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| Number - 1 |
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| One God |
| A few of the quotes concerning the One God: |
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| One Religion |
| Of the quotes concerning the Oness of Religion we offer these: |
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| One Mankind / Humanity |
| Amongst the quotes concerning the Oness of Mankind and Oness of Humanity are these: |
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| The point is the symbol of the Occident, the singleness of God; the circle is the symbol of the Orient, the all-ness of God, and not until the point and the circle meet do you have the absolute oneness. So Bahá'u'lláh has taught us the singleness and the oneness of God, and in the singleness and oneness of God we again have the point and the circle, the circle and the circumference. |
| The point is the symbol of the objective being, the circle is the symbol of the subjective being. Now we see that even in the description given us in the creation, the earth was without form and void and the Spirit of God moved upon the surface of the waters and there commenced to be a forming, a creating, a drawing in toward a collective centre. And then in the spiritual sense when God sent forth His prophet, His Manifestation, His Word, for the purpose of a new spiritual creation in this universe, the same principle exactly was followed. He sent forth the luminous point-as in this great, new wonderful creation of our own day, the Báb-and eighteen others, making nineteen "letters of the living". |
| If you will study carefully you will find that Jesus the Christ had twelve disciples, men-and there were six women dear to his heart, his faithful servants who, because of the character of the times and the conditions were not outwardly known as disciples, but who were in a spiritual and inner sense just as truly disciples of the blessed Christ as were his twelve men disciples, and so then there were eighteen "letters of the living", and together with Christ, himself the point, made the nineteen; and the one and the nine, ten. The Báb, the luminous point, passes through these signs or letters. He has his eighteen "letters of the living", the greatest of all of whom, thank God, was a woman, Qurratu'l-'Ayn, who gave her life for this great Cause in such a manner that Dr Pollock, a western physician present at the time and witnessing her execution, makes the statement, publishes it in writing, that that magnificent, that wonderful woman bore with infinite patience, without a murmur of complaint, with great gladness, a long and torturing death for the sake of the great freedom of woman and of the race. Eighteen "letters of the living", himself the point, the luminous point, nineteen; one and nine, ten. |
| [Star of the West - 6] |
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| In philosophy |
| In the philosophy of Plotinus and a number of other neoplatonists, The One is the ultimate reality and source of all existence. Philo of Alexandria (20 BC - AD 50) regarded the number one as God's number, and the basis for all numbers ("De Allegoriis Legum," ii.12 [i.66]). |
| [ Wikipedia - 1 (number) ] |
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| THE NUMBER OF THE PRIMORDIAL BEING |
| 1 |
The One permeates every number. It is the measure common to all numbers. It contains all numbers united in itself but excludes any multiplicity. The One is always the same and unchangeable, that is why it has itself as a product when multiplied by itself. Although without part, it is divisable. However, by division it is divided not into parts but rather into new units. None of these units, however, is larger or smaller than the whole unit, and every smallest part of it is again itself in its wholeness. |
| This description of the qualities of the mystical One, written by the medieval German mystic Agrippa of Nettesheim around 1500, cannot be considered to be mathematically correct, but it serves to show the importance of the 1 in religious traditions. |
| One, geometrically represented by the point, was not regarded by the Pythagoreans and the thinkers under their influence as a real number because a number is an aggregate composed of units, as Euclid holds. Kobel wrote in 1537: “From this you understand that 1 is not a number but is a producer (or ‘mother’), the beginning and foundation of all other numbers.” Since 1 is the first originator of numbers, and even though it is odd, it was considered both male and female, although it was somewhat closer to the male principle. When added to a male number, it results in a female number, and vice versa: 3 + 1 = 4, 4 + 1 = 5. |
| One became the symbol of the primordial One, the divine without a second, the nonpolarized existence. It comprises relation, entirety, and unity and rests in itself but stands behind all created existence. Real unity is inconceivable, however, for as soon as a self thinks about itself, there is a duality: the observer and the observed. Polarity is essential to recognition: whatever is qualified with attributes can only be recognized because of polarity. Large and small, high and deep, sour and sweet—all such qualities are relative to an ordering system. The divine, however, is beyond polarity; it is absolute being, unrelated to any ordering system. For this reason, the mystics have tried to approach the final unity beyond the manifestations, the deus absconditus beyond the deus revelatus, by using negations, and have spoken, as in the Upanishads, of neti neti, “not not,” or in the Cabala, of the Ein Sof (literally “without end”), which then reveals itself in descending layers of manifestations. In Islam, the problem for the serious believer posed itself in the question: Can a human being really pronounce the words of the profession of faith, ‘There is no deity save God,’ without committing the major sin of shirk, that is, to associate something with the One? The most radical Sufis have formulated the opinion that only after the seeker’s complete annihilation in the divine, God Himself speaks through His mouth the profession of His own unity. |
