Let’s Be Very Clear

about something: reading is one of the most productive uses of a body’s time. Perhaps that’s precisely the point: a body’s time. If the body’s time is pondered for a second, what comes immediately to mind is death, so how on earth is reading a justifiable part of that relatively short existence?
The soul.
The soul is universal and eternal and infinitesimally small and infinitesimally large and permeates everything.
But of course there arises the eternal question, the question that has plagued science and religion (to a lesser degree) from the beginning of time—I couldn’t help myself:
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Perhaps a better rendering of the question might be:
What is it about something that makes us believe there should be nothing?
The latter question would probably be answerable, and that answer would be that we see the universal structure everywhere: it is present in the very smallest particles, it is viewable in the night sky and our understanding of astronomy, and you can even find it in reading.
What is this structure that we see?
(I can see we’re on a basic ontological search here…)
Mostly-empty space, is what it turns out to be.
At a cellular level, most of the atomic structure is a cloud, a haze, and a constantly moving something-or-other.
Have you ever seen a picture of a galaxy? Looks a lot like a cell to me.
I bet the universe looks like that.
But I suppose I’ve been avoiding the “why” question that I posed earlier.
Basically, I like to avoid discussing why questions because they inevitably lead to metaphysical inquiry, and metaphysics is not my strong suit because it seems to me to be based largely on things like belief. If I were to categorize the different kinds of physics, I would say that general, observable physics would be precisely that: observable. We can watch the rules and principles that we believe to be true actually happen—thereby offering a kind of “proof” for the them. However, metaphysics deals with things that are—rather unfortunately or very fortunately depending on how you look at it—almost always experientially based.
The words I chose to use there are very specific and I want to make sure that metaphysics—or at least Eli metaphysics—is not reduced to a purely subjective perspective. Just because metaphysical understanding has at least one foot in the experiential aspect of humanity does not mean that an entire blanket of personal experience can be thrown over the whole situation: there are always teachers that come before and disciples that come after any kind of metaphysical experience. In other words, you have to be prepared for the experience by some kind of coach who has been there before, and you will be so changed by the experience yourself that you will in turn attempt to guide others seeking metaphysical experience. In a lot of ways, the experiencing of why is a community project.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
“Happiness is the virtuous activity of the soul.” That’s some bastardized Aristotle for you, but he places this caveat on that activity:
over the course of a lifetime.
Inside the body’s time are two other times: the time of the mind and the time of the soul.
One of them marches steadily onwards (the body).
The other two are based on the initiative of the possessor.
The power of the mind is basically limitless, and the same can be said of the soul, but it takes time and dedication to develop either of them. It is for this reason that Aristotle decided that the virtuous activity of the soul needed to extend over the course of an entire lifetime.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that we will probably never know from a scientific perspective why there is something instead of nothing. If we take what we know about nature and apply it to the universe, then our universe is probably just a cell in the skin of the universal fabric that spreads its one fact throughout everything it touches: is-ness.
If God—capitalization intentional—exists, then he must necessarily be bigger than the universe: what good is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present god that isn’t big enough to be everywhere at the same time, able to out-muscle anything, and know absolutely everything?
No good. God isn’t dead, but it’s a fuck-tonne bigger than we could ever imagine, and I believe that her name might be Nature.
We call it Mother Nature and think of trees in autumn or lakes during the summer or snow drifts in winter and giddy springs, but our sight is very short. It is probably more likely that Mother Nature extends to the galaxy as well. The nature of the galaxy is to spin around a giant black hole. The nature of our solar system is to spin around the sun. It turns out that nature is probably extendable to the very reaches of the universe and—perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here—beyond.
What is the one incontrovertible fact about nature? Is-ness.
Nature is also imbued with a very slippery touch of magic.
Oak trees growing from acorns? Magic.
So, you’re telling me that we bury this in dirt, keep giving it water, and that’s about it? Yup. It turns out that the process (while infinitely more complicated in reality) is basically that simple. Imagine the entire earth as the brain and the products of the mental work the things that make the earth such a beautiful place—trees and streams and whatnot. The core and the movement and all the stuff we don’t see would be the world’s sub-consciousness and the visible stuff would be the consciousness. The planet would be the body. The soul would be the magic of the fact that it is.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
“Nothing comes from nothing.”—Many people said it, but notably Shakespeare
Because without something to work on, nothing gets worked on… the work stops. Realistically, we are probably here to develop as fully as possible the unique manifestation of universe that we are—that what the ancients believed at any rate. The truth of the matter is that we are probably an accident based on a pure numbers game:
“Billions and billions and of planets, huh? That ought to be enough for a while. Let’s see what happens. We can always make more next time. We’re not super busy.” Maybe we’re a product of nature attempting to create something that can overcome her at last, but she simply hasn’t quite gotten the recipe perfect yet.