The Book of Non-Existence

 

Vadim Filatov.

The Book of Non-Existence

«A person seizes truth through death».

 (G. Bataille).  

The INTRODUCTION. How the Philosophy returns to its sources.

CHAPTER 1.  The Captain of Soul.

CHAPTER 2. Whether thinking without fear is possible?

 CHAPTER 3.  The dark stars of the Non-Existence

1) Will to Death.

2)  Not-Existence is present, and Existence is absent.

3)  How the Nothing destroys everything.

4)  Familiarizing with the Void

5) The Final Future.

 CHAPTER 4.   A Spiritual Horizontal of Nothing

CHAPTER 5.  The Outcome

The CONCLUSION.  The twelve principles of the sense of life

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE INTRODUCTION.

HOW THE PHILOSOPHY RETURNS TO ITS SOURCES.

«When one who is listening does not understand another man, who is speaking, and the speaker does not know what he means, - it is a philosophy»

(Voltaire)

It becomes obvious for everybody now, that the so-called academic philosophy has fallen outside own limits in which the philosophy was generated in the Ancient Greece, and has turned to dead system of ritual spells, called "a philosophical discourse». But right now, when the world changes into one big poststructuralist project, the philosophy comes back to native sources, presenting an example of universal model of eternal returning.

 The philosophical creativity has turned to some kind of technology using which a thinking person adjusts itself on the corresponding relation to a life, and checks, how much it was possible to him. Proceeding from the nature of philosophy,   position of the independent thinker, who is not pursuing the aims of material welfare and office advancement, not only provides to him a relative anonymity, but also denies all the conventional understanding of philosophy as an infinite process of senseless chatter.  This process quite corresponds to the specificity of modern philosophy, as product of a contemporary civilization with decayed institutes of information violence.

Now our time has provided return of philosophy to the primary environment of its dwelling. That forces us to speak about a style instead of habitual for the academic propagation "a professional approach". Moreover, such kind of the exaggerated professional approach began to testify not only about  provincialism of its supporters, but — owing to inadequate habit to estimate everything around it— about an imitating character of the professional philosophy as a whole. Thus, the last one for a long time already represents itself as a comfortable convention replacing a sacral aesthetics of philosophical spirituality by conformist chatter of philosophizing handicraftsmen. However, it is premature to bury them yet, for they in a latent form, carry out an important sense-creating function - so far as they brightly reflect the processes of fatal disintegration of a decaying chimera of the modern world.

 

CHAPTER 1.

 The CAPTAIN of SOUL.

"The wise person does not possess humanity.  All the people are like straw dogs for him".

(Lao -Tzu).

This text is written in the spirit of Edgar Poe, but it is completely not terrible.

Walking together with my dead friend Alexander Chavushian in vicinities of Great Novgorod, we came to the glade, where a kind of the ashes from the burnt down fire and a heap of garbage picturesquely opened. "Here it reminds me of our lost generation", - I have told, showing on the garbage. -"No, we are, more likely, like the burnt down ", - Chavushian has answered for me.

As an Italian thinker Machiavelli spoke: "That, which in a usual life is called as murder, in the politician is called - "to cause the big loss to the enemy". A habit to use of a violence, which was dispersed earlier, now reaches for a high degree of concentration.

Sentenced man has lay down on a medical table for reception of deadly injections. His execution consists of three stages, during which three solutions are entered into his vein, the first deprives him of consciousness, the second stops a work of his lungs, and the third stops his heart.  

According to Jaspers, a person sees world of human activity as a state with its ruthless inflexibility. Beginning with the times of Socrates   institute of democracy was unshakable to infringers of the convention, which unmasked its cruel character. A difference between theatre and democracy consists on the fact that the theatre fairly and truthfully recognizes that it is only a theatre. Meanwhile, democracy, unlike theatre, deceitfully tries to hide a fact that it is a theatre too.  As to so-called Russian democracy, it represents itself not as a theatre, but as a circus of clowns.

Expecting execution, the condemned man wrote some letters for his friends and some kind of essay - for the purpose of publication. According to his opinion, his essay should give an irrefragable answer on a question: why he has made his action. Having studied the foreign policy of the state, I have decided to send a signal, intended to our power, because it became more and more aggressive. If somebody tries to estimate it according to moral and strategic sense, then my action is obviously equivalent to the air blows on cities and peaceful population of different countries, which were obviously incapable to protect themselves".  It means that the state in vain appropriates a monopoly for legitimate using violence.

Many witnesses, who were present on the execution, recollected as the following:  “- He looked so, as if he wished to tell us: he would receive not that he has deserved, but just the same that he wanted.  I feel deceived”.  

“- I hoped that, when facing his own death, he will tell us something like "an excuse", but I could not read anything of a kind on his sight”.

“- Without having told words, he has reserved a last word for himself”.

However, his last word all the same has been told. In two days before his   execution, he has extended a poem, written by English poet William Ernest Henley, - "Invictus "("Invincible"):

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

... "It is better let the spark of my life to go out, brightly having flashed, than to decay eternally in a dust. It is better to shine as a meteor, than to be a gloomy eternal moon. I would like to be ashes, but not a dust". Jack London, 1906.

 CHAPTER 2.

WHETHER THINKING WITHOUT FEAR IS POSSIBLE?

«We have nothing to be afraid, except of a fear».

(Franklin Delano Roosevelt)

I can name a last sight of some person as a most true moment of all his life.

The dying person obviously sees that a lot deal of his fears were absolutely vain. Daily overtaking death, a person comes to understanding of this true during his lifetime. So thinking without fear begins.

A person possesses capability of thinking and so, unique of all living beings, knows about his own finiteness. A presentiment of   death, which is peculiar to an animal, in human thinking becomes philosophy. So, a bible thinker Ecclesiastes has fairly noticed that «multiplying knowledge - multiplies grief». Probably, therefore the person became a unique being on the Earth, regularly and purposefully destroying himself and his own relatives.  It became for us like one of illusory ways of finding of a freedom in choosing. «To know that you are mortal, means to die at least twice, no, means to die every time at thought that you should die», - thus a Romanian thinker Emil Cioran wrote. And it is interesting:  what is more awful – an endless horror or an awful end? A whole horror consists of that the people, without excluding even small children, are compelled to undergo both that and another. And now a well - known philosophical paradox of Epicure (according to which death for a person does not exist, for while he is alive, death has not come yet,  and when there has come death — there is no person)  hardly probable will help. Certainly, Epicure aspired to overcome not death, but only fear of death, which, on his opinion, along with fear of gods poisons a human life and does people unfortunate. Epicure most likely was mistaken concerning gods, because all representations about gods exist for the aim to help people with overcoming of fear of death. And people really are afraid not so much death, but terrible tortures connected with it. Thereupon it is possible to consider as a good luck those episodes when death comes suddenly.

A woman here dies. At first she has turned yellow, then her stomach was inflated and she began to moan terribly. After a while she has сamе то аn agony, but some more days continued to moan and groan. At last, a blood has rushed from her throat, and she has died, but even after that blood continued to exude. If this suffering body is a strange kind of animal, where is our grandmother? Perhaps, any force, observing our sufferings, makes experiments over people?

The Danish philosopher of 19 century Seren Kierkegaard gave a big attention to preparation for death («Illness to death») and probably therefore has come to understanding of tragic essence of a human life. But, if life is not more than suffering fear and fault, whether it though has any sense? Whether attachment to a life is justified? And if life is deprived value, whether our world is equal as to live? The definitive alternative to which Kierkegaard has come looks so - either reason, or despair. Life filled with sufferings, gets sense and justification as a way to rescue through expiation by suffering. Every person suffers not so much from a tragic element of his own life, but from reasonable comprehension of inevitability of this tragic element which comes to an end with more or less painful death. Therefore reason represents itself as a patrimonial damnation of men. Thus, according to the Bible, when first people have tasted fruits from a Tree of Knowledge, they have lost paradise. It is a quite clear allegory - so all animals stay till now in paradise ignorance, and concerning their own death including. According to Kierkegaard's doctrine, if reason leads people to despair, only belief is capable to rescue them from it. Then a fear of death gives way to it’s expectation as unique definitive true and a disposal. A fear is eliminated by death negation, and neglect to a life, will to death, worship for it. «The death is general happiness of all people … The only sense of life is to come to a higher degree of contempt for a life», - Kierkegaard has summed up in his "Diary". Not to be, not to exist —thus are most passionate requirement of human reason since the moment when it realizes itself in a humiliating condition of one of human body functions, and probably even earlier. «Perhaps, a highest pleasure of a birth is not another, is but a death anticipation, a rupture of own vital essence», - in the essay about tragic feeling of a life the Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno wrote.

