Any number of distinct things can be one. When people object to the concept of a triune God because “how can three Persons be one,” they are tripping over the least mysterious aspect of the Trinity, and the most mundane application of non-duality that makes it explicable in pantheist terms.

Trunk, roots, and branches are all one as a tree. There are 206 distinct bones, 650 muscles, and approximately 37.2 trillion cells in one human body. Who knows the unfathomably large number of distinct physical bodies in this one thing we call the knowable universe.

Yet in all these cases, while it is legitimate to draw distinctions between the parts, it is also true that the one thing that unites them is truly one fully integral thing that is not “made of them.” A tree is not made by combining trunk, roots, and branches, and the body is not made by combining 37.2 trillion cells. If you follow the logic of the Big Bang or any similar hypothesis for the origin of the subtle body of our universe, it is no different than the other examples.

Non-duality is the key to seeing both the multiplicity of aspects and unity of essence simultaneously. To utilize some terms I’ve been using in current writing projects:

The universe appears to be a collection of separate numbers or finite sets of numbers.

God is Numerality itself.

Non-duality is the “innumerality” that lets us see God instead of the individual numbers. It is also what lets us see each thing in its unique self and as the expression of Numerality itself (the self and Self) without contradiction.

The difference between the previous examples and the Trinity is that we are dealing with relationships between non-physical aspects of one entity. But that shouldn’t be troubling either— we have no compunction about saying that one human person has a body, a mind, and a soul, though two of those are said to be immaterial.

I propose that if you examine them lucidly and without a need to conform to catechism, there is a clear pattern in the persons the Trinity. The Father is the infinite suchness of Being (the cosmic Mind, if you will); the Son is that which is both infinite and, as the Incarnation, finite (Mind embodied); the Holy Spirit is the relationship between them, the distinct person that could also be called FatherSon. All three are God, and God is all three.