The obsession with identifying what is “true” from what is “false” has been around for as long as humans are alive. Many people have died for defending a truth, only to see that same truth fall from grace and be relegated to the status of “belief” or even to be outright false. As one delves deeper into spirituality and the true nature of God, one starts to understand that the dichotomies of “true” vs “false” are widely inadequate. Indeed, God is beyond true or false. God can be found by adding both true and false and neither true nor false to the equation. Here is a non-exhaustive list of existential questions and dualities which illustrate these new categories.
Life has meaning
From our human perspective, we have gone to great lengths to identify a meaning to life. Be it happiness, love, family, friends, work, pleasure,… Or simply, just making sure that the unbroken chain of life continues, uninterrupted, forever. See our children and grandchildren walk in our footsteps and evolve past what we have been able to accomplish, become a branch on the infinite Tree of Life which bears many fruits and continues growing into infinity.
Life has no meaning
From the perspective of God, the All, the Absolute, life has no meaning. God is someone or something which cannot die because it will manifest instantly out of the void, since God and the void are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin. In the All, in God, there is life as we define it (biological life), but from God’s perspective, all is life or nothing is life. A rock is life, an atom is life… And since God cannot die, since God is eternal and infinite, then everything has meaning and nothing has meaning. That is, when you find meaning in everything, then it’s the same as finding meaning in nothing. This is a key contradiction which is often misunderstood. It is the same as saying “everything is equally hot”, in that regard, the very concept of the term “hot” ceases to exist, since something is “hot” only in relation to something that is “cold” (or colder). So when everything has meaning, it is the same as if nothing had any meaning. Especially, for a “being” which cannot not exist, which is everything there ever was, is and will be, all at the same time, the very word of “meaning” is meaningless. Language is meaningless. A word is finite. It refers to a specific, limited concept. For an infinite being, everything is beyond words.
There is existence
From our human perspective, we clearly have the sensation to “exist”. We think, we feel, we “do”, we experience pain, suffering, joy, anger, all kinds of emotional states, and we clearly fear death, which to us could mean the “end” of existence, or at least, of our individual existence. We have memory which gives us the impression that the past existed and to a certain extent still exists through that memory. And we project ourselves into the future, which gives us the impression that the future also exists, in our imagination and especially, in our intentions and planning of what we want to do next, tomorrow, in a week, a month etc.
There is no existence
From the perspective of God, existence and non-existence is one and the same thing. Understand that in infinity there is an experience and it’s counter experience. There is every single possible vibration and it’s vibration of opposite phase. To try to experience everything is to experience nothing. Once you apply infinity to everything, you end up with nothing. Being infinite and experiencing everything infinitely fast is the same as experiencing and being nothing. The example with vibrations may not speak to the human mind, but other allegories or metaphors exist. If you are an infinite being and you are capable of experiencing everything infinitely fast, then it is the same as experiencing to be born while dying, or eating your favourite food while vomiting after a hang-over, or taking a stressful exam while having sex for the first time, or more simply, experiencing being still while running, sleeping while being awake… It all sort of cancels itself out. Experiencing everything is the same as experiencing nothing. That is the finding of “non duality” teachings: that in the end, you are the void, nothingness, which manifests as “this” but is really, just nothing. It’s actually more complex than that. It is bothnon existent (when you “plug” yourself into God) and existent (when you simply are yourself) One of the reasons for our reality is that it’s a way for God to experience being him/her/itself sequentially.
There is good and evil
From our perspective, as mortals, there clearly is good and evil. Even when you practice open-mindedness and understanding, when you examine cases like that of Carl Panzram you would be hard pressed to argue that he wasn’t evil.
