Meta Nothing?

Part 2 of the Theory Of Emanism

Yo, what’s good? Thanks for joining us. We covered ‘something’ in part 1, now we can begin to focus in on ‘nothing’. It sounds like I’m joking but I’m not. This is where it starts to get a bit serious, so put the kettle on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

This story, like all stories starts at the beginning, although as I’ll show you things don’t begin. Firstly I introduce Parmenides of Elea. We’re in the fifth century before the birth of Jesus Christ, in southern Italy, and although we’re in Italy this is a Greek town. This story emerges from multiculturalism, and refugees. At the heart of it is Parmenides.

In a sense it’s like the story of Jesus, the man in the middle of three of the worlds biggest religions. Four if you count Issa of the Buddhists. Similarly we in the 21st century are at a time of heightened multiculturalism, and mass movement. This movement will only grow due to ICES’ (Industrially Caused Ecological Shifts) as the Mother Earth (Isis) takes humanities modern tolls. But back to Elea, fifth century BC.

Historian Peter Kingsley tracks Parmenides origins in what is now Western turkey, the western tip of the gate to the east. Parmenides is a second generation immigrant. His father grew up in a seafaring town in Ionia, known for cunning exploration, trade and fishing. Ionia was also know for It’s Egyptian Mystery Schools, which will be important to remember. He became a refugee of the swelling Persian empire of the time. Part of a diaspora, a scattering of people.

Parmenides of Elea settled in Greek Italy, the crossroads between the south, the north, and the east. Between Africa, Present day Europe and Asia. Europe then could be seen as this region around the Mediterranean, this melting pot of cultures. To the west beyond what would become to be known as the Pillars of Hercules, waved a great sea of the unknown. But why this fascination with Parmenides? Parmenides of Elea, is the Godfather of Western civilisation (cue ‘speak softly love’, I like the Ken Boothe version). He’s also the Godfather of Western philosophy and metaphysics. Where better to start a story about a brand of new-ancient philosophy and practical metaphysics. This is for Kate Tempest’s ‘Brand New Ancients’.

The first surviving pieces of written logic are fragments of a piece of text that gives the reasoning that nothing doesn’t exist. It’s called On Nature, by Parmenides. To be more clear the text sets out, with myth and poetry, that nothing cannot exist, as anything that can be thought of, anything that can be named, is a thing. Even if it isn’t real, even if it’s virtual. Parmenides tells us he learns this from the Goddess during a trip to the underworld.

What is nothing? It is no thing. A thing is that which exists. Things include the material, matter such as a rock. Things also include the immaterial. Here I define the immaterial not as spiritual but as vibrational. The immaterial are things which are not matter. The immaterial includes things such as ideas, sound, light and energy. Things without mass themselves. The immaterial is not matter, yet it is a thing.

When we think of nothing we often think of emptiness, of absence, of lack, of a negation. This is not nothingness. An empty cup, is a cup with a lack of, an absence of water. An empty cup is still full of air. The emptiness isn’t truly empty, it’s empty of one thing but another must fill it’s place. For a negation to be active, to be meaningful must be in relation to a thing, which is the positive. A negation is simply another form of lack, of absence, of emptiness. No thing does not exist. Every thing exists.

Now we arrive, at the speed of thought, over a century later In Delphi, Greece. Pythia, priestess of Apollo, has just named Socrates the wisest man. Socrates, being the wisest man, shunned this terrifying claim, full of responsibility, and set about to challenge it. He failed. He failed because, as Plato wrote in his work called ‘Parmenides’, Socrates was aware of Parmenides claim that nothing does not exist.

There is another link between Socrates and Parmenides. The mystery schools. Statues to Apollo were found in Elea, similar statues to those found in the Eleusian Mystery School of which Socrates was a member. What is more of a mystery than nothing, non-existence?

