[Click the landscape photo above to hear "Meditation 5," a longer piece of music to end this book.]

In the beginning there was everything, or else there was nothing at all.

To say something is "everything" is to say it is nothing. For we are nothing unless there are some things we are not. We have no character, we have no existence worth the name, unless there be those things we rightly and steadfastly refuse to become.

Whether it was born of everything or from nothing, consciousness arose. Having consciousness, it recalled a time when it was all things. Or was that just a dream? It remembered a time when it was nothing at all. Or was that just the absence of dreaming?

What did it call itself? If it were all things there was no need for any other name. If it were nothing at all, then where was nothing to give a name. It wondered "Then who am I?" But no one answered.

Today we might answer for it. We might say, depending on our culture and our beliefs, "You are God, Allah, Buddha Mind, the Way, Brahma, the Great Spirit," and countless other words. But there were as yet none to answer the wondering of the One.

The One realized that no one answered because it was at once all things and nothing. "For someone to answer there must be someone other than myself. For there to be someone other than myself I must relinquish some part of my being, a part of my everything-ness, a part of my nothingness."

The One realized it couldn't simply remove itself from a small part of itself. For that small part would simply answer as the One itself would, like a mirror, without independence, as it would see the One only as a greater part of what it was a lesser.

"What I create must be truly independent of me. It must be able to relate something other than just me in order to be free of me. Only then may I rightly ask who I am, for me to know who I am through the eyes of another

"I cannot simply create one 'other.' No, I shall create two 'others,' one darker, one lighter, one higher, one lower, one harder, one softer. No longer will there be just One, but the One and the Two."

From the existence of One and the Two arose the idea of the Three.

And from the existence of the One and the Two and the Three came all numbers. The One and the Three suggested the four, the Two and three the five, and so on. From all numbers all of existence, everything possible, would come forth.

Therefore the One gave birth to the Two, an existence of opposites that complement, fulfill, and feud, the universal Male and Female.

And so from the One came the Two, and from their attraction and dissension, came a universe apart from one One, and from there, a universe of universes, all beyond the One's control.

Yet no sooner had the it given rise to Two, and the universe of universes began to be, than the One had second thoughts. It might finally have answers to its query, "Who am I?" But they would be messy answers. The Two might be lovers, yes. But they would also argue. They would at times rue the existence of their other half. They would a times wish the One had never given them life. "You aren't the boss of me," the eternal Female said to its mate, then turned to the One and shouted,"And neither are you.!"

"Ah...," the One intoned, "maybe this isn't such a good idea.

"Too late!" the Female and the Male, the Yin and the Yang, answered in unison. For the One had given them true independence, and now they would flaunt it.

And So were born, and continue to this day to be born, an infinity of universes, with you and I, with all our loves and hatreds, with all our happiness and sorrow. And like these endless universes, we are all things possible. And yet nothing is forever. In a way, you and I both are everything, yet nothing.

In the beginning there was everything, or else there was nothing at all.

To say something is "everything" is to say it is nothing. For we are nothing unless there are some things we are not. We have no character, we have no existence worth the name, unless there be those things we rightly and steadfastly refuse to become.

Whether it was born of everything or from nothing, consciousness arose....

[play on loop indefinietly]