A Universe of Souls
Non-duality may be one of the most misunderstood concepts in spiritual practice. Traditionally regarded as the culminating realization in systems like Hindu Advaita Vedanta or Buddhist Madhyamaka, it has increasingly become a central focus for modern seekers, and we are encouraged to “skip ahead” to the profound insight that there is no separation---no subject, no object, nothing “out there” apart from the self. A common refrain asserts that there is only a single, universal mind, exploring diversity as a way to know itself.
For the analytical mind, such claims naturally provoke questions: “Why? How does this work? What purpose does this exploration serve?” Often, these questions are dismissed as irrelevant, and we’re urged to bypass rational inquiry and embrace direct experiential awareness instead. While this approach can lead to profound glimpses of reality, it risks leaving us without the intellectual framework to contextualize and integrate these experiences into a coherent worldview.
Why should understanding the nature of reality be “easy?”
Students of ancient mystery traditions, like those in the Pythagorean school, would never have dreamed of “skipping ahead.” An aspirant might spend years---or even decades---studying and refining their intellect to prepare for the revelations they would encounter during their mystery initiations. This deliberate, disciplined approach has always resonated with me, and I’ve often wondered why we seem so eager to bypass all the foundational work these great traditions emphasize. Isn’t skipping straight to the advanced studies a recipe for misunderstanding? Or is this simply a reflection of our Western “I want it now” attitude toward life?
In a certain sense, ontological mathematics aligns with non-dualistic thinking. It is fundamentally monistic, asserting that all reality arises from a single source: mathematical structures, which are inherently mental and unified. This perspective resonates with non-duality, which sees divisions as illusory---mere appearances overlying a deeper unity.
Ontological mathematics explains the universe as composed of infinite individuated yet interdependent souls. These souls form a harmonious system, unified through the mathematical principles, where frequencies interact according to precise mathematical laws. In this view, no true separation exists between entities; all are expressions of the same underlying mathematical reality.
This doesn’t mean, however, that we are all literally the same. Ontologically---a term that refers to the fundamental nature of being---we’re not interchangeable. It’s not “I am you, and you are me” in a direct sense. Rather, we’re distinct aspects of a shared system, like individual waves rising and falling on the same ocean. Each soul retains its unique identity, yet all exist as part of the same mathematical fabric, interconnected and mutually dependent. This interplay of individuality and unity is what gives rise to the phenomenal world we experience.
We can think any thought we want in the privacy of our own mind, and every night we create dream worlds where anything is possible. If we wake up within those dreams and become lucid, we gain superhuman abilities. Like Neo from The Matrix, we can defy the rules, reshape reality, and manifest our will.
But the collective dream---the shared universe we inhabit---is a different kind of playground. It’s a vast interference pattern, woven from the thoughts of countless minds. While we’re free to add our own ideas to this web, those ideas collide with the collective, subject to its rules of resonance and cancellation. To bring a personal vision to life here, we have to do more than dream---we must work in harmony with the system, learning how to align with its patterns rather than struggle against them.
Consider a simple example: imagine you want to host a neighborhood gathering. If those around you share your enthusiasm, their agreement amplifies your vision, and the idea takes root with minimal effort. Now imagine an ambitious goal, like revitalizing the entire community. The complexity skyrockets. Suddenly, the collective interference pattern becomes far more intricate, with competing ideas and agendas creating resistance. To succeed, your idea must be tuned carefully, gaining resonance from a broader group, sustaining momentum long enough to outlast any opposing forces. The bigger the dream, the more precision and collaboration are required to manifest it.
The nuance of this system is complex and goes beyond a simple apprehension of vision. To understand the collective as an interference pattern of sinusoidal wavefunctions that interact mathematically is simply beyond most intuitive abilities, which tend to rely on feeling and sensing, not mathematics.
Mystical intuition offers a direct way to explore reality, but without rational grounding, it risks misinterpretation. Mystical experiences often dissolve the ego, leading to a profound sense of “oneness.” The limited, constructed sense of self---the ego---falls away, revealing the interconnectedness of all things. In this state, distinctions blur, and we may interpret it as evidence that the self is an illusion. Yet this experience reflects a functional unity, not the annihilation of individuality.
