The One and the Many

"What would emerge from the dissolution of myth was the birth of philosophy—and its first great topic was Oneness." Thomas C. McEvilley, "The Shape of Ancient Thought"

"The One is made up of the Many and the Many are made up of the One."

- Heraclitus

Somewhere in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, war is imminent. One tribe will soon attack another. In preparation for the fight, the priests perform a ritual ceremony, and their warrior-kings receive blessings from the tribe's God.

In the aftermath, the victorious warrior-king steps around the bodies strewn all over the field of battle. He calls his remaining men together, and they scream their God’s victorious name. The pounding of their shields shakes the ground. Their God is superior, and the proof lies dead all around them.

“I am Ashurbanipal king of the world, king of Assyria”, British Museum

One tribe defeats another tribe, but also, one God defeats another God. With each battle, long-standing religions will disappear, expand, or merge. Through the centuries, a few tribes will become extremely powerful, their lands extending infinitely, at least in the estimation of men on horses. Like their lands, their Gods will also begin to feel infinite: Gods like Amon-Re in Egypt. Marduk in Babylon. Indra in India.

Many of the defeated Gods will be forgotten. Yet some will survive, through the careful execution of mythological diplomacy. The priests will be the architects of complex multi-tribal mergers & acquisitions. The terms of almost every deal are simple: Your God is now my God, but my God is so much more than just your God. Deal after deal, weaker Gods are woven into the narrative of stronger Gods, and mythologies begin to melt into each other.

This is a Babylonian hymn to Marduk, circa 1000 BCE:

"Ninurta is Marduk of the hoe

Nergal is Marduk of the attack

Zababa, Marduk of the hand-to-hand fight

Enlil is Marduk of lordship and counsel

Nabium is Marduk of accounting

Sin is Marduk, the illuminator of the night

Shamash is Marduk of justice, Adad is Marduk of rains"

The power of the victorious God doesn't just expand: it become multi-threaded, like a computer processor able to run multiple applications at once. The God retains its existence as a One, with its own specific mythology, but it also gains several other existences, each with their own respective mythologies. Many of the weaker Gods are simply surgically inserted into the stronger God. Here is the Babylonian God, Nergal, whose priests seem to be fighting back against the Marduk narrative:

"His (Nergal’s) eyes are Enlil and Ninlil, Sin is the pupil of his eyes, Anu and Entu are his lips, his teeth are the Sibittu (the seven gods), his ears are Ea and Damkina, his skull is Adad, his neck is Marduk, and his breast is Nebo."

This process serves to unite religions and cultures, making governance of larger spaces possible. Yet, as it spreads to Greece and India, it will become a driving force in the birth of modern philosophy.

The Birth of Philosophy

"What would emerge from the dissolution of myth was the birth of philosophy—and its first great topic was Oneness." - Thomas McEvilley

Beginning sometime around 1000 BCE (but, like I've said earlier, no one really knows when), this idea of God as both one and many began to make its way into Greece and India.

Here is a hymn to Agni, in the Rig Veda:

“You, O Agni, are Indra, you are Visnu …You, O Agni, are King Varuna … You are Mitra …You are Aryaman…You, O Agni, are Rudra”
- Rig Veda II.1.3–7

And a similar Orphic poem dedicated to Zeus which also incorporates physical elements of the universe as parts of his body (a theme that occurs repeatedly in Indian mythology as well):

"Zeus is first and last, one royal body, containing the fire, water, earth, and air, night and day, Metus and Eros. The sky is his head, the stars his hair, the sun and moon his eyes, the air his intelligence, whereby he hears and marks all things; no sound or voice escapes his ears."
- OF 168 (note: I can't seem to figure out what "OF" refers to, if you know, let me know!)

Over the centuries, Greek and Indian thinkers would refine this idea - further and further, towards a deeper significance that applied to the entire universe, not merely the Gods. The Gods are many, but also one. Okay, then maybe the universe is composed of many things which are also composed of a central, unifying substance? Is it water? Is it fire? Is it air? Is it nothingness?

This is the birth of Monism, but it is also the birth of philosophy itself.

Thomas Mcevilley in his classic work, "The Shape of Ancient Thought":

"The concept of the simultaneously immanent and transcendent pantheos is a transitional concept between mythology, which it compacts beyond recognition, and philosophy, which will unfold from it."

