The Act Of Counting
John L. Waters
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The Act Of Counting
John L. Waters
April 16, 2001
Copyright 2001 by John L. Waters. All Rights
Reserved
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In the kitchen of an Iowa farmhouse a girl sits
whistling. She is happily counting eggs and putting
them into an egg carton. Her right hand grasps one
egg after another and moves it from a wire basket
containing hundreds more eggs. The girl carefully
places each egg in a styrofoam carton. As the hands
of the clock measure her hours of delight, the girl's
hand follows almost the same path over and over.
To produce my theory of unity I use abstraction. I
generalize over many cases of individual acts of
counting. For example I observe that in counting
objects a person touches each object he or she counts,
and moves on to the next object. In the example
above, as the girl is counting eggs, each time she
touches an egg she utters a number name. The girl
speaks the names of the numbers, one, two, three,
...N, N+1..., as she is also moving her body in a
cyclic-repetitive manner. However in defining what a
number is, educators and theorists leave out the
cyclic-repetitive body movement. On the blackboard
the number line stands motionless.
Furthermore, we know that one equals zero plus one,
two equals one plus one, three equals one plus one
plus one, and so on. However when the girl learned to
count, she learned a different name for each number.
She wasn't taught to say one plus one N times to name
the number N. For example, it's a lot more economical
of breath to say "nine" rather than "one plus one plus
one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus one plus
one." Imagine putting "one million" into this
repeated one-plus-one form. It would take the girl
longer than a year to say "one plus one plus one, and
so on, a million times and identify the number! And
so the fact that one is added each time the next
number is named isn't emphasized, and the importance
of this isn't recognized.
We observe that in learning to count and in counting
objects even as an adult, a person moves his or her
body in a cyclic-repetitive way. I described this
repetitive movement already. Every time the girl
touches an egg she adds one but she says the name of a
new number. Now when it comes to integrating the
movement of the girl's verbal intellect with the
movement of the girl's body, this is what a study of
counting helps us understand clearly.
Each one that gets added is indicated by the one cycle
of the cyclic-repetitive movement. Kinesthetically
the cyclic repetitive movement defines the one which
the girl doesn't utter vocally because instead she
utters the conventional number name. If she said as
she counted by saying "one, one plus one, one plus one
plus one," it would be easier for us to see the unity
expressed by her repetitive body movement. She feels
the repetitive body movement but she is preoccuppied
with reciting the increasingly complicated number
names in the correct order.
The unity, that is the number one, is felt by the girl
as she is moving her body without trying to think of
the number names and keep track of where she is in the
long linear sequential order which runs from one up to
as large a number as you want to count to. And in
learning arithmetic the emphasis is placed upon
manipulating larger and larger numbers, rather than
the nature of unity and the sense of unity itself.
Our goal is to understand unity using words, not to
just sense unity. We have seen that the girl counting
eggs can sense unity by moving her body in a
cyclic-repetitive way without being distracted by
trying to remember where she is in the long sequence
of number names. She will sense unity as she feels
the unity being expressed over and over again by her
own body in motion. We can see that this body
movement is expressing unity as we apply the counting
process and count the cyclicrepetitive body movements
the girl is making. She might not be conscious of all
this, however, if she is concentrating on counting the
eggs without breaking them, and as she is
concentrating on not losing count and remembering to
recite the correct number names in the correct order.
Unity is a sensation felt by persons who repeat the
same body movement over and over without being
distracted by counting these movements and without
being distracted by thinking using words at all. For
example, many joggers report feeling unity as a
euphoria they call "runner's high." Some mystics
repeat the same word or short series of words over and
over and experience a euphoria in this way. However
to understand in words the sense of unity we can
relate the cyclic-repetitive movement to the language
of mathematics. This enables us to think of other
ways by which a person can cultivate a sense of unity
and euphoria within himself or herself.
For example, if the girl were to stop counting eggs,
and lie down on the ground and clear her mind of all
conscious thought thought, her breath would still be
regular, and her heartbeat would still be regular.
With her mind clear, the cyclic-repetitive movements
inside her body would enable her to sense the unity
directly through her body. She could add more
cyclic-repetitive physical movement by listening to a
single hum or buzz which filles the air. Or she could
produce a single hum or buzz as people do when they
chant "ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm." She could also open
her eyes and just gaze into the clear blue sky. The
color blue vibrating in her eyes would be another
source of continuous vibration. Adding all these
vibrations in her body the girl would be more likely
to sense unity and have a "mystical" experience.
The direct sensation of number, God and God-mind is
hereby revealed. Just be let your breath and your
heartbeat lead you there.
9:44PM April 10, 2001
John L. Waters
johnlwaters@yahoo.com
The information on this page represents that of John Waters and not
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