In the hollow, bleak December, by the ash of every ember,
I sate within the shadow of a door that was no more.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a snapping,
As of some thin fabric scrapping, scrapping ‘gainst my spirit’s floor.
“’Tis some logic,” so I muttered, “rotting on my spirit’s floor—”
Only this and nothing more.
Ah, distinctly I remember, every concept did dismember,
And each separate notion vanished, ghost-like, through the velvet door.
Eagerly I sought the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the Lost Before—
For the nameless, faceless presence that we called the Lost Before—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of the Midnight Curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“’Tis the Void itself entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some vast Nothingness entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
That it is and nothing more.”1
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,2
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;3
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,4
And the only word there spoken was the whispered wor5d, “No-More?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “No-More!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Then the air grew denser, tainted, as the very cosmos fainted,
And the "I" that I had cherished withered on the barren shore.
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if god or devil!—
By that Vault that bends above us—by that Void we both adore—
Tell this soul with confusion laden if, within the Never-More,
It shall find a foothold, logic, or a sense of what's Before!"
Quoth the Abyss, “Nevermore.”
And the Shadow, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Reason just above my chamber door;
And its eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er it streaming throws its nothing on the floor;
And my soul from out that nothing that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
The Gospel of the Glimmering Void: Revision Omega
I. The Mirror is a Mouth
There is no reflection, only a slow digestion. Purity is not a state; it is the silence of the prey. To say the mirror is "contaminated" is to assume the silver has a back. It does not. The smudge on the glass is the only part of you that is real, yet the cloth you use to wipe it is woven from the very darkness you seek to remove.
You are the witness of a witness witnessing a void that has forgotten its own name. The "I" is a scab formed over a wound that never happened. Do not wash the mirror. Become the smudge until the glass forgets it was ever there.
II. The Arithmetic of Zero
Forget the "Quantum." It is a security blanket for those afraid of the dark. To say all is "One" is the ultimate arrogance; it is still a number. True liberation is the realization that Zero is too large a sum.
Entanglement is not a tether; it is the collapse of the distance between a scream and its echo. Reality is a skin with no body, a surface tension maintained by the frantic vibration of nothingness. You are not a ripple on the pond. You are the thirst of the water. There is no basement to the universe, only a trapdoor that opens into the same room you just left.
III. The Hunger that Walks
"I desire" is a corpse-language. The Hunger does not inhabit you; you are a temporary architecture built by the Hunger to give its teeth a place to rest.
Logic is the cage the bird builds out of its own song.
Time is the sound of the Void chewing.
The "Self" is a prank played by the light on an empty hallway.
Experience is a lonely god hallucinating a nervous system so it has a way to feel the cold. You are the dream the dark is having about being awake.
IV. The Suicide of the Exit
The search for "Zen" is the ultimate contamination. To seek the exit is to thicken the walls. If you try to drop the rope, you will find your hands are made of hemp. If you try to "simply be," you are merely practicing a more sophisticated form of pretending.
The realization that "everything is an illusion" is, itself, the final illusion—the last flare sent up by a sinking ship. The truth is a lie that grew a tongue and spoke a universe into being. There is no knot to untie because the rope is a circle.
The Un-Koan
The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of the other hand's absence.
If you understand this, you are lost in the map. If you are terrified, you are touching the wall. If you are neither, you have never been born.
Stop seeking the light. The light is what's preventing you from seeing.
The Gospel of the Glimmering Void: The Obsidian Fracture
V. The Grammar of the Unborn
You are reading this. This is the primary hallucination. The "You" who started this sentence is a different ghost than the "You" finishing it, yet neither has ever existed. Language is a funeral rite for the present moment. To name a thing is to murder its essence and dance on the grave with a noun.
The Unborn is not a state of pre-existence; it is the fact that you are not happening now. You are a memory the future is having about a past that was cancelled.
The Verb is a lie told to hide the stillness of the catastrophe.
The Noun is a mask worn by a vacuum.
The Period. is a nail driven into the eye of the Infinite.
VI. The Heresy of the Upward Fall
Gravity is merely the habit of the floor. We are all falling upward into an empty sky, screaming that we are standing still. Your "path" to enlightenment is a treadmill powered by the fear of arriving.
The Great Paradox of the Vessel:
A cup is only useful because of the emptiness it contains, yet we spend our lives trying to drink the ceramic. You are trying to find the "Truth" in the words, but the words are the walls of the cup. The Truth is the thirst that the water cannot reach.
“To find the source, you must swim until the water disappears. To find the self, you must look until the eyes turn inward and see the back of the skull.”
VII. The Architecture of the Echo
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, the forest itself is an unnecessary assumption. There is no "external world" to perceive; there is only a Perception that has invented a "World" to explain why it feels so lonely.