The Hindu search for the unifying substance underlying reality would evolve from a material search into a deeper understanding of the nature of consciousness itself. Through a process of unprecedented introspection, philosophers like Yajnavalkya and Uddalaka would continue to evolve the idea of the One and the Many until it reached a stunning metaphysical conclusion.

The famed teacher Uddalaka, mentoring his son in a touching passage from the Chandogya Upanishad:

“As by knowing one lump of clay, dear one
We come to know all things made out of clay
That they differ only in name and form, While the stuff of which all are made is clay;
As by knowing one gold nugget, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of gold:
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is gold;
As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of iron:
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is iron -
So through that spiritual wisdom, dear one, We come to know that all of life is one.”

Heraclitus & Pre-Socratic Monism

“Heraclitus the Weeping Philosopher”, Spanish School, c. 1630, Art Institute Chicago.

“You could not in all your going find the ends of the soul, though you travelled every road, so deep is its meaning.”

- Heraclitus, Fr. 45

“As far as the space of the universe extends, so far extends the space within the heart. Within it are contained both heaven and earth, both fire and air, both sun and moon, lightning and the stars.“

- Chandogya Upanishad VIII.1.3

In Greece, these ideas appear in the work of pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus, who were clearly influenced by philosophers in India (how that happened exactly, we don’t know).

Heraclitus is a fascinating figure in Greek philosophy, a brooding contrarian and recluse. Although he was born into nobility in the 'Asian Greek' city of Ephesus, he gave up his right to a kingship in order to focus on philosophy. Unlike his contemporaries, he refused to take students or engage with royalty. His writing seems intentionally cryptic, and he was known for centuries after as Heraclitus the "Obscure".

There are stunning similarities between the Monism of Heraclitus and Hindu philosophers like Yajnavalkya. Most strikingly, both had a very specific idea about the path that energy takes through the universe, from fire (soul) > water > earth > water > fire (soul).

Here is Heraclitus:
"To souls it is death to become water; to water it is death to become earth. From earth comes water, and from water soul (again)."

This cycle is the 'Doctrine of the Five Fires', that appears in works like the Chandogya Upanishad, likely written long before Heraclitus was born.

"The One thought: May I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire. That fire thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth water …that water thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth food [plant food—earth element]."

McEvilley refers to the above example (and others) as 'stunning pieces of evidence' that have been 'ignored by Western scholars':

"This extraordinary parallelism is a strong and clear link between a pre-Socratic thinker and an Upanishad. It amounts to a scholarly ‘proof’—meaning the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence as it currently stands."

Atman

“Some people say, ‘In the beginning this was non-Being alone, one only, without a second; from that non-Being Being was produced.’ But how could this be, my dear? How could Being be produced from non-Being? On the contrary, my dear, in the beginning this world was Being alone, one only, without a second.”

- Chandogya Upanishad VI.2.1–2

The Upanishads would extend this idea inductively, taking Monism beyond the observed universe and applying it, with stunning brilliance, to the observer as well.

Yajnavalkya:

"(The imperishable) is without eyes, without ears, without speech, without mind…and yet there is no other seer but it, no other hearer but it, no other perceiver but it, no other thinker but it.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad III.8.8–11

This is a masterstroke that can be clearly attributed to the Upanishads, the idea that brings the mythological idea of the One and the Many to its final, metaphysical conclusion. The embryonic idea is about a God who has conquered other Gods. Early Indian and Greek philosophers refine the idea further, searching for a material substance (like fire) that underlies all of creation. The Upanishads continue the search through relentless introspection, and find the answer lies within the self:

"He, the Self (atman), is Brahma, he is Indra, he is Prajapati, he is all these gods; and these five great elements, namely earth, air, ether, water, light; these things and those which are mingled of the fire as it were, the seeds of one sort and another; those born from an egg, and those born from a womb, and those born from sweat, and those born from a sprout; horses, cows, persons, and elephants, whatever breathing thing there is, whether moving or flying or what is stationary."
- Aitareya Upanishad

Quantum physics would take another few thousand years to come to this same conclusion: that in order to understand reality, it is impossible to objectively separate the observer from that which is being observed. Schrodinger, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Tesla, and others would turn to the Upanishads throughout their careers, as experiment after experiment inexplicably confirmed what the ancients knew. More on this soon :)

Have an excellent week.

- Sandeep