The problem of the One and the Many is a perennial philosophical problem reaching back into the mists of antiquity, in Greece first encountered in the writings of the Pre-Socratics Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus, Pythagoras and co.
This is not just a question for speculative philosophy, however. It is an existential question that can confront us in the heights and depths of psychedelic mystical experience. We can actually experience the One as a nondual unity encompassing all of Reality, ourselves included. This is often alluded to as “ego death” because all the usual categories of self and other dissolve. We can also experience the Many as a dizzyingly infinite multiplicity of beings and things numberless as the sands of the seashore or the stars in the sky.
In print, in the comfort of your own human mind, this sounds fine, even desirable. Who would turn down the chance to experience the One and the Many first hand? Well, be careful what you wish for. Allen Ginberg hauntingly wrote, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”, and I wager that not a few of those will have been driven mad by a precipitous fall into the One or the Many.
The human mind cannot fathom the One or the Many. The One is unnameable, as Jewish tradition has it, just as the Tao is unnameable according to the Chinese, because in the One everything dissolves. There can be no name, no namer and no named. We can point to it with a sign, JHWH, Tao, God, in order to talk about it, but these are just pointers. In the experience of the One, even the idea of Oneness dissolves. Likewise, the Many is impossible to grasp. Although we can have a coherent idea of the meaning of the word “infinite”, for example, our minds cannot grasp even very large numbers, such as the number of stars in our galaxy, or the number of galaxies in the universe.
We can have glimpses of the One and the Many in deep psychedelic meditation. They are awe-inspiring and occasionally terrifying. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes never-ending (seemingly), these strange experiences feel like they complete us in some mysterious metaphysical way. However, as I indicated above, they are also potentially dangerous, if you’re not ready.
So what does readiness entail? How can you prepare for the eventuality of a seismic breakthrough to the limit of ultimate Reality itself?
In order to answer this question in a way comprehensible to the human mind, I will approach it pictorially. Imagine a long ruler or x axis numbered between 0 and 10,000. The number 0 represents the One (even the One disappears in the One) and the number 10,000 represent the Many (as Taoist convention has it).
Now imagine that the number 10 represents conventional human reality. Everything is experienced and understood within the defining structures of base 10 (so to speak). People in this position may have a theoretical notion of the One and the Many, but they cannot actually experience them. They may believe in God, for example, but it will be, at best, a conventional, dualistic, base 10 God, and at worst, a psychological projection.
10 is relatively close to ground 0 so people at 10 are kept in orbit around the massive black hole of the One and don’t fly off into the infinite void of outer space. It’s as though they lived on Mercury, orbiting tightly around the sun. Staying with the solar system metaphor, Venus would then represent 11 and Earth 12. Imagine further that Venus (think angel number 1111) is an unstable magical place, elusive and ephemeral. People can’t stay there very long, and quickly find themselves back on Mercury or on Earth.
Now imagine that Earth’s orbit represents a limit beyond which the distance from the sun stretches too far. Mars represents the next number 13, unlucky for some. Mars is habitable, but not hospitable. For a start, it’s too cold. Beyond Mars is the chaotic asteroid belt and the gas planets.
In our analogy, people on Mercury (10) are safe, but narrow. People on Mars (13) have a more expanded consciousness, but are on a risky trajectory. Inherently unstable, they are prone to expand uncontrollably outwards into cosmic infinity. Too far from the unifying gravity of the One, they are in danger of fragmentation and madness. I suppose Ginsberg’s unfortunate friends were probably mostly Martians.
People on Earth (people of the 12 tribes) are in a comfortable Goldilocks position. However, they can easily slip onto the 10 or 13 position and get either stuck or lost. We need something extra to keep us in place. G.I. Gurdjieff called this something extra “the Law of Three” and “the Law of Seven”. I won’t go into the intricacies of all this now, but for the purposes of this imaginative exercise, simply picture lines connecting 3, 7 and 12 on the axis.
10 is rigid and predictable and 13 is irregular and unstable. People on 10 and 13 orbit the One but are not intimately connected to it and so cannot safely navigate the Many. But people on 12 who are connected to the nondual 1 via 7 and 3, are protected from disintegration and dispersal in the 10,000 things.
In the psychedelic context, to “turn on” is to have a vision, perhaps even a beatific vision, of the 1, the 3, the 7, or all three at once. It is a kind of kensho, a waking up to the true nature of metaphysical reality. Once you have seen it, you know you have seen it, and you cannot unsee it. You have achieved gnosis. You have turned on the spiritual faculty, or opened the third eye.
If this mystical experience is to have any lasting effect on the personality, however, it must be integrated through a process of consolidation. You now need to “tune in”. This is done primarily through contact, regular and sincere, with the riches of your spiritual tradition. In so doing, you awaken and strengthen faith, pistis. This process is both linear and cyclical and typically follows a 12 month cycle (for a Christian option see the Meditation page).
Once you have sufficiently tuned in and have achieved “great faith” (Rinzai) or “absolute faith” (Tillich), you are ready to “drop out”. This does not mean you become a dharma bum, as many Timothy Leary fans did in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It means you leave the world of dualistic human left-brain thinking behind, through self-emptying kenosis, and begin to live in the nondual world of headless immediacy. This is called “being born in the Pure Land” or “entering the Kingdom of God”. It is living out 1, 3, 7, 12 in the 10,000 things.
With this understanding, Leary’s hippy slogan, “turn on, tune in, drop out” is not a recipe for selfishness and irresponsibility. It points to the same liberation that Christ and Buddha point to. In Buddhist terms, it is “escape from Samsara”. In Christian terms, it is both “escape from Babylon” and “escape from Zion”. Salvation through Christ is salvation from the religious bondage of Mercury (10) and the worldly bondage of Mars (13) through connection with the One and the Many.
Jesus said to his disciples, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). In his final discourse he said to them, “ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world” (John 15:19). When questioned by Pilate, he declared, “my kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).
Key:
10 = religious but not spiritual (Mercury 10) = “bound”
11 = magical (Venus 11) = “unhinged”
12 = spiritual and religious (Earth 12) = “contained”
13 = spiritual but not religious (Mars 13) = “unmoored”
1 + 3 + 7 = mystical (Sun 11) = “detached”
11 + 12 = magical, spiritual and religious (Venus and Earth 23) = “fantastical”
1 + 3 + 7 + 12 = spiritual, religious and mystical (Sun and Earth 23) = “incarnation“
11 + 13 = magical and spiritual but not religious (Venus and Mars 24) = “space cadet”
bread of life 