The first question for me is this. “Is there meaning?” This is of course just a way of phrasing – “Why?”, “Is there purpose at all?”. Surely, this underlies all of living for each of us. Sometimes we confront it, sometimes avoid it – but it’s always there. Since we are INSIDE existence, and have no rational external reference point, there can be no rational answer. Personally though, it seems obvious to me that the answer is yes; but that is in the end just an article of faith ( although underpinned by set of extraordinary “coincidences” in physics that make life possible).
Let then take the existence of meaning as a truth. Where does it lie?
It seems to me that purpose isn’t to be found in “self” – our obsession since Freud. At least not in a physical self. My body at death will dissolve and the molecules will be taken up into infinite new forms, just as the body I currently inhabit is made up of atoms that have been part of infinite others – including all of those I have known – my mother, father, brothers, wife etc. (“ the dust inbreathed was a house, the wall the wainscot and the mouse”(Eliot)
I don’t believe that either that meaning lies solely within the material world. In fact the more that science uncovers of the “how” of quantum mechanics – the less concrete materiality really appears ..
It seems to me that the frantic search for meaning within things – dialectic materialism – is a dead end or distraction. On the other hand the material world must surely be a part of meaning. But part of what?
Part of a whole”. All is one. Indeed that is what “universe” means. One thing. Another way of looking at it could be that meaning is in process – the flow of matter and energy. Perhaps – “the whole flow of energy and matter”. How though do we break that down to something we can get our arms around or understand?
Maybe another way of looking at it is that material is part as in partnered with.. (mind? Spirit? Antimatter?)
That, for me, is where Martin Buber and David Bohm come in. They each talk about meaning lie within “relation” or “dialogue”. What lies “between”. Buber’s amazing semi-poetic meditation – I and Thou – (Ich und Du) – has been transformative for me. I would encourage everyone to read at least the first 2 pages, where he defines the “primary words” as I-It and I-Thou – as opposed to I, Thou, or It alone.
I therefore have two building blocks in my search. First. There is meaning. Second. The place to look for it is relationship.
And that’s where number arises for me..
My daughter, as a teenager told me she thought that an incredibly important concept was “boundary”, and I’ve been assimilating that ever since. Without boundary nothing can be known. You NEED the “other” to understand yourself.
I wrote this some years ago .
“From zero to hero, the world is born with the appearance of 1. The archetypal boundary is right there in the change from nothing to all. But, one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. From 1 to 2, consciousness is possible. Granularity and separation. We can understand existence because we have edge. A within and without. Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as a cloud of possibility – until observed. It is the act of knowing that crystallises out reality from potential. Deliberately to mix language – it is witness that causes wavefunction collapse. It is consciousness that creates reality, and that is only possible when edge is born with the advent of the number 2. Duality appears to be a fundamental property of existence. Energy is the flip side of matter (e=mc2), everything is wave and particle simultaneously. Yin is nothing without Yang. Ich and Du embrace and the world unfolds.”
That is why – for me – the “mystic number” is 2. With that comes a consciousness of existence and the possibility of relation and dialogue which Buber and Bohm so eloquently place at the core of meaning.
I conclude then. There is meaning. It lies in relation, and boundary is key to that. Hence the importance of the number. 2
