Light, Utterance, and Metaphysical Unity

Fred Cummins and Jens Edlund

April 1, 2023

1 Begining
We start with a meditation.

Figure 1: Panta rhei

Everything flows. Mountains are no more or less fluid than bodies. The body’s temporality is
rooted in its processes of combustion, respiration, production. Solidity is a function of temporalites
and substance. The phases of matter appear real and substantial to us because of our particular
form of generation and persistence.
No violence has occurred here. The body was long buried and rotted before the engineers laid
the pipes for a new supermarket. The intersection of the pipe and the head is distributed in time,
and was not noticed by engineer or corpse. Ahimsa. This is a place to start from. Viewing thus,
we excuse ourselves for a bit from time and history.

1
 We are concerned with the interpenetration of all things, of everything in everything. Hen to
pan. This suggests a cosmic unity, but that is inexpressible. This is the problem and paradox of
ONE. This ONE is not a counting unit, a number bead, nor is it a unity that can be differentiated
from something else. Its intrinsic ineffability is perhaps the best known challenge to philosophy
and theology. Unnamed it is the mother of heaven earth.
Name something, and duality arises. “Let X =” . . . , and the complement, ∼ X is conjured
up at the same time. And so the enfolding of everything in everything is obscured through the
power of language to divide up the All into multiplicities. TWO is thus the mother of multiplicities.
Named, it is the source of the 10,000 things. It is language, categories, relations and relata, this
and that.
All this is well trodden ground, but ground we are constantly drawn back to. The figure of
Indra’s net is a contribution to metaphysical thinking that captures some of the conundrum, and
so we turn to it.

2 Indra’s Net
In Buddhist discourse, the image of Indra’s Net is frequently adduced to encourage insight into the
notion of the continuous generation of the cosmos, or dependent co-origination. Now the problem
of attempting to refer to ONE is not quite the same conundrum as dependent co-origination. But
if one grasps the ungraspable figure of everything-in-everything, then the arising of anything must
perforce be attributable to the ineffable whole, and not to a discontinuous and incoherent series
of causes and effects. Thus the same figure serves both purposes. Its great act of simplification
is to remove time completely from the picture. If one could “see” the whole, one would have the
magnificent vision offered by Parmenides, which is timeless and changeless.
Here is an description of Indra’s Net from the Huayan patriarch Dushun (557–640):

The manner in which all dharmas interpenetrate is like an imperial net of celestial
jewels extending in all directions infinitely, without limit. . . . As for the imperial net
of heavenly jewels, it is known as Indra’s Net, a net which is made entirely of jewels.
Because of the clarity of the jewels, they are all reflected in and enter into each other,
ad infinitum. Within each jewel, simultaneously, is reflected the whole net. Ultimately,
nothing comes or goes. If we now turn to the southwest, we can pick one particular
jewel and examine it closely. This individual jewel can immediately reflect the image of
every other jewel.
As is the case with this jewel, this is furthermore the case with all the rest of the
jewels—each and every jewel simultaneously and immediately reflects each and every
other jewel, ad infinitum. The image of each of these limitless jewels is within one jewel,
appearing brilliantly. None of the other jewels interfere with this. When one sits within
one jewel, one is simultaneously sitting in all the infinite jewels in all ten directions.
How is this so? Because within each jewel are present all jewels. If all jewels are present
within each jewel, it is also the case that if you sit in one jewel you sit in all jewels at
the same time. The inverse is also understood in the same way. Just as one goes into
one jewel and thus enters every other jewel while never leaving this one jewel, so too
one enters any jewel while never leaving this particular jewel. (source: Wikipedia)

2
 There are many ways to try to convey this limit of language. In quantum physics, David Bohm
introduced the notion of hidden variables that would allow any determinate entity to be nonetheless
continuous with, or enfolded in, the totality. I do not know if the quantum physicists like this idea.
Probably some do and some don’t. That’s how such suggestions fare.
Bohm got the term “enfolding” from the German mystic Nicholas of Cusa, who distinguishes
the infinite unity from the unit and number thus:

Infinite unity, therefore, is the enfolding of all things; indeed “unity,” which unites all,
designates this. Unity is maximum not merely because it is the enfolding of number, but
also because it is the enfolding of all things. (On Learned Ignorance, Chapter Three).
Infinity, therefore, exists and enfolds all things and nothing is able to exist outside it.
Consequently nothing exists that is infinity’s other or that is different from it. Infinity,
therefore, is in all things in such a way that it is no one of them. No name can fit infinity,
for every name can have its contrary. But to infinity, which is unnamable, there can be
no contrary. (De Visione Dei, par 55)

Such figures are of value, despite the verbal contortions they induce. Referential language has
its limits. Indra’s Net provides instead a visual figure to think with. Others are possible, and we
here introduce a novel figure of similar intent. Where visual figures employ light, we arrived at
our figure through consideration of another way in which the constant arising of everything may
be understood: through the power of utterance.

