09-11-2016, 02:39 AM
I was practicing in my head how I would explain my beliefs to someone who knows nothing about them (as I will sometimes do). I was focusing on a visualization of when infinity became intelligent / self aware.
The visualization: you wake up in a room all alone. You look around and all you see is featureless, dim grey. You can't even see the corners of the room or make out features to distinguish anything from anything else. You don't know who you are and don't remember any other person. You start walking for hours, days, weeks and you never find anyone or anything in this grey-void. You look down at your hands and you have none. No feet; no body. You do not hunger or thirst. You do not breath and you feel no heartbeat. You do not sleep nor understand the concept. You remember that you are the only being in existence. Worse, you know you are the only being that has ever existed or will ever exist. There is no other matter or consciousness or anything else outside yourself, so no possibility of others. You are it. All alone. So unbelievably alone.
That visualization has brought me horror in the past, but I have come to grips with it. That infinite intelligence created of itself finity, free will, time and space, all of us, etc etc, so it can experience something. So it can experience Itself.
The new horror I experienced was: how did that infinity come to exist? It's really the same question no matter what faith you are. Maybe you believe in the universe described in the Ra Material and other similar materials. Maybe you believe in one of the major religions. Maybe you're an atheist. It all boils down to: what came before?
If you accept the placeholder term "Bing Bang" for the beginning of the universe (or the Original Thought or God creating the universe or whatever you want to label it): What came before the Big Bang? If there are a series of Big Bangs, when did the first one occur? How did the first one occur? It had to pop out of nothingness or the matter / energy always existed. Either way you look at it, that is INFINITY (either it popped out infinite nothingness or the matter itself is infinite). It HAD to have come from infinity; there is literally no other explanation. If you have matter and the universe and the Big Bang and white bearded gods creating the world in 7 days (or whatever the hell you want to believe); that had to have popped out of nothingness. "Nothingness" IS infinity. It's not possible for anything to proceed infinity because "something" is finite and infinity cannot come from finity. All roads lead from (and to) infinity. Most atheists / materialists, religious folk, and even generic "spiritualists" (for lack of a better term) don't seem to feel comfortable contemplating "what came before" when you reach a certain point. They either say "well I don't know" or "that's not for me to say" or "God only knows" or "I'm not a scientists; I don't know anything about the Big Bang" or they just become visibly uncomfortable and change the subject.
Is this the "Great Mystery"? I understand Who we are and what we are doing here and how all this was created (from that Infinity; of that Infinity). But when I try to contemplate what came before that, how that Infinity came about... I become deeply disturbed. It's like my consciousness was a blind person safely and happily bumbling about in the dark, never encountering single object, then all the sudden I run smack into this wall.
Has anyone here else tried to contemplate existence this far before?
The visualization: you wake up in a room all alone. You look around and all you see is featureless, dim grey. You can't even see the corners of the room or make out features to distinguish anything from anything else. You don't know who you are and don't remember any other person. You start walking for hours, days, weeks and you never find anyone or anything in this grey-void. You look down at your hands and you have none. No feet; no body. You do not hunger or thirst. You do not breath and you feel no heartbeat. You do not sleep nor understand the concept. You remember that you are the only being in existence. Worse, you know you are the only being that has ever existed or will ever exist. There is no other matter or consciousness or anything else outside yourself, so no possibility of others. You are it. All alone. So unbelievably alone.
That visualization has brought me horror in the past, but I have come to grips with it. That infinite intelligence created of itself finity, free will, time and space, all of us, etc etc, so it can experience something. So it can experience Itself.
The new horror I experienced was: how did that infinity come to exist? It's really the same question no matter what faith you are. Maybe you believe in the universe described in the Ra Material and other similar materials. Maybe you believe in one of the major religions. Maybe you're an atheist. It all boils down to: what came before?
If you accept the placeholder term "Bing Bang" for the beginning of the universe (or the Original Thought or God creating the universe or whatever you want to label it): What came before the Big Bang? If there are a series of Big Bangs, when did the first one occur? How did the first one occur? It had to pop out of nothingness or the matter / energy always existed. Either way you look at it, that is INFINITY (either it popped out infinite nothingness or the matter itself is infinite). It HAD to have come from infinity; there is literally no other explanation. If you have matter and the universe and the Big Bang and white bearded gods creating the world in 7 days (or whatever the hell you want to believe); that had to have popped out of nothingness. "Nothingness" IS infinity. It's not possible for anything to proceed infinity because "something" is finite and infinity cannot come from finity. All roads lead from (and to) infinity. Most atheists / materialists, religious folk, and even generic "spiritualists" (for lack of a better term) don't seem to feel comfortable contemplating "what came before" when you reach a certain point. They either say "well I don't know" or "that's not for me to say" or "God only knows" or "I'm not a scientists; I don't know anything about the Big Bang" or they just become visibly uncomfortable and change the subject.
Is this the "Great Mystery"? I understand Who we are and what we are doing here and how all this was created (from that Infinity; of that Infinity). But when I try to contemplate what came before that, how that Infinity came about... I become deeply disturbed. It's like my consciousness was a blind person safely and happily bumbling about in the dark, never encountering single object, then all the sudden I run smack into this wall.
Has anyone here else tried to contemplate existence this far before?