The Fear of Nothing

[golfer]

This is as esoteric as it gets... came across this essay and thought that some here might find it worthwhile??? If anyone does, please take the time to explain it to me!

The Fear of Nothing

The concept of “Nothing” is impossible for the human mind to understand for as soon as we ponder the notion of nothing we are effectively thinking of “Something.” Mathematics deals with this paradox by using the symbol of “Zero, ” though in this case we are essentially left with the same dilemma for any attempt to represent the value of zero ultimately leaves us with a symbol that essentially becomes the value of “1”.

While the notion of “Nothing” is beyond our understanding, it is nevertheless necessary to have a symbolic representation of the inconceivable in order for us to be able to structure our thought into any rational framework. It could then be said that “Nothing” represents the ultimate unknown, the mystery of life that will always both frighten and fascinate us as we strive to understand it. Another way of viewing “Nothing” would be to say that its looming specter represents the entire basis for anything we will ever discover about our existence.

In the face of “Nothing” the need to compulsively create something and then experience immediate and tangible results often ends up marooning us out on a narrow ledge between two daunting precipices. One of these ledges is mysticism, or an understanding of the subtle, non-ordinary levels of being, and the other is a fear of material failure. I like to think of this choice as basically one of acceptance or denial in the face of what the Buddhists call the “Sorrow” of Life. In this case the term “Sorrow is not meant to imply that life is intrinsically sad, rather it refers to a choice we must make between believing we are more than our physical selves or blindly attaching to the physical world as the sum total of our existence. The sorrow spoken of subsequently comes about because it is only a matter of time before a total dependence on the physical nature of life will lead us to something that ultimately can’t fulfill us. Our discontent will then lead to frustration once we find we can’t explain our emptiness in terms of what we already understand. The next step after this is usually denial, whereby we project responsibility for the situation onto some external factor. The sorrow the Buddhist’s refer to then results from banging up against these self-imposed walls of a limited consciousness and not knowing what to do.

In general, human beings feel a need to have someone or something to blame for every problem. The Rationalist will call this deferral of responsibility “causality,” which doesn’t really change anything but does allow us the illusion of believing that life is beyond our control. What makes the true nature of reality so difficult to understand for a Rationalist is that there is essentially no such thing as deferring responsibility for your existence through any form of logic; instead there is only the choice you did or didn’t make. Mysticism provides the additional view that everything we experience whether good or bad is necessary, so that at any given moment the world is exactly as it should be. This is because the Mystic has faith that there might be a reason for what is happening beyond immediate comprehension. The Rationalist will once again attempt to use the logic of “causality,” yet the Mystic’s attitude is why assume that something you may not currently understand has nothing to do with you? The “Higher Self” or that part of us that intrinsically knows what we have yet to consciously realize may effectively be the guiding intelligence that directs us in and out of the various life situations that constitute what the Buddhists call “Karma.” A simple definition of the term “Karma” would be “the eternal wheel of matter, fatality, change, and illusion” or circumstances that will recur until we understand what is really going on and stop the cycle. A perfect metaphor of this would be a ping-pong game where one of the players refuses to return an opponent’s serve. This act of choosing not to play introduces an additional factor known as “free will,” which insures us the possibility of changing what we don’t like at any given time provided we are willing to accept responsibility for our actions. The Rationalist is uncomfortable with the anomaly of “Free Will”, hence the compulsion to try and figure out the full structure of the matter first in order to “understand” what the next logical step should be. This false safety of knowledge is then validated through another oxymoronic concept known as a “Law” or a formula that will manage to eliminate future problems by making us aware of something that must always occur. The simple fact is that aside from 2 basic premises of existence known as the Law of 3 and The Law of 7, “laws” as we usually think of them are effectively nothing more than our illusions about some notion of permanence in life.