However reason can become not a specific damnation, but a faithful ally. It is necessary to use it for the designated purpose: not for inventing various subjects making ineradicable existential sufferings rather comfortable.  One must look at the world fairly and try to find a basic decision of the problem. Clearly, that it is deprived any sense to develop a material component of human life for this just component is doomed to destruction first of all. So attempts to be hooked for things, social communications or even for Time are completely senseless. «I vainly try to be hooked for instants, they escape me. There is no instants which would not be hostile to me, would not tear away me, would not notify me on the refusal to deal with me. All of them are not accessible to me also one behind another proclaim my loneliness and my defeat», - wrote Emil Cioran. – “The knowledge of myself always manages to be too expensive as, however, a knowledge in general, - argues it further. - When man will reach depths, he will not want to live. After all, in explained world nothing can have sense, except The Nothing. So a subject which is thoroughly examined loses value and it is better to it to disappear”. Thereupon, a person aspiring to think fairly - inevitably turns his look to The Nothing which becomes a starting point of his metaphysical awakening. Thus The Nothing is thought as unique absolute Truth which is not afraid of anything, even of negations of any true and of the idea of true itself. It turns out so that sense of life can be found, but this sense denies life. To understand and to accept primacy of absolute Nothing and excessive (superfluous) character of everything — that means to accept an existing course of things and to be built in it. If one tries to think with categories of Chinese philosophy it would equivalent to a contemplation of Universal Way (Tао), which is invisible to the majority of people perceiving shown material world as a unique reality and owing to this reason senselessly wandering in a dark. Some person is afraid when hopes:  thus a patient is afraid of his doctor, and a believer is afraid of his God. But as a rule hope perishes first of all. Hopelessness is the property accessible only by very strong persons. The Anti-philosophy of Nothing demonstrates that if you wish to be afraid of nothing, it is necessary to remember that there is no anything to be afraid. For anything is not present. We are young, as our Will to death, and we are old, as our fears to die.

 

 

CHAPTER 3. The dark stars of the NON-EXISTENCE.

“This night all will be good.

This night all will be good.

Will be neither summer, nor autumn,

Neither spring, nor winter.

Nobody begins to think,

And nobody will go mad.

Nobody will be born

Also nobody will die.

Nobody will commit suicide,

And nobody will kill.

Nobody will be ugly,

And nobody will be beautiful.

Nobody will be dead,

But nobody will be alive.

This night all will be good.

This night everywhere there will be nothing.

This night everywhere there will be nobody.

This night all will be good”.

 (Michael Naumenko)

1). Will to Death.

The death destroys all.  If a person could die only by means of ordinary effort of will, the mankind would disappear very quickly. But the mechanism of self-development and self-damage provides every possible dodges, with which forces people to cling to a life while, at last, all of them with disgusting rotting does not fall prey of sepulchral hearts. Someone from philosophers has told that any life is a dying stretched in time.  Every instant death approaches more and more close to victim, including a serial murderer of children and Lev Tolstoy, and leading both of them to absolute zero. So the Non-existence represents itself as such universal and unique reality that life appears as illusory visibility. Life is present only yesterday and today, while the Non-existence was, is and will be always.

During an epoch of Zenon and Epicure in the Ancient Greece there lived philosopher Hegecius nicknamed the Teacher of Death. It belonged to philosophical school, a founder of which, Aristippes, learnt that a sense of life consists in pleasures, and at the end of his life has committed suicide. Hegecius was convinced that a suffering reigns in the world. The best that a person can do is to try not to mourn about it, and to show insensibility to death. Hegecius so convincingly showed to people a pettiness of life that his many listeners have committed suicide and as a result, he has forbidden to propagate his teachings. However, Hegecius, also as Arthur Schopenhauer, who denied will to live and has lived to a ripe old age, did not call for immediate suicide at all – he preached only a contempt for a life and will for death, which meant his readiness to die in any minute. After all, as told Fales, between life and death there is no difference. However, when he was asked – why he, in that case, will not die, he has reasonably answered – just for this reason. In the history of philosophy one more will – nietzschean will to power - which is usually considered, as a statement of a life is known. However, according to Nietzsche, his will to power does not mean a banal tendency to domination. It is some kind of aspiration to fall outside the limits of sensation and to leave an incompleteness of our daily existence. Developing the concept of Nietzsche, it becomes possible to tell that will to power simultaneously represents itself as will to death or will to the Nothing, in which process is more important than result. This existential imperative has extremely clearly sounded in G. Bataille's statement: “Die, as a dog!” A philosophical substantiation of will to the Nothing as a further logic development of will to power can be found in Heidegger's philosophy:  “To will the Nothing - it does not means to will absence of all valid. On the contrary, it just means to will valid, but only such kind of valid, which destroys everything, i.e. to will destruction. And in such Will, the power still provides possibility to be a master”. (M. Heidegger. “Nietzsche and the Void”). And what is the all-conquering Nothing? For the purpose to understand this, it is It is represented useful to consider some related concepts.  In particular, in philosophical literature one can often meet with distinctions between three related blocks of concepts, such as: “the Non-Existence", "the Nothing” and “the Void”. It is necessary to note at that these three concepts are very close among themselves. However, it is necessary to make the reservation of that the listed concepts of the substantial relation are rather close among themselves. Therefore, their differentiation has a conditional character.

2). The Non-Existence is present, and existence is absent.

All of us will not be. Though thus already was.

Simple people trust only in those phenomena which they can see or hear. Some difficulty in definition of a non-existence consists of a spirit which has no any representation about the Nothing. It stops before this line behind which both contemplation and understanding disappear. Thus it is impossible to create neither an image, nor a concept about the Nothing - it is situated outside all definitions because the Nothing is a spirit. So dissolution of spirit in emptiness of the Non-existence is a spiritual consciousness of itself.

The Non-Existence is usually defined as an absence of life. Concept of "non-existence" distinguishes from "nothing", which is understood as last definiteness negation. So, as a rule, in philosophical tradition, concept of “non-existence” is considered only as a category opposite to life. Complexity of "non-existence", in which specified the Greek philosopher Parmenides, consists in the following: the non-existence is a kind of absence however definition of absence should be based on any signs. On the other hand, presence of signs means an existence of object of the description. As a result there is an interesting paradox, which can be defined as:  “a presence of an absence of a non-existence”. This seeming paradox brings us to idea about self-sufficiency and a substantive character of a non-existence – an idea which ancient and medieval mystics had. However, they operated more often with concept "nothing". Expression «the Universe is nothing», was considered in a conceptual context concerning dissolution of human spirit in the Absolute, making a positive aspect of numerous mystical doctrines. Parmenides wrongly identifies life with a reality, refusing to adopt reality of non-existence. According to his statement, “existence is present, and non-existence is absent”. So the Non-Existence cannot be thought and described rationally. On the contrary, the Greek philosopher Democritus was assured of an existence (atoms), and a non-existence (empty space between them). Thus the "Non-Existence" of Democritus, like "the Void" in the Buddhism, is considered not as absolute absence, but as a certain special form of existence. Besides, the idea of the Non-Existence, in a form of assumption, is present in doctrine of a sophist Gorgius, who declared that: 1).The anything is not present; 2). If something is present, we will not learn about it; 3). If we would learn about it, we all the same can not tell this to anybody. And developing so-called “negative theology” medieval European theologians used a concept of the Nothing as instruction that a nature of God is inaccessible for understanding and is situated outside of all possible definitions.

As a whole, the aphorism of Parmenides about impossibility of a non-existence for a long time has limited the development of a positive component of this concept. In Russian philosophical tradition a substantive meaning of an absolute Non-existence has been openly proclaimed by philosopher Arseny Chanyshev in “The Treatise about a Non-Existence”. This work has been published rather recently and till now it is perceived by some representatives of official bureaucratic philosophy as an unsuccessful intellectual joke of the thinker, as something absolutely frivolous, a philosophical funny thing.  And really: Chanyshev brushes aside all public and private principles, according to which within many years verbose and not representing the slightest value "philosophical" monographies were fabricated - so, he has acted in a role of an infringer of the convention. It would be enough to tell that this philosophical treatise of Chanyshev is written by clear language that is a crushing blow on imitating stylistics of bureaucratic philosophers according to which when a question is answered by a philosopher, you cease to understand a question. When speaking about characteristic for the majority of modern professional philosophers terminological chatter, Emil Cioran, in particular noticed that a most banal ideas, being translated on a philosophical slang, got deceptive importance and weightiness: “When a philosopher passes to normal language, it becomes clear at once, as a little he has what to tell. I always considered that philosophical slang is an improbable deceit”. If in an ancient times force of a word stopped the sun and destroyed cities, already in the Middle Ages the empty chatter became some kind of prestigious and well paid activity. In other words, simulators from philosophy do not confirm anything, but confirm it with very not clear words. So the American writer Henry Thoreau said in 19 century: “Presently there are professors of philosophy, but not philosophers”. Probably, Chanyshev became a rare exception of the law noted by Toro. According to his views, everything arises from the Non-existence in which it is inevitable eventually comes back. And whether there is this everything or it too, at least, potentially, does not exist? Thus life is considered by him as a casual anomaly of all the same Non-existence. Confirming this position Chanyshev has formulated following theses:

1)    The Non-existence is more absolute than life in the same measure in what the substance is more absolute than it’s conditions;

2)  Casual is absolute, and every law is relative, because any law cannot provide all cases. Generally speaking, for a case there is no law. The law is only for cases;

3) The Non-existence in which all contrasts are destroyed is more absolute than these contrasts. We can recollect at least zero density in the Universe, for example;

4)  Everything present is only a small part of that is absent and of that which will be, i.e. of the Non-existence;

5) The moving body is in one, final part of space, and it is not in another, infinite part of space; any body exists in a final part of space and does not exist in its infinite part;

6) All arises for a while, and perishes forever. Occurrence and destruction possess various strength. So far as time is not a phenomenon, but an essential property of life, so far as everything is short-lived, the Non-Existence is absolute, and life is quite relative. (And, hence, the doomsday is inevitable).

