Why Does 2 + 6 = 8?

Many searching for truth believe that truth consists of some sort of knowledge, as they believe understanding relationships between forms primarily constitutes bringing one closer to understanding “what is.” For instance: knowing the equation for determining the area of a circle, or understanding how chemicals will consistently interact with one another, or memorizing the names of geographic locations on Earth, or even something subjective like understanding social phenomena, or something abstract like trying to understand if God is real- is believed to impart one with an ability to interact with “reality” (what the thinker perceives to be reality) with greater effectiveness.

However, form cannot explain form, except only to the illusory extent that we identify our grasping of the relationships between forms to be satisfying to us, or not. Even “objective” (repeatable and verifiable) proof of effectiveness only demonstrates just that- effectiveness within the local known world- and not why. We can understand more and more effectively how form relates to other form per the rule-set of our local reality, but this is not true understanding.

The real question then is not whether we understand or don’t understand that 2 + 6 = 8. The real question is, if we “know” why 2 + 6 = 8 even exists. Without that answer, there is not true knowledge.

Since all form, all differentiation, exists within and by something else, the answer cannot be known without that something else. That something else is always present, always existing, and always transcendent: it is consciousness itself.

Consciousness is inherently formless. It gives rise to the experience of form. It even sometimes seems to “lose” itself in the experience of form: in the experience of day and night, and brain chemistry and coffee and languages and pain. But it is, fundamentally speaking, completely formless, transcendent, omnipresent, eternal, and immortal. Its existence gives rise to the form that can be understood from a local well-defined perspective in the first place.

This is why the truth can never be fully spoken or understood with the dualistic mind. Form and duality itself is transcended by that which gives rise to it all. That which transcends form, and fully contains and creates all of it, cannot then be named or explained by it. As the Daoist text the Dao De Qing begins, “The Dao that can be spoken of is not the true Dao. The name that can be named is not the true name.”

No one then can say with form (words, ideas, and explanations) the “why.” No one will be able to articulate “the answer” to you. But, you do not need them to. You are conscious. You are awareness already. All you need to do then is completely let go of all the forms- all the understandings, beliefs, expectations, definitions, and identities that you have wrapped yourself in over your lifetime- and allow yourself to fall back into your transcendent formless nature which is already native to you. From that nature, all things are known, just as they are.

And that is more than enough.