Imagine someone sees a beautiful cake and decides they want to bake their own from scratch. Instead of learning the recipe or understanding the role of each ingredient, they skip straight to mixing things together and putting it in the oven. Some aspiring bakers might get lucky and produce something edible---or even delicious---but they likely won’t understand why it worked or why it didn’t. And if the cake fails, they might dismiss the process altogether, thinking, “Baking doesn’t work.” Worse yet, they may achieve a result that is satisfying to them, but isn’t even close to the beautiful cake that inspired them.
The same principle applies to non-duality. Jumping straight to proclaiming “there’s no self” or “no separation” without understanding the foundational “ingredients” risks a shallow or incomplete realization. Without study and practice, it’s easy to misinterpret these teachings and miss the deeper purpose and interconnectedness they reveal. Mystical experience provides a visceral sense of the universe’s interconnectedness, but it often lacks the framework to fully comprehend or articulate what’s encountered. Without a rational structure, the simplest interpretation often prevails: that all is one, and the individual self is an illusion.
If we have infinite individuated souls, that then begs the question--what are they up to? If they’re not seeking to annihilate themselves, what’s their purpose---what are they striving toward?
We’ve reasoned that infinite souls exist, “dancing on the head of a pin”---our collective singularity---producing perfect sine and cosine waves in a state of flawless mathematical symmetry and zero entropy. But this perfect state clearly doesn’t reflect the messy, complex world we live in. So, how does that world emerge?
From this perfect state of being, the only possible way to introduce novelty is to introduce entropy. We can conceptualize the Big Bang not as a physical explosion but as a mental event, where infinite souls simultaneously exercise their wills, shifting themselves into a state of maximum entropy---both within and between themselves. Rather than an ontologically singular universal mind “splitting” into many parts, it’s more logical to view this as a collective hive mind becoming maximally dissociated, psychologically fragmenting both internally and relationally.
It’s a subtle difference. You might ask, “what’s the difference between a collective mind becoming dissociated and one mind splitting itself?” The difference is that the cosmic mind was never just a singular mind, but a singular mind composed of infinite necessary building blocks---souls. These souls simply forget that they are part of a collective and begin fighting, competing, and bickering amongst themselves unnecessarily.
Imagine this collective hive mind as a solved Rubik’s cube. The Big Bang represents the moment when the cube shuffles itself into maximum disorder. This act begins the cosmic cycle. Like solving a Rubik’s cube, most of us start by trying to solve just one side---focusing on ourselves. But at some point, we realize that solving only one side doesn’t complete the puzzle. The game isn’t truly won until the whole cube is solved---until the collective is harmonized.
This realization shifts the game. Each individual soul must solve itself, but the constraints of the “cosmic Rubik’s cube” ensure that no one soul can achieve the ultimate goal---a won game---alone. At a certain point, cooperation becomes necessary. The only way forward is for each soul to find a solution to itself that allows the rest of the cube---the collective---to align as well. The game changes from self-focus to collective integration, requiring each soul to work together with its brother and sister souls to complete the cosmic puzzle.
When the Big Bang---a mathematical, mental event---occurs, each soul begins to exercise it’s individual free will and thus begins the “fall” from perfection to imperfection. Imagine your soul starting out maximally unconscious, and through sheer brute force simply trying things out to see where they go. This isn’t random evolution, but purposeful evolution, driven by a will to become more conscious and return to the perfect state of being. This choice seems paradoxical---it both serves to drive the collective into unconscious disunity, but also to conscious functional unity.
At the moment before the Big Bang, every soul was focused on the same thought of perfection, all synchronized in a rhythm of pure sine and cosine waves. But the instant they began to exercise their wills, this perfect harmony shifted. Their mental processes introduced phase, breaking the uniformity and constructing thoughts from sinusoidal waves---a blend of sine and cosine, no longer perfectly aligned. This shift marked the birth of the material world, emerging from the mental singularity as the structured interplay of countless individual minds.
By exercising their will, each soul can combine these sinusoidal waves in profoundly creative ways. An individual soul can compose an intricate private dream world, one uniquely its own---a process we all experience each night in our sleep. But these souls also contribute their thoughts to a greater whole, forming a collective dream world we recognize as the material universe. Every ripple of existence, every point of experience, becomes a node in this vast interference pattern---a tapestry woven from the interplay of countless souls.