3 Uttering
Fiat lux! Uttering and light have history. Contemplative figures based on light, such as Indra’s
Net, may appear somewhat insubstantial. Figures drawn with light lack any tangibility, tactility,
or sense of body. As embodied beings, we are more than light. We are bloody, substantial, and we
persist. The body is a resonating column. We utter the cosmos into being. Performative ‘speech
acts’ are mere mundane shadows of the power of voice to create. AUM is the original creative force
of the Upanishads. Voice has no origin, but in uttering everything arises.
One does not knit Indra’s Net! But one might, with some satisfaction, knit a form, or paint
a picture, or write an orchestral piece, that allows discussion of the net—forms for thinking with
and through, for contemplation, and for discarding. Contemplative technologies are real, and
widespread. A yantra is minimal in its expressive capacity, which makes it invaluable as a tool of
contemplation. The synthemata of the theurgists are similarly useful.
And so we turn to uttering. Let us imagine a net now, in which each node gives utterance,
and each node receives the utterances of the others—each uniquely positioned, yet each resonating
with every one. Each hears everything, but from a unique position. Each node utters and each
node is heard by every node. This is a cosmic chant, brought forth by an infinity of souls. This is
translation from light to voice.
Attention to chant, or joint speech, unlocks treasures. Chant is, of course, synchronized respi-
ration (just as speech is the exquisite control of exhalation). If such a form of animation were found
in any animal species, it would be the single most salient property that biologists would attend
to. They assemble and breathe in a common time! What exquisite communion! Surely this is a
more plausible singular characteristic of the human species, than the anachronistic claims of Logic
or Language?

3
 As well as its well-known role among the metaphysical figures of the Upanishads (OM!),1 chant
is creative in the collective enaction of real, actual, very real, very actual, human collectives and
identities, through ritual, protest, sports, education. Those activities in which chant is central
are precisely those which create the marvellous diversity of human social worlds. It is endemic at
all those occasions in which multiple people assemble and through communion lay the ground for
communication. Chanting creates.
One of the strongest forms of chant is the joint silence through which collective grief and
vulnerability are expressed after tragedy or atrocity. The utterance itself is reduced to a silent
minimum, making the capture of the participants total, maximizing joint consciousness.
One of the most neglected forms is the cacophanous ritual of Happy Birthday, in which the
individuated personal monad is jointly celebrated and stabilized. Chant also provides the most
sublime music ever created. Let Hildegard von Bingen make this point for us. Chant is not musical
language. It does not engender a distinction between ecstatic cacophany and angelic harmony.
Nor is it to be understood in linguistic terms. Chant frequently uses words that are not from the
vernacular of the participants.
We excused ourselves a bit from time and history in the opening. We can take that a little more
seriously and flesh it out. Ritual, one of the main manifestations of chant, provides a time-out-
of-time in which ongoing activity knows its place within the grand order of things—not pursuing
something, nor fleeing, but generating and maintaining. Roy Rappaport2 describes both the organic
communion (entrainment of breath and pulse) and cosmic alignment (“Rituals are among the most
precisely recurrent of social events”) as constitutive features of ritual.

4 NChant
In the Appendix, we describe the development of an architecture, conceived in terms of nodes who
periodically utter and simultaneously receive the utterances of other nodes, as it might be supported
via conventional telecommunication networks. The work grew out of the realization during the
pandemic of 2020–2022 that the first victims of the social isolation enforced by the social response
to the virus were precisely those places of assembly in which the associated creative activities
involve chant. The churches, temples, schools, and sports stadia were locked down and bodies
could no longer contact bodies. Classes moved “online.” Churches reluctantly took to streaming
services. Matches were played in front of empty seats, even to robots who were programmed to
chant. Protests, for which there is always adequate reason, had one more reason to assemble people,
but now haunted by the spectre of transmission through the air that filled the lungs of the chanters.
Although the children of the information age like to think that computers provide communica-
tion and contact, it was abundantly clear that something was wrong. At the same time, musicians,
choirs, and even families trying to sing Happy Birthday, realized that advancements in digital wiz-
ardry still did not allow synchronous uttering through networks. The problem was not that nobody
had ever thought of it. There is a fundamental problem in that transmission through networks lies
in time, and when we substitute cables, screens, routers for the warm bodies of others in a room,
hiatuses, or lags, are introduced that are logically ineradicable. The magic that arises in communal
1
The spelling OM is the common form. The AUM variant is more practical, and stems from Tantric practices in
which embodied knowledge is applied towards divinisation, which is a fine goal.
2
Rappaport, R. A. (1999). Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Vol. 110). Cambridge University
Press.

