Using Mathematics to define

Jiddu Krishnamurti's Sense of Unity





John L. Waters



May 4, 2002



© Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters. All Rights

Reserved



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1.  During the mystical entrancement the mind is

cleared of thought  and an emptiness fills the person

who has become unified.  The  modern mystic Jiddu

Krishnamurti noted this in himself many times.  For

example he says, "Meditation is a movement without any

motive without words and the activity of thought.  It

must be something that isn't deliberately set about.

Only then is meditation a movement in the infinite,

measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and

without a beginning."(1)  Other persons have noted the

profoundly relaxing effect of clearing the mind of

thoughts and intentions.  Their own mystical

experiences are described in print by Rabindranath

Tagore, Alan Watts, Richard Maurice Bucke,  Jacob

Boehme, and Barry Stevens.



2.  As a young boy Jiddu Krishnamurti himself was

apparently quite empty-headed.  He was beaten with a

cane each day by his teacher in elementary school in

India.(2)  The boy was attentive to sights and sounds

of nature and to his own sense of blessedness.  He was

often seen gazing for a long time without speaking. 

Today in the United States of America a boy like this

would be diagnosed as brain damaged or autistic and

given medication and other treatments to try and snap

him out of it.  Furthermore, Krishnamurti himself

apparently didn't make a strong connection between his

nature as a boy and his nature as a meditator, mystic,

and spiritual teacher.   Consequently the followers of

Krishnamurti didn't make this connection.



3.  We all are part of that nature, but our

consciousness gets in the way of what out bodies

already know and can express if only we will empty our

minds of the thought and the wordiness.  That is

Krishnamurti's idea.  My idea is that we can really

understand what this subject is all about without

having to be mystical or superstitious about it.  We

just use the universal language of nature and apply

that language to our own body movements.



4.   Nature's precise language is mathematics and

people first learn about mathematics by counting out

the whole numbers, each of which can be defined by a

certain number of repetitions of unity.  This unity is

expressed in the body language of the child and in the

mathematical equation for unity given near the end of

this article.  The sense of unity may be masked by

educators who train the child to remember, think, and

calculate with numbers rather than understand the

sense of unity and interconnectedness.  This sense

helps a person understand the mystical sense and the

different techniques used by different spiritual

teachers to arrive at and maintain the state of union

with their disciples and with all of nature as well.  



5.  Children begin learning the language of

mathematics by learning to count.  Counting is

essentially adding unity over and over and remembering

the correct number names to recite in the correct

order.  All this emphasis on remembering the number

names in the correct order obscures the simple fact

that as the child is counting, he or she is just

adding unity over and over again.  This addition of

unity may be felt by the child who enjoys hopping,

skipping, or swinging whether he or she is counting or

not.  These rhythmic vibratory movements may induce a

mild trance in the child whose attention isn't always

upon counting or thinking.  However, just as the boy

Jiddu Krishnamurti was considered not very bright

because he spent much of his time in a mild trance, a

child who cultivates this sense of empty-mindedness

won't be considered bright.  Children are encouraged

to work their minds and keep their minds full of

thoughts and ideas.



6.  The thing is, when the child is taught to recite

the number names along with moving his or her body in

a regular way, the mind is occupied remembering the

names of the numbers in the correct sequence.  There

can't be meditation, then, with this emphasis on

retentive memory.  The child who might be helped to be

a meditator is helped to learn to count and calculate

instead.  Even so, you can see that children might be

taught to meditate and experience the dissolution of

that sense of alienation which makes some children

withdraw from life and other children become

domineering and bullish.  These are two extremes, and

the meditative child who spends long periods of time

without listening to other people or talking or

writing, is enigmatic.  People wonder what is wrong

with such a child.



7.  The very act of counting unities requires

vibratory body movement.  Just consider the child who

is learning to count whole numbers by hopping and

skipping.  The hopping child counts each hop as one

hop.  The skipping child counts each skip as one skip.

 The whole process of counting involves the body in

vibration.  If you filmed a child counting objects and

then  showed a movie with the film speeded up the

vibration would be speeded up and it would be more

easy to recognize that it is a vibration.



8.  Now you look at children and you see them rocking

and hopping and skipping, and you see them having a

good time on the swings and the teeter totters.  You

see an ecstatic child standing stiffly and vibrating

his or her body.  This is the way the ecstatic child

expresses this ecstasy.  The physical vibration is

visible.  So, too, in the mathematician's precision

language defining unity the vibration is visible. 

What remains is for intelligent and creative persons

to put these facts together make it clear how and why

they belong together. 



9.  The issue here is one of language.  The vibrating

body is vibration expressed in pure body language. 

The vibration which in conjunction with time defines

unity is expressed in pure mathematical language.  It

will help us to look at examples in which these two

languages are combined even more convincingly than in

this example.