The universe, then, is far from random or meaningless chaos. It is a collective creation, an intricate tapestry woven from the thoughts and choices of every soul. Each decision, each act of free will, shifts the phase of a soul’s waves, altering its contribution to the whole. These shifts ripple outward, affecting the global pattern. The result is a symphony of overlapping frequencies, creating the rich and complex world we experience---a shared dream sustained by the synchronized yet individuated contributions of every being.
The interface between the domain of mathematical sinusoidal waves and the domain of matter is elegantly resolved through the Fourier transform, discovered by Joseph Fourier in the early 1800s. In the context of ontological mathematics, the Fourier transform acts as a translator, converting the silent language of frequencies into the experienced language of matter and energy. This provides the bridge between mind and matter. The Fourier transform translates the eternal, dimensionless frequency domain---the realm of sine and cosine waves that define the essence of each soul, and their temporal and contingent sinusoidal waves---into the spacetime domain, where these frequencies manifest as the tangible, structured patterns of physical reality. Matter, then, is not a separate substance but the interference pattern of these waves, projected into visibility through the mathematics of the Fourier transformation.
A Fourier transformation shows the relationship between the frequency and time domains. Within the frequency domain, we can see individual sinusoidal waves, while in the time domain, we observe a composed waveform made up of each frequency or each part.
This process reveals the universe as a purposeful, evolving symphony of mathematical frequencies. Each soul’s unique waveforms, characterized by frequency, amplitude, and phase, contribute to the collective field, generating the interference patterns that shape the phenomenal world. The “forward” Fourier encodes functions from space and time into the timeless frequency domain, while its inverse unfolds mental thoughts into the dynamic, spacetime reality we experience. In this way, the material world is not an independent “thing” but the expression of eternal mathematics in motion---a shared dream arising from the interplay of countless souls harmonizing their unique contributions.
As the soul evolves and works through its individual Rubik’s cube game, it begins to harmonize its waves with the greater whole. This conscious re-alignment with the eternal sine and cosine patterns from which it diverged is the essence of the return journey. Through this process, chaotic, unconscious interference transforms into a symphonic unity, where the individuality of each phase no longer disrupts but enriches the collective resonance. It is in this harmonization that the collective dream transitions from discord to harmony, and the universe itself becomes a conscious, functional unity, embodying the interplay of all its individuated parts.
The mathematical Big Bang isn’t a singular event---it’s the start of a cycle. Instead of a cosmic mind endlessly exploring diversity for its own sake, the collective mind of countless souls embarks on a journey: from maximum diversity to seamless, functional unity. To complete this transition, each soul must awaken to its individuality, forge meaningful connections with others, and evolve into a cooperative, interdependent whole. This cosmic cycle is the story of transformation---a shift from the unconscious, fragmented 'mob mind' to a conscious, harmonized 'hive mind.
Ultimately, this journey leads back to a state of functional unity, where it becomes impossible to distinguish one soul from another. They resolve all their differences and, if observed, would appear as a singular unity. In this, there may be an element of contemporary non-dual teaching that holds relevance. At some point in the far distant future, we will eventually lose everything we think defines us.
But this doesn’t happen by rejecting ourselves. We achieve it by aligning more and more with the collective, striving to become functionally one. While our conventional idea of identity may vanish, the path each of us takes to that point is entirely unique. There is no one else who will ever walk the same path as you.
From this perspective, what makes us truly unique isn’t who we think we are in this lifetime, but the sum of countless choices made across our seemingly endless incarnations.
In a world rife with suffering, it’s easy to see the appeal of believing you don’t exist. Our minds possess a remarkable ability to reshape experience---in dissociative identity disorder, for instance, a traumatized psyche can entirely detach from pain. Yet even then, the wounded part persists, subtly influencing us from the shadows. The mind can convince itself of almost anything, but our experiences aren’t always trustworthy at face value. Some spiritual seekers actually end up experiencing depersonalization, a form of dissociation where they feel disconnected from their thoughts, feelings, memories, or sense of identity. Is this healthy?
Just because we can detach from the self doesn’t mean we should, or that we actually have detached. Instead of negating the self, what if we chose to recognize our potential divinity and use it to create a better world for all?
With the universe of souls now in focus, we can explore how our own soul is mirrored in space and time---its essence unraveled through the lens of an ontological Fourier transformation.