Starting With Nothing and Ending Up With Everything by Bruce Rawles

Question: What's black and white and blinks in and out of existence 10⁴⁴ (a lot) times per second? And is in every 1/10³³ cubic centimeter of space (every teeny tiny bit)?
Answer: Hey ... Everything!

—W. Robynne McWayne
from the book Radical Reality

Okay, it's time to dig down into the mental archives of your high school geometry class. You say you're not that old? Well then, perhaps it will be only a short nostalgia trip.

If your geometry teacher was typical, the subject of the infinitesimal point was probably glossed over quickly to usher you into more "important" theorems and pragmatic applications.

But let's hit the virtual PAUSE button on the subject of the point for a while, and give it the attention it deserves.

The Infinitesimal Point

A pure, ideal, mathematically pristine and glittering point occupies no space. It has no dimension.

Wait just a picosecond. How can that be? In your high school class, were you preoccupied with the cute classmate next to you while this tidbit of metaphysical profundity just went zinging right on by, like a high-energy cosmic ray flitting through Planet Earth and out the other side?

If so, or even if you did boggle on it a while, let's explore the dimensionless point a bit further ... so you'll get my point ... about the point. Isn't language fun?

The quote above from Robynne McWayne contains galaxies of insights about the revolutionary upheavals quantum physics has brought (or should have brought) to mass consciousness in the past few decades. It suggests, among other things, that the totality of all Creation is contained within every single point within it; that Creation is a perfect hologram.

If space ultimately is an illusion — as both Einstein and ancient traditions inform us — then the paradox of how anything, however minuscule, might contain everything becomes reconciled.

What I gleaned from this gem is that all the wisdom, truth, beauty, serenity, awareness, courage, kindness, poetry, compassion, quasars, chromosomes, pineapple bagels, and other infinities of infinities of anything and everything that have ever been or ever will be — exist right here.

Now that could come in handy.

I've also found, to the delight of Ram Dass fans worldwide, that "here" appears to be quite portable. Or, as Buckaroo Banzai, said in Across the 8th Dimension, "No matter where you go ... there you are."

What a great prescription this is for a quick morale boost. Feeling a bit weary? Just tap into the INFINITE energy that exists in the cubic 10³³ centimeter in the center of your heart (or any other favorite atom of your choosing). For if all Creation exists in this point, and that point, and that point over there, and... You get the idea. The whole point of our existence is readily available. What a relief.

The McWayne quote also suggests that even the vastness of so-called "empty space" contains everything, and it all pulses like the ultimate disco strobe light, inhaling and exhaling life into beingness and non-beingness at a speed beyond any manifest realm we could imagine.

Think about it. If the whole cosmic recipe for life is made from scratch that often, we just might have a lot more opportunities to reinvent ourselves than we've thought.

You are the entire universe. You are in all, and all is in you. Sun, moon and stars revolve within you.

—Swami Muktananda

I can hear some of you going, "Great theory, but how do I apply this when [insert your favorite trauma]?"

Better Living Through Expanded Dimensionality

So to address the practical issues, let's jump from the dimensionless point to a one-dimensional line.

Recall that no matter how thin your pencil lead is, or how many DPI your printer can muster, any point you draw (if it's visible) won't be a mathematically correct point. In the same way, neither will any line you draw be thin enough. Even if you could draw a one-quark-wide line, it would be too big.

But a line offers choices — and therein lies all dilemmas. I don't adhere to Murphy's Law, but years ago I learned of a rather Zen sub-law called "Garth's Distinction" which I am actually fond of. It goes like this: "There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't."

That about sums up polarity or duality thinking, does it not?