Thus, Chanyshev considers that the underlying all Non-Existence (the Void) illusory acts as the world with its seeming variety. A Non-Existence initially represents a world normal state, while life - only a time deviation, the form of existence of a non-existence. A non-existence of the Non-Existence is life. As the Non-Existence exists, without existing, and does not exist, existing, it compounds a time. Only the Non-Existence can be both an original cause and self-reason: as it does not exist, then it does not demand the reasons for the existence. The Increasing speeds, more and more high rates of a life, more and more distant flights in space, - unless it not an aspiration of life at least for an instant to come off the Non-Existence?

 “All of us go on thin ice over ocean of the Non-Existence. The more life becomes intensively, the more it become fragile, and the more strongly subject to destruction of life there appears “, - Chanyshev speaks. – “A Love is an attempt to be hooked for another's life and to make the life steadier by that “. Also a love for God from here originates: after all just when meeting intolerable physical and sincere sufferings people address to God, trying to be hooked for His eternity.

 It would be possible to object on these arguments, for example, as follows: everything is mortal in private displays, and simultaneously it is eternal in its ideal bases. In such a context the "Nothing" can be simultaneously considered as "something".  Perhaps, it also is the Void or nirvana which “in the late Buddhism of a Dharma acts as the world in all its variety”?

As a conclusion of his treatise Arseny Chanyshev confirms “a courage of a non-existence” which really means courage of absurdity. This courage represents a self-affirmation of life contrary to inevitability of the Non-Existence. Besides, his ideas generate a natural question: how the primary and substantive Non-existence could produce any life? Statement of this point in a question testifies that, despite of proclaimed by Chanyshev consecutive materialistic approach, his philosophical concept and in general - any courage to be - all of this has obvious or latent idealistic and even mystical bases. According to these bases, a life and accompanying it sufferings are quite illusory, because The Non-Existence is present, and existence is absent.

 

3). How the Nothing destroys everything.

 

The Nothing - is a term fixing absence of qualitative definiteness, unlike a “non-existence” which is, as it has already been told, traditionally considered as an absence of a whole life. Sometimes the Nothing is identified with a non-existence as simple negation of life. Besides, the Nothing has additional value, acting as an active beginning of negation, negativity. Figuratively, a concept of the Nothing is used as a hyperbole of belittling of value of some object or some phenomenon.

As everything real is unity of two aspects — life and essence, so far the Nothing serving by negation of aspect of definiteness, simultaneously acts as a negation of life. But the Nothing is not quite equal to the Non-Existence". Analyzing these concepts, we can see different senses of negation. Thus the Nothing is a negation of definiteness, and the Non-Existence is a negation of existence. For this reason in philosophical and religious mysticism a concept of the Nothing is often considered as a kind of existence deprived of definiteness. This got to the Nothing some positive sense, which is unusual for the Non-existence. This means that a material “nothing" simultaneously became a spiritual “everything".

So, Plato, Hegel and others recognized the Nothing as a key category of philosophy (such as “God”, “life”, “absolute” and others), denying a principle according to which “from anything nothing arises” (“ex nihilo nihil fit”).

Within another approach which originates from the Ancient Greek philosophy, the Nothing results from formal negation and is defined as a formal-logic concept. The great Greek thinker Aristotle has been convinced that philosophy begins with a surprise. Probably therefore philosophers can not cease to be surprised with a Life, which is given a person for the sake of the Nothing. Some philosophers consider that "the Void", "the Nothing" and so forth – all these terms are possible only as the concepts existing in consciousness of a person. In materialistic philosophy concept of "the Nothing" is not a philosophical category as if it contradicts with principles of eternity and unity of a material world. From the Christian point of view the eternal Nothing is a display of divine strength and everywhereness.  Just from the Nothing have been created by God both angels and the visible Universe. Thereupon a book of bible skeptic Ecclesiastes, in which there is no hint on continuation of a life after death, is interesting. Ecclesiastes does not think out consolations like habitual for us representations about eternity and about a life which does not die even at the moment of death. His quite unusual for the Bible position is summarized by a rhetorical question: “What advantage is received by a worker from results of his work?” (3,9). For the acknowledgement of his views, Ecclesiastes takes a best of all possible scenarios of human destiny: he tells about a tsar, who has possessed both wisdom, and riches, and power. This tsar has succeeded in all his affairs, it has constructed his own world and he has received everything that a person only can wish from a life. But even “a most successful life” cannot avoid its final end, which is death (2, 13-17). And results of works inevitably are gotten into alien hands after death and they can become property of madmen. (2, 18-22). Sometimes this occurs already during ones lifetime, but, in any case, last destiny of a person is darkness and misfortunes (2, 21-23). Finally Ecclesiastes comes to conclusion that even in the most ideal case nothing in life belongs to a person. We will add – with exception for the Nothing itself. A concept of the Nothing is so universal after all, that it becomes possible to explain a nature of God with it. So, according to the Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, “We create God for the aim to rescue the Universe from the Nothing”. But probably is it to relieve the Nothing from itself?

The Nothing is partly connected with a key concept of a Judaic Cabbala – “Ein Sof” which means "Boundless", the Deity, giving rise and extending. Ein Sof is written also as “En Soph” and “Ain Suph”, but anybody, even rabbis, are not sure of a writing of vowels.  According to early cabbalists Ein Sof is defined as   something “without form and existence", "not having similarity with another” (Frank, “Die Kabbala”). That Ein Sof was never considered as "Creator", it has been said by such an orthodox Jew, as Filon, who named "Creator" as Logos following for "The Boundless", and even as “the Second God". "This second God is a wisdom of Ein Sof”, stated Filon (“Quaest et Solut”). Thus, according to religious metaphysics of Hebrew philosophers, the Principle of Uniformity was an abstraction. However, some modern cabbalists with the help of sophism and paradoxes have rather succeeded in explanation of Ein Sof as the “Supreme God”. The Deity is the Nothing; it is nameless and consequently is named “Ein Sof”, because this “Ein” just means "The Nothing". (Franc “Die Kabbala”).

Considering further evolution of understanding of the Nothing in history of philosophy, we address to Hegel's doctrine. Hegel finds sources of his dialectics of life and the Nothing in previous philosophical doctrines: in its pure form he finds out life in a philosophy of Parmenides, and the Nothing - in the Buddhism. However it is obvious that as a basic theoretical source for him it has served understanding of interrelation of life and the Non-Existence which is present in Plato's doctrine (for example, in his dialogue "Sophist"). Plato managed to relieve an existence as an idea from abstract continuality and, having defined the Non-Existence as something another to existence and simultaneously constantly accompanying an existence, he gave to these basic categories the necessary dynamics for the aim to build his philosophical system as a complex of interrelations. Here it is difficult not to notice an anticipation of the Hegel’s doctrine which overcame static character of all previous systems.

As a starting point of philosophical thinking of Hegel it was his representation about full abstraction and emptiness of the beginning of system which, having defined and becoming more concrete during dialectic process should return to the beginning. An Existence or a Life as an abstract and uncertain spontaneity is identified by Hegel with the Nothing, and both these concepts, passing each other and disappearing in each other, become the moments of formation. The existence and the Nothing disappear in each other so really there is only “a movement of direct disappearance of one in other” (Hegel V.F. “The Science of Logic”).  So a terminal point of philosophical system of Hegel is an existence. However it is not an abstract and empty existence, but on the contrary, full and concrete, characterizing the Absolute, which is an existence in its most perfect form.

So, if to follow the idea about primary and substantive character of the Nothing which in this context can be equated to the Absolute, then we will receive that the Nothing (the Non-existence), passing through it’s own comprehension and negation by means of conceiving life, as a result Anything comes back again and definitively to a condition of the Absolute Nothing, or to the Non-Existence in it’s most finished and perfect form. Thus the Absolute Nothing is considered as a substantial something, or, in other words, as the Spiritual Everything. But “spirit reaches the Truth, only finding itself in an absolute rupture”, - as Hegel confirmed. So, this interpretation of the Hegel’s system allows undertake preliminary approach to understanding of objective meaning of materialization of the Nothing in a form of the rupture of continuity, that is, a time transition of the Non-Existence in existence and back. We see that if existence exists in time, the Non-Existence exists out of time, i.e. in eternity, and their dialectic interaction translates the Absolute on qualitatively more perfect step of substantive transformation. Thus the Absolute Nothing can be considered as an objective beginning of everything.

One more, but much less known German philosopher living in 19 century - Phillip Mainlender, considered himself as a follower of pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer, has been convinced that philosophical pessimism is necessary not only in theory, but also in practice. So, Mainlender, after having published his only book “The Philosophy of expiation” in which he has given a sense to existence of the world for the aim that than with a quiet conscience to leave it, with feeling of deep satisfaction has committed suicide. In his book he has written that “God has died, and his death became a life of world”. Therefore a state and a society should aspire to such organization in which the culture of understanding of aimlessness of a life and cooperation with God in His aspiration to the Nothing would be formed.

