The different ways of moving away from the line that represents the ego in English (I), and how the three shapes that result spell a name of God – and a conjunction.

The ego in English is a line: I. It separates us from one another. It has a beginning and an end, like time (a word that is closely related to line, we cross out the l and apply the phonetic pair m-n).

How do we move away from the line that is represented in English by the pronoun I? I can see three ways to do this.

The first is to make reference to a third point, to bring God into the conversation, as if when crossing a river we remember the source of that river in the mountain. From a line, I, we make a triangle, Δ, which closely resembles the letter A (a triangle on stilts):

A

The second is to delete the ego, to draw a line through it (to deny oneself). We have seen that this makes a cross, †, which is also a plus-sign, + (the meaning of losing your life in order to find it):

+

The third is to treat the ego as a number, 1, and instead of counting up, as we teach our children, which has no end, we count down to 0. Again, we make reference to God (0 is an eternal symbol, it has no beginning or end) – we remember him:

O

The three symbols that result when we move away from the line are A+O. These three symbols spell the name of God Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. That is, when we turn away from the ego’s selfish demands and seek to do good, we necessarily call on God – there is no other way to do this.

And what’s curious is that this name of God, Alpha and Omega, is contained in the middle conjunction, and, if we write it with capital letters:

A ’N’ O (AND)

The reverse of and is DNA. We might say that it is in our DNA to do this. All human life is about understanding that the pursuit of our own desires, to the exclusion of others, will lead ultimately to dissatisfaction. It is when we embrace the other – not simply seek our own ends – that our life acquires meaning.

So, and, that little word that crops up so much in conversation, is like an instruction to turn away from the ego and to embrace the other, their needs, their points of view. It is a plus (our life is enriched), as the word itself indicates.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 2/15

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