Any dimension, literal or figurative, that has opposites or extremes can be represented symbolically by a line. Our senses seem to paint a fairly convincing picture of a world of opposites, yet there is a way out of the tug-of-war struggle that denizens of linear realms must contend with. Let's start with some examples of polarity:

Light - Dark
Hot - Cold
Yin - Yang
Republicrat - Progressive
Bass - Treble
Sticky - Smooth
Synthetic - Organic
Quiet - Loud
Universal - Subatomic
North - South

That should be enough for now. Pick any innocuous spectrum of choices (or emotionally charged issues) that can be represented by a line, and you can find perspectives anywhere on the line.

There might be still be a few concerns or judgments we harbor about things in the "relative" world of duality. But since lines are infinite, if you pick a point on the line, you can always find a point on either side of it.

The perspective stuck in one dimension says (to pick an example) "Everything in this direction looks YIN to me; everything in the other direction looks YANG." Wham! Conflict has arrived.

So now let's expand by one more dimension, this time to an infinitely thin plane. All we need to do this is one point that's not on the line.

How simple that is. Our two points on the line now have an intermediary that not only sees their individual perspective, but sees the whole realm of choices extending both between the two points and beyond them in both directions.

This third point is the essence of compassion, transcendence, harmony, and evolution.

With three, a qualitative transition is made from the pure, abstract elements of point and line to the tangible, measurable state that is called a surface. In India, the triangle was called the Mother, for it is the membrane or birth channel through which all the transcendent powers of unity and its initial division into polarity must pass in order to enter into the manifest realm of surface. The triangle acts as the mother of form.

—Robert Lawlor

Hence the sublime third point of the triangle becomes our mediator, refreshing our limited perceptions with the comforting insight of another way of seeing things. Note that the triangle (particularly the equilateral triangle) is also the primal cellular tessellation that emerges from the Seed of Life/Flower of Life matrix.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

—Albert Einstein

This probably quite familiar quote can be seen as a perfect triangular philosophy. If we ever needed an omnipresent symbol for getting "unstuck," the triangle would seem optimum. When we find ourselves between two opposites, the solution might just be to make a 90-degree turn into another dimension.

This isn't escapism. Actually, it's integration. It seems — at times, at first — more difficult to feel deeply about "both sides," but it truly is more fun, because embracing the whole is liberating. The linear mind might squawk a bit, but if the heart sings, you've negotiated that right-angle turn and are flying into your soul's appointed territory.

"If we don't encounter ideas we disagree with, we're isolating ourselves."

—Julia Butterfly Hill

What if we were to preach outside the choir? This planet might just get a lot more musical.

Just so we don't take "finite dimensional" life too seriously, I'll leave you with this quote to help you with your own detective work:

"The term 'holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff, and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough-and-ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs. Rawlinson."

Douglas Adams of Dirk Gently's
Holistic Detective Agency

The next time you see a triangle — either visible or implied between any three points — you can use that as a reminder that you are a vast multidimensional being, capable of seeing all sides of any issue from a perspective that reconciles all conflict, voids all struggle, and reveals the intrinsic beauty of all Creation.

And if all you can find in your field of vision (inner or outer; this works just as well with your eyes closed) is one solitary point, then you still have the entire Universe to draw upon for sustenance, encouragement, and inspiration.

Not bad for a point and a triangle.

Any of the other gazillion shapes you might contemplate probably have points (and triangles) in them. So you can relax. Get out (or in) there (or here) and have fun exploring your custom-tailored metaphors in geometric form. Make a point of noticing when symbols show up in everyday life, and be amazed!

You ARE the point of all this, after all.

Bruce Rawles is a digital artist and author of Sacred Geometry Design Sourcebook.

Bruce's most recent artistic inspiration is the remarkable work of geometer John Martineau, who discovered numerous very accurate models of planetary orbits with surprisingly simple patterns. Bruce has created a series of high-resolution, ray-traced artistic interpretations of these models. A variation of the Mercury-Venus model serves as the illustration for this article.

For more about Bruce, his short tutorial on Sacred Geometry, his artwork, and details of his participation in the upcoming Sacred Geometry Conference, please visit his website at Intent.com.