The concept of the Nothing is also considered in early philosophical texts by Marthin Heidegger. “It is necessary to research reality and more – the Nothing, only reality and except of it – the Nothing; this unique reality and moreover – the Nothing”, - as he wrote in his essay entitled “What is metaphysics?”: “Where to search for the Nothing? How to find the Nothing? At any rate, the Nothing is known for us, because we hourly, resembling and thoughtless speak about it... The Nothing is a complete negation of set of the real. When we can find a trace of the Nothing? When we are covered by deep melancholy wandering in chasms of our life... Whether there is such mood in our life which is capable to approach as to the Nothing? It can occur and occurs - though seldom enough, only for instants - in fundamental mood of horror. We understand meaning of “horror” here not as too frequent ability to be terrified which as a matter of fact is similar to fear. But the horror is completely distinct from fear... The Horror slightly opens the Nothing.

It is quite obvious that Heidegger spoke about “terrible empty wisdom of the Nothing” as it was told above. The philosopher underlines primary and basic character of the Nothing in it’s relation with existence as a whole, and in relation to subjective perceptions of life by a person: «Only on a basis of primary displaying of the Nothing a human presence is capable to approach to real and to penetrate into it... A human presence means putting forward into the Nothing …And putting of our life into the Nothing on the basis of undercover horror is an exit above the limits of reality, or a transcendention. Our asking about the Nothing urged to show us metaphysics in itself”. Thus, according to Heidegger, the essence of metaphysics compounds immersing in Horror of the Nothing. And without this immersing   metaphysics is quite impossible - irrespective of, whether people who try to argue metaphysically understand this point. Simultaneously there appears a fresh wording of the basic question of philosophy: "Why in general there is reality, instead of the Nothing?" Thus is the basic maintenance of the doctrine of Heidegger concerning parity between existence and the Nothing.

The various thinking on this theme we also meet in creativity of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, in particular, in his composition “The Existence and the Nothing”.  In this treatise Sartre adheres to traditional for the European philosophy views about the maintenance of the Non-existence (the Nothing) as deprived of an independent essence and representing itself only as an antithesis to the substantial existence: “So, the Nothing is absent. We can tell about it only because it possesses visibility of the life, borrowed life … An existence by means of which the Nothing comes to the world, there should be it’s own Nothing”. Actually, as we can tell, the Nothing creates the world, as well as a whole existence, as its own time anomaly.  We always find out the Nothing – in every place and at every time - as the unique prospect and inevitability. Basically, each life represents its own Nothing, which exists only for the reason of non-existence. No less than the substantive Absolute Nothing exists owing to the non-existence, constantly absorbing isolated fragments of life. After all movement is an eternal process of destruction. Such is the basic function of the Nothing: it destroys.

And at last, in the Eastern philosophical tradition the concept close to the Nothing (but not identical with it) is usually designated as "the Void".

 

4) Familiarizing with the Void.

 

Through you, through me

Emptiness rolls the waves,

Appearing in veins of blood at dawn,

As a dead plaster mask in which

An instant flour of pierced moon has fallen asleep.

Look, how all is buried in emptiness.

Both the left wood and the bits from apples.

Look, how fossil is the world

Which has not found a trace

Of its first sobbings of melancholy.

(F. Guarcia Lorca.)

 

Existing steams of philosophical categories, such as a truth and an error, a life and a death, a freedom and a slavery, a beauty and an ugliness, a pleasure and a suffering, a love and a hatred, a destruction and a creation and others, represent a  reflection of the Absolute Void by two mirrors.

In Eastern wisdom there is an ancient concept of the Non-Existence (the Void) which have found its judgment in modern physics (the vacuum theory and the theory of an origin of the Universe). Already in "The Itzing" - Chinese classical "The Book of Changes” - the world comes up from the Non-existence, becoming for a while one of its conditions and, having obeyed to a rhythm of world development, having realized a basic possibility of self-knowledge, comes back into eternity of the Non-existence, according to a principle of movement: “there – back”. The world is dissolved in the Non-existence which represents possibility of infinite creativity "("The Book of Changes»). So the non-existence possesses special creative function – possibility to create from the Nothing some kind of new Nothing. We also meet the concept of the Void in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism. As an example it is possible to mention the Taoist initial entitled «The Book of secret explanations of three heavens» in which a legend about a birth of a founder of Taoism Lao Tzu it contained. In this text Cave of the Void in which Great Absence was born is mentioned. As it is accepted in Taoism, specified concepts hide in themselves set of meanings and give various possibilities for interpretation. Thus, Lao Tzu wrote about the Void like the following: “In the world all things are born in life, and life is born from the Non-Existence”. So all arises from the Non-Existence and, having made a cycle of development, is dissolved in it. The Non-Existence (the Void) is shapeless and absolute, because it is all and comprises all. «A nature gate – is the Non-Existence. All darkness of things appears from the Non-Existence. Life is not capable to become life by means of life it should appear from the Non-Existence. The Non-Existence owns the Unique Non-Existence», - one more Taoist philosopher, Chuang Tzu said.

Much more often philosophical understanding of the Void is connected with traditions of the Indian philosophy. “The gloom has been hidden by a gloom at the beginning. Everything was an indiscernible abyss. That active that has been concluded in the Void, It one has been generated by force of heat», - as narrate sacred texts from "The Hymns of the Rigveda" about an origin of the universe.  Doctrine about the Void also takes the important place in philosophy of Buddhism. Thus, when the Buddha has reached enlightenments, within several weeks after that he did not give any doctrines. All this time he stayed in meditation on the Void. Then some gods of the world have come to him and have asked him to produce doctrine for the sake of blessing of all live beings rotating in Sansara. And Buddha has told them: "I realized most precious of all doctrines but if I now open it to people, it will not bring an advantage them. Therefore I will keep silence now". In this case Buddha meant his doctrine about the Void.

The Sunnata (it is literally means —the Void, the Nothing, the Non-Existence) is a concept of the Buddhism believing absence of own nature of things and phenomena (Dharmas) for the reason of their conditionality and interdependence. “For whom the Void is clear, all becomes clear”, - the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna living in India in 3 century told. He taught that outside of a network of dependent origin of causes and effects there is the Void. According to his views, Buddha preached two Truths. The first – the truth of worldly conventions, created by Buddha with compassion to people:  to help those who are on a way to the second, final truth of the Void. The human reason is powerless in knowledge of a world which is not present. Besides, a reason for itself also is incomprehensible and empty. There is a search of causality on the basis of human knowledge of the world. However “neither existing, nor nonexistent thing cannot have a reason: a reason of what is a condition if a thing does not exist? And if a thing really exists, for what any reason is necessary then?” (Nagardjuna "Mule-madhjamika-kariki"). It seems paradoxical, but just emptiness of all reality does it possible. Followers of a Buddhism of Mahayana recognize that physical elements and physical bodies consisting of them have no final value. Their doctrine of the Non-Existence or Universal Void is simultaneously a doctrine of universal relativity. Identity of phenomenal and absolute, caused and untied, Sansara and Nirvana is real only from positions of eternity. Everything becomes a reality only after removal of phenomenal illusion. While this illusion exists, the Absolute Non-Existence is inherent in the shown world only as possibility, but not as the validity. The person, who has got rid of phenomenal illusion, becomes involved in the existence of Absolute, which means to be involved in eternity of the Universal Void. It is possible to tell something like this and concerning all the mankind which is capable to familiarize with eternity only on a basis of disposal of all illusions.

The concept of the Void is also present at the Islamic mystical doctrine of Sufizm, where we can find out representations about the Universal Void, which is metaphorically designated as “a bottomless sea», deprived of a form and absolutely non- accessible for rational understanding and even for mystical comprehension. This Non-Existence is often named as “not shown essence” or the Allah, covers all existing world and serves as a support to it. All potential possibilities of universe are settled down in the Non-Existence.

 

The Eastern idea of the Void has also found development in Western philosophy where its meaning is approached with a concept of “nihil” – the Nothing. So, according to reflections of the German thinker Ernst Junger: “We have nicely worked on a field of nihilism... We march for a long time in a direction to magic zero point, and only one who possesses other invisible sources of power would cross through this point … We  put our hopes on a revolt against the domination of a cosiness, for which purpose a weapon of destruction directed against the world of forms is required”.

 Essential distinctions between the Eastern and the European approaches to understanding of the Void have been noted by Emil Cioran: “The Non-Existence for Buddhism, and for all East as a whole, does not comprise that gloomy value which is given to it by us. It coincides with last experience of light or with a condition of eternal shining absence, radiant emptiness: it is an existence which has prevailed over all attributes or, more likely, extremely positive Non-Existence which radiates the non-material groundless pleasure and has not a support in one of the worlds”.

