Non-existence

“ The very fear of non-existence, in the light of reason, seemed a wholly unreal thing. No shadow of it attached to the long dark years of the world, which had passed before one's own conscious life began. ”

“ This was a condition in which was found only the negative blessing of release from the turbulence and surging distresses of life. Without calling it non-existence, we claim that it is wanting in every element that we connect, or can conceive connected, with human existence. ”

“ How dost thou expel the world from thy consciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beatitude of the unlimited soul? Only by making the world itself a product of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence always hovering between existence and non-existence, always awaiting its annihilation. ”

“ You very well know that to cease to possess an identity of being and of intellect is what we mean by non-existence, and this is just the thing for which you argue. Now when we contemplate taking refreshment in sleep, it is in hope of awaking again in a better condition for enjoying ourselves and others, and for the performance of our duty. But the contemplation of passing out of existence, never to have another thought is certainly very widely different as to the nature of the subject, from the former. Now, sir, why should not these different subjects produce different sensations in the mind? ”

“ By an accident, without consulting his own will, he is called from non-existence into life.... Why? He wishes to know the aim and significance of his existence; he is answered with silence or absurdities; he knocks but it is not opened to him; and death itself comes against his will. ”

“ Possibly non-existence has its dark side too, but it cannot be worse than remaining between life and death neither suited to the one, nor prepared for the other--enough of this! Is it your fault if the life which you saved was not worth the trouble? ”

“ Perhaps if the authors of this new immortality would tell us what they understand by non-existence, we might be led to value more highly by contrast the existence which they propose for a soul when it has ceased to think or feel, and for an organism when it has been scattered to the winds. ”

“ This fact of the mystery of our own existence is full of material for thought. It is in itself startling—even appalling. We feel that it is a solemn, a dreadful, thing to exist, and to exist in that limitless space and that eternal time which we can no more understand than we can our own constitution, though our belief in their existence is inevitable. Nor can we divest ourselves of anxious thoughts as to the source, tendencies, and end of our own being. ”

“ Existence cannot include non-existence. For, non-existence is, is it not?—the negation of existence. And since the professors exist, their non-existence would involve us in the most exasperating contradictions with them, with ourselves, and with the daily Press. ”

“ We may admit, therefore, that for the reprobate themselves simple non-existence is more desirable, and better, than their actual concrete state of existence [pg 180] as reprobate: because simple non-existence is for them the simple negation of their reality, whereas the absolute and irreparable loss of their last end, the total frustration of the purpose for which they came into being, is for them the greatest conceivable privation. ”

“ For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. ”

“ We must see further than finite forms to gain the true sense of existence. And where shall we look to rest the gaze in the unsearchable realm of Mind? Let us look where we would walk, act as we would act in the possession of all power to create our own destiny. ”

“ The idea of non-existence, i.e. of existing only in God, without retaining our individual consciousness of being, does not, like the idea of endless misery, absolutely destroy our present comforts. It only cuts short, or else prevents, future prospects. ”

“ You, in your folly, suppose that you have individuality, a separate existence; this is maya, illusion—God alone exists. You imagine that you see forms, and touch material bodies; this is illusion—they do not exist. But one thing exists ”

“ There is no existence or non-existence, but in their stead reality and unreality, and in this world of form is unreality and in That World, reality. So that the unreal ego which we here believe to be the man is nothing and whether here or there has no reality but is a compound of causes which dissolve at death, while the reality of the man abides whether here or There. ”

“ If we cannot, then, properly say that the Absolute, or the Universe,—or whatever may be our chosen name for the infinite individual which is the whole of existence,—is a self or person, can we say that the finite individuals which compose it are one and all selves, and that the Absolute is therefore a society of selves? ”

“ This, to him, was as certain a truth as the truth of his own existence. I exist: not only do I exist, but exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to change, greatly ignorant, and incapable of creating anything. ”

“ And what begins from non-existence, and can be conceived not to exist, and unless it subsists through something else, returns to non-existence; and what has a past existence, which is no longer, or a future existence, which is not yet, --this does not properly and absolutely exist. ”

“ There was existence, perhaps, inert unconscious existence waiting to become suddenly aware of itself, aware of its parts and its difference from other things. Well, existence struggling, dreaming of self-knowledge, found in a wriggling, oozing spot of protoplasm—that's the start of it all. ”

“ When one considers how vast and how close to us is the problem of existence—this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence of ours—so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims ”

“ Whatever is conducive to the unity of the world of mankind is most acceptable and praiseworthy; whatever is the cause of discord and disunion is saddening and deplorable. Consider the significance of unity and harmony.
This evening I will speak to you upon the subject of existence and nonexistence, life and death. Existence is the expression and outcome of composition and combination. Nonexistence is the expression and outcome of division and disintegration. If we study the forms of existence in the material universe, we find that all created things are the result of composition. ”

