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<!-- The Centre is the midpoint of any line or figure. It is the point within a circle or sphere which is equidistant from any point on the circumference or surface.

In CENTRE, The Truth about Everything (1), Brian Taylor uses “CENTRE” as a mental concept with which to express the nature of every individual thing and its relation to every other thing within the Whole in which all exist. It covers the whole of our universe, whether we know about it or not.

The “Whole in which all exist” is also characterised by various mental concepts.

UNIVERSE (2) comes from “unus”, one and “vertere” to rotate or change. It indicates something which is a unity, rotating and rolling on and ever changing. Because it is One, it is defined here as:

“Everything that exists, has existed and will exist; and also everything that might exist or does not exist”.

However, although unus (one) indicates unity, it is also a word meaning an integer as in 1,2,3,4 etc. This enables some thinkers to refer to “other” or “parallel” universes and obscures the basic concept that “All is One”.

The “ALL” is itself a mental concept. As Greek Πάν (genitive Πανός) the All, it was used by Greek thinkers to characterise the nature of Reality. But when this led to the personification of Pan Πάν as a god, this too obscured the basic concept that “All is One”. Since, for the Greeks, there were many gods. So Pan became one among Many.

Hermeticism (3) attempted to rectify this in the Hermetic maxim which states:

"While all are in The All, it is equally true that The All is in all."

In CENTRE: The Truth about Everything, Brian Taylor links the concept of “Centre” to an ideograph.

An ideograph is the representation of an idea by a written image. It comes from Greek ίδέα = "idea" + γράφω (grafo) (“write”). Ideographs are found, together with pictographs, in some systems of writing which accompany the world’s languages.

An ideograph is not the same as a pictograph. A pictograph conveys its meaning through pictorial resemblance to a physical object, for example wayfinding and warning signs at airports or by the side of roads.

In CENTRE, the ideograph is described as “a Circle with an infinite circumference”.

The circumference of the circle defines its Oneness. The statement that “the circumference is infinite” indicates that there cannot therefore be anything outside the circumference. Although the Circle can be drawn, the circumference is purely imaginary and non-existent.

The reason for approaching things in this way is that Brian Taylor is not concerned to write more philosophy or speculation but to present the facts in such a way that they become not only intelligible but usable. That is, they provide a method for going beyond thinking about Truth and experiencing it directly for oneself.

Wittgenstein seems to have had something similar in mind: “What is your aim in philosophy?” “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” (4)

The ideograph and the statement of the mental concept in words illustrate and refine each other. The picture of a circle seems to show something (space) outside it. The verbal statement emphasises that there is no such space.

“CENTRE”, the verbal concept is used to describe the “nature and origin of every thing and its relation to other things within the Whole in which all exist”. It needs to be considered together with its ideograph of a circle. There is nothing beyond the circumference. In fact there is no circumference. The line of the circumference is there to indicate the oneness and non-duality of everything. But we can illustrate, conceptually, the relationship of the one and the many by developing this circumference line. This makes it appear as a kind of Universal Octopus (5) but with an infinite number of tentacles. Just as the drawings lie within the line of the circumference, so all the various manifestations of the One are within the One itself. The unity of everything means that everything exists within the circumference, no matter what diverse and apparently separate forms are manifest.

The practical, real-life presentation of this Universal Octopus (5) shows that an infinite number of tentacles emanate and develop from and within it. The uniformity of everything is that its nature, too, is uniformly the same. The concept of CENTRE taken together with its ideograph illustrates and makes intelligible the relationship of the One with the Many, the Whole and its Parts, The Universal Octopus and its tentacles.

"While all are in The All, it is equally true that The All is in all."

If all the manifestations, “creations” of the Centre are visualised as being within its infinite circumference, it can be posited that each manifestation also has the Centre within it; not as a part, but as the Whole itself.

One implication of this is that, if it were possible for an apparently separate individual to access this Centre within itself, it would have access to the “whole of the Whole” and not just as another individual manifestation like itself.

In Brian Taylor’s book CENTRE, in addition to discussing the theory and philosophical background to this, he provides a practical method for locating the Centre inside one’s body, activating it, entering it and using its infinite possibility; most importantly, the possibility of infinite peace and happiness.

NOTES

(1) CENTRE: The Truth about Everything by Brian Taylor ISBN 978-0-9571901-6-0

(2) UNIVERSE. Although a distinction can be made between the physical universe made of atomic or subatomic matter and the mental universe, they both exist within the Unity. Just as Yin and Yang both exist within the Tao. (3) HERMETICISM

(4) Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002). Wittgenstein

(5) See UNIVERSAL OCTOPUS PUBLICATIONS http://universaloctopus.com/ EDIT BELOW THIS LINE -->