There is no good and evil
And yet, if you take a much higher perspective, you will see that these dichotomies fall apart. First, if you are eternal, and you cannot die, does it still make sense to talk about “good and evil”? Of course not. Even from our perspective, these two opposites might fall apart the moment we die. More and more evidence, especially coming from near death experiences, tends to prove that there is life after death. So basically, accusing someone of “killing” you in this reality and pinning them down as “evil” is the same as blaming someone from killing you inside a video game. No one would take that seriously because we all know it’s just for “fun”. This reality very much seems like a place of temporary amnesia where you enter, forget that you are an eternal soul, and take everything extremely seriously including your “life”. To expand on these concepts, I encourage you to read my article 9 “Beyond Good and Evil”. And so once again, it’s not about one or the other! It is near impossible to “live” in this reality pretending that good and evil don’t exist! Rather, the lesson from this false dichotomy is rather to allow us to make choices and judgments without hate. That is, decide that you do not want violence/rape/killings in your life, just because. For no specific reason. Just like you don’t need to pretend that oysters are “evil” to have the right not to like how they taste. Does it mean that you cannot judge murderers and rapists? It all depends what you mean by “judging”. Are you expressing a personal preference or are you issuing a Universal and Absolute Godly Decree about something? For instance, you can imprison and isolate criminals, as defined by the common rules that we have adopted, without hate, simply because you (our society) do not want them around. It is basic electro-magnetism: you attract to yourself what you want, and repulse what you do not want. No judgement, just attraction-repulsion.
Conclusion
The aim of this exercise is not to pretend that “anything goes” or that there is no more objective truth so everything is true or everything is false. It is to gain a new understanding of these concepts and allow us to live better lives in this Universe and this reality. Here are a few closing metaphors to allow you to apply the concept of “true and false” and “neither true nor false” in your life.
When you use your GPS to get from point A to point B, it tells you which direction to go. “Turn left, turn right…” Which direction or instructions are “true”? Interestingly, they are all true but not at the same time and place. It is the exact same thing for the “story” of humanity, going from point A (Adam and Eve, the prehistoric man) to point B (functioning as one global organism in harmony). With a lot of intermediary steps in the process. For instance, the 10 commandments and the teachings of the old testament were the correct set of instructions at that time, when humanity was still very much on the fence between base animal instincts (survival, reproduction) and higher human ethics. You can view every single event in our history as a way to “stir” humanity in the right direction, even planting a few road blocks and deviations along the way like learning from the Nazi holocaust (a way to ensure that this never happened again). And notice that if you are God, an infinite being, then since you are experiencing everything at the same time, your GPS gives you instructions to “turn” in all directions at the same time! Again, you can therefore see that in order to understand God, you need to really grasp concepts of both true and false, or neither true nor false.
And so in this reality, it’s more interesting to talk about which direction a certain “truth” stirs you in, rather than trying to pin down something which is “true” for all eternity.
Another metaphor is to think of a seed hatching and daily growing further and further. Could you talk about it in terms of “good” or “bad”? In terms of “better” or “worse” at different points in time? No. From a “macro” perspective, the plant was perfect at every single second. It was perfect as a seed, it was perfect as a sprout, it is still perfect regardless of what “stage” of growth it’s in. From a “micro” perspective, you can knit pick and say that at one point it was attacked by bugs, at another it received less water and had more brown leaves. The same applies to humanity. We are like a plant growing across time from a “seed” (call it Adam and Eve or “Lucy”, it’s all the same), with things happening along the way. But overall, we have grown into a beautiful plant with many many leaves.
Finally, to get the “big” picture, think of lightning, which goes from the Heavens to Earth. It starts off as pure energy, pure potential, it creates a “path” between Heaven and Earth, and it finally reaches the ground, and all of its energy is transferred to the point where it struck. Heaven represents God as the Void, Nothingness, pure potential, no form. The Earth represents God as the All, the Absolute. What happens between the two is just the “transition” from one to the other, a story among an infinite other stories which go from the Void to the All, from God back to God. From the perspective of God, it doesn’t matter which “path” that lightning takes. God knows that regardless of what happens along the way, the final destination is absolutely certain. This is why only God feels Unconditional Love for all of “Creation”. It is an integral part of the process and there is nothing wrong or right about it. It just IS. From the perspective of the lightning, however, it does matter what happens along the way. Lightning can take a more or less direct path from the Heaven to the Earth, it can branch out more or less, and it can waste a little or a lot of energy along the way. But ultimately, it will reach it’s destination regardless. The same applies to us. We can keep killing each other, wasting the energy of the lightning (our souls), by steering it in a less than optimal direction towards the ground (God), and thus needing to wait 4 or 10 more generations before we “get” it, or we can understand who we are, what this Universe is all about, and what we are meant to become.
I invite you to read my other articles as these go into more details about what lies ahead for Humanity. The reassuring part is that, in the end, it’s going to be fine. Nothing escapes God. Except maybe God him/her/itself, for a time… the time it takes lightning to strike… :-)
Luke 17:22–25
Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.