| Such mystical thoughts were well known in the ancient Indian tradition, which claims that the primordial and all-pervasive principle is the One without a second; similar words are used by Plotinus (d. 270), the most influential Neoplatonic thinker in late antiquity, whose ideas provided a basis for the development of mysticism in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. For him, the One God is beyond all forms, because forms always express multiplicity. As every multiplicity is a multiplicity of unities, it presupposes unity in itself. And since God is the root and presupposition of everything, He is also absolute Unity. |
| Ancient Chinese religion has expressed similar ideas about 1, which represents the All, the Perfect, the Absolute beyond all polarity. |
| One is an ideal symbol of the divine because the divine is spirit and as such has nothing to do with material qualities, which are bound to appear in multiplicity. Thus, 1 has no contrast, and even the negative principle that seemingly opposes the deity is, in the end, annulled or integrated into the Unity. As 1, God is the Absolute One as well as the One that is unique in its being. |
| The Indian thinkers of the Upanishads were in search of the unity behind the varied manifestations that were taken as mere appearances, as ways of action, indeed, as deceptive phantasms before the One, or as a colorful play that veils the essential Unity. “Manifold, that is how poets call the One that is only one. One is the fire that flares up in ever so many forms, One is the sun, radiating upon the world,” as an Indian sage described it. The German poet-orientalist Rückert has expressed such ideas in his didactic poem Die Weisheit des Brahmanen (The Wisdom of the Brahmin), taking over in the last line a formulation from chapter 112 of the Quran, the chapter that is the shortest expression of God’s unity: |
So wahr als aus der Eins die Zahlenreihe fließt, |
(As truly as the chain of numbers emerges from the 1 |
| To attain this unity that lies hidden behind the manifold manifestations and to achieve identity with the One has always been the goal of mysticism, as expressed in its classical form in the Upanishads: aham brahmasmi, “I am Brahma.” Besides this inclusive mystical monotheism, however, there exists another type of monotheism, which has been called “prophetic” or exclusive. This is a religious form most clearly seen in Judaism and Islam (very strict monotheists do not consider Christianity, with its doctrine of the Trinity, to be truly monotheistic). This type of monotheism is likely to have developed out of henotheism, which is the adoration of one special god who is superior to the other deities, and to whom believers turn in their worship more than to others. The biblical Yahweh, however, teaches his prophets that he, the One, is the only God, a jealous God who does not tolerate the worship of anyone else. Similarly, the Islamic profession of faith claims that “There is no deity save God,” and “deity” can be interpreted as anything that diverts humanity from the absolute surrender (islam) to this one creator, sustainer, and judge. To be sure, in both Judaism and Islam a more mystical, more inclusive type of piety developed, which can be studied in the Cabala on the one hand and in the Sufi tradition on the other (particularly in the school of Ibn ‘Arabi), both of which show Neoplatonic trends. At that point the sober and clearcut statement that “there is no deity save God” can be expressed by the formula, “there is nothing existent save God,” and the creation out of nothing by God’s creative word is interpreted as a mysterious doctrine of emanations from the One. |
| Prophetic monotheism is not restricted to the Semitic peoples. In the fourteenth century B.C.E. the Egyptian king Amenhotep IV proclaimed a monotheistic religion that had the sun as the one central deity. However, the opinion that urmonotheism preceded all other religious forms cannot be maintained, in spite of how much material its major defender, Pater Wilhelm Schmidt, collected to prove his point. |
| Christianity, although viewed with suspicion by the stern monotheistic religions of Judaism and Islam, has in fact ascribed the greatest importance to the One. Suffice it to read, in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (4:5): “One lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, father of all”. And as the Venerable Bede has claimed, the one temple in Jerusalem pointed to the one eternal home of all believers. |
| The German Protestant mystic Valentin Weigel has expressed the mystery of 1 as the number of the deity in a beautiful saying: “The One is a conclusion and concept of all numbers, 2,3,5,10,100,1000. Therefore you can say that 1 is all numbers complicite—rolled together—and 2,3,5,10,100, 1000 is nothing but unfolding. I shall compare God to the first number and the creatures to the other numbers because God is one … and because the creature in itself is twofold or has two aspects, one to itself, and one to God.” And the seventeenth-century Catholic mystic Angelus Silesius sings: |
Gleich wie die Einheit ist in einer jeden Zahl |
(Just as unity is in every number, |
| For the Muslim mystics the numerical value of 1 for the letter alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the first letter of the name of Allah, God, offered a wonderful possibility for puns and allusions on every literary level. Is it not enough to know the first letter of the alphabet and its numerical value, since it contains all wisdom and knowledge in itself? The person who has come to know the One God does not need anything more. |
| [ Schimmel, Annemarie. The Mystery of Numbers (Oxford Paperbacks) (Kindle Locations 517-586). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. ] |
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