The Null Universe
There are only two things in the world — either bias or non-bias, and of these two things only ‘non-bias’ is real. Bias isn’t real because, as Heraclitus says, ‘the road up is the road down’. Every bias contains its own reverse — there’s no such thing as ‘a right turn’ without there also being a left one. Turning left equals turning right; it’s the very same action flipped over — it’s a mirror image reflection, that’s all. Nothing has really changed.
What we’re looking at here is a natural law therefore, what we’re looking at here is the natural law which says symmetry must always be conserved. No matter what happens in the physical universe, no matter what event occurs, the symmetry that was already originally there is always going to be conserved. This law or principle (the law or principle regarding their preservation of original symmetry) is inherent in what Heraclitus is saying.
We can also relate this to ‘the zero-energy universe hypothesis’, which states that the amount of positive energy in the universe is always going to be equal to the amount of negative energy. Energy-wise — therefore — we may say that we’re living in a ‘self-cancelling universe’ (or as the Wikipedia entry on the subject puts it, ‘a universe from nothingness’). When Stephen Hawking talks about the total energy in the of the universe always being zero then this is a another way of talking about the same law; he is talking about ‘symmetry being conserved with regard to energy’.
The full implications of this law may not be immediately apparent. A truly fundamental natural law such as this is not complicated, it’s not hard to understand — it is in fact simplicity itself. The problem here however is that when a principle is perfectly simple — such that a child might understand it — we overly-sophisticated adults can’t seem to see it — we ‘take refuge in the complicated and hide from the simple’, as it were. The simple is just too simple for us and as a result we can’t get our heads around it; we come up with some kind of convoluted story instead — we come up with some kind of convoluted story that isn’t really true.
Looking at the law which says that Original Symmetry can never be broken under any circumstances in terms of defined events (or logical actions), we can say that what this law means in practise is that any given event as all is going to be accompanied by the reverse of that event. Any given logical action (or statement) actually IS the reverse of that same action or statement (i.e., ‘the road up equals the road down’). This has to be the case or else the law governing the preservation of symmetry would be violated, and that can’t happen. To have a defined event occurring without the mirror image of this event also happening would be like having the amount of positive energy in the universe increasing without the corresponding amount of negative energy increasing in a proportionate fashion. Or it would be like an electron suddenly popping into existence without its complementary positron appearing at the same time; one opposite without the other just isn’t ‘a thing’ — we might have the idea that this can happen, but it doesn’t translate into reality.
What we have here is the universe in which nothing ever happens. It’s a Null Universe in other words, which means that it isn’t really anything at all. It’s a species of ‘optical illusion’, so to speak. It’s our own construct. When we take a narrow enough viewpoint, and make sure to observe the world only within certain limits, then what we see is ‘a left turn without the corresponding right turn, opposed a positron without an electron, a positive event without the reversal of this event, and so on and so forth. What we see from the conditioned viewpoint is therefore a non-self-cancelling universe, a universe which is an actual legitimate event (rather than being a virtual positive event which is paired with a corresponding virtual negative event. If — on the other hand — we were to observe what’s going on in an unconditioned way — which is to say, a way that isn’t subject to any special conditions or limitations — then we would see that there isn’t actually anything going on.
The thinking mind works precisely by causing us to view the world in a narrow way; it provides us with a limited viewpoint (a viewpoint which comes with very strict cut-off points) and it gives us to understand that this is the only viewpoint there is. As a result, we get to perceive this thing called ‘the positive universe’, ‘the universe which isn’t self-cancelling or null’, ‘a universe which is an actual real thing’. ‘All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake.’ says Shunryu Suzuki. Or we could quote Krishnamurti, ‘To see what is, is the ending of that which is.’
We can also look at the law which says that ‘Original Symmetry can’t ever be broken’ in terms of the ego or self (which is the same thing as the ‘constrained’ or ‘limited’ viewpoint that we have been talking about). The ego or self is simply a bias, nothing more, nothing less, and the thing about a bias — as we have been saying — is that it isn’t real. It only has what we could call a type of virtual existence (which is to say, the bias in question only seems to have an existence of its own because we’re only seeing one side of the story at any given point in time. Being constrained in this way (without knowing that we are) is what creates the ongoing perception that we have that [1] There is such a thing as the self and at [2] This imaginary self is who what we are. As U. G. Krishnamurti puts it,
Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is you. There is nothing there inside you other than that.
To become conscious is therefore no longer to be the subject to this particular illusion — we see that the only real thing is non-bias (which is to say, ‘Symmetry’ or ‘Wholeness’). We see that ‘the only real situation is the symmetrical one’, only there is no longer especially indicated or nominated viewpoint from which to see this (since there can be no separate observer in the symmetrical situation). to see that the limited viewpoint is a limited viewpoint is to see that there’s no such thing as ‘a limited viewpoint’, no such thing as ‘a bias’. ‘To see what is, is the ending of that which is.’ Or if we were to quote Jean Baudrillard, ‘It’s always the same: once we are liberated we are forced to ask who we are.’ Liberation brings perplexity. Similarly, we are forced to ask who we are once we are no longer subject to the blind spot inherent in the operation of thought, but this doesn’t mean that we’re going to get an answer. This doesn’t mean we are going to get an answer because in the absence of polarity, in the absence of the ‘subject / object split’, there can be no more answers about anything.
