Would you trigger the Big Bang?

If you found yourself at the beginning of time and were given the power to decide whether to start the Big Bang and all of the pain and happiness that it will bring, would you do it?

Or would you leave nothingness alone?

What kind of a being would go through with the Big Bang, knowing everything you know about reality, history and what we humans do to each other?

Look back at history and see what we’ve been through: the joy, beauty, ugliness and misery. Is it worth it? What’s the point?

Perhaps we’re ‘evolving’ and progressing to some higher form of being. But then why not cut straight to the chase? If you are an all-powerful creator, why create the beings that will suffer? Why not just the angels? Why not just create make everyone enlightened right from the beginning?

What exactly is the point of all of the suffering?

Perhaps the Divine Intelligence is powerful, but not too powerful. Perhaps it is strong enough to create the universe, but not strong enough to avoid suffering. Maybe. But it seems a bit strange to suppose a divinity that can create reality itself, but not control it.

To suppose the universe is randomly created answers nothing either. Firstly, infinity is a lot bigger than we think it is. There are untold infinities upon infinities of possible universes that contain no life whatsoever.

And secondly, what started the random generation process of all of these universes in the first place? We end up right where we started, we just moved the Big Bang back a while and made it even bigger.

Emotion is the most important fact about existence

What is most salient about reality is not existence, but that we notice existence.

And herein lies our first clue.

There is a certain experience to life, a certain feeling of existence that is inexpressible, but that we all recognize.

Closely related to emotion is time. Without time, there would be no emotion, no experience.

If your mind were static and unchanging, you would experience nothing. Without time, there would be no change and without change, there would be no experience.

Here we begin to see the necessity of time. Time enables our emotional experiences and emotion is what the universe is doing.

For what goal is our universe the solution?

What exactly is the universe doing? Why would a Divine Intelligence create this?

What would you have to be trying to do, in order to come up with this? This reality, this existence, this universe.

Most answers to this question only create more questions. Why create a complicated universe that slowly changes and evolves, why not go straight to the end goal?

Therefore, what is happening right now must be the goal. And what exactly is happening now? Everything.

We live in a world filled with emotion and passion. I don’t think it’s limited to human emotion, experience takes place on scales small and large that we cannot even begin to imagine. The universe enjoys all of these. Maybe one day we will feel them too.

We are merely one form of experience, one form of emotion, but a particularly intense form of emotion.

For emotion to be emotion, it must be real

And what is the most salient fact about emotion? That it is real. What you experience cannot be faked, it cannot be an illusion. You cannot be mistaken about your experiences, you feel them directly.

Perhaps the reality you think your experiences are attached to is different from what you suppose, but experience itself simply is. You cannot be wrong about it.

And for emotion to be real, it must be… real. What do I mean?

There is no real happiness unless real sadness is also possible. There is no true love without true loss.

Everything that comes into being brings with it its opposite. Joy brings pain and pain brings joy.

In order to experience joy, you must experience pain. For the joy to be real, so must the pain.

For any of these emotions to exist, time must exist. Change must be real.

And for the emotions to be genuine, you must be able to genuinely choose them. In each moment, you must be able to truly choose between genuine alternatives. That is what makes your decisions in life so important. They are real.

So in order for emotions to exist and be real, change must be real and free will must be real.

And here we see the mystery of existence begin to unravel, if ever so slightly. Emotion depends on time and freedom. With time and freedom come change, pain, loss. But time and freedom bring love, happiness and beauty.

In order for love to be real, you must freely choose it, when you truly could’ve chosen hate or indifference instead. You must truly be able to lose the ones you choose to love in order for that love to be so beautiful.

If you knew that everything would always be easy and go well for you, that your loved ones would never die, that everything you touch would turn to gold, life would be meaningless.

And what exactly is the point of living a meaningless life?

It is the fact that you are finite that gives each moment infinite value

If you could live forever, time would be meaningless.

It is the fact that you will truly die, that you are finite, that gives each moment infinite value.

It is the fact that this moment will change that gives it such beauty. Life takes on a sublime, ineffable, bittersweet beauty because it will disappear, it will change, it will be destroyed and transformed. You will never experience this moment again, that is why this moment is so worth living.

And with all of this comes the reality of pain, suffering and loss. You are free to be nice or be mean. Some will choose to be mean, bad things will happen. Some will choose to be nice, happiness will result. Everything is possible, so expect to see evil and see goodness. And expect to see both within yourself.

The universe is an infinite process exploring the landscape of emotion

And so we return to the original question: what exactly is the point? This moment is the point. There is no point. Those are the same things.

There is nothing for you to do, nothing for you to achieve. Yet life gives you such opportunities for action and in that action comes all of the beauty. You have nothing to do, but if you do something you will find beauty, you will find failure, you will find knowledge and confusion, hope and fear, love and loss.

You cannot avoid it. You can sit and do nothing and life will still live. You can take action and all of your action will be for naught. You can hide but experience will find you. You can dare but the universe will crush you. You can seek refuge but you will be destroyed. You can be miserable, but someone will love you. You can love, but you will lose what you love.

So what is there to do? Nothing and everything.

We mortals are the gods

Experience is the most god-like power of all.

If God wants to experience happiness, he must take on mortal form. He must experience it through us. If God knows he’s God, there is no pain. And without pain, there is no joy.

If reality wants to feel fear, then it must feel fear. For the fear to be real, the consequences must be real. And what else could feel fear but a small, weak, mortal creature?

This changes our relationship to the universe. We are not small, insignificant, transient beings…even though we are. We are the things that feel, even though all things feel. Our very weakness is the whole point.

What you feel has meaning. What you experience has meaning. Everyone one of your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings is beautiful and real. It is all the point. Everything you do has meaning, no matter how trivial or banal. Every moment is experience itself, every moment is life, beauty, sadness, loss, pain, joy.

You are the point, you are the point of the big bang, of stellar evolution, of biological evolution. You will disappear and everything you do will be forgotten. Everything you do will disappear, will fade, will be erased. The universe does not care about you, or what happens to you. But at the same time you are the miraculous expression of the infinite. Everything you do has meaning and value.

We are the universe exploring the landscape of emotion, we are reality itself feeling what it feels like to be alive and to die.

And so, we must live and we must die.