The first of these two basic laws is known as The Law of 3 and can be explained as affirmation, denial, and reconciliation, or more simply “Being, Non-being, and Becoming.” The Law of 7 represents the Law of 3 playing out in the reality of our material world symbolized by the number 4. By combining 3 and 4 into 7 we then get a representation of our actual moment-to-moment adjustments to the eternal cycles of life. What both of these laws basically explain is that no one ever really understands anything until after they have already experienced it. Rebounding from the unpleasant surprises of life is the basis of all human wisdom and allows us to define terms like courage, strength, perseverance, maturity and yes, understanding. It’s easy to be confident and wise if you feel you can be reasonably sure about the outcome, but it takes true character to face a situation whose outcome remains uncertain.

The question now should probably be, “What can we do different in order to deal better with the mysteries of life?” The simplest answer would be to change ourselves, yet in this mortal coil we will always be blind in regards to the future. In order for us to better understand how to improve our circumstances we must become the future with an open mind about the mistakes we have made in the past. This is helpful to some degree but then as long as we are alive there will always be an additional set of future circumstances to deal with. The issue now becomes to admit that needing to know the future is really about avoiding responsibility for the destiny currently forecasted by our limited awareness.

Reality is subjective, meaning that anything we believe to be “real” is based on our perceptions. The Ancient Qabalists were entirely aware of this when they attempted to define the great void of existence or “Nothing” with the title AIN or “The Great Negative.” A profound awareness of the universe as a subjective phenomenon is revealed when the letters of AIN are subsequently rearranged to spell ANI or “The Self.” The numerical value of each of these words is 61, which would then make their combined total 122. Doing a little numerological gymnastics, 122 can be deconstructed into either 12 and 2 or 1 and 22. In the case of 12 and 2, 12 represents both the number of signs in the Zodiac and the number of the pairs of ribs in the human body, while 2 is the duad or the realms of the Macro and Microcosms otherwise known as “Heaven and Earth.” Thus from 2 and 12 we get the mirroring of “Above” and “Below” through references to individual and collective being. In the division of 1 and 22, 1 represents the Unity of all things and 22 symbolizes the number of paths in the Tree of Life, the Divine Prototype from which all Humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Once again we have the mirroring of “Above” and “Below” though this time it is in the form of God and Man.

When the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in one of his Presidential addresses “there is nothing to fear but fear itself,” he was illustrating a classic Qabalistic premise. The word fear in Hebrew is PChD or “Pachad” and it represents an alternative name for the 5th Sphere on the Tree of Life known as Geburah or “Strength.” From this we can see that the Qabalah views fear and strength as mutually dependent states.

The sphere of Geburah is then in turn ruled by the planetary energy of Mars or MDIM whose numerical value is 94, which can then be reduced to 9 + 4 or 13, the value of a pair of Hebrew words, AHBH or “Love” and AChD or “Unity.” At this point we see that the action of true strength brings things together through the power of “Love.” If the Hebrew words for “Love” and “Unity” are then added together their sum is 26 or IHVH, the Tetragrammatic name of God that can be translated as “Creation.” Here we see that fear must ultimately be mastered by love in order for new life to be created.

A last point to be considered is that if we again take the total of 122 which comes from adding “The Void” or AIN (61) with “The Self” or ANI (61), the three digits that result can further be added together to give us a root value of 5 or the sphere of Geburah/Pachad or “Strength/Fear” on the Tree of Life.

Thus for the Qabalist, the dynamic of life (IHVH or “Creation”) is the result of our strength and action (Geburah and Mars) in the face of our fear (PChD). The product of this dynamic is “Love,” which ultimately brings us full circle back to the creative source. A more mundane way of looking at this would be to say that AIN changes to ANI, or the notion of a great void becomes interchangeable with individual being based on understanding and creative action in response to a fear of the unknown. This premise is firmly supported by the fact that every religion that has ever existed has a creation myth that tells of how the Deity created the world from nothing, a dilemma faced every day by each one of us when we wake up in the morning.

The fear of nothing could therefore be defined as our reticence to take responsibility for creating the world we live in.