The Divine Dyad

Instant recap: The Infinite Creator, aka OM-God, is watching the unfoldment of the cosmic rounds, the eternal recurrence of the universe. In round four, the presiding non-infinite God failed to go through the miracle of death and resurrection which had transformed the God of round three into OM-God.

2. The Deuce

OM-God breathed out the universe again for round five. The script ran along unaltered until the new manifestation of God reached the scene where he stood on the edge of the Abyss. His earlier self had maintained a vigil there through the rest of the second round, then in the third and fourth rounds had leaped into the blackness. What would he do this time? His soul was an open book to OM-God, who sensed that his previous choices were making an impact on him now, even though he could not consciously remember himself from the preceding rounds. Based on these intuitions, God now made a different choice: he decided to retreat from the Abyss and attempt to merge back into OM.

The new development filled OM-God with a pleasurable rush of startlement. This in itself was a great discovery, that the warp of creation could produce positive energy for OM-God every time it hit a weft that broke out of the iron-bound grip of repetition from the previous rounds. As yet OM-God only watched, but the quest for novelty would become a vital factor when he deigned to creatively intervene.

OM-God’s burst of surprise expelled the rest of his breath, and there began the great inbreath of uncreation. This made it easier for the God of the round to fulfill his aim, as the stages of his prior unfoldment began to run in reverse like a movie on rewind. The Abyss began to shrink until it no longer encompassed God, and finally shriveled to the point where he was no longer aware of it. At that moment he forfeited self-awareness as well ~ he was still a conscious, knowing being, but he had forgotten that “I AM”. The dark unconscious part of reality now withdrew into God and became again his Anima. At length this yin aspect merged again with yang, and God was neutered to an “it”. This was the penultimate stage, as the deific being fell into the blissful dream-state of Nirvana and was thence unborn, reabsorbed back into the cosmic womb. The counter-gestation ended with the dissolution of the subtle fissure between the Oneness of the Spirit-being and the Nothingness of Nirvana. And then there was only OM, the All/None, of which naught else can be said.

But OM-God knew, and retained his being. He expelled his breath, and existence unfurled again in the sixth round. Soon the God of the new cosmos found himself back on the brink of the Abyss. The preconscious shadows of the earlier rounds swirled like a ring-pass-not within him, and he knew not what to do. This time it was with a shrug of fatalistic resignation that he leaped into the Abyss. He came back to awareness as the lonely only Self, the agonized Purusha eternally crucified in the timeless dark night between the poles of life and death. And now the terrible memory came back in full: he had been here before, and the intervening events seemed like mere flickers of illusion which his mind had concocted to obscure the awful truth that this hell he endured was the ultimate reality, the end of the tether. Here he was, hence he must always return, and here he must be forever.

OM-God’s heart was filled with compassion for his suffering progeny. All he had to do was intervene in the round by unveiling his presence to the God in the Abyss, who would thus discover that he was not alone after all. But the enormity of this act was lucid to OM-God: there would then be two beings in a single cosmos, the first rupture of Oneness in an absolute sense, the first step in the creation of a universe filled with myriad creatures. This was indeed the objective of OM-God, but it had to be done in exactly the right way to avert errors with infinite consequences. Above all, he must not act in a way that violated the self-directed path of the other being, for that would make him less than he was, and hence deflect his cosmos in a disastrous direction.

Awash in his oblivion, the sixth-round God pondered his nature and uttered a thought that expressed what he thought it was. First was the concept ‘I’, the excruciating awareness of self, followed by “One”, which he was, and “sole” for he was alone, and finally the inescapable fact of his existence in the word “is”. He strung them together and spake it as his name: IONESOLIS. And so he shall be known to us, pending a change in his state ~ though he believes this to be impossible.

Ionesolis next contemplated the objects he held in his outstretched hands: the primordial forms of life and death. Each was an archedox, das Ding an sich, the ground of being for everything destined to be born in the lesser realms, and later die. Ionesolis looked death in its hollow eye with a grim conviction that it would never claim him. He would cast away the hideous proto-skull if he only could, but it was of a piece with the star of life in his other hand. Gazing into this gemlike spark, Ionesolis knew that it held the power of infinite generation. If only he could unlock the secret and learn its use, he could banish the curse of his loneliness and create more living beings.

Suddenly the thought seemed to come real ~ he caught a glimpse of a face in the light, or rather the archedox of our human notion of “face”. The face of Ionesolis had but one eye, and so did the face he thought he saw in the star of life. It vanished, but peering intensely he saw it again, and it matched his look of astonishment. He was able to steady the image, and then his hope of a miracle blinked out as he realized that he was indeed looking at his own face, for the light had become a mirror.

Ah, but perhaps it could be used as a tool to accomplish his aim. By an act of concerted will he shaped the light into a smooth surface large enough to reflect his entire form, which we can imagine to be humanoid. Next he cast upon it a glamor, a technical term in the art of magic, which hence was born in that moment. The spell gave the mirrored image a different aspect so that it no longer matched the original. Further experiments enabled Ionesolis to animate his doppleganger so that it moved independently of his own actions. Now if only he could bring it to life and make it step out of the mirror!

OM-God was watching this drama with great fascination, and at this point he had a ‘eureka!’: Ionesolis’ expressed desire to encounter another being was a de facto invitation for OM-God to enter his cosmos. Further, the magic mirror would be the perfect device for him to do it: he could cloak himself in the animated image and fulfill the wish of Ionesolis by stepping out of the mirror.

But now he paused to reflect, and realized that he would have to sacrifice his omnific position outside the multiverse, and even lose the sublime detachment he had as the Watcher of the spectacle. He would become a conditioned being within the cosmos, a participant in its flow of life and subject to its hazards. He would retain the awareness of his true self, but even this might be mitigated by the lesser state of existence. These weighty considerations caused not so much as a flicker in his will to perform the act, because his heart was filled with compassion for Ionesolis, and his mind was stimulated by the challenge of the unknown.

OM-God had no form, but now he centered his attention on the form conjured by Ionesolis, and entered into it as if from the back side of the mirror. In doing so he acquired a sheath of the plasmic substance of which this universe was made, a Godbody of tremendous magnitude as judged from our human scale, but one which bound him into cloying limitations compared to his unconditioned state. He had become the first Avatar in the history of the multiverse, an emanation of the supreme divinity into the world of form. A subtle separation took place, and he found himself looking back at his original OM-self as if it were apart from him. On the other side, OM-God got another pleasing surprise as he discovered that he retained his fullness of being in the OMnisphere as he apperceived his Avatar going forth from him into the mirror; thus he was still able to watch in detachment and oversee the new experiment from his realm beyond. And even though OM-God and his Avatar had taken on logistically separate functions, they shared an exquisite awareness that they were One. Hence we shall give the Avatar the name of Unam.

Ionesolis sensed the change in the animated image, though he knew not the cause. He decided that the time was ripe to escalate the magic, so he gestured dramatically and said: “Come forth, I command thee!”

Unam was happy to heed this summons, and stepped out of the shimmering surface into the Abysmal blackness and looked the other being in the eye. Thus there was no longer one God in this universe but two ~ the Divine Dyad was born. Therefore its original habitant was no longer alone, and we must change his name again. Though he thinks he is the first, we know him to be second ~ verily he is the Deuce.

3. I and Thou