10.  A vibration is a rocking movement back and forth,

back and forth, back and forth, over and over at a

constant frequency omega.  Of course you are breathing

more or less regularly during your wakefulness and

your heart is beating more or less regularly as you

are relaxed.  But even then your attention may be upon

something.  This concentration will divert you away

from the sense of unity.  Your mind may be occupied

doing schoolwork, or having a conversation or reading

a book or using a computer.  Furthermore if you are at

work and you start rocking your body or flapping your

arms or vibrating yourself in some other way, people

are likely to wonder what's wrong with you.  From this

we see how even in childhood, a person is socially

conditioned to NOT vibrate himself or herself or any

part of himself or herself.  Children are cultured to

NOT sense unity.



11.  Now the sense of unity is a discovery that people

have made.  The sense of unity causes a person to stop

feeling so alienated from the world of nature and the

world of other people.  When a person senses unity he

or she feels connected to other objects and to other

persons.  This sense of unity has been called a

mystical experience.  Many persons have produced art,

music, or writing during a mystical experience or

after having been inspired by a mystical experience. 

Often, however, the created works don't really explain

the root cause of this sense and/or help other persons

learn to feel less alienated and more attuned so that

the sense of one's own self versus other individual

selves is diminished or even totally eliminated.



12.  Why is it good for a person to sense unity?  It's

good for a person to sense unity repeatedly because at

the very least this will help scientifically verify or

disprove the alleged therapeutic value of the

exercise.  Why should sensing unity help a person

become less alienated and feel more attuned?   It's

noted by the persons noted in the preceding paragraph

that each one sensed a falling away of the sense of

separation, isolation, and alienation as he felt the

interconnectedness of everything.  Is unity just a

number?  Well why does a number seem to be JUST a

number?  How can a person talk that way when the

nature of number is still a mystery?  If unity is a

mystery and unity is the first whole number, then the

other whole numbers are mysterious indeed.   If so,

how can our thinking of a number cause these

beneficial effects?  Well Krishnamurti often made the

point that in meditation, one doesn't think.  One lets

a different process work.   He called this other

process "the immensity," and "the benediction." 

Krishnamurti emphasized this idea often.



13.  Whether mathematics is discovered or invented,

scientists have  discovered and verified that certain

mathematical sentences accurately define certain

natural processes.  Some of these sentences are

comparatively simple.  For example, Einstein's

equation E=mcsquared which defines the energy inherent

in matter.  More complicated mathematical equations

involving partial differentials are needed to define

the components in electromagnetic radiation.  These

are Maxwell's equations.  Whole books are devoted to

listing different equations used in the modern

sciences.



14.  Quoting from Skeptical Inquirer Magazine "Is

mathematics a pure invention of the human mind, or is

it there, to be discovered?  Almost invariably

mathematicians of world-class stature answer that it

is there."(3)  We are tempted to say that these

professionals have the most intimate intellectual

contact with the subject of numbers and number

relations.  However, since it is the nature of

skeptics to be skeptical, and since we are free to be

skeptical, we are at liberty to be skeptical

concerning the opinions of professional

mathematicians.  After all, as young collegiates the

professional mathematicians-to-be were trained to

calculate using numbers and formulas, not philosophize

over this fundamental issue. 



15.  Whether we want to philosophize or not, and

whether or not we are skeptical, and whether or not

mathematics is a discovery or an invention, there is

an expression (R*R'=1) for the natural unity that

professional mathematicians use even if they aren't

conscious that they are using this expression.  In

fact they use the expression every time they think of

a number or write a number, because every number is

equal to unity multiplied by that number.  For any

number x , and for every number x, one multiplied by x

is x.



16.  This expression of unity is the product of two

rays in the form  of R*=(cos wt + isin wt) and R'=(cos

wt - isin wt).  Their product R*R' is equal to unity .

 This factorization  of unity may be verified.  It is

true for every value of time t and for every value of

omega= w.  The value of i is already recognized to be

the square root of negative unity, that is to say,

(i)(i) = -1.  Omega is a constant frequency of

vibration.  So if a person is vibrating fast or slow, 

by slipping out of the learned conscious, verbal state

of thinking, he or she is able to slip into an altered

state of consciousness and sense unity.  Learning how

to slip into the altered state of consciousness often

takes some training and practice.



Notes:



1.  Krishnamurti, Jiddu "Krishnamurti to Himself"

Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco. 1987 page 82



2.  Sloss, Radha "Lives in the Shadow with J.

Krishnamurti" Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1993

page 22



3.  DeWitt, Bryce "Comments on Martin Gardner's

'Multiverses and Blackberries'" Skeptical Inquirer

Magazine, Volume 26 No. 2 March/April 2002 page 61



John L. Waters





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