Unlike the European, nihilistic understanding of the Non-Existence, in a context of the Eastern tradition it carries out a major sense-developing function. The Eastern sight on the Non-Existence leads to perception of the world given us in experience as a time partial expression of that infinite world of the Non-existence which stands behind it. As it is known, the outlook of a modern western civilization is based on “a scientific picture of the world”. Preferring habitually to think that he worships to God, the western person actually worships “scientific and technical progress” and regulating force of the market. "It is necessary to recognize a hypothesis of existence of external objects as it creates base for the steady uniform belief uniting all people"? That is for a science – so a founder of the American philosophy of Pragmatism Charles Pierce spoke.  Nevertheless, the Eastern concepts of the Non-Existence have something in common with some modern scientific representations, for example with the physical theory of the vacuum, which is capable to generate from itself infinite set of the Universes. And vacuum is possible to consider as a kind of experimentally achievable Void. Besides, a one more model of the Non-Existence is present at the Universe in the form of black holes, which are limited by so-called “horizon of events” as narrates Steven Hocking in his book “The short history of Time”. (This every book, besides purely scientific information, contains a great weight of curious philosophical questions, for example: “Why we remember the past and do not remember the future?”). Everything which failed after the horizon of events gets to an area of infinite density where time comes to an end. Thus, the horizon of events reminds an edge of shade of future destruction. A compression of star in conditions of black hole is similar to last stages of a collapse the Universe. Probably, it is something like Christian Hell?

Recently American astronomers have found out great empty space in material Universe in the extent 1 billion light years (for comparison, the distance from the Earth to the Sun consists 8,3 light minutes). Opened by scientists from University of Minnesota the empty space represents huge Nothing in which there are no usual space objects: neither planets, nor galaxies, nor even “black holes”. It is natural that astronomers do not understand value of this Void. The similar phenomena were also met earlier, but the found site in one thousand times surpasses all spheres of emptiness that were earlier known to a science. One of pioneers of Great Nothing, researcher Lawrence Rudnick, has been shaken by the seen. «We not only have found emptiness which has appeared more than others before known - we have found such huge space Void which we could not imagine”, - he has declared. His colleague Lily Williams has commented their discovery on the same way: “That we have found out – abnormally “.

It is known that the Universe is filled by stars, a dust and gas, so its most part is invisible. Scientists know that in a concrete point there is any object when they notice gravitational effect proceeding from so-called “dark matter”. But in the found out Void there are no even latent weights. A reason of occurrence of such huge empty space stays unknown for scientists. However, it is quite clear that in this field of the Universe Absolutely Nothing is present. Probably there is just the same area of Absolute Nothing or pure spirituality from which once all has occurred and which would sometime extend and dissolve so-called shown world? And then there will be a great triumph of the Nothing. Actually, its inevitability already now, in obvious or in latent forms, defines all course of our life, and, in particular, releases mankind from insolvent illusions concerning its own importance. After all, when learning the Absolute Nothing, a person is released from everything, even from necessity to exist in a herd and to glorify his shepherd. And in this question everyone has very small choice (according Kierkegaard, a choice between “or” and “or”) - to leave herd and pass in a spiritual emigration, or to identify itself with herd and, as a result, to become follower and simultaneously slave of the shepherd looking after herd. The Great Emptiness bares emptiness and inconsistency of authority of the shepherd, in spite of the fact that he frightens herd with his long whip. It is quite enough to increase space for the aim to destroy a deceptive visibility of someone's greatness. «If everything is empty - who would glorify and would receive glorifications?” - "Mahayana" rhetorically asks.

“All of us are mad because we accept a deceptive visibility as reality. Everyone living is a madman, and, moreover, a blind man: he does not see illusiveness of the world, instead of that durability and completeness everywhere seems to him. If by a miracle he manages to begin to see clearly and find out that around him only the Void he blossoms. The Void replacing a reality appears more richly, it shows itsуда like firmness and fragility, like basis and light, and, at last, like an essence of life overturned in a chasm. But, unfortunately, we perceive in it only absence of everything, which leads to our fears and failures. For us the Void is only a transparent deadlock, a tangible hell”, - confirms Emil Cioran.

 

Having overcome an illusion of material world, a person becomes involved into releasing Truth of the Void. And this familiarizing is the unique real value which one is capable to find throughout ones life. The value connected with formation of a form and its dissolution, with infinity of restriction and with limitation of boundless.

 

 

6) The Final Future.

“How can I state the final?” – The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has written down. –“But this just latest also is not necessary to state, after all - it is an end to which we come, a wall against which everybody rest». It is accepted to represent various creeds on this wall”.

 Such concepts as: “the Non-Existence”, “the Nothing” and “the Void” are independent and simultaneously form unity. Each of these concepts has definite features.  However, for the purpose of designation of a fundamental principle of life, concept "the Nothing" looks more comprehensible, because it, besides a designation of a pure absence, confirms a presence of independent, self-sufficient, through also uncertain, essence. Such interpretation of The Nothing is similar to the ideas, which are presented in the works of the ancient European theists.

The Absolute Nothing – or the infinite Void – represents itself as an independent ideal essence. The physical world is a casual abnormal condition of the Nothing. Mankind provided with collective consciousness personifies a higher step of development physical world by means of which the Nothing can realize itself. As a result, ontological function of the Universe becomes settled.

The history of the Universe and the history of mankind is a circulation of the Nothing and final returning to completeness of absoluteness. A life of every person is a small model of universal circulation which comes to an end on the terms of its connection with the Nothing. Mankind aspires to strengthen its positions in physical world, developing artful environment of material and pseudo-spiritual culture. It does not notice illusiveness of progress – this artful unsteady soil is inevitably feels under its feet, and each new generation returns again to a zero for the purpose to give way to following one. Therefore, it is a time to mankind to recollect basic ontological mission, which is concluded in comprehension of Absolute Nothing.  In such terms, to will the Nothing - means to saddle death, to realize its sense-creating function and to transform it from inevitable definitive accident into basic means of the intrinsic self-realization. The will to death means possibility not to submit, but to rule over it, and to become the master itself. Come in the stead of the Overman, which just has lost in a pursuit of consumption his Will to the Power, our new hero, the Overnoumen (it is a term of Russian philosopher AZsacraZarathustra) – wills death, which means to will Nothing to him.

The Overman («Übermensch ») – is a concept, invented by Friedrich Nietzsche, which outdated central in his book named «Thus spoke Zarathustra». It was his attempt to replace «become outdated and sputtered out» an image of Christian person, by new person, more modern and conceptually compatible to the nietzschean ideas concerning ideal person of future. Certainly, formation of nietzschean image of the Overman was affected by darvinism. As from a monkey there became a man so from a man there should be the Overman, which overcomes three stages during his formation: a camel, a lion (critic) and a baby (a creative beginning). Contrary to popular interpretations, the Overman is not a soldier and not a leader (such as a first in a herd), but he is a genius. But in the modern world,   nietzschean Overman has turned to a being which tries to seize a planet and space because considers them as a place for residing and survival means. Now the Overman has run into total dependence from all his creations. In effect, he is spiritually dead for a long time already, as could not sustain a temptation by consumption. Thus has occurred because the system (a shepherd and a herd) has learnt to use for its purposes even such things that are objectively resisting to it.

Unlike the Overman, the Overnoumen, showing Absolute Nothing, thinks by categories of destruction, which at the same time means to him some kind of spiritual creation. He does not stay «on that party of good and harm», because there are no parties, moral and other values and, especially, appraisers to him. The only value for the Nothing, in spite of its relative character - is the Nothing itself.

The Overnoumen, being inseparable with the Nothing, daily overtakes death, but, like Buddha, definitively comes back to itself only after performance of this  main ontological function: to dissolve existence in the Void. After all, the consciousness of Spirit is not a banal biological death, but steady will to death, denying everything, and, in its final result – denying death too. A total character of nihilism leads to that the meeting with the Absolute demands scale victims. At final step of its grate expansion, the Nothing denies itself, including its inner world. There will be a disappearance of the disappearance. Therefore, “definitive future is an excess of all rates of death” (Azsacra Zarathustra), or a Spiritual horizontal of the Nothing.

CHAPTER 4.  A SPIRITUAL HORIZONTAL OF THE NOTHING.

 

"Having opened the anthology of religious texts, I was attacked by the saying of Buddha: "Any subject is not necessary to wish ". I have immediately closed the book for what to read after that?"

(Emil Cioran)

 

To fill own life with a sense - gradually it becomes basic attitude and outlook. The everyday life is left on the second plan.

What occurs around us is not surprising, but that from what all undertakes and where disappears. A person, being a part of the world programmed on self-destruction, is steadily directed together with it in the Nothing. The objective maintenance of all processes occurring in the material Universe consists of annihilation and returning to initial zero. How is possible with the account of this to construct a new spiritual line connecting a person with the Nothing? To answer this sense-creative question, it is necessary to address again to existential decisions offered by the Russian philosopher Arseny Chanyshev. Thus, in the very end of his apology of the Non-existence he comes to following conclusions:

“1. The Non-existence is initial and absolute.

  2. The Non-existence is boundless in every aspect.

  3. In the boundlessness the Non-existence is its own non-existence.

  4. The non-existence of the Non-existence is life.

  5. Life is secondary and relative. Absolute life is quite impossible.

  6. Life as a non-existence of the Non-existence is unstable.

  7. Expression of instability of life is time.

  8. All existing exists in time.

  9. Hence, all arises and perishes.

  10. Occurrence and destruction possess with various strength. All arises for time and perishes forever.

  11. The attribute of life is its absolute disastrous character (its banefulness)

  12. Life is first and consciousness is secondary.

  13. A basis of consciousness is memory.

  14. Using memory consciousness gets visibility of its own substantive character.     

  15. A conscious of banefulness brings suffering which is an attribute of consciousness.

  16. The suffering forces consciousness to imagine a world of absolute life, or God.

  17.  So there is “a consciousness of life” – a kind of religious consciousness.     

18. All previous philosophy represents various variants of "consciousness of life”.

  19. But God does not exist.

  20. Therefore there appears “consciousness of non-existence" which makes life transparent and sees the Non-existence behind it.

