We are part of a self-emergence virtually without beginning or end, which, recognized, leaves so many great minds (like the physicists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg) in a state of despondency. But nihilism is a disease of the Western intellectual. It is not meaninglessness that is at the core of everything; it is an utterly inexplicable creative impulse. Nature creates nature from itself. Why does pure energy "explode" wholly from and of itself—making our time and space in the process—to expand and cool to differentiated forms of energy residing in higher and higher order particles, which then self-assemble into such complex forms? It is as though a fundamental "it" must manifest itself (and we get to an irreducible paradox or tautology here) because its nature is to do so, as if in its completeness but consequent lack of "consciousness" of itself, it must separate itself into two halves (and on and on) just to have a kind of reflection to know it exists!
You cannot banish the Cosmological Argument for an unknowable force—itself uncaused and, in and of itself, sufficient to generate the manifest universe—that is the ultimate source of all; you can only put it to farther and farther remove. Even if we deny the whole validity of asking any question about first cause, we have actually just shifted the principle from a "force-causer" to "causing-ness," and that just shifts the question of what it is from a proper noun to a verbal noun, in our limited language-concepts. How is there causing if there is no first causer? Maybe creating is the very "soul" of the universe. For me, the idea of a self-causing impulse at the core of everything is an even more beautiful mystery than the concept of a more conventional creator; and, if you think about it, it seems a more satisfying and even reassuring conception of a fundamental uncaused and unknowable principle, the absolute, a universal creator, the divine, God—call it what you wish. Ripeness is all!
And even a hypothetical and complete body of all possible scientific knowledge could never explain why the universe is both artist and its art. We could even almost say that the universe—and all possible universes—emerges from some pulsating essence (or "no conceivable thing" to reconcile the dual conceptions of "completeness" and "emptiness" into non-duality). It has its own intrinsic "passion" for endless churning and self-creating to manifest all its potentials; basically, to strive to "know itself" and understand what it itself is. Self-creation, however pointless it may seem to us, is, I suppose, the only point. What a beautiful and comforting (not terrifying) thought: the universe creates, and that is all! It creates more than it destroys or else there would be nothing! So we are embedded within the force-containing essence—the paint, hand and canvas of an omni-pervasive art; and we are just of "it" as every other part is.
I am cool with this. It makes me more comfortable with facing my destination and its uncertainties. And, as someone who is a scientist, I can see that I am part of the experiment as well as partly the experimenter. All is well always!
Now I must go make a cup of tea because I am starting to get depressed. Vive l'ironie!
— Gabriel Fenteany, February 24, 2016
