I
"The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me" (John xiv, 30). In these words the Grand Master of Divine Science gives us the key to the Great Knowledge. Comparison with other passages shows that the terms here rendered "prince" and "world" can equally be rendered "principle" and "age." Jesus is here speaking of a principle of the present age so entirely opposed to that principle of which he himself was the visible expression, as to have no part in him. It is the utter contradiction of everything that Jesus came to teach and to exemplify. The account Jesus gave of himself was that he came "to bear witness to the Truth," and in order that men "might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"; consequently the principle to which he refers must be the exact opposite of Truth and Life—that is, it must be the principle of Falsehood and Death.
What, then, is this false and destructive principle which rules the present age? If we consider the gist of the entire discourse of which these are the concluding words, we shall find that the central idea which Jesus has been most strenuously endeavouring to impress upon his disciples at their last meeting before the crucifixion, is that of the absolute identity and out-and-out oneness of "the Father" and "the Son," the principle of the perfect unity of God and Man. If this, then, was the great Truth which he was thus earnestly solicitous to impress upon his disciples' minds when his bodily presence was so shortly to be removed from them—the Truth of Unity—may we not reasonably infer the opposing falsehood to be the assertion of separateness, the assertion that God and man are not one? The idea of separateness is precisely the principle on which the world has proceeded from that day to this—the assumption that God and man are not one in being, and that the matter is of a different essence from spirit. In other words, the principle that finds favour with the intellectuality of the present age is that of duality—the idea of two powers and two substances opposite in kind, and, therefore, repugnant to each other, permeating all things, and so leaving no wholeness anywhere.
The entire object of the Bible is to combat the idea, of two opposing forces in the world. The good news is said to be that of "reconciliation" (2 Cor. v. 18), where also we are told that "all things are from God," hence leaving no room for any other power or any other substance; and the great falsehood, which it is the purpose of the Good News to expose, is everywhere in the Bible proclaimed to be the suggestion of duality, which is some other mode of Life, that is not the One Life, but something separate from it—an idea which it is impossible to state distinctly without involving a contradiction in terms. Everywhere the Bible exposes the fiction of the duality of separation as the great lie, but nowhere in so emphatic and concentrated a manner as in that wonderful passage of Revelations where it is figured in the mysterious Number of the Beast. "He that hath understanding let him count the number of the Beast ... and his number is six hundred and sixty and six" (Rev. xiii, 18, R.V.). Let me point out the great principle expressed in this mysterious number. It has other more particular applications, but this one general principle underlies them all.
It is an established maxim that every unity contains in itself a trinity, just as the individual man consists of body, soul, and spirit. If we would perfectly understand anything, we must be able to comprehend it in its threefold nature; therefore in symbolic numeration the multiplying of the unit by three implies the completeness of that for which the unit stands; and, again, the threefold repetition of a number represents its extension to infinity. Now mark what results if we apply these representative methods of numerical expression to the principles of Oneness and of separateness respectively. Oneness is Unity, and 1 × 3 = 3, which, intensified to its highest expression, is written as 333. Now apply the same method to the idea of separateness. Separateness consists of one and another one, each of which, according to the universal law, contains a trinity. In this view of duality the totality of things is two, and 2 × 3 = 6, and, intensifying this to its highest expression, we get 666, which is the Number of the Beast.
Why of the Beast? Because separateness from God, or the duality of opposition, which is also a duality of polarity, which is Dual-Unity, recognises something as having essential being, which is not the One Spirit; and such a conception can be verbally rendered only by some word that in common acceptance represents something, not only lower than the divine, but lower than the human also. It is because the conception of oneself as a being apart from God, if carried out to its legitimate consequences, must ultimately land all who hold it in a condition of things where open ferocity or secret cunning, the tiger nature or the serpent nature, can be the only possible rule of action.
Thus it is that the principle of the present age can have no part in that principle of Perfect Wholeness which the Great Master embodied in His teaching and in Himself. The two ideas are absolutely incompatible, and whichever we adopt as our leading principle, it must be to the entire exclusion of the other; we cannot serve God and Mammon. There is no such thing as partial wholeness. Either we are still in the principle of Separateness, and our eyes are not yet open to the real nature of the Kingdom of Heaven; or else we have grasped the principle of Unity without any exception anywhere, and the One Being includes all, the body and the soul alike, the visible form and the invisible substance and life of all equally; nothing can be left out, and we stand complete here and now, lacking no faculty, but requiring only to become conscious of our own powers, and to learn to have confidence in them through "having them exercised by reason of use."
The following communication from "A Foreign Reader," commenting on the Number of the Beast, as treated by Judge Troward in "Separation and Unity," is taken from EXPRESSION for 1902, in which it was first published. Following is Judge Troward's reply to this letter.
Dear Mr. Editor.—A correspondent in the current number of Expression points out the reference in the Book of Revelation to the number 666 as the mark of the Beast, because the trinity of mind, soul, and body, if considered as unity, may be expressed by the figures 333, and therefore duality is 333 × 2 = 666.
I think the inverse of the proposition is still more startling, and I should like to point it out. Instead of multiplying let us try dividing. First of all take unity as the unit one and divide by three (representing of course the same formula, viz., mind, soul and body). Expressed by a common fraction it is merely 1/3, which is an incomplete mathematical figure. But take the decimal formula of one divided by three, and we arrive at .3 circulating, i. e., .3333 on to infinity. In other words, the result of the proposition by mathematics is that you divide this formula of spirit, soul, and body into unity, and it remains true to itself ad infinitum.
Now we come to consider it as a duality in the same way. Expressed as a vulgar fraction it is 2/3; but as a decimal fraction it is .6666 ad infinitum. I think this is worth noting.
Yours very faithfully,
A Foreign Reader.
Brussels, Aug. 14, 1902.
Dear Editor.—I return with many thanks the very interesting letter received with yours, and I am very glad that my article should have been instrumental in drawing forth this further light on the subject.
This, moreover, affords an excellent illustration of one great principle of Unity, which is that the Unity repeats itself in every one of its parts, so that each part taken separately is an exact reproduction (in principles) of the greater Unity of which it is a portion. Therefore, if you take the individual man as your unit (which is what I did), and proceed by multiplication, you get the results which were pointed out in my article. And conversely, if you take the Great Unity of All-Being as your unit, and proceed by division, you arrive at the result shown by your foreign correspondent. The principle is a purely mathematical one, and is extremely interesting in the present application as showing the existence of a system of concealed mathematics running through the whole Bible. This bears out what I said in my article that there were other applications of the principle in question, though this one did not at the time occur to me.
I am much indebted to your correspondent for the further proof thus given of the correctness of my interpretation of the Number of the Beast. Both our interpretations support each other, for they are merely different ways of stating the same thing, and they have this advantage over those generally given, that they do not refer to any particular form of evil, but express a general principle applicable to all alike.
Yours sincerely,
T.
London, Aug. 30, 1902.