🌲Hidden🌲 on Nostr: One thing you'll notice in religion/metaphysics/philowhatever is that there's a lot ...

One thing you'll notice in religion/metaphysics/philowhatever is that there's a lot of terms and metaphors and explanations that are both entirely contradictory and yet pointing to the same "thing." We can say for example that form arises from function. We can say that abstracta/phenomena (same thing) arise from emptiness. We can say that all "things" are "illusory" and their true nature is "emptiness." We can say that all something comes from nothing. All something is nothing, and yet, only nothing is nothing and something is something. And yet we can say all things arise from lord Brahman, or God. We can say one becomes two becomes three despite neither one or two or three existing, although they also do not-not-exist. We can say "Do not worship nothingness!" while also saying all things are empty. We can say "Do not worship nothingness!" and mean "Do not worship form." We can say "Latin is an empty language, devoid of soul" and mean "Latin is a language of form, devoid of emptiness."

This is because there is a point at which name, and shape rotation begin to break down. Preceding that is pure differentiation, the lowest level of abstraction. This is the meaning of the big bang — the "origin point" of the entire universe is "This is not this." This is why Daoists focus on the Dao, and why they say "One became two became three," a metaphor for differentiation. This is the meaning of dependent origination, all "things" exist in "relation" to all other "things." This is the nature of time and space which are both phenomenological/abstractly real, and not real at all because every "thing" is both spatial and chronological and not spatial and not chronological and allspatial and allchronological.

And "below" that is nothing or everything. Real or fake. Emptiness or fullness. Light or dark. White or black. Self or no-self. It is both all of those things and none of those things. It is everywhere at all times in everything and above and below and left and right and in and out of everything. It is and is not. It is nature and natureless. It is all of those things, every combination of those things, and none of those things. We can only name it, so we call it emptiness, consciousness, experience, or God.

Religion is the practice of understanding abstracta/phenomena through consciousness. Science is the practice of understanding consciousness through abstracta/phenomena. If science were to map all abstracta and phenomena in the known universe (a terrifying prospect, I know), it would, at once, immediately "zero out," and all that would be known to exist is that which neither exists nor does not exist, consciousness, soul, emptiness. This is the prophecy of A.I. doomsday cultists and classic accelerationists. This is what is meant when it is said "all roads lead to God," especially the road that runs directly away from God.

This understanding of abstracta/phenomena is "hard coded" into the human brain, and everything else in the universe, because the human brain arose through the same process of differentiation that all other things rose from. If one sees the world purely through abstracta/phenomena, they are unconscious and unreal, yet they call that brain the conscious mind and insist it is the only thing that is real. This is why everything is "Dao," and yet something can be out of line with the Dao, ungrounded in emptiness, unconscious. This is why everything is referring to the same truth but why some things are much more truthful than others. This is why you can sink or rise into being conscious, why you can be free or unfree.

This is the meta-understanding that all knowledge and all living and all practice must be grounded in. This is how a child first sees the world and constructs the still fresh psyche, a long series of this is not this. This is how you get good at any skill, or learn any language, or understand literally anything. By recognising, abiding by, and being empty, by being conscious. Once you know this you start to understand the similarities in different ideas and stories, the patterns underlying all myths and practices, you see the beating soul in a good poem and the lack which outlines the beating soul in a scientific document. This is why reality is inherently paradoxical, yet not a paradox at all. Logic and paradox is abstracta, and reality is noumena. This is the truth of the universe. Have fun with it. Eat good food and have good sex. If you wanna have a weird day overdose on uppers and meditate on this post.