This is my first book. If I had it to do over again, I think
I would have given it a different title (or sub-title). Since
the book is about the deepest nature of the universe (absolute
simplicity), and since the essential character of this primal
stuff naturally issues forth in spasms of energy (with no need
whatsoever for any kind of theistic impetus), a more appropriate
title might have been, The Universe, Why God Had Nothing To
Do With It. Essentially, it describes how a universe could
come to be without the need to propose that a pre-existing Supreme
Being had a hand in it.
I am especially fond of its opening lines:
But One Thing only exists,
with many faces and countless names.
It is absolutely simple, having no parts whatsoever.
It is always hidden,
and only appears as All Things.
I call this five-line offering
a pentad. The book contains twenty-five of them (see table of
contents at right). They are presented with no commentary whatsoever
in the first part of the book, although they are accompanied by
drawings, some of which are mine (all the rest being the work
of the publisher). Immediately following the first section (Pentads),
a much larger section (Pentads Expanded) is given, in which all
the pentads are, well ... expanded upon. I explain in greater
detail what the pentads are suggesting. Here, for example, is
the first pentad (All That Exists) expanded:
The appearance of diversity in the universe may
be just that, an appearance, largely attributable to
the way our senses work. We sense a lot of distinct things, to
be sure, but the mere sensation cannot be taken as proof that
such distincions are ultimately real. The diverse panorama that
our sensing mechanism offers to us may be somewhat deceiving.
And it could not be otherwise. It is only through the hardware
of our perceptual faculties that we know the world, hardware that
unavoidably (because of its very structure) shapes and forms what
we perceive. If its design was different, our perception would
change with it. Thus the mere sensation of a variegated display
in no way constitutes certain proof of its actual existence as
such a disparate — and detached — presentation. The
possibility is very real that it could be just the Way we are
observing it.
Consider the very words you are now reading. Their appearance
is very misleading. You are not actually looking at paper and
ink. You couldn’t be. The human eye wasn’t designed
to see such things as paper, ink, or any other objects.
It evolved solely in response to light. What you are looking at,
as you read these words, is light being reflected from the page
and into your eyes. Eyes don’t see anything but light, period.
And it’s the same if you take your eyes away from the page
and look at other objects around you. You are not actually looking
at furniture in the room, or a house across the street. Kant was
right. We can’t know the thing in itself. All we can know
is what our senses create (the appearances) with the information
conferred on them by the light (and sound) waves in our environment.
According to physicists light is made up of photons, which are
flying around and bouncing off of things everywhere. Some physicists
even maintain that matter itself is ultimately composed of them.
They are very tightly packed together inside the small pieces
of matter we call atoms. (It’s the reason that tearing atoms
apart, as in an atomic bomb, results in that bright flash of light
which we’re not supposed to look at should we ever have
the unhappy experience of being near such a blast.)
In addition to being a part of the ultimate stuff of the universe,
light plays a definitive, albeit more humble, role in the creation
and development of our minds. All of those photons which are flying
around all over the place are a significant source of information.
Their penetration into our eyes actually constitutes a type of
data entry, which is being performed on us (which means that it’s
actually creating us) as long as we’re awake and conscious,
and have our eyes open. As you read this page (or any other one
from any other source) data entry is being performed on you by
light
reflecting from its surface. If you put the book down and go into
the kitchen for something to drink, light reflecting from every
object you look at as you proceed is doing more of the same; the
data entry is being performed on you, involuntarily; you’d
have to close your eyes to stop it. In other words, we are not
making things happen; things are making us happen.
And the data is treated the same as information which is fed into
a computer. It’s stored in memory, then categorized and
filed for later retrieval and use. For example, after you read
this, you may tell someone else about it. What exactly would you
be doing if you did that? First, you’d be remembering what
you read. Next, you’d be retrieving it from memory, and
then discussing (using) it with whomever. It seems that the universe
has anticipated us — its accreting energy has already made
computers, and they are us!
Light and sound are the primary media through which we know of
the world around us. Their respective waves travel through space
and air inducing vibrations in our optical and auditory nerves
which our brain transforms into something we call sense. The literal
intrusion of light and sound into our eyes and ears is nothing
less than a form of data entry being performed on our brain by
the energy of the universe. And it continues, relentlessly, inexorably,
as long as we’re alive. The data entry performed by sound
waves continues even while we sleep. This is evident from the
fact that we are often awakened by sudden noises, or the abrupt
cessation of a droning sound which we may be using to facilitate
sleep.
All that exists then is flowing energy, whose dynamic accounts
for the appearance of everything which we sense (All Things).
At the particular level of sensation at which we operate energy’s
production of light and sound waves induces in us the feeling
of separateness (of ourselves and everything else) to which we
become inured, and accept as (and insist is) reality. But what
is actually happening (reality) exists apart from any level of
sensory experience which we, or any other organism, might be having.
Our level of sensitivity in no way establishes it, or calls it
into being. What is happening is doing so completely outside the
sphere of our sense perception, and persists in spite of it, not
because of it, and we are not so much sensing experience (what
is happening) as we are experiencing sense (what is happening
inside of our own head). At increasingly lower levels of sensation
the multicolored array of separate things melts into a field of
greater and greater uniformity. It is only because we normally
operate at our high level of perception that the One Thing is
always hidden from us. It exists beyond any level of sense impression.
However cryptic it may sound to the Western mind, the opening
words of the Tao Te Ching also express this Idea:
The tao which can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao.
That which can be spoken of is what we sense. But the ultimately
real (Tao) is beyond any powers of sensing. Its dynamic is producing
our sensation; our sensation is not producing it. So whether we
are scientists or street philosophers, we are not actually describing
the world as much we are merely recounting its impression on us;
we are just expressing how it feels to us.
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