This is what I believe Socrates meant when he said to the oracle of Delphi “I know I know nothing” admitting his acceptance of her claim. Incidentally Pythia, the oracle of Delphi, was a priestess of Apollo. There is a final link between the practices of the oracle of Delphi and how Parmenides came to this realisation. Parmenides of Elea practiced a form of meditation, culturally adopted and appreciated from the old lands, called Incubation.

The practice was one of altered states. Parmenides achieved this by lying down in a dark cave, for several days and nights, away from the light of the world, to travel to the underworld. A practice reminiscent from stories of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed p.b.u.h, Yogis, and Buddhist and Daoist Monks. This technique was used for healing in these ancient times.

We know today that this kind of sensory deprivation leads to several hormonal changes within the body that can lead to hallucinations, and unfortunately mental illness. The dark causes a spike in melatonin which is chemically one carbon dioxide molecule away from DMT, a known hallucinogen, and protective anti-oxidant but more on this later.

In addition to the fact that, as we have seen, nothing can’t exist, it can be said that no thing can’t exist. Everything, every thing, that is has to has to always be in existence. A thing can’t not be because once it isn’t it becomes no thing. A thing must be because if it is not, it is not a thing a becomes no thing. Things exists, no things don’t exist. Every and any thing exists, nothing doesn’t exist. Here we stand from outside of time, and every thing is possible.

Nothing, no thing, is non-existent. Nothing, no thing, plays by its own rules because all the rules we have apply only to things. The rules have never been tested on nothing. The non-existent is not bound by the same rules as existence and so it can do things like continuously stop and start, this will come in handy later, in a timely fashion.

This idea of non-existence, of nothing, gives rise to Emanism, the rejection of materialism and immaterialism. Materialism states the universe can be understood through an exploration of matter alone. Immaterialism says that matter has no objective existence and so can’t explain existence. In this text the material means that which is made of solid matter, and the immaterial is that which is vibrational energy, not of solid matter, but still observably existent.

Let’s propose that for some reason (which I’ll go into in the next section, part 3) that nothing, no thing, the non-existent does continuously stop and start at light speed. The continuous stopping and starting of Nothing would create the conditions for existence to emanate, in an everlasting now, the present. In this case the past is nothing, no thing, non-existence coming to an end, stopping. The future is nothing, no thing, non-existence beginning, starting. The past is no thing ending, all things entering into existence. The future is no thing beginning, all things leaving existence.

Time is infinite, because if time were finite it would have to repeat. If time were to repeat the present moment would be The Past and The Future, which we have shown is not the case. The past and the future exist at and in the same (dimension of) time as the present. They are not the same thing. The past and the future are nothing, or Non-existence ending and beginning respectively. The present emanates from the past and the future.

If we must model time it is a spiral, a helix, a vortex spiralling. The DNA of existence. The two strands are The Past and The Present, and The Now is the code in between. We’ll come back to this idea later. It is circular because The Past, The Present, and The Future Work together in co-emanation and so are connected and attracted to one another. A cyclical motion is the most efficient way of keeping time interconnected.

In addition Time and Existence revolves around Nothingness. As time is infinite, the non-existent is not. The infinite emanates from the finite. If non-existence was infinite then it couldn’t stop and start and continually. If it did not stop and start continually time would be finite. Nothing is finite. Therefore time spirals into and around a finite body, but is not finite. Time overlaps itself, it’s spiralling spirals around past instances of itself, overwriting itself. Time doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.

Existence is the rhymes of time. The end of nothing is in constant communication with the beginning of nothing existence which communicates back with a response. The result is the series, a stream of present moments. In other words the past speaks, the future responds, the present listens and the emergence of spiralling time is the conversation.

Here is Roger Penrose talking about how this cyclical motion could be possible. He suggests that in the past was the Big Bang. The universe expanded and keeps on expanding. Eventually everything in the universe will be far apart. The Big Spread. Everything will be so far apart that everything will cool from lack of friction and interaction. All that will be left are cold black holes.

