THE DIGIT AS THE BASE MEASURE OF THE SELF

As compared to all other living creatures on earth, the human body is unique in that it has an opposable thumb—a thumb that can grasp. Interestingly, the thumb represents the chief finger of the hand, which enables us to grasp the things in this world, and the digit represents the chief unit of measure, which allows us to grasp the measures of the things in this world.

The digit was actually a sacred unit of measure, viewed so because it can be related to various bodies—the body of humans, the body of the altar, the body of the Cosmos, and the body of Logos—through a system of measured correspondences. The general idea was that all of these bodies, whether physical or metaphysical, share the same base unit of measure: approximately equal to the width of a human thumb.

We can gain insight into the meaning of the thumb measure through considering the Vedic system of mudras (hand gestures). Here, the thumb was used to represent the universal self, while the index finger was used to represent the individual self. For example, when seated in meditation, the sages often placed their hands on their knees, with their fingers arranged in a sacred mudra: They touched the index finger to the thumb, forming a circle. This particular mudra represents the union of the individual self (index finger) with the universal self (thumb)—the goal of the meditative process. The ancients believed that the human being is the only creature on earth that has the potential to realize the universal self. Moreover, this realization was related to the thumb measure. In the Vedic texts, the form of the universal self that is cognized when the newly enlightened soul takes its first step on the divine ladder was called the angushta-matra purusha, “the soul that has the measure of a thumb.” Those who cognized the thumb-size soul as their very own self were said to become immortal: “The soul, the measure of a thumb, the inner controller, is perceived by the mind in the heart; they who know it become immortal.”¹⁵

The thumb-size soul was also viewed as the inner controller of the human mind and body, because it represents the higher self of the human being. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that the thumb-size soul has a form that resembles that of the human body. Instead, it consists of a point value of consciousness associated with spherically symmetric waves of consciousness, each of which has a wavelength on the order of a digit. These waves are sonic in character and operate nonlocally at the speed of thought, rather than locally at the speed of light. They manifest the fundamental tone of the first layer above the half measure—that is, in the sonic half of the spectrum. The transcendental sound produced by these waves represents the first and finest sound that can be heard by the divine ear.