21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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exist,’ and finally, ‘the universe neither exists nor does it not exist.’ Clearly, even all four statements about the universe taken together don’t really tell us anything. And that of course is the whole point — no statement about ultimate reality really makes any sense. (Indeed, it may be that reality itself is inherently paradoxical, not just our understanding of it.) It is only by defining boundaries, and assuming parochial economies of human endeavour or ecology or whatever that a place can be reached where statements can take on a meaning. Our statements and questions will then be qualified by the limits that we knowingly impose upon ourselves. (There is a similar trace of paradox in some ancient Greek thought. Heraclitus, for instance, not only claimed that things constantly change (you cannot step into the same river twice) but also claimed that opposites are identical. Things contain their opposites, and everything both is and is not, at the same time.)

What then of something and nothing? It is more than simply a matter of saying there could have been nothing, but instead there’s something or saying something and nothing are the same. It might seem like a very strange point to make, but our culture has an inherent bias towards something. Nothing is regarded as an absence — almost a mistake. Our view of reality might be very different indeed if we were to turn this on its head and see something arising out of nothing. Consider this explanation of the issue given by Wu Wei Wei, commenting on the Diamond Sutra and quoted by Jerry Katz:

‘The importance of this understanding of the precedence of the negative element to the

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