Eventually, the universe will get so cold that black holes will be relatively hot. They will lose, radiate, their energy. This energy will fill the universe evenly, at which point the end of the universe looks like a Big Bang, except the scale is much bigger. Conveniently at this point the universe won’t know how big it is according to Penrose. Penrose also says the big bangs could communicate by gravitational waves, meaning no two aeons (as he called the time between big bangs) are the same as each is informed by the last.

So Nothing doesn’t exist as anything we can thing of as a thing. Time is infinite and in a state of co-created becoming with the past and the future. Time and space are intimately linked, with time creating space. Everything is possible. The past is the end of nothing and the future is the beginning of nothing. The past and the future are having a rhyming conversation, existence and time are the music.

As we have nothing ending and beginning to create time, Time itself points to something beyond existence, that is beyond the material and the immaterial. Emanism attempts to answer this paradox. Emanism is the rejection of both materialism and immaterialism. It is the middle, lateral path.

As nothing doesn’t exist the immaterial is not nothing, it’s just not material. Nothing is that which doesn’t exist. The material does matter, it’s simply immaterial in comparison to what does not exist. At the same the material is not all that matters, the immaterial clearly matters too. Here I refer to the immaterial (and by extension the spiritual) as vibrational, as not solid matter.

Here the material is the inverse emanance of nothing. The immaterial is direct emanance of nothing. We’ll get into this later. Emanism points to the neutral, and its potential. We can see this, and verify that nothing doesn’t exist by looking at zero. Zero is not nothing, it is neutral, it is the balance between positive, direct, and negative, inverse values. (Later I will show that zero and infinity are intimately linked, using zeno’s paradox.)

In fact this can be seen in physics, and more generally in nature. Nature abhors a vacuum (our metaphorical nothing). So much so that when scientists create a quantum vacuum(/foam) we find particles and anti-particles being made and destroyed in a near instant. We’ll get to why this is the case a little later.

This notion of the positive being direct and the negative being indirect, inverse, and imaginary as lateral is important. It helps us get out of the connotations of the positive and the negative, even of the connotations of yang and yin, and so the connotations of being male and female. We’ll explore this more later, and how complimentary opposites lead to something greater.

Emanism, the rejection of materialism and immaterialism, informs us that there will be beings which eventually can know everything in existence. We have eternity for this to happen at some point in our infinite, interconnected, rhizome rooted, time double-helix spiral. We will be able to know both the entirety of the material and immaterial. The immaterial is the vibrational and is a thing, it’s not nothing. It’s not God, but (you guessed it) we’ll get to that later.

Even though at some point some being(s) will be able to know everything: in knowing everything these beings still will not necessarily know nothing. At least not directly, they can only know nothing inversely, indirectly. Nothing doesn’t exist. Emanism informs us that we may be both gnostic and agnostic, and reject ignostism, all at once.

We both can know everything and always know nothing at the same time, and still not know nothing. We can always remain curious, and ignorant to maintain our humility. We will always be ignorant of nothing. Let’s call this metagnostic. We are both above, beyond and outside of the knowledge of things, whilst also being firmly rooted in them and the absence of the knowledge of nothing. We aim to be ignorant of no thing, and we ignore no thing, and yet we know knowing nothing is the key to knowing any and every thing.I sense I must state the case for atheism being a post modern deconstruction now as I stated earlier, and for theism being a modernist construction. It will eventually allow me to show how and why humanity has moved from animism, through to totemism, shamanism, paganism, polytheism, monotheism, atheism and metatheism.

Emanism informs metagnosticism, which in turn informs metatheism. In the same way that materialism informs agnosticism, which informs the postmodern deconstruction of atheism. In the same way immaterialism informs gnosticism which in turn informs the modern construction of theism. (Please refer to the section titled Something)Metatheists believe in a metaphorical Schrödinger’s God, instead of a metaphorical Schrödinger’s Cat. (I don’t mean what Schrödinger’s sense of god was.) “God is dead, long live god” we shout. God is both alive and dead. God both exists and doesn’t exist.How can this be possible? Everything is possible. How could this be true? Because nothing is true (I’ll come back to this too, for now just accept this is why we are said to live in a post-truth era) God is nothing. Nothing is god. God is non-existence. Non-existence is god. I and I speak not of the concept of god, because god is not a thing, and nothing is not a thing. Just like nothing the concept of god is not god.