“ I felt the utter insignificance of what we name existence, and I perceived too behind it that which it conceals from us—the real Life, illimitable, unfathomable, the element of our true being, with its eternal possibilities of misery or joy. ”

“ Have, then, the unrealities, the non-essentials of existence become the realities, and have we, emerging from a world where only the essentials of existence concerned us, given them an undue importance? Coming out of a state of primitive civilisation, are we unable to appreciate the true meaning of our surroundings? ”

“ But why should anyone suppose a body of some kind always necessary? Why should they assume a perpetual sort of dualism about existence? The reason is that we have no knowledge of any other form of animate existence; and it may be claimed as legitimate to assume that the association between life and matter here on the planet has a real and vital significance, that without such an episode of earth life we should be less than we are, and that the relation is typical of something real and permanent. ”

“ But how could that which had no existence, assist anything in coming into existence? If, however, no aid to the existence of anything ever had its source in nothing, who can be convinced, and how, that anything is created out of nothing? ”

“ It is likewise evident that that which is produced with intention has passed over from non-existence to existence. ”

“ The idea that in time or in space there can be distinctions without any differences is to my mind quite unmeaning, and the assertion that anything can be successive in itself and yet merely the same, is to me an absurdity. Again to seek to place either the identity or the difference in mere ‘existence’ is, so far as I can see, quite futile—mere existence being once more a self-contradictory idea which ends in nonsense. ”

“ But in a little measure my small voice of individual experience does join in the declaration of philosophy that the good is the only world, and that world is a world of spirit. It is also a universe where order is All, where an unbroken logic holds the parts together, where disorder defines itself as non-existence, where evil, as St. Augustine held, is delusion, and therefore is not. ”

“ Then there is process in time with its perpetual shifting of content from existence, a happening which seems certainly not all included under will and thought. The physical world again suggests some problems. Are there really ideas and ends that work in Nature? And why is it that, within us and without us, there is a knowable arrangement, an order such that existence answers to thought, and that personal identity and a communication between souls is possible? We have, in short, on one side a diversity and finitude, and on the other side we have a unity. ”

“ And so the one which is not, if remitting aught of the being of non-existence, would become existent. For not being implies the being of not-being, and being the not-being of not- being; or more truly being partakes of the being of being and not of the being of not-being, and not-being of the being of not-being and not of the not-being of not-being. And therefore the one which is not has being and also not-being. And the union of being and not-being involves change or motion. But how can not-being, which is nowhere, move or change, either from one place to another or in the same place? ”

“ Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE Mutakallemim, as I have already told you, apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to the absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g., blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, nonexistence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced. ”

“ Such an existence might perhaps be defined as one which, looked at from a purely objective point of view, or, rather, after cool and mature reflection--for the question necessarily involves subjective considerations,--would be decidedly preferable to non-existence ”

“ There is something so striking in this perpetual contrast between the external uniformity and internal variety of the procedure of existence, that it is no wonder that multitudes have formed a conception of Fate,—of a mighty unchanging power, blind to the differences of spirits, and deaf to the appeals of human delight and misery; a huge insensible force, beneath which all that is spiritual is sooner or later wounded, and is ever liable to be crushed. ”

“ Which is the most perfect existence, that of a wild beast of the forest who lives and sleeps in the open, without care or thought except for the immediate present, or of a man whose very existence is beset by doubt, jealousies, false gods and forbidden iniquities? ”

“ It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned ”

“ IV. But, it will be asked, what consolation and encouragement is there in all this for those who do not feel the charm of these remote hypotheses concerning the outer limits of existence, for those who see death in all its brutality, and lean, as you yourself probably do, in the present state of the theory of evolution, somewhat toward purely negative conclusions? What can be said to them when they stand, as they believe they do, on the brink of annihilation? ”

“ And nobody can deny that there may not exist, and perhaps do exist, aspects of reality unknown to us, to-day at any rate, and perhaps unknowable, because they are in no way necessary to us for the preservation of our own actual existence. ”

“ No sooner, therefore, had existence and consciousness been torn from their common root of life, and thereby forced asunder from each other, than, with a view of filling up the great gap between them, the deceptive rationalism of an irrefragable chain of destiny, and a necessary predetermination of all things, took the place which life had formerly held, but from which it had been forcibly expelled. ”

“ Why we should not exist, is, up to the epoch of our Manhood, of all queries the most unanswerable. Existence—self-existence—existence from all Time and to all Eternity—seems, up to the epoch of Manhood, a normal and unquestionable condition:—seems, because it is. ”

“ I am convinced that this popular and superficially plausible view is radically false, and that its logical consequence, the belief that the real existence of our fellows is less certain than our own, is a grave philosophical error. ”

“ When the non-God has no existence, what is to be denied? When thou thyself art not, how canst [Pg 49] thou affirm?... This is the zenith of Unity, and the stage of the Perfect Ones.... He who sees with the eye of Unity finds the non-God non-existent.... ”