  21. The suffering develops into horror.

  22. The horror forces consciousness to deny not only illusory “consciousness of life”, but also a life.

  23. The world perishes.

  24. It perishes if a new courage, “courage of a non-existence” would not opposed horror.

  25. It is a highest kind of courage. “Courage of life” is only “courage in spite of anything”. But “courage of a non-existence” is courage due to the Nothing.  

  26. To know that all passes, and at the same time not to run into horror - this is confirmed by true philosophy of the Non-existence

 

We can see that Chanyshev has absolutely fairly noticed that comprehension of inevitability of the Non-existence causes a person in suffering. Therefore, and also because the reality is directly opposite to human views on justice, people transfer their hopes concerning restoration of justice and familiarizing with eternity into spiritual area. However, already Hegel derided an idea that all-powerful God steadfastly watches each action of shoemaker Johann, carefully fixing his senseless daily acts. This illusion is quite empty, as well as all various other myths, generated by sufferings of self-conscious life. On the other hand, religious consciousness comprises centuries-old experience of overcoming of fear and sufferings which it is possible and it is necessary to use. So, in Christian tradition a fear before Divine acts as the beginning of knowledge. The main principle consists of that if something is difficult for avoiding, it is necessary to change our relation to it, having transformed inevitable sufferings from a source of humiliation in sense-creative factor.  But Chanyshev, having denied an existence of God, could not overcome fear before the Non-existence - therefore his fear constantly passed into horror.  And it is not that Horror discovering and explaining the Nothing about which Heidegger wrote in his early works, but it is a horror of hopelessness, aspiring to find decision of the problem, without falling outside a principle of material unity of the world. (“I exist because it horrifies me that I exist, - Sartre says. – It is just me who takes me from the Non-existence to which I aspire”). According to philosophical materialism a death is a biological phenomenon so it is possible to delay it only by scientific means. “But whether the science can sometime make people immortal? - The Russian philosopher Vladimir Ern asked in the beginning of 20 century. – “There is necessary to notice that it is quite impossible. As to an idea of infinity in progress of science – it cannot help us, because a science, developing and progressing, at the same time with more and more definiteness learns its own borders. Developing in one direction, science was narrowed in another and threw back all that was alien to its principles. To speak about possibility for a science to destroy death - it means to ignore main principles of science itself”. However, Chanyshev, owing to features of his philosophical views, probably did not suppose possibility of overcoming of biological death.

 

But whether is probably to overcome or at least to soften sufferings, accompanying death and comprehension of death? It is partly possible if to turn sufferings into a positive as it is accepted in many world religions. As for the Christianity, it is directly is based on giving a sacred character to sufferings. Thus, the ancient Christian authors asserted that if a person does not suffer for a long time, it is a very bad omen, as it means that God has turned away from him. As one schoolboy in his composition turned to God wrote: “If I get to a hell, you will see me there and will look, how over me scoff there?” And really, a suffering carries out an impotent sense-creative function. Pulling out a person from routine of daily occurrence it relieves him from numerous, hiding terrible Truth of the Nothing illusions and opens his eyes on a real state of affairs. Not casually a way of Buddha to his enlightenment begins with contemplation of human sufferings. A person who has passed through sufferings, extremely seldom it is possible to rank as mediocrity and to force him to submit opinions of crowd. Comprehension the Truth of the Nothing helps person to understand and to overcome his own negligibility.

“The suffering changes temperament, concepts, positions, estimations, directions of existence, thus, any strong and long suffering influences an intimate basis of a being.  Changing an internal basis of a being, suffering implicitly changes his relation to the world. This is a change of prospect, a change of understanding and feeling. After you suffered for a long time, it seems quite impossible to you to imagine a life without the sufferings which alienate you from your natural establishments and translates you on the existential plan of intrinsic aspirations. Thus, from a person born for a life suffering does sacred, replacing all his illusions with ulcers and gangrene of refusal. An absence of rest which follows suffering, places a person in such pressure in which it is impossible to be mediocrity. Apathy, vulgar skepticism and superficial immorality – all can be destroyed with fear, total anxiety, fruitful terror and general suffering”, - Emil Cioran declares in his latest book “Recognitions and damnations”.

One more major component of a religious way of spiritual self-improvement is a refusal of attachment to a material world for the aim of development of ones own spirituality. All our life and various blessings accompanying it are sinful. Renounce a terrestrial life and you will obtain an eternal life, - as declares Christianity. Advantage of the dead consists of that they are washed from a sin of an existence”, - Sartre echoes Sacred Fathers. The orthodox way of spiritual self-improvement stated in a book “Lestvitsa" ("the Ladder’) written by sacred John the Klimaxus, represents a program of consecutive refusal of attachment to a material  life by overcoming in itself a very lot of desires and sins. The similar ideas can be seen in so-called "Tarikat", which is a system of spiritual development of the Muslim followers of Sufism – a mystical direction in the Islam. According to the words of a Sufi prophet of 11th century Ghazali, “the doctrine of Sufi mystics aspires to releasing heart from everything except of God and to devoting life for contemplation of Deity”.  The centuries-old tradition of Sufism has developed a way of achievement the Absolute – it is a well-known “the Way of Sufi”, which includes three step of perfection: the law, actually a Way and definitive Truth. The Way of Sufi assumes, in particular, a repentance, a discretion and a voluntary acceptance of poverty. Thus poverty is understood as a comprehension that everything, up to mental conditions and "I" itself, is not a property of a person:

 

“One day Nasreddin has come into a shop, and dealer has approached him.

-About a main thing, first of all: have you seen, how I entered? -  asked him Nasreddin.

- Of cause, - dealer answered.

- And met you me earlier?

- I see you the first time in my life

- So whence do you know, that it is just me who have entered?”

 I am anybody, I have won my own “Me” rightfully exclaims a Sufi mystic. So, his way is overcome and he has reached a third, last one step of self-development. This is the "Hakikat", or a Final Truth. Here the essence of Truth is intuitively learnt, and consciousness of a person is dissolved in an object of contemplation. The latent sense of a Sufi Way mysteriously sounds in inspired lines by Rumi:

“Join a brotherhood and you will feel a pleasure of real life. Walk on destroyed street and look at distraught owners of ruins. Drink an excitement bowl for you do not feel a shame of consciousness. Break an earthen idol to see other idols.  Whether it is necessary to marry an old woman for the sake of the big dowry? Whether it is necessary to sell itself in slavery for three pieces of bread?  

 

Similar ideas can be seen in philosophy of the Neo-Platonism: to incorporate with Uniform – a mystical general fundamental principle which can be defined as the Nothing as it stays outside of any definitions – it is necessary to refuse very much. In particular one must refuse numerous visible and hidden threads connecting him with the world. Since that time when life and consciousness were allocated from the Non-existence, all reality began to be called as a life, but, nevertheless, it has completely kept its intrinsic basis as a deformed form of the Non-existence. The non-existence includes all and consequently contains own sense in itself. Life derivative of the Non-existence also receives its sense from the Non-existence. In other words, we live to overcome a life. According to one of Sartre’s statements, “a sense of our existence consists in consciousness of that any existence is not necessary and so it is quite senseless”.

As it has already been told, a person can collect things to be closed by them from contemplation of definitive truth. “Things parade themselves, calibrating a foulness of their existence for each other. I have understood that middle between a non-existence and a languished redundancy is absent, - Sartre has noticed thereupon. Therefore it is not casual that, since an antiquity and up to our days, numerous religious and philosophical doctrines call for ascetic self-restriction. Only having rejected material, a person releases his spirit for connection with the Nothing. The more a value of the Ego decreases, the more a true essence of the Non-existence as general universal basis of spirituality which do not have neither the beginning, nor the end is become opened. These positions can look banal enough, but they are supported by centuries-old spiritual experience of best representatives of mankind which in practice have proved their validity. After all, according to statement of Jorge Luis Borges, actually there are only some key plots at cultural space of mankind. And all the rest plots represent their variations.

There are creators who show to us unearthly worlds of the Nothing. Thus, in the beginning of 20 century the Swiss artist Hodler drew many portraits of his dying wife. A simple horizontal becomes on his pictures a visible sign of definitive moment of truth. “All subjects, - he spoke, - gravitate to horizontal plane aspire to be stretched by the ground as a water which spreads more and more widely on it”. The dying woman is left in play of paints, as in streaming happiness – between vertical falling and horizontal rest. Thus Hodler celebrates disappearance of her flesh. Therefore our new spiritual vertical also develops on a descending line, reminding a turned letter Т. It differs from all other programs of spiritual self-improvement of mankind because most fairly declares general tendency into the Nothing:

1. Not to be born.

2. Not to exist at all.

3. And, hence, (according to AZsacra Zarathustra) as soon as possible to overtake death.

After a person manages to overtake death (for what it is absolutely not obligatory to die physically), vertical of his perfection directed downwards incorporates to the Spiritual Horizontal of the Nothing.