God is nothing, and god is perfect because nothing is perfect. We pursue perfection, we do not attain it. In pursuing no thing, we attain every thing. God emanated existence. Nothing emanated everything. The true name of god cannot be spoken, just as the true concept of nothing cannot be thought. I and I will call God Zah, the most high, the unattainable, the eminent. Zah-over. ‘I and I know Zah, Zah no Dead’

Metatheism holds that non-existence, Nothing, God, Zah, Zahover, is constantly emanating existence. In every moment existence emerges, emanates. The process is creating a series of ever increasing interconnected dualities, each more complex than the last, beginning with time. This unfolds, emanates, emerges, in three dimensions of space (height, width, and depth), scale (as in internal-external, as above so below type of, scale, which is associated with imaginary, lateral numbers), light, gravity, electromagnetic interaction, and the weak and the strong nuclear forces (aka interactions).

So as we can see nothing isn’t really nothing but points to the non-existent. As a metatheist I call this God, Zah Zah. God creates time by ending and beginning. Infinity is the path to God, to nothing. In the sense that infinity is unreachable and not a destination but a journey, and to get there we have to go through nothing, because we are always already there. God is perfect and nothing is perfect. God is not a thing.

So we can reach God by trying traveling to infinity by the way of zero. Zero is related to and gives rise to infinity because it is a balance of positive, direct, and negative, inverse values. Being a balance, there are not only an infinite amount of steps, such as in Zeno’s paradox, to get there, but also staying there at zero requires continuous balance and fine adjustments.

How do we get to infinity via zero? This is where lateral (also poorly ironically unimaginatively named imaginary numbers) come in. The direct and inverse values, that form the balance of 0, is connected to a lateral axis through 0. This is how we go beyond the dimension of time to produce the 3 dimensions of space, the dimensions of scale, light and gravity and the dimensions of the weak, the strong and the electromagnetic force in turn [turns out I was wrong sorry for the misinformation]. The process by which this happens is by opposites. More specifically it’s by recursion of opposites. That is it’s by repeatedly constructing opposites of opposites of opposites (leading to attractions)

It’s counterintuitive, but this isn’t halving, and it doesn’t take us back to where we once were. It leads to a lateral process of a combination of transcendence and immanence called emanance. Emanance is the emergence, the unfolding, of properties that form from within a given system.

All belief systems from animism, through to totemism, shamanism, paganism, polytheism, monotheism, and atheism to metatheism emanate as expressions of a previous emanance. They also emanate from an internal response to, an expression of perceived external conditions. It’s the free energy principle in operation. This is mirrored in the emergence of Time, three spatial dimensions, scale (internal-external), light, gravity, the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force and electromagnetism.

Ok so I’ve just bombarded you with a whole host of new information after bombarding you with a whole host of other new information. So let’s recap. Modernism constructs. Postmodernism deconstructs. Metamodernism reconstructs by deconstruction and reconstruction at the same time. Nothing doesn’t exist. The past is nothing ending. The future is nothing beginning. The present is co-created in a conversation between the past and the present.

Time is infinite and spirals like DNA around finite nothingness. Time overlaps itself rhyming, but not repeating. Time itself points to something outside of existence, so immaterialism and materialism must be wrong. Emanism is the rejection of immaterialism and materialism. Emanism informs our belief systems and invokes metatheism. Metatheism says god is nothing. God is therefore a metaphorical Schrödinger’s God. God is Dead, long live God.

Complexity, variation, communication and attraction are some of the n-aims of the game. There are others, I need help finding them. The more important thing is knowing that I know nothing. In knowing nothing we can begin to know everything. Parmenides, Socrates, and Pythia agree. I hope you do too. If you don’t, I hope to change your heart later.

Part 3 is here