Using Mathematics to define Jiddu Krishnamurti's Sense of Unity
John L. Waters
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John L. Waters
May 4, 2002
Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters. All Rights
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1. During the mystical entrancement the mind is
cleared of thought and an emptiness fills the person
who has become unified. The modern mystic Jiddu
Krishnamurti noted this in himself many times. For
example he says, "Meditation is a movement without any
motive without words and the activity of thought. It
must be something that isn't deliberately set about.
Only then is meditation a movement in the infinite,
measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and
without a beginning."(1) Other persons have noted the
profoundly relaxing effect of clearing the mind of
thoughts and intentions. Their own mystical
experiences are described in print by Rabindranath
Tagore, Alan Watts, Richard Maurice Bucke, Jacob
Boehme, and Barry Stevens.
2. As a young boy Jiddu Krishnamurti himself was
apparently quite empty-headed. He was beaten with a
cane each day by his teacher in elementary school in
India.(2) The boy was attentive to sights and sounds
of nature and to his own sense of blessedness. He was
often seen gazing for a long time without speaking.
Today in the United States of America a boy like this
would be diagnosed as brain damaged or autistic and
given medication and other treatments to try and snap
him out of it. Furthermore, Krishnamurti himself
apparently didn't make a strong connection between his
nature as a boy and his nature as a meditator, mystic,
and spiritual teacher. Consequently the followers of
Krishnamurti didn't make this connection.
3. We all are part of that nature, but our
consciousness gets in the way of what out bodies
already know and can express if only we will empty our
minds of the thought and the wordiness. That is
Krishnamurti's idea. My idea is that we can really
understand what this subject is all about without
having to be mystical or superstitious about it. We
just use the universal language of nature and apply
that language to our own body movements.
4. Nature's precise language is mathematics and
people first learn about mathematics by counting out
the whole numbers, each of which can be defined by a
certain number of repetitions of unity. This unity is
expressed in the body language of the child and in the
mathematical equation for unity given near the end of
this article. The sense of unity may be masked by
educators who train the child to remember, think, and
calculate with numbers rather than understand the
sense of unity and interconnectedness. This sense
helps a person understand the mystical sense and the
different techniques used by different spiritual
teachers to arrive at and maintain the state of union
with their disciples and with all of nature as well.
5. Children begin learning the language of
mathematics by learning to count. Counting is
essentially adding unity over and over and remembering
the correct number names to recite in the correct
order. All this emphasis on remembering the number
names in the correct order obscures the simple fact
that as the child is counting, he or she is just
adding unity over and over again. This addition of
unity may be felt by the child who enjoys hopping,
skipping, or swinging whether he or she is counting or
not. These rhythmic vibratory movements may induce a
mild trance in the child whose attention isn't always
upon counting or thinking. However, just as the boy
Jiddu Krishnamurti was considered not very bright
because he spent much of his time in a mild trance, a
child who cultivates this sense of empty-mindedness
won't be considered bright. Children are encouraged
to work their minds and keep their minds full of
thoughts and ideas.
6. The thing is, when the child is taught to recite
the number names along with moving his or her body in
a regular way, the mind is occupied remembering the
names of the numbers in the correct sequence. There
can't be meditation, then, with this emphasis on
retentive memory. The child who might be helped to be
a meditator is helped to learn to count and calculate
instead. Even so, you can see that children might be
taught to meditate and experience the dissolution of
that sense of alienation which makes some children
withdraw from life and other children become
domineering and bullish. These are two extremes, and
the meditative child who spends long periods of time
without listening to other people or talking or
writing, is enigmatic. People wonder what is wrong
with such a child.
7. The very act of counting unities requires
vibratory body movement. Just consider the child who
is learning to count whole numbers by hopping and
skipping. The hopping child counts each hop as one
hop. The skipping child counts each skip as one skip.
The whole process of counting involves the body in
vibration. If you filmed a child counting objects and
then showed a movie with the film speeded up the
vibration would be speeded up and it would be more
easy to recognize that it is a vibration.
8. Now you look at children and you see them rocking
and hopping and skipping, and you see them having a
good time on the swings and the teeter totters. You
see an ecstatic child standing stiffly and vibrating
his or her body. This is the way the ecstatic child
expresses this ecstasy. The physical vibration is
visible. So, too, in the mathematician's precision
language defining unity the vibration is visible.
What remains is for intelligent and creative persons
to put these facts together make it clear how and why
they belong together.
9. The issue here is one of language. The vibrating
body is vibration expressed in pure body language.
The vibration which in conjunction with time defines
unity is expressed in pure mathematical language. It
will help us to look at examples in which these two
languages are combined even more convincingly than in
this example.