4
chanting is killed stone dead. No matter how fast a 5, 6, or 7G network, the arrow of time points
in one direction, and transmission—which often appears instantaneous—lies in time. It takes time,
and this makes chanting over networks impossible. Chanting is an activity that demands presence.
It is beyond the fiction of instant communication, or “information.”
A fundamental problem for which a solution is impossible could lead one to walk away and find
an easier problem. After convincing ourselves first of the absoluteness of the barrier in front of us,
we decided to walk around it anyway to see what was on the other side.
To do this, we took the problem out of time, and into an ideal space. Much as we would like, we
cannot fabricate a network without time delays. But chanting is repetitive. Prayers are recited over
and over, stabilised by beads. Protesters, football supporters, and children learning their tables,
repeat words, phrases, over and over. As chant is production, not encoding, this is necessary for it
to be efficacious. We can take advantage of the inherent repetition by having little daemons sit at
each node, listening to the incoming, and somewhat delayed, productions of others. Each daemon
holds onto what it hears and only provides it to the node3 at the start of the next repeating cycle.
Example: Consider one node, P , uttering “ba” repetitively: “ba1 . . . ba2 . . . ba3 . . . ”. Consider
another node, Q, who utters the same. To distinguish the two on the page, let us write Q’s
productions as “pa1 . . . pa2 . . . pa3 . . . .”
Q’s daemon receives from P ba1 with a little delay. But it knows the overall repetition cycle. So
it holds onto ba1 until Q is about to produce its own pa2 . In this way, the lag is overcome by aligning
the tokens with a fixed delay equal to the production cycle. All productions are aligned, and the
transmission delays appear to have disappeared. In fact, delays have simply been homogenized to
be equal to the length of the production cycle.

From P ’s perspective:
ba1 . . . ba2 . . . ba3 . . . ba4 . . . ba5 . . . ba6 . . .
pa1 . . . pa2 . . . pa3 . . . pa4 . . . pa5 . . .

From Q’s perspective:

This has promise, perhaps. But it is naı̈ve. Real delays depend on many things, including the
resources needed to pass tokens around, to install daemons, and the degree of spearation of two
nodes in space. Furthermore, if everything is connected to everything else, growth is impossible.
The network would rapidly become densely packed. Resource demands would be overwhelming.
Nothing would have been achieved.
A trick is needed to grow a network such that connection between nodes is sparse—adding
thousands of extra nodes should make little or no difference to the resource requirements of an
individual node. Yet we want each node to receive (with delays, as above) the productions of every
other node—to receive them once and once only.
The Appendix describes such a network capable of growing indefinitely large. Starting with a
core of 3 nodes, we repeatedly bump up the order of the network from 3 to 9 to 27 to 81 . . . . As
3
Nodes produce and receive. The habits of everyday language that would describe this as speaking and listening
are not appropriate in the entrained sustained simultaneous productions of chant.

5
we grow it, we consider the resources required by each node. The sparse connectivity we employ
ensures that at each increase in order (each time the entire number of nodes is tripled), each node
adds only two new connections. The connectivity nonetheless ensures that every token is received
by every node, and that the totality of tokes received by each node is unique to it. There is no center
in such a network. Each node has a unique position, and a unique constellation of connections to
other nodes. Consideration of the topology we had discovered leads to the comparison with Indra’s
Net, and we therefore relegate all the technical details to the Appendix.

5 Dreaming
One does not knit Indra’s Net. But one could envisage building a finite (but potentially huge)
NChant net. Thousands or millions of producer/receivers, all uttering in ‘time.’ Would this be
anything other than a metaphysical placeholder? We believe the space is worth exploring.
If a group of us chant together repetitively, there are many ways in which we can influence,
perturb, manipulate each other beyond altering timing. The voice has musical qualities, timbre,
intensity, melody, many properties that the linguist ignores, but, because the linguists have yet to
discover chant, remain at our disposal.
Experimentation in such a space is possible. A finite implementation would have individuals
yoked together in a distributed net with patterns of variation that depend on proximity between
nodes, and on the neighbourhoods produced by our proposed pattern of connectivity. It does not
matter, at this stage, precisely what is uttered. Uttering could be a bang on a drum or a howl, as
long as it is repetitive. What is of immediate interest is how patterns of variation (along dimensions
other than time) appear, propagate, and transform as production continues. Would participants
have a sense of participation that is currently lacking in conventional transmission? We can imagine
they would, and we can see a path forward to exploring in a limited way, using existing technology.
But we cannot shake the suspicion that our principal innovative step of taking productions
out of linear time and into a time-out-of-time has untapped potential we too cannot yet see. We
know chant to harbour mysteries untouched as yet by linguistics, psychology or sociology. We are
approaching an unexplored part of the entanglement of everything in everything, from an embodied
standpoint. Ahimsa.