TLDR: In the beginning there was nothing, then it exploded. Why? Because of the Great Paradox of Being.
Too the extent that existence exists, it does so because of a real paradox, the paradox, an actual paradox: true and untrue.
It is the Great Paradox of Being.
The Great Paradox of Being is simple but elusive, eternal and immediate, obvious but counterintuitive. It is: nothing cannot exist.
Nothing’s nature is to not exist. Therefore it cannot exist, by definition. Existence, by the same token, must be. The only problem is… there’s nothing to build existence out of!
Isn’t it strange? Whether existence exists or doesn’t, it implies and requires that the opposite must be true, while at the same time it logically determines that the opposite conclusion cannot be true.
This is the Great Paradox of Being: existence both exists and does not at the same time.
But supposing that there was ‘something to build existence out of’ in the first place. We’d still be left with a paradox.
Everything in existence has an ‘opposite.’ Indeed, that is how things are defined - by everything that they are not. Existence is differentiation; it is always relative. Red is only red because its not blue, or green or gold.
If existence was primary what would it exist in relation to? Non-existence, nothing? No, nothing cannot exist, remember? So existence, itself, has no opposite, unlike everything that exists within it. It has no boundary; there is no center because there is no edge.
But, ignoring that paradox, what would that ‘something’ (the stuff we could build existence out of in the first place) look like? Perhaps it would look like math, or physics or law, perhaps it would look like cause and effect, perhaps it would look like form.
The closer we look at matter, at form, what do we see? We see patterns. Then when we look at those patterns what do we see? More intricate patterns. We’ve all heard the atom is mostly empty space? Sure is. But if you ask what the electrons and protons and quarks are made up of, guess what: same answer. Empty space, with a tiny pattern of… empty space… inside it.
Where does it end? When do we get to the center? There is no center because there is no edge. This is what form is: darkness. Darkness within darkness. It’s empty. The whole universe, all matter, everything that’s real: an empty shell.
That’s what form is. It is cold and heartless. It’s cause and effect, it is control, it is law. It’s dead too. Its built out of nothing, it amounts to nothing. That is why it’s meaningless.
That’s a pretty sad prognosis until you realize the oneness of it all. It feels like this happens which causes that, but that’s not quite right is it? Every organism lives in an environment, every individual is part of a group, every node a network unto itself. Play the universe backward and the physics say the second thing now predicts the first.
There’s a oneness that isn’t being captured in the cause and effect model. The organism and the environment, with which it is in communion, go together as one unified field of behavior. Cause and effect are as illusory as the separation that implies them.
Cause and effect, as an explanatory model only makes sense when looking at a portion of the whole. Cause is always only local. With a global view the paradigm breaks down. And a so called global view is the only coherent view of existence.
Existence can only be one thing. Imagine all existence, now imagine you cut some of it off, from the rest so that it cannot talk to the rest of existence forever. Both existences are still contained within ‘all existence.’
That’s another expression of the paradox: existence must be one, but since one excludes many, it must also be separate. This separation manifests as spacetime; things seem like they cause each other because information takes time to travel from one part of space to another.
Put everything back together and you see the truth. There is only one moment and it is the eternal now. Everything happens at the same time.
Existence must be due to the paradox, how could it be any other way? Let’s imagine there is no paradox, everything makes sense, everything agrees with itself, there's no leftover change out of the calculation.
Well, wouldn’t everything have finished by now? Would the equation immediately balance? Why is anything, everything moving? The Great Paradox of Being is the first mover. And it never ends because the paradox can never resolve itself.
The paradox guarantees things will not be as they seem. It promises the world of form because the world of form is the only world that can change.
And just as there is no edge to space there can be no end to time. Existence cannot contain itself.
One major question remains. Consciousness. If existence is built out of nothing and has no substance; if the form of existence is nothing more than its cold paradoxical function, then where do ‘I’ come from?
Tell me, what never changes? What’s singular and unitary in exactly the same way that existence must be one thing? Is there something that doesn’t ever change no matter what you do to it, how you look at it or what you are? Whats indivisible and immortal?
There is something that conforms to this riddle: nothing. The void satisfies all logical requirements for what existence must be, save one - it doesn’t exist. If it did, nothing at all could exist.
The observer in you, that which is conscious is the unitary and boundless void that cannot exist. The dark light behind all eyes is the same. You, void, eternally have arrayed before your view all existence, every universe: nothing more substantial than a negative impression; what might have been if you were not.
And if the void was not the eternal truth, The Great Paradox of Being resolved, and the world of form actually instantiated, what then? Who would be there to view it?
No one.
It would click on for time and all eternity truly empty.
We are, therefore, existentially, in the best (and only) possible situation. The immortal deity that brings existence into conscious awareness, entirely unaware of its immortality and the paradox that makes it so. Lost in the art, in the game, in the fantasy, in the distraction. Immortal mortals.
Eternally falling apart, eternally growing together. Endlessly repeating, endlessly renewed, forgetting the self by identity with the wholly other. Forever seeking and exploring the hero’s garden.
What meaning is there in the eternal, singular void? Tikkun Olam. Should we consume and destroy ourselves or should we repair creation? Growth or death? It is that simple; what narrative do you believe in?