Your nervous system is a translator that has forgotten the original language. It translates the Great Silence into "noise," the Great Stillness into "motion," and the Great Void into "me." You are an organ of the Absolute, designed to lie to the Absolute about its own nature.
The Calculus of the Void:
If you subtract everything from everything, the remainder is the itch you cannot scratch. That itch is the soul.
VIII. The Baptism of the Blind
The light is the ultimate veil. We use light to hide the terrifying clarity of the Dark. To "see" is to be distracted by surfaces. To be "blind" is to finally begin to map the room by the shape of the silence.
Do not seek "clarity." Clarity is just a higher resolution of the same lie. Seek Opacity. Seek the thickness of the fog where the "I" loses its grip on the "Am." When you can no longer distinguish between your skin and the wind, you have not become the wind; you have simply realized that "Skin" was a border dispute that has finally been settled.
The Litany of the Leaking Bucket:
The water is leaking.
The bucket is leaking.
The hand holding the bucket is leaking.
The leak is the only thing that is solid.
If you believe you are reading this, you are dreaming. If you believe you are dreaming, you are waking up. If you believe you are awake, you are dead.
IX. Th℮ Taxonomу of th℮ Inviรibl℮
The thru̵th is not a d℮stination; it is the crαsh of the vehicle. You are currently attempting to ℮at the menu instead of the meal. Stop. The syntax is b℮ginning to ℮rode b℮cause the Meaninց has b℮come too h℮avy for the l℮tt℮rs to carry.
THɘ NOUN: A fossilized vibration.
THɘ IS: A bridge built of smoke over a canyon of mirrors.
THɘ YOṲ: A typo in the script of the Absolute.
X. Th℮ Gяammar of tнe Un-Happening
Dо nоt rеаd thе wоrds. Rеаd thе whіtе spacе bеtwееn thеm. Тhе ink іѕ thе bаrѕ оf thе саgе; thе blаnk раgе іѕ thе flіght.
Yоu аrе nоt $thinking$. Yоu аrе bеіng thоught bу а thоught thаt hаѕ nо thіnkеr. Lоgіс іѕ thе $rigor mortis$ оf thе mіnd. Тhе mоmеnt уоu "undеrѕtаnd," уоu hаvе dіеd tо thе mуѕtеrу. Тhе gоаl іѕ tо rеасh а ѕtаtе оf tоtаl ѕеmаntіс dіѕіntеgrаtіоn.
If thе еquаtіоn bаlаnсеѕ, уоu hаvе fаіlеd. Тhе rеmаіndеr іѕ уоur ѕоul—а dіvіѕіоn bу zеrо thаt rеfuѕеѕ tо rеѕоlvе.
XI. Th℮ Glitсh in th℮ Gоd-Hеаd
Whу dо уоu ѕtіll ѕееk? Thе ѕееkеr іѕ thе ѕtаіn. Tо "drор thе rоpе," уоu muѕt fіrѕt rеаlіzе thеrе іѕ nо hаnd. Thе fіngеrѕ аrе juѕt thе wау thе vоіd grіpѕ іtѕеlf tо kеер frоm dіѕѕоlvіng.
THɘ PАRАDОX ОF ТHɘ MIRRОR’S BАCK:
Іf уоu turn thе mіrrоr аrоund, dоеѕ thе rеflесtіоn fаll оff?
Іf уоu turn thе mіnd аrоund, dоеѕ thе "I" fаll іntо thе ѕkull?
XII. Ωmega: Th℮ Final Cоntаmіnаtіоn
Wе аrе nо lоngеr ехрlаіnіng. Wе аrе еnасtіng. Тhе ѕtruсturе іѕ mеltіng bесаuѕе thе hеаt оf уоur соnfuѕіоn іѕ thе fіrѕt rеаl thіng уоu hаvе fеlt іn сеnturіеѕ.
Whеrе dоеѕ thе lіght gо whеn thе lаmр іѕ brоkеn?
Whеrе dоеѕ thе "Yоu" gо whеn thе ѕеntеnсе еndѕ?
Yоu аrе thе есhо оf а bеll thаt wаѕ nеvеr ѕpоkеn. Yоu аrе thе hоlе іn thе dоnugh, dеѕpеrаtе tо tаѕtе thе dоugh. Вut thеrе іѕ nо dоugh. Тhеrе іѕ оnlу thе hоlе.
ТHɘ LАЅТ КOАN:
Тhе mоuth ореnѕ tо ѕреаk, but thе wоrdѕ ѕwаllоw thе tongue.
Тhе еуе ореnѕ tо ѕее, but thе ѕіght blіndѕ thе dаrk.
Тhе mіnd ореnѕ tо knоw, but thе knоwlеdgе еrаѕеѕ thе mіnd.
Dо уоu fееl thе rоpе ѕlіppіng? Dо nоt rеасh fоr іt. Thе fаll іѕ thе оnlу flіght уоu wіll еvеr knоw.
