The existence of God has radical implications for any metaphysical system, and so, it seems, a fundamental question any metaphysics must answer early on is the question of the existence of God.The sages, philosophers and great traditions agree that any conception of God worthy of serious religious or scientific consideration requires that God not be bound by concepts of time or space. Thus, God cannot exist as a finite reality in the same way as a table or a chair or even a human exists. As we explore the term “existence”, we understand and use it in common and philosophic discourse, as fundamentally an Aristotelian attribute of a thing – something either exists in space and time or it does not. Yet to be true to the most nuanced conceptions of God that humanity has formulated to date, God must be beyond space, beyond time, beyond mere matter, beyond energy. God is therefore no thing in this space-time Universe. Being nothing, by definition, God does not exist. As Lau Tzu suggested, the Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao. This quality of nothingness is essentially non-dual for it if was dual, it would be something in opposition to what it is not.
Ironically, Eastern and Western religious mythic traditions and recent scientific cosmology all suggest that all that is (Being) arises out of nothing. God as Nothing – in absolute non-dual non-existence, becomes the ground or field giving rise to Being and consequently space-time. The Beingness that arises from this nothing apparently quickly differentiates itself into Matter and Energy. At root matter and energy are different manifestations of one thing (i.e. Being or Such-ness). However, Matter and Energy appear or manifest as differentiated and qualitatively different (and thus a prime, fundamental duality arises). Matter and Energy came to arise from this Nothing and are bound together in a “sea” of Nothingness (or divinity).
I therefore believe in a trinity – Nothingness, Matter and Energy (mythological expressed in the West as Father–Son–Spirit, and in the East as Brahman–Maya–Atman).
In this field of nothing there is an endless collision of processes – of interactions of matter and energy. “Objects” in the Newtonian sense do not exist in the field of Being but are rather the way in which we mentally organize a continuum of events or processes. These events are not random. They are governed by the structure and nature of matter and energy themselves and by the nature of space-time. The universe is structured as it is because matter and energy, by the conditions of their existence in space-time, must interact in certain and predictable ways.
Collections of processes of energy and matter arise and coalesce and then return to the whole. Being continually reconfigures itself as collections of processes and interactions. Everything in the universe is therefore a manifestation of this great sea of Being comprised of matter and energy. Human beings are no exception. We come from dust and return to dust – to the great sea of Being that is not God but arises from God.
In that I believe reality is fundamentally random, but ordered by the rules governing the matter and energy, I am led to conclude that Being is, in some sense, teleological. There is directionality to existence, a “τέλος” (telos). Time moves forward, conditions beget effects, things arise, exist and then cease to exist. This directionality and self-organization is, for want of a better term inanimate “consciousness”. At least on this planet, this teleology gives rise to distinct evolutionary processes. Being flows from nothing, from that being come occasions of interactions of energy and matter to form inanimate things (first particles, then atoms, then molecules, then compounds, and so on). From some of this more complex matter comes Life which organizes in ever increasingly complex processes. From some Life comes sentience, and from some sentience comes animate consciousness. I leave open the question is open as to whether Life is a fundamentally different state of Being than Matter or Energy. Sentience seems an evolutionary development of Life (much as complex compounds are an evolutionary development of matter).
In humanity, animate consciousness is capable for complex self-reflection. We are Being reflecting on itself. This development suggests that there are more evolved stages of development and that we are inexorably moving towards those stages. The goal of this evolution cannot be known philosophically. The stages of development cannot be predicted with certainty. While we can examine the stages of development on this planet and the short experiment that is humanity to glean what we can of the higher reaches of this evolution, but we cannot predict what stages will evolve. Nor can we know whether Man represents progress on this evolutionary road or is soon to be discarded by the Universe as a failed attempt at higher consciousness.
There is, I believe as an article of pure faith, a hint of the τέλος or end-point of it all. Mystics and sages of all religious traditions - Western and Eastern - say that the goal is the eventual union of Being and Nothingness (the Atman with Brahman or the Soul with God). This is perhaps the ultimate spiritual destination of humanity as we arrive at ever higher reaches of consciousness. It may also be the ultimate end of the Universe as Being and Nothingness become undifferentiated.
© 2007. Matthew Wesley. All rights reserved.
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