10. A vibration is a rocking movement back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth, over and over at a
constant frequency omega. Of course you are breathing
more or less regularly during your wakefulness and
your heart is beating more or less regularly as you
are relaxed. But even then your attention may be upon
something. This concentration will divert you away
from the sense of unity. Your mind may be occupied
doing schoolwork, or having a conversation or reading
a book or using a computer. Furthermore if you are at
work and you start rocking your body or flapping your
arms or vibrating yourself in some other way, people
are likely to wonder what's wrong with you. From this
we see how even in childhood, a person is socially
conditioned to NOT vibrate himself or herself or any
part of himself or herself. Children are cultured to
NOT sense unity.
11. Now the sense of unity is a discovery that people
have made. The sense of unity causes a person to stop
feeling so alienated from the world of nature and the
world of other people. When a person senses unity he
or she feels connected to other objects and to other
persons. This sense of unity has been called a
mystical experience. Many persons have produced art,
music, or writing during a mystical experience or
after having been inspired by a mystical experience.
Often, however, the created works don't really explain
the root cause of this sense and/or help other persons
learn to feel less alienated and more attuned so that
the sense of one's own self versus other individual
selves is diminished or even totally eliminated.
12. Why is it good for a person to sense unity? It's
good for a person to sense unity repeatedly because at
the very least this will help scientifically verify or
disprove the alleged therapeutic value of the
exercise. Why should sensing unity help a person
become less alienated and feel more attuned? It's
noted by the persons noted in the preceding paragraph
that each one sensed a falling away of the sense of
separation, isolation, and alienation as he felt the
interconnectedness of everything. Is unity just a
number? Well why does a number seem to be JUST a
number? How can a person talk that way when the
nature of number is still a mystery? If unity is a
mystery and unity is the first whole number, then the
other whole numbers are mysterious indeed. If so,
how can our thinking of a number cause these
beneficial effects? Well Krishnamurti often made the
point that in meditation, one doesn't think. One lets
a different process work. He called this other
process "the immensity," and "the benediction."
Krishnamurti emphasized this idea often.
13. Whether mathematics is discovered or invented,
scientists have discovered and verified that certain
mathematical sentences accurately define certain
natural processes. Some of these sentences are
comparatively simple. For example, Einstein's
equation E=mcsquared which defines the energy inherent
in matter. More complicated mathematical equations
involving partial differentials are needed to define
the components in electromagnetic radiation. These
are Maxwell's equations. Whole books are devoted to
listing different equations used in the modern
sciences.
14. Quoting from Skeptical Inquirer Magazine "Is
mathematics a pure invention of the human mind, or is
it there, to be discovered? Almost invariably
mathematicians of world-class stature answer that it
is there."(3) We are tempted to say that these
professionals have the most intimate intellectual
contact with the subject of numbers and number
relations. However, since it is the nature of
skeptics to be skeptical, and since we are free to be
skeptical, we are at liberty to be skeptical
concerning the opinions of professional
mathematicians. After all, as young collegiates the
professional mathematicians-to-be were trained to
calculate using numbers and formulas, not philosophize
over this fundamental issue.
15. Whether we want to philosophize or not, and
whether or not we are skeptical, and whether or not
mathematics is a discovery or an invention, there is
an expression (R*R'=1) for the natural unity that
professional mathematicians use even if they aren't
conscious that they are using this expression. In
fact they use the expression every time they think of
a number or write a number, because every number is
equal to unity multiplied by that number. For any
number x , and for every number x, one multiplied by x
is x.
16. This expression of unity is the product of two
rays in the form of R*=(cos wt + isin wt) and R'=(cos
wt - isin wt). Their product R*R' is equal to unity .
This factorization of unity may be verified. It is
true for every value of time t and for every value of
omega= w. The value of i is already recognized to be
the square root of negative unity, that is to say,
(i)(i) = -1. Omega is a constant frequency of
vibration. So if a person is vibrating fast or slow,
by slipping out of the learned conscious, verbal state
of thinking, he or she is able to slip into an altered
state of consciousness and sense unity. Learning how
to slip into the altered state of consciousness often
takes some training and practice.
Notes:
1. Krishnamurti, Jiddu "Krishnamurti to Himself"
Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco. 1987 page 82
2. Sloss, Radha "Lives in the Shadow with J.
Krishnamurti" Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993
page 22
3. DeWitt, Bryce "Comments on Martin Gardner's
'Multiverses and Blackberries'" Skeptical Inquirer
Magazine, Volume 26 No. 2 March/April 2002 page 61
John L. Waters
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