We see that Chanyshev is wrong - the God surely exists, but He exists outside of a life, so He is the Non-Existence. Spirituality also really exists, in spite of the fact that, among modern adherents of "a scientific picture of the world” transformed in object of religious worship, the concept of Spirituality is considered as a kind of medieval atavism. Actually the spiritual area of the Nothing is unique authentic reality, and”…every spiritual being is free from contradictions, accidents and illusions of a material life” (Alistair Crowley). The world, certainly, will be lost, but this event becomes a moment of definitive clearing of spirit from oppression of matter and a great triumph of the Non-existence. The life is a suffering - as first noble truth of the Buddhism teaches us, hence the destruction of sufferings consists of the destruction of matter. After all, “to comprehend process of clearing and to make possible settlement of freedom into a kingdom of causality and conditionality, it is necessary to recognize a principal possibility of destroying death as an external fact” (Vladimir Ern). When a person overtakes death, he transforms it into a fact of his own spiritual life, that is, in the internal fact. To know that all passes, and to feel happiness –just in this a higher step of spiritual self-development or the Spiritual Horizontal of the Nothing consists.

 The Nothing also is that many medieval mystics named God. The Nothing exists by means of everything: by means of you, and by means of all the rest, by means of everything that is perceived and unperceived. In spite of that all around us is divided, there is the only united form of life in the Universe – the Non-existence. A sense can be defined with relation to something. And relation arises, when there is a division. But if the Nothing is everything, Uniform, if there is no division - how to find sense? Hence, the required sense contains in the Nothing itself, which is equivalent eternity. After all, if to cease to consider the Non-existence only from one point of view - concerning a life – there is possible to understand eternity of the Non-existence. And for this purpose reason should leave a condition of absorption in daily occurrence, transforming a life into obviously hopeless “struggle for existence".  "I exist – here is my unique trouble”, - one of the Sartre's heroes speaks. Actually a person struggles not for existence, but exclusively with his own understanding of the Non-existence. People care of their bodies and do not know that their nature is uniform with the Void. For a limited consciousness of mediocrity the Non-existence reveals as a threat while threat and sufferings are born by a life. After arrival to true understanding of the Non-existence, all that is perceived as loss actually turns around clearing. No losses in time, biological existence can be compared by that is got as a result of this clearing. And an   understanding of the Absolute Nothing which presents already here is got. It is present at you. It is you, and you are it, even if yet do not understand it. The required understanding will mean termination of a senseless competition of a person with associates and with itself.

The God of Absolute Nothing is born owing to destruction. The creation the Nothing by means of death consists in daily overtaking death.  Our life is too short to spend it for a life.

 

CHAPTER 5. THE OUTCOME.

 

“It is necessary to admit that the pessimism literally understood only by the laymen – it confuse to a morbid depression – allows to look rather vigorously and consolatory at the world surrounding you. As all is finally the Nothing and has only relative value, to worry there is for nothing”. (August Strindberg)

 

... The Understanding and realization of everything here it is told, demands presence of a certain kind of strength of mind which comes only into prepared space. This spiritual force feeds by will for death. Ancient Romans said “respise finem” that means “pay attention to the business end”. The outcome is a vector of flight and prosecution when overtaking death Overnoumen becomes a persecutor.

 

It is hardly probable that in the history of philosophy somebody represented a tragic element of a human life more strongly, than Buddha. A gloomy sight on the world which is present in implicit form in the Upanishads, occupies a substantive provision in the doctrine of Buddha. He comes to a conclusion that a life is a suffering, aspiration to preservation of individuality is painful, and constant changes of destiny are awful. Imperfection of a human nature forces us to understand that any life is damnation. Therefore a despaired person exhausted with its consciousness, exclaims: "I wish to die!"  It is possible to get rid of sufferings, only having ceased to exist. People conceiving these, according to Dostoevsky's expression, “last questions” are always oppressed. Thus, Kant in his article entitled "Failure of all philosophical attempts of Theodicea" (1791) asks a question: “Whether any sane person lived long enough time and reflecting on value of human existence, will want to be engaged in this boring vital game again?” The existential despair of great thinkers is a consequence of their thinking. Knowledge – is an illness. It is much easier to a person who does not think.

The German philosopher of 20 century Hans Faihinger considered that only pessimism provides to generate an objective view on the world and on real state of affairs. According to his representations, if rationality is essentially limited, it is necessary to use irrational means of knowledge and first of all – the Will. So thinking acts as a tool of the Will, and being directed by the Will, it gets new force and possibilities.

A main mission of mankind and of every person includes comprehension and realization of the Nothing. The one who operates according to his own mission, is helped by inertia of all the Universe. According to philosophy of the Taoism, all the possible ways contain the only Way (the Tao) on which the world and its components move. This Way conducts from the Nothing through its comprehension by the people back into the Definitive Nothing. It is necessary not to forget that general restriction of requirements would have for the material world much more serious consequences, than a most destructive war. Just for this reason a Tao-aggression of the Overnoumen is directed on destruction of matter and on creation of spirituality. Thus is unique positive understanding of life as a struggle which approaches general transition into the Nothing. “I call you not for work, but for struggle “, - thus nietzschean Zarathustra spoke. So we may distinguish two kinds of sense-creative and sense-distractive activity. The first one is a process of interaction between a person and world during which person satisfies his requirements. It also is so-called work. Usually occurs that a labour activity (work), and also consumption of its results create a kind of substitute sense of life directed on a statement of life in material sphere. After all, reason of a person searches for every possible dodges to cease to think the Nothing. But human thinking is also display of the Nothing that is why every kind of activity and a result of each concrete human life and a result of the human History - everything give all the same initial zero. So remains not quite clear, what for in general to spend forces on existing and to pay for each effort which is falling outside limits of the pure fact of existence. The unique exit consists in refusing not only results of activity, but also an activity itself, having directed the best part of our possibilities to a productive spiritual channel. Therefore Tao-aggression of the Overnoumen acting as activity of second kind, is shown through spontaneous direct action which helps to overtake death and on its sense is opposite to activity. Thus when Napoleon was asked about a secret of his strategy he answered: “It is necessary, without deliberating, to be got involved in fight, and the rest will dare by itself".  

 "Superfluous consciousness disturbs to any business (including a life) too long conversations about sexuality kill it. Sensuality as a scourge of decaying societies - is an encroachment on an instinct, the organized impotence. It is impossible to reflect with impunity on feats for which no reflections are necessary. An orgazm never was a philosophical event”, - wrote thereupon Emil Choran.

 According to Lev Tolstoy’s doctrine – both riches, and power, and life, that is everything that people with such a diligence equip and protect, if all of this values something, but only a pleasure to reject it. “To win freedom and sacred "Not" even in spite of a debt - it is necessary, for this aim, to become a Lion”, - thus the nietzschean Zarathustra spoke. The direct action expressing Great Refusal - here is unique kind of an act which is not humiliating. A pleasure from Refusal in is similar to paradoxical delight of despair. Thereupon history of life and death of Japanese writer Yukio Mishima is very indicative.

 During his rather short life (1925-1970), Mishima also became famous also as a sportsman-body builder, a director, an actor of theatre and cinema, a conductor of symphonic orchestra, a pilot, a traveler and a photographer. On November, 25th, 1970 he has made an attempt to monarchic revolution and, having suffered defeat, has made hara-kiri. Philosophical views of Mishima are most full expressed in his comments to the medieval code of Samurais “Hagakure Njumon”.

The initial point of Mishima’s reasonings: the Way of the Samurai - is a death way. Thereupon Mishima contemptiously responds about modern men who, on his opinion, are weak and cowardly. Therefore they are unworthy neither for lives, nor for death. A loss of tradition and, as consequence – a feminization of men and their growing avidity are guilty in it. “The majority of young men which serve today, are afflicted with petty aspirations. They look around with mean sights of pickpockets”.  Misihima is deeply convinced that in the modern world there is impossible neither to live beautifully, nor beautifully to die, as militant platitude everywhere has affirmed. He proclaimed an opposed to sexual revolution ideal of secret love: “The stated love inevitably loses its advantage. The original love reaches its highest ideal when a person carries away his secret into a tomb”. Only death is an effective medicine for suffering soul, though the modern civilization aspires to suppress a natural instinct for death in a person. But, even suppressed, it inevitably clears up and then death prevails, but already in rough and ugly forms, as together with tradition a person has lost also the culture of death. “We are not able to take a noble essence from death and to force it to work for us”. How to restore the lost tradition? We need a determination first of all. To achieve an objective is necessary even if you know about inevitable defeat. Proclaiming determination, Mishima professed his extremism. He considers that a confluence of an extreme measure can serve as a spiritual springboard for comprehension of value of death. Usually the philosophy is based on calculations in which life is considered as an acquisition, and death as a loss - to turn this cosy and habitual world, it is necessary to ennoble violence over ones own common sense and intelligence. That is why Mishima stands on anti-intellectual positions which in some ways related his views with the early forms of the European fascism. “Intellectuals hide their feebleness and avidity behind conversations and philosophizing”, - he contemptiously notes. Unlike them, Mishima acts as a supporter of extremism and of a direct action. “Fidelity and honouring will come together with obsession”, - he said, opposing to empty philosophizing his ideas concerning power and spontaneous harmony of pure action. Only if a person has reached a high degree of obsession, then gate of death opens before him. Thus there are no distinctions between voluntary and compelled death. It is impossible to die “for the sake of a just cause” as a nature of death is absolute, and any purpose is relative.

