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Temporary version of 1st chapter of Mathematics and Morality, Refining Awareness, Deepening Love

Mary spreads her cloak to protect all who come to her. Mary’s protection can be seen as infinite, always extending as more and more come: infinite, not finite, without end. Alternatively her cloak of protective Grace may be seen as finite; then, within that space the fact that there is always room for more can be likened to the ‘real’, decimal line where, between any 2 points, we can always place more, as the points, like our souls, are deep infinitudes, leading always inward to the Source.

It was Pythagoras who coined the term, ‘mathematics’ – ‘ta mathemata’, literally, ‘those things which have been learned’. This was not just sums and times tables etc, but holistic learning, i.e. both the beginnings of mathematics as we think of it now and spiritual development, at the same time  

‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita …’ In the middle of the road of our life’ – this is how Dante begins the ‘Divine Comedy’. When we come to consciousness, we never start at the beginning. We always start in the middle, from where we are. We find ourselves in the middle of life, in the middle of our world – our hugely heterogeneous, ambiguous world. We only ever see beginnings from the outside.

A monograph on the importance of the integers and the possibility of a historically and philosophically self-conscious mathematics; alternatively, the method of exhaustion, the endless screw and the linear plot.