The Golden Mean

The Golden Mean proportion (whose mathematical symbol is the Greek letter N or phi) has fascinated philosophers and architects from the Egyptians to Pythagoras to Plato. This proportion has also inspired the builders of the Gothic cathedrals, the artists and thinkers of the Renaissance, and architects and artists of the present day.

The Golden Mean proportions appear everywhere in organic and inorganic matter, in the structure of the human body, and even throughout the intergalactic worlds. These "divine proportions," as they are known, in combination with the Fibonacci numbers,* can be found in our solar system, in growth patterns of flora and fauna, in viruses, and in DNA. The Golden Mean spiral is most evident in the patterning of seeds in the center of a sunflower, in the shell of the nautilus, in vortices, and in galactic formations. It may well be the matrix underlying the outward thrust of the ever-expanding universe. All this suggests that human beings are intimately linked with this law of Unity and regeneration. We might thus consider the expanding Golden Mean spiral as a symbol of the lawful evolution of human consciousness and its inward movement as a sacred symbol of the return of the individual to the source of being.


The Golden Mean or Phi proportion can be illustrated by a point on a line asymmetrically divided such that the shorter segment is to the larger segment as the larger segment is to the whole. The point on a line (measuring one unit) in which this statement is true is expressed as .618.... . This asymmetrical division is what makes dynamic expansion possible. Robert Lawlor, the author of Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice, puts it as follows: "In a sense, the Golden Proportion can be considered as suprarational or transcendent. It is actually the first issue of Oneness, the only possible creative duality within unity. It is the most intimate relationship, one might say, that proportional existence - the universe - can have with unity, the primal or first division of One…. An asymmetrical division is needed in order to create the dynamics necessary for progression and extension from the unity. Therefore the N proportion is the perfect division of unity: it is creative, yet the entire proportional universe that results from it relates back to it and is literally contained within it, since no term of the original division steps, as it were, outside of a direct rapport with the initial division of unity."

Thus the Golden Mean rectangle demonstrates geometrically and symbolically what the verse from the Upanishad states poetically and philosophically: when we take a perfect square which represents This or the visible universe which is the manifestation of the Fullness of the Absolute from the Golden Mean rectangle which represents That or the Supreme Brahman, or pure consciousness, what remains is another perfect rectangle. The integrity of the proportion remains the same: the remainder is perfect. In other words, the manifestation of the universe does not affect or diminish in any way the Infinite or Brahman.