 

Staying at the crossroads between life and death the Samurai chooses ANY death. … The condensed silence was broken off by his shout: "Long live the Emperor!" Having exhaled last words, he has driven edge of a sword with a great force into his stomach.  He felt as if a heated rod has pierced him through. Burning like an ice, a heat of a wound was instantly replaced by an intolerable pain enveloping all his body. He has seized steel with both hands and, having ploughed guts, has finished an edge to the right part of a stomach. According to custom it was a second (“kayshaku”) who should stop torments of the Samurai. Моritha in excitement could cut out his head only with a third blow. But other sources assert that he could not make it, and other Samurai has finished business. A head of Mishima, spoiling with blood, has swept on a red state carpet. Moritha, executing his debt, has unstitched to himself a stomach too. Then stupid and scared police has rushed at last into the office filled in with blood.

“Even a senseless death which will no bring neither flowers, nor fame - possesses an advantage of the Death of Person. If we so highly appreciate advantage of a life how we can not appreciate advantage of death? Nobody dies in vain”. (Yukio Mishima).

If we should argue from positions of unconditional pessimism, every natural death simultaneously is a violent one, or execution, a kind of punishment for a sin of existence. And suicide represents a voluntary death when a person carries out a function of executioner for himself. Probably sometime a practice according to which people will choose their term for final returning into the Nothing will be established everywhere in the world. Our perfection reaches its top in death. Ancient wise men named died - “that who has returned to the beginning”. Die on time! –thus Zarathustra spoke. But now still there are numerous interdictions, semiinterdictions and various arguments against suicide. However a most convincing argument against suicide was offered by all the same Emil Cioran: “To get rid of a life - this means to lose a pleasure daily to laugh at it”. On the other hand it is fine that a life gives us many occasions not to live every day. Life and death of Mishima has shown that he obviously was mistaken with the world or, at least, with an epoch to live in. It is impotent to understand that his last action was not a banal suicide. It was his direct action representing sense-creative Refusal. As to suicide, it, as a rule, is made not because of philosophical negation of a life, but only because a person does not agree to accept his place in a life.

Even known philosophers – pessimists (with exception of   Philipp Mainlander) made fair intellectual efforts to stop development of their thought in this critical point. After all, every fair philosopher can divide metaphysical despair of Philipp Mainlander, but quite another matter – to share his fate. Certainly, it is possible to live to a ripe old age, sadly arguing on caducity of a life, but much more fairly it seems to be hung up joyfully and so to prove for temporarily surviving persons ones own intellectual honesty.

So from statements concerning absurdity and imperfection of life a conclusion about suicide directly follows. Various attempts to reject this conclusion undertaken by Arthur Schopenhauer and Edward Hartmann, could only demonstrate extreme weakness of their argumentation. The first says that suicide is an error because as a result of it not the essence of harm (World Will), but only its phenomenon is exterminated. But no person puts to himself such a ridiculous aim, as a destruction of essence of things. Being a suffering phenomenon, he wishes to get rid of his life as a painful phenomenon — and he undoubtedly reaches such purpose, even from point of view of Schopenhauer, who with all his pessimism cannot confirm that dead men suffer. And Hartmann, quite recognizing that main purpose of everybody is suicide, demands that a person abstained from suicide in interests of the Universe and in interests of the mankind and devoted his forces on preparation of means for general Universal Suicide in which historical and space process should terminate. It is consumed as the higher moral duty whereas to kill himself, to get rid of own sufferings, it is peculiar for the people standing on lowest step of ethics. The last is, surely, fair, but Hartmann’s own principle of unconditional pessimism logically excludes any other ethics. On the contrary, our Anti-philosophy of the Nothing considers a sense of a concrete human life on a context of universal problem of all the mankind, connected with comprehension of Absolute Nothing. In such a context everything including apocalyptic fears of mankind, get opposite, positive sense.

It is prominent that there is a representation about inevitability of Doomsday which can be found at collective consciousness of the various people. Eventually, the mankind does not have any future, but it have many variants of death. “The sky is not opened for anybody - it will open only after disappearance of our world”, - as an early medieval philosopher Tertullian confirmed. In the western philosophical tradition there is so-called eschatology - a motion about Doomsday, expiation and afterlife, about destiny of the Universe or its transition in qualitatively new condition. Hear it is possible allocate the individual eschatology, that is a doctrine about afterlife of individual human soul, and eschatology of the world, that is a doctrine about the purpose of space and history and also about their final. The eschatological moods are present at many religions and beliefs of various nations of the world. Thus, eschatology has received its special development in Judaism and in Christianity ("Last Judgement"), then in Islam.

The eschatological ideas were usually perceived as fatal threat or – if to consider a material world as a painful wound of the body of the Non-existence - as a light hope promising to everybody last and definitive termination of sufferings. As told the French philosopher Blaise Pascal:  “Jesus will be in deadly torments till the end of the world – should not sleep at this time”. It is interesting that in Russia, during the reign of tsar Alexey, the Russian peasants periodically stopped their work on fields and, having closed in a temple, joyfully waited a destruction of the world. But, as a Doomsday unfortunately did not come, they were obliged to come back to their senseless agricultural activity. However, though predictions for concrete terms of universal transition in the Non-existence, made during different epochs, did not come true, it is necessary to remember that treatment of the world from illness of existence is in any case inevitable. Unfortunately people during a human history, one generation after another, pass in the Non-existence without having seen the most interesting. However would be desirable to believe that we become a happy exception and that the world will incorporate with the Nothing already during lifetime of our generation. Then God should be carried out as an explosion, and an explosion should be carried out as God. The Universe will disappear when the human spirit will be quiet and clarified. The mankind will forget about all and will come back in the Non-existence which was present prior to the beginning of time. The Outcome is an act, opposite to creation. What can be better for a person, rather than worthy death? Also what can be better for mankind rather than light and joyful doomsday? Daily waking up, people start to prepare for perception of the day hallucinations which make our world. But one fine day they with simplification will find out that the fog dissipates. An impressing picture of collapse of universal illusion was drawn by Sartre in his philosophical novel "The Nausea":

“Once in the morning people will wake up and, having opened windows, will be surprised by some terrible sense which has taken root into things and waits for something.  It would seem these are trifles but if the situation lasts, people will start to make mass suicides… And then I will burst out laughing and I will shout to running by: “What have you achieved with your science? What have you achieved your humanism? And where is your advantage, a conceiving reed?”

 Just with an expectation of approach of this fine day, full with delight of despair, people, following an example of the first Christians, take cover in vaults from time to time. It is requires a certain kind of internal scope for a purpose to cripple ones own life.

 

The CONCLUSION.

 

Twelve principles of the sense of life

 

Whether a pleasure to roll stones in steep depth is familiar to you? And whom you do not learn to fly, than learn them to fall faster!

(Friedrich Nietzsche).

 

1. Such concepts as "the Non-existence", "the Nothing" and "The Void" are quite independent and simultaneously form trinity.

2. The absolute Nothing exists owing to its non-existence, constantly absorbing isolated fragments of life. Movement is an eternal process of destruction. Such is the basic function of the Nothing: it destroys everything.

3. The Universe is a lost life of the primary Void in which existence and non-existence did not resist each other. The absolute Nothing realizes itself by means of human thinking (or God learns itself by means of its creation), and thus existence of world becomes comprehended. As a result a function of the Universe is finished.

4. The God of Absolute Nothing is born owing to destruction. It is necessary to dare not to be at all for the aim to be perfect. The creation the Nothing by means of death consists in daily overtaking death.  Our life is too short to spend it for a life.

5. All our life and all our sufferings are illusory, because the Non-existence is present, so life is absent.  A position of some person in his life offers nothing from his position in a coffin. A person is captured by fear when he hopes. He is afraid to die, because hopes for a life. But a hope dies first. Hopelessness is a property accessible only by very strong.

6. Having overcome various material world illusions person becomes involved in releasing the Truth of the Void. And this Particle is unique real value which it is capable to find throughout the life. The value connected with formation of a form and its dissolution, with infinity of restriction and with limitation of boundless and with abolition both of that and of another.

7. The ancient Romans said: “respise finem”, or “pay attention to an end of a case”. The outcome is a vector of flight and prosecution when the overtaking death Overnoumen becomes a persecutor.

8. A main feature of the Overnoumen consists in his realized tendency to the Nothing: It is better to be killed, than recognized. God of absolute negation demands enormous victims. Now symbols of the Void become more terrible, than power symbols.

9. Therefore Tao-aggression of the Overnoumen is shown through spontaneous direct action which overtakes death and on its sense is opposite to activity. It is the action adequate to eternity.

10. The Outcome is an act, opposite to creation. The Universe disappears, when human Spirit is quiet and clarified. Mankind forgets everything and comes back in a Non-existence, which was prior to beginning of time. What can be better for a person, rather than worthy death? Also what can be better for mankind, rather than light and joyful doomsday, or an apocalypse?

11. At a final step of its expansion the Nothing denies itself, denies not only visible (material) world, but also an inner world. There will be a disappearance of disappearance. Therefore “definitive future is an excess of all rates of death”.

12. Any compromise not only does not comprise, but also directly