=1 "The 1 x 1 = 1 of reality"

The 1 x 1 = 1 of Reality (vs. The 2 x 2 = 4 of Appearances)

O: What do you mean by = 1, the name of your magazine?

= 1: “Equals one”.

O: Yes, but who is equals one? Or what?

= 1: Who isn’t or what isn’t?

O: I am thinking of “two”.

= 1: “Two” is also = 1 because there is always a unit which unites the twos and makes them one.

O: How about night and day?

= 1: Aren’t both faces of the same planet?

O: How about good and evil, virtue and sin, heaven and hell?

= 1: Each pair comprises the two faces of a single coin.

O: Theoretically, but practically we have to differentiate, do we not?

= 1: Yes, but even then you would be better off if you remembered the oneness behind the differentiation instead of forgetting it in favour of the difference.

O: I am not interested in theories. I am a practical man and I live a practical life in which you can’t have anything.

= 1: We also mean = 1 to be practical not theoretical. That is why we don’t say that everything is equal to everything else, which is not the case. But we say that they are one simply because they are.

O: There are two chairs here, not one.

= 1: Yes, one pair; but it is you who say that they are equal to each other because you count them: 1,2. We say simply they equal one, not that they are equal to each other.

O: Two people are sitting on them: you and I.

= 1: One sitting consciousness.

O: If I am hungry and poor and you are rich and well fed, how can you speak of the same consciousness in us both?

= 1: An hour ago you were hungry and now you have eaten. Are you still the same consciousness, or have you become two?

O: What if I am alive and he is dead?

= 1: Still the same error of perspective. There is only one life.

O: But life has not meaning if everything is one.

= 1: Only if everything is one does life have a meaning.

O: How do you explain multiplicity?

= 1: = 1 doesn’t. Most monists get into difficulty trying to explain multiplicity. We don’t explain, we just say: there is only one. Nobody has ever proved that there are two.

O: But you cannot deny the existence of the two: man and woman, mother and child . . .

= 1: The two-in-one. To prove the two or the multiplicity is your privilege. We offer no proof.

O: Let’s be practical: you propose to build a city based on the formula = 1.

= 1: Yes.

O: Would you treat the good workers and the lazy fellows the same way?

= 1: Certainly not. Equals one doesn’t mean that A = B, only that A = 1 and B = 1 in such a way that A + B = 1. It doesn’t mean that everybody will be treated the same way. It only means that in the city = 1 everybody should be able to feel the oneness.
Oneness does not imply equality. It implies fraternity: one family, one community, one city. And those who don’t want to work have no place in this community because it is a community of those who enjoy participating in the labour of one another, in working concretely for the future. Nobody is asked to become a citizen. Nobody is asked to work. The oneness of a society as well as the oneness of the universe means an invitation to participate. All those who wish to are permitted to work, to collaborate, to build, to create.

O: That’s a utopia.

= 1: We don’t think so. For you, work constitutes a means of exchange – work for payment. But work can be something else too – a means of expressing yourself, of expressing your hopes, your joys, your sense of beauty or goodness, or simply a way of being, of living, of being alive – a joy in being useful or creative.

O: There is always work which will be drudgery.

= 1: Intelligent organization of the work, and the = 1 spirit should take care of that. Even in your society where everything is measured in terms of money, there is always work which nobody can pay for: perhaps the creation of a poem, or the discovery of the zero, of penicillin, of the transistor, the attainment of Buddhahood, the education of the golden child . . .
Only when you disregard individual differences, can you count: 1, 2, 3.
In an = 1 society you don’t count your collaborators, because nobody and nothing can ever exceed one.
Let our work like our love be continuous, undivided, whole:

= 1.