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

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

positive, of the void to the plenum, of non-being to being, of I am not to I am is sufficiently great to justify any degree of hyperbole — for it requires a reversal of our habitual way of regarding these matters, and a transvaluation of our established values according to which…we assume positive reality or being and then look for negatives. That is, we imagine the void as an emptiness in a pre-existing fullness, a nothing in an assumed something, whereas we are urgently required to apprehend the ubiquitous pre-existence of nothing, out of which something may appear, or out of non-manifestation manifestation.’

So, whilst in one sense — regarding all as one — we are obliged to regard something and nothing as a false split; nonetheless, when this duality is considered more closely the usual manner of understanding is perhaps flawed. It is assumed that nothing is almost a product of something or at least the absence of something rather than giving nothing its true and balanced weight.

Again, it may seem like a subtle point, but so much of what we do gives pre-eminence to existence. Even, for instance, St. Anslem’s famous proof for the existence of God uses the precedence of existence over non-existence as a reason for belief. The whole basis of empirical science — that is, science based on observation — makes the underlying assumption that existence is primary and that extension in space and time are basic to that existence. Logical positivism extended this notion to effectively dismiss the unseen as irrelevant and unreal. Science has so far made an exception for forces — gravity, electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear force — but the search always

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