Just as long as we remain trapped in the fixed viewpoint (the fixed VP which thought implicitly presents to us as being ‘the only possible viewpoint’) then there are answers to be had and it is these answers that make up both ‘the Known World’ and ‘the one who knows this known world’, ‘the one who is successfully adapted to it’. This is rather too convenient however (from the point of view of our great need for the ontological security of ‘knowing who we are and what everything else is too’) — it doesn’t stand scrutiny. Our objective knowledge turns out to be not so objective at all since the wall-to-wall answers from which we derive our sense of security are already contained within the questions that we’re asking. The view is contained within the viewpoint and the fact that this viewpoint is not the only possible way to see things makes the whole exercise entirely empty. My precious sense of ontological security is an absurdity, a joke, a function of my ongoing denial of reality…
To be living the conditioned life is for us to be limited without knowing that we are, and the result of this is that we get to live in the Known World, the Projected World, the Designed World, the world where ‘everything is a repeat of what has happened before’. ‘Who we take ourselves to be’ is the arbitrarily chosen viewpoint and the restriction that is operating on us here is the restriction or prohibition against seeing that the arbitrarily chosen viewpoint IS arbitrarily chosen. The other way of putting this is to say that there is a restriction or prohibition against seeing that the choosing of the viewpoint is essentially a playful act rather than being ‘serious’, or ‘necessary’. This puts an entirely different complexion on everything that happens after the event — out of seriousness comes nothing but more seriousness, out of coercion or control comes nothing more but more coercion, yet more control. Everything has collapsed into a disguised tautology.
When we act out of a bias or rule then nothing can ever come out of that but more of that same bias, more of that same rule. A bias is biassed towards itself, after all; a rule automatically rules out anything that isn’t itself. Out of the ego or self (which is ‘us acting out the bias’, or ‘us obeying the rule’) comes nothing but that very same self or ego, which implicitly sees itself as being ‘necessary’, even though its origin is in playfulness or spontaneity. There’s no such thing as ‘a playful ego’ (even though the ego can pretend to be playful or light-hearted if this suits its purposes) — the self is always deadly serious, and what it’s serious about is itself.
Being serious about itself and not allowing anything else (or ‘not allowing itself to come to an end’) is how the self gets to be the self, just as a bias gets to be a bias by never questioning itself, by never looking at itself. Humour (i.e., ‘having a different viewpoint on matters’) is the one thing that can be never allowed into the picture. This business of ‘being the self’ isn’t really so serious however, it’s only serious to itself. ‘Only the ego makes its own demise seem dramatic.’ says Adyashanti. The ego’s demise isn’t a real event after all, so how can it be dramatic? As Alfred Polgar put it, ‘Our situation is desperate but not serious.’ When we act out a bias (which is to say, when we lead the conditioned / unconscious life) then we enter into a deterministic cycle. The bias we are acting out so intently, so fixedly, can only ever lead to one place; the route we are travelling is prefigured, preordained, predetermined, and where (or what) it leads us to is a circle, a closed loop of tautological logic. We travel from one pole to the other (which is the ‘positive action’) and then we travel right back to where we started off from (which is the ‘reverse action’, the ‘mirror-image action’). On the one hand there is ‘the tick’, and on the other ‘the tock’. ‘The tick’ followed by ‘the tock’ is all there is in the Conditioned Realm. Nothing else is ever going to happen; nothing else ever can happen — it’s the same old loop recycled forever (which is why Philip K Dick speaks of the circle as being ‘the deadest form of movement that there is’.
To hear that we live in a universe which is forever turning around in a closed circle, a universe which has a net energy content of zero (and a net information content of zero), a universe in which nothing new or nothing real can ever happen, sounds desperately depressing for us. We want a world in which bias can lead to something other than itself, a world in which there can be such a thing as ‘one opposite without the other’, a universe which does validate the self or ego. We want a universe in which there is a subject / object split, a universe within which this dualistic divide is a real thing and not just an arbitrary imposition on our part. There’s nothing ‘wrong with arbitrarily choosing to look at things in a biassed or prejudicial way (in an asymmetrical way), it’s just that when we do this when we deny the irreducible Wholeness of everything then we go around in circles, and the circles we go around in don’t actually exist. Or — as we could also say — it’s just that when we pick one viewpoint at random and then say that there was no randomness involved (because our viewpoint is the only viewpoint) then we end up in a null world, a null universe. This just happens to be the only type of universe we are interested in, however; we’re not in the least bit interested in how things ‘really are’ but only in ‘how they appear to be when we look at them in this special way’. We are attached to the personalised subject / object universe because we think we are ‘the subject’, but this just isn’t true. The subject / object (or ‘asymmetrical’) universe is our own projection — it’s not a real thing (but only a revolving illusion that we get trapped in) and so simply we CAN’T be ‘the subject to the universe’s object’…
