IN SEARCH OF ONE

Can the word ‘one’ be of use to understanding the occult?
‘One’ is an all inclusive word. On the one hand it means an individual – an individual person, a single number. Yet on the other it has a mysticism about it that enshrines all. To be as one is to belong, to be communal, to be in sympathy with everything. Hence, ‘one’ can mean the individual and the entirety, and has often been used as a description of God.
Words with such duality are an enigma in themselves. For instance, what is the real meaning of ‘one’ if it can mean a single thing or everything? The Oxford Dictionary usually clarifies words, but the word, ‘one’, is beyond its ability to explain: ‘… number of a single thing without any more … ‘ Yet? ‘forming a unity, united … ‘

ONE OR ALL?

Being One can lead to ‘oneness’, which can be described as ‘singularity’ or ‘wholeness’. Language should define; make clear. But here it only adds confusion. How can a thing be both single and whole? How can a concept in language mean a single thing, yet everything? ‘One’ is an enigma indeed.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps, when ‘one’ was devised, it had a certainty in its meaning. Perhaps, when it was thought up as a form of descriptiveness, ‘one’ was understood as
holistic in itself. Perhaps, in the past, there was not a clear identification of individuality to break ‘one’ into two meanings. Perhaps it is not our language that is at fault, but our perception of the world in which we live.
Individuality, you see, is a new concept, not written in stone until the 18th century Enlightenment. The word ‘one’, on the other hand, goes back further than we can remember.

PRANA

God was One – when we popularly believed in Him. God was One, in that He was above everything, was in everything, and was in the person. With such a meaning, a person was not himself, but contained within him the spark of God. The person was not his own, but borrowed from an overall deity, as part of an overall unity, or Oneness.
Individuality destroyed this notion of Oneness with God; this communality with all things. But could this thing called individuality be an illusion?
This is indeed so in Hindu thought. Hindus believe in Prana, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘life force’. It connects the ‘one’, meaning you, to the ‘One’, meaning ‘all’. Prana exists in all celestial bodies, is there in universal forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, it fires all living things and lies in all inanimate things. The human body itself is a store of Prana, and yogis use it to assist in meditation, healing and magical powers.
Prana is a divine power that forms the basic elements of the universe. It surges through everything, regulated in the body by power points known as chakras. When the person dies, Prana does not. Kept in the body by mind during life, at death it leaves the body but continues existence in the One that is all.

CH’I

To Taoists, a religion formulated in China, this life force is ‘ch’i’, the source of vitality, harmony, creativity and morality. To Lao-tzu, the mystic behind Taoism, ch’i has a duality, yet at the same time a unity. The duality comes from its two powers, Yin and Yang. One is dark, the other light. One is female, the other male. One is a preserver, the other a destroyer. Yet in unity they form a balance to make everything harmonious in One.
As with Prana, ch’i is fundamental to the universe, everything in the universe, and ourselves. The source of health and action, it courses through the body by way of nodal points, which can be manipulated through acupuncture. Further, in Taoism, it has a divinatory purpose, being manipulated through the I Ching to assist in your decision making.

CLASSICAL STUFF

The universal life force does not only exist in eastern philosophy. The Ancient Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates knew of it. He called it ‘Vis Medicatrix Naturae’, and through understanding it he knew ‘ … all things are in sympathy.’
In the 18th century it was thought to be rediscovered by German healer Franz Anton Mesmer, who referred to it as ‘animal magnetism’, a force he used to heal.
Understanding of the life force comes to us through ancient writings known as the ‘hermetica’. Thought to have been authored by ancient magician Hermes Trismegistos, or ‘three times great Hermes’, he is seen as an amalgam of the Egyptian God Thoth, and Greek god Hermes.
As Thoth, he was the guardian of magic; as Hermes, he was messenger of the gods. His writings were said to be mainly destroyed in the fire that engulfed the great libraries of Alexandria, but fragments are said to have survived, going on to form the western occult tradition.

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

The phrase, ‘As Above, So Below’, is attributed to Hermes Trismegistos, and again enshrines the notion of the one, the individual, and the One, the unity. Even in the 20th century, ideas on the life force continued to be offered.
The Austrian psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, called it ‘orgone’, a cosmic and biological energy that permeated all things. During the 1940s he wrote books on the subject and designed a small metallic box to accumulate ‘orgone’ to aid healing. The American authorities eventually stepped in to stop him practicing. He refused. They jailed him. He died in prison in 1957. Conspiracy theorists argue they made him take a strange pink pill.

A GOD THING

The most widely known explanation of the life force comes from the Judaeo-Christian tradition itself. When Abraham led his people to the ‘Promised Land’, he did so because of the commands of a specific life force he knew to be God.
As God, He intervened directly in history through miracles. Such miraculous intervention could change history and cure people, for the fundamentals of nature were created by Him, making Him the fundamental force in the universe.
Later, God was understood in the Trinity of the Christian. In this concept He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. As the Father he is creator of the universe; as the Son, He walked the Earth as the man, Jesus; and as the Holy Ghost, He is spirit within us all for all time. In The Trinity, God becomes One and Three, and within us all, within the universe, and above the universe, intervening through His miraculous interventions.

THEOSOPHY AND CO

God is not alone in His overseeing of the universe and humanity. In the 19th century the Russian medium Madame Helena Blavatsky settled in India to form the Theosophical Society; a mystical organisation fundamental to bringing eastern mystical traditions to the west. She became convinved of the existence of the ‘Mahatmas’, hidden masters with whom she communicated.
Mahatma is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘great soul’, and Buddhists believed it to refer to an adept who had achieved complete Oneness with the universe through meditation. In doing so he gained universal powers that to us seemed miraculous. To Blavatsky, these hidden masters became immortal, ethereal, the guardians of existence.
The mystic George Gurdjieff knew these hidden masters as the Sarmoung Brotherhood, from whom he gained knowledge whilst in the Himalayas. A student of Gurdjieff’s, J G Bennett, went further. He wrote of a class of cosmic essences he called Demiurges, responsible for maintaining universal order and guiding the evolution of the world.

DEMIURGE

The word Demiurge comes from the Greek ‘demos’, meaning ‘people’, and ‘ergon’, meaning ‘work.’, thus translated as ‘one who works for the people.’
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato thought the Demiurge was a mysterious force that made the world and all within it. In the mystical tradition of Gnosticism, the Demiurge is a creator influence subordinate to the Supreme Being.
Of course, to the modern individual – the ‘one’, not the ‘One’ – this is all mystical clap-trap from a bygone age. There is no universal life force, no God, no demiurgic existence, no hidden masters, no miraculous intervention, no intelligence behind evolution … There is just the individual.
Maybe it’s a good job we still have occult literature to remind us he may just be wrong.

© Anthony North, August 2007

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