Daily Meditation: Monday, September 5, 2005

Number 4 - its symbolism

09/05/2005

People generally limit themselves to a rather prosaic use of numbers: they use them to count or calculate, and there are so many things that can be counted! But numbers are also living realities, and, if we know how to meditate on them, they will help us in our spiritual work. Let us take the number four. In geometry it is expressed as a square, or a cube, which symbolizes all that is firmly established on earth, in the material realm. ‘The New Jerusalem which descends from heaven’ as described by St. John is a cube. But the cube is also the figure of limitation, of confinement, of imprisonment. Imprisonment provokes suffering: the imprisoned man suffers. If he knows how to understand this suffering, however, and to overcome it, he purifies himself. Consequently, we can say that the number four represents confinement on the physical plane, suffering on the psychic plane, and purity on the spiritual plane. One who has purified himself is free, he is released from his prison.