. Monohumanism? How?

While two is the "first" number, it also signifies the quality of duality or of division, and thus the "desire" to transcend this division and return to Unity. At least this is what would be suggested by pure logic, i.e., the urge to merge, to reduce multiplicity to Unity, whether through love, truth, or beauty.

However, revelation suggests otherwise, in that it surprises us with a Three! that is not a consequence of Two, but rather, the source or ground of the One and Two, of monism and dualism. 

Apparently, what comes before One isn't zero, but Three. Or at least One and Three are complementary and irreducible to anything else. Which further implies that Primordial Relation is coequal with the Relata.

One can appreciate how early philosophers ended up with the One; again it is where logic inevitably leads. The problem, rather, is the possibility of diversity in the face of this One. What is its ontological status? Is it real, or only an illusion, AKA maya? Is it just an extension of the One, thereby losing its own freedom, dignity, and reason for being? Or is it radically separate from the source, as in deism or existentialism? 

It's easy enough to claim to be a relativist, but relative to what? How is relativity even possible in the absence the Absolute? That's like starting to count with two instead of one, when we already concluded that numbers as such are multiples of One. Dávila:

The rationalist calls "absolute" the shadow that his body casts one day under a passing cloud.

Let's conclude this annoying prologue and stipulate the following: one can try to think this through on one's own, but how many people are capable or even interested in doing so? Or, one can take it on the authority of a trusted source, and move on. Me? I enjoy lounging in the shade of insoluble problems, but most folks aren't like that.

Let's think about "multiples of one," or of unity, rather. Let's start with, say, Life Itself. What is it? Seems to me that it is an exercise in the binding of space and time. Despite all the parts, Life has a wholeness and unity to which the parts are ordered; likewise, although the organism lives in "instants," these instants are bound together in a lifespan. 

How is this even possible unless this prior Unity is in the nature of things? In other words, Unity can't be a "result" unless it's already present. Metaphysically speaking, if you start with duality, there's no "returning" to Unity. One invents Two, every time. 

It's the same with Mind: what is it? Obviously, the very possibility of knowledge rests upon an implicit unity of knower and known, or of Intelligence and Intelligibility. Speaking of the One Philosophy, if yours doesn't begin with some version of this Principle, then there is again no returning to it: there is no intelligibility in the universe, and besides, no universe. Man is submerged in permanent tenure.

Oh yeah. That just reminded me of our subject: one philosophy because one cosmos and one mankind. Or just say oneness, a oneness that permeates things and is consciously present only in man. Man is consciousness-of-unity in both space and time. 

Unity in space is a prerequisite of science (or of any real knowledge, or knowledge of the Real), as unity in time is a prerequisite of history, whether personal or collective. Only God can say I AM. The restavus can only Become, but the very possibility of this temporal becoming abides in the atemporal Subject of subjectivity.

This aphorism may seem like a sudden left turn, but it isn't:

Faith is not knowledge of the object, but communication with it.

In other words, faith presupposes an implicit unity of God and man. To have "faith in God" is to posit a unity that is given by God, without which Two can never return to One, as we already established above. Schuon has some important points on this subject as well, for example, faith "is to see concretely what apparently is abstract," and "is like an ‘existential’ intuition of its ‘intellectual’ object."

Well, that's about the size of it this morning. We'll end with this pleasantly inspiraling thought:

The dialectic of love is not an irreversible process of ascent but an infinite series of returns.