Trinity: Dividing the Universe into Three

How do trinities work? This is a very deep question with answers on many levels. The levels exist in many domains of human experience and knowledge. It would take a lot of words to answer this properly.

The mind naturally divides the universe into three parts:

1. The subject or thought that our mind is considering in the moment, which is actually a set or collection of things.
2. Everything that we think is included inside this thought, or within this consideration set.
3. Everything that is excluded from our current thought, or outside the consideration set.

Because of this mental process our mind creates trinities. Every time we think about something we divide the universe into three parts. When we later recall our thinking process, we tend to generalize and think about the big picture which is the trinity of the situation. We think about the 'system' that our mind created when we thought about that particular consideration set. We look at the way we divided the universe with our thought. This is mostly not a conscious phenomena, but it is operational nonetheless.

One of the most powerful examples of how this innate dividing of the universe into three parts is Earth, Heaven and Hell. Primitive Human experience thought of their world as a flat plane that extended infinitely in all directions. Naturally this divides the universe into three parts: The Earth on which lives Humans and all creatures, Hell below and Heaven above.

Primitive Humans knew about the Earth on which they stood. They thought about their Earth intently and with great curiosity because their survival depended upon this knowledge. However, when they had time to think about the 'big' picture, they considered how the the universe must be divided into three distinct regions: Earth, Heaven and Hell. They imagined that beings must exist above and beneath the Earthly plane. They placed themselves in the 'big' picture and thought of a cycle of existence that must include the possibility of traveling to these other planes of existence, etc.

There are so many trinities that Humans throughout history have created that it is impossible to catalog them all. Searching the Internet for 'three' yields some interesting results. There is a very interesting website written by Michael Eck who has devoted his life to cataloging threes, see www.three.com and The Book of Threes.

From Wikipedia (and other sources) some interesting facts about three.

In Mathematics:

• Three of the five regular polyhedra have triangular faces — the tetrahedron, the octahedron, and the icosahedron. Also, three of the five regular polyhedra have vertices where three faces meet — the tetrahedron, the hexahedron (cube), and the dodecahedron. Furthermore, only three different types of polygons comprise the faces of the five regular polyhedra — the triangle, the quadrilateral, and the pentagon.

In Nature:

• A human ear has three semicircular canals.
• Humans perceive white light as the mixture of the three additive primary hues: red, green, and blue.
• Genetic information is encoded in DNA and RNA using a triplet codon system.
• Atoms consist of three constituents: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
• We perceive our universe to have three spatial dimensions.

In Religion:

• The Christian Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
• The Hindu Trimurti: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.
• In Hinduism the three Gunas underlie action, in the Vedic system of knowledge.
• The Hindu Tridevi.
• The Three Jewels of Buddhism.
• The Three Pure Ones of Taoism.
• In Kaballah the trinity is God, Torah and Israel.
• The three Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh has 3 sections: Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim.
• There are three main divisions of Jews: Kohen, Levi, and Israel (Israelite).
• According to the prophet Muhammad, there are three holy cities of Islam (to which pilgrimage should be made): Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.
• The Wiccan Rule of Three.
• The Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone; the three fates.
• Gurdjieff's Three Centers and the Law of Three.
• The three Doshas (weaknesses) and their antidotes are the basis of Ayurvedic medicine in India.
• Hegel's dialectic of Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis creates three-ness from two-ness.
• Saccidānanda, Satchidananda, or Sat-cit-ānanda is a compound of three Sanskrit words, Sat, Cit, and Ānanda, meaning truth, consciousness, and bliss respectively. The expression comes from Hinduism and is used in yoga and other schools of Indian philosophy to describe the nature of Brahman as experienced by a fully liberated yogi or saint.

It is no surprise that most of the major religions have a highly significant trinity in their teachings. What I find curious is that perhaps the most significant trinity of Human existence: Father - Mother - Child is not represented. The Christian Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost comes close. Do you think that the Holy Ghost is a substitute for Mother? Some reports state that the Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated more than Jesus Christ as a Christian Deity.

An interesting web page The Christian Goddess talks about this issue. See http://www.northernway.org/goddess.html  (My highlight below).

Many theologians and scholars believe the Holy Spirit written as, Pneuma in Greek every time it appears in the New Testament, is a feminine being.  Note that Pneuma is a neuter word in Greek, but in Hebrew the word Ruah (Spirit) and in Aramaic the word Shekinah (Presence) are feminine words and imply a feminine divine presence.  The Holy Spirit is possibly a Christian Goddess, not a mysterious invisible member of an all-male Trinity "club."

Plato also conceived of a triad consisting of Beauty, Symmetry and Truth. Bucky Fuller talks about this in Synergetics.

Fig. 542.02 Tetrahedral Analysis of Plato's Triad: The triadic concept of Beauty,Symmetry, and Truth inadvenently omitted the function of the observer. The tetrahedron is the unique symmetrical set of minimum interrelationships.

Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

The Power of Myth

The full meaning of the term "myth" is something you should learn. Understanding the role of myth in your life is perhaps the most powerful tool you can attain. It is a tool that you can pragmatically apply to help you live your life with joy.

I consider Joseph Campbell one of the wisest scholars of the 20th century. In some ways he is wiser than Bucky Fuller. Campbell's book The Power of Myth changed my life. The Power of Myth is a book and six part television documentary (available on DVD) originally broadcast on PBS in 1988. The documentary comprises six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers and includes selections from Moyers' interview with Star Wars creator George Lucas. 

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."

George Lucas was the first Hollywood filmmaker to credit Campbell's influence. Lucas stated following the release of the first Star Wars film in 1977 that its story was shaped, in part, by ideas described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces and other works of Campbell's.

Check out the YouTube video: The Mythology Of Star Wars which is a Bill Moyers interview of George Lucas and his thoughts of God and "The Force."  Lucas says Mythology creates a context for the unknown. The video includes a great clip of when Luke Skywalker first meets Yoda and receives his first lesson about "The Force." Lucas says that when Star Wars first came out, almost every single religion took Star Wars and used it as an example of their religion and related the Star Wars mythology to the Bible, the Quaran and the Torah. He goes on to say if the Star Wars mythology is a tool to make old stories be new and relate to younger people - that's what the whole point was.

When Campbell published his book Historical Atlas of World Mythology,  a reporter interviewed Campbell and confronted him with some tough questions:

Reporter: "The word 'myth,' means 'a lie.' Myth is a lie." 

Campbell: "No, myth is not a lie. A whole mythology is an organization of symbolic images and narratives, metaphorical of the possibilities of human experience and the fulfillment of a given culture at a given time." 

Campbell: "That which human beings have in common is revealed in myths. Myths are the stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

Joseph Campbell defined myths as having four basic functions: 

1. the Mystical Function--experiencing the awe of the universe
2. the Cosmological Function--explaining the shape of the universe
3. the Sociological Function--supporting and validating a certain social order
4. the Pedagogical Function--how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances

See more in an interview with Campbell regarding The Function of Myth In the Individual Life.

Some inspirational quotes by Joseph Campbell:

Follow your bliss.

If you do follow your bliss,

you put yourself on a kind of track

that has been there all the while waiting for you,

and the life you ought to be living

is the one you are living.

When you can see that,

you begin to meet people

who are in the field of your bliss,

and they open the doors to you.

I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,

and doors will open

where you didn't know they were going to be.

If you follow your bliss,

doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.

☼

People say that what we're seeking is a meaning for life. 

I don't think that's what we're really seeking. 

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, 

so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

☼

Find a place (inside) where there's joy,

and the joy will burn out the pain.

☼

The goal of life

is to make your heartbeat

match the beat of the universe,

to match your nature with Nature.

Some Notable Ayn Rand Quotes

I heard the following quote on a recent episode of Criminal Minds television show. I am a big fan of this TV show and a much bigger fan of Ayn Rand. I read Ayn Rands' The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in college; both books had a big impact on me. It has been a while since I thought about Ayn Rand and so I felt a compulsion to record this excellent quote.

“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”

The last two sentences of the quote were not mentioned in the Criminal Minds episode. Of course, the FBI agents would not have much to do if they followed the last bit of advice.
My challenge is to "leave them alone" as Ayn Rand says. Definitely a tough one for me. I am a student of reason and find it frustrating when I encounter someone who denies reason. It is almost a feeling of religious zealotry that grips me. I feel the need to convert the person to a belief in reason. This is especially difficult for me in dealing with my father who I feel often denies reason for the sole purpose of winnning an argument.

“The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.”

Then we come to this quote about truth and the persons who seek it. This tempers my need to convert people to the belief in reason because it is also the path of the truth seeker. Who am I to force someone on the path to seek truth? Truth can only be found by following reason. Therefore, someone who denies reason has no interest in the truth. Do you agree?

What about religious truth? Can this be found using reason? The Buddhists believe this. The seeker applies intellect, logic and reason to the path of truth in order to test all assumptions and relative truths. It is only after exhausting these tools that we come to the end of the path and find the absolute truth which is beyond logic and reason.

Teyata Om Gate Gate Para Gate Para Sohm Gate Bodhi Swaha

This is the great mantra from the "Heart Sutra" also known as the Prajnaparamita Sutra. It means Beyond, Beyond, The Great Beyond, Beyond That Beyond, Awaken, Rejoice!

Ayn Rand reminds us that reason is the source of all great creative acts. Can we include the "highest religious abstraction" among the artifacts of our reason as she states? Some may have a problem with this. I believe this is true, because language itself is a product of reason.

“From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind.”

The Buddha says that words [religious abstraction] are but fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the moon itself. The intent is to look at the moon and not focus on the fingers. In this way, the religious abstraction, an artifact of reason, can point to the absolute truth beyond the reasoning mind.

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others”

Which brings us to creative compassion, or compassionate creativity. This is the foundation of Ayn Rand's philosophy. The reasoning mind, with its tremendous power to create is motivated by compassion. A wonderful, beautiful and hopeful thought indeed. Something that is needed especially in troubling times when world finance is controlled not by compassionate creative people, but by destructive, anti-creative scammers (anti-truth seekers) motivated by greed.