God is one… Who could explain this? Nov­els and fantas­ies have been writ­ten about it, and philo­sophy and theo­logy, magic and nat­ur­al sci­ence strive to inter­pret the inex­plic­able – One. Per­haps Saint Augustine divined more of it than any­one, he who knew only one law: Love, and do what you will (dilige et quod vis fac)…

In ancient and myth­ic math­em­at­ics the begin­ning is not zero but One. This is logic­al, for the exist­ents are derived from some­thing, not from the noth­ing­ness of zero. The sac­red word of the Vedas runs thus: Truth is one, but the wise speak of it in many ways. (Rig Veda 1.164.46.) Behind the phe­nom­ena one seems able to dis­cov­er an invis­ible, under­ly­ing order, an ulti­mate belong­ing togeth­er. The one is not a num­ber but a prin­ciple.

Juli­an Bag­gini explains in his work Athe­ism: A Very Short Intro­duc­tion: ‘Most athe­ists do believe that although there is only one kind of mat­ter in the uni­verse, and that is phys­ic­al mat­ter, yet out of this “mat­ter” arise thought, beauty, emo­tion, moral val­ues – that is, the full gamut of phe­nom­ena that makes human life so rich.’

The One may mean the ulti­mate essence, the unity that binds all things to one anoth­er. This ulti­mate belong­ing togeth­er, the prin­ciple of unity, is one of the great insights of mys­ti­cism, and the other is etern­ity. Yet in a good spir­itu­al school these two insights are not the sub­ject of the final exam­in­a­tion but of the entrance exam­in­a­tion: etern­al exist­ence and the prin­ciple of unity. Does any­thing exist bey­ond this?

We love the prin­ciple of unity, that all the ele­ments of the uni­verse belong togeth­er, that they are of one fam­ily, and this binds us to everything and every­one with the unal­ter­able bond of kin­ship. Yes, even to what is unlovely or unpleas­ant, even to who­ever is hos­tile or means harm. Every­one in the world is a mem­ber of one fam­ily, even if this fam­ily has its strays. That is why Christ's say­ing holds true, that what you do to the least, you do to me… In a com­munity that lives in truly har­mo­ni­ous, per­fect spir­itu­al sym­bi­os­is, the suc­cess of a single par­ti­cipant is every­one's suc­cess, and the sor­row of a single indi­vidu­al is every­one's sor­row. This hints at the great mys­tery of shar­ing, for shared joy grows, while shared sor­row lessens.

Along­side one­ness of essence we love unique­ness too, and we do not love exclus­iv­ity. We love our own opin­ion, we love that we dif­fer from oth­ers, that we are unique, and that there is no other like us in the world. Per­haps in this inclin­a­tion of ours, too, it is the unique­ness of the One that we love?

Let us men­tion two traits of the One: the single ulti­mate essence is neces­sar­ily caus­al, and everything can be traced back to this essence, to this one source. And this means exclus­iv­ity, for noth­ing can be traced back to any other source. In this light we may under­stand such state­ments as ‘Only he attains sal­va­tion who med­it­ates upon him, rejoices in him, devotes him­self to him.’

How­ever para­dox­ic­al it may seem, the only thing that can­not be recon­ciled with the uni­verse's one­ness of essence is inner divi­sion. When man strays far from the source of the uni­verse, he falls out of the divine har­mony, as when a jewel rolls out of a pre­cious ring. The one com­mon prin­ciple requires that all belong togeth­er, and admits no excep­tion.

The nature of this ulti­mate essence is exist­ence, and we may say of it that the One exist­ence is. This seem­ingly simple state­ment has a deep mean­ing: it sig­ni­fies a pos­it­ive, affirm­at­ive onto­logy. It neces­sar­ily also pre­sup­poses that exist­ence is imper­ish­able. What is, is never lost, has always been, will always be. The One is mas­cu­line, heav­enly, bene­fi­cent, the source of every pos­sib­il­ity, the prim­al essence exist­ing in itself, the abso­lute, the hid­den mean­ing.

The mir­acle of exist­ence repeats and mul­ti­plies itself at every moment, provided we hon­our the laws of exist­ence. Then there is no ali­en­a­tion, no loss, no dam­na­tion. For even the last mir­acle tells of the first mir­acle…