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Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
are many experiencing subjects as well as many objects being experienced; every subject is
also an object to another subject, and every "one" is part of the category of "many" for other
"ones."
In Wholeness, the one and the many are unceasingly, eternally interrelated, and they
are interrelated in wholes. The wholeness of a human whole includes both the state of
"subjecthood" and that of "objecthood." A whole is neither "one" nor "many," it is both;
each whole is more or less "one," more or less "many." But various types of wholes differ
from one another according to the proportion of "oneness" and "manyness" within their
constitutions.
We come therefore to the realization that Wholeness includes the One and the Many,
indeed that it is their dynamic interrelationship. Philosophically speaking, Wholeness
includes and integrates two fundamental principles, the principle of Unity and the
principle of Multiplicity. And as change is the primary and most essential fact of human
experience, the interrelationship of Unity and Multiplicity is a dynamic relationship that
ceaselessly changes. In terms of consciousness, it is the relationship between subjectivity
and objectivity. In terms of universal motion and change, the relationship between Unity
and Multiplicity is structured and essentially cyclic. The dynamic interrelationship
between them is contained within fields of activity, wholes — wholes of time (cycles) and
wholes of space (units or cosmoi). The principle of Unity gives to motion a rhythmic or
cyclic character. It also provides defining boundaries for the fields of activity, large or
small, microcosms or macrocosms, in which the principle of Multiplicity produces ever
more differentiation and expansion.
Because of the principle of Multiplicity, the world of existence is experienced in terms
of a multitude of entities; because of the principle of Unity, these entities are wholes,
integrating parts (or rather subwholes) differentiated by the principle of Multiplicity. At
the human level of being, the principle of Unity operates in the organized whole, the
person, as a subjective sense of identity, of being "I." But because the principle of
Multiplicity can never be totally inoperative — dominant and for an instant all-powerful
as the realization of unity may be — there ultimately can be no one-and-only absolute
subject, "the One." Similarly, because the principle of Unity can never be totally
inoperative, neither can there be absolute multiplicity. If no principle of Unity were in
operation, there could be no unity of being, only an undifferentiated, infinite extension of
nameless substance. No experiencing subjects would exist, because without defining
boundaries there could be no even minimally integrated wholes, no entities, no
experiences because no experiencers.
All wholes are and must be finite. The very fact that an entity is a whole implies that it
has limiting factors or boundaries, as abstract or supersensible as these may be. But
Wholeness is not finite, because it applies to all wholes and is not limited to any particular
whole or condition of being. Yet neither is Wholeness infinite, because the concept of
infinity (to which human beings usually attach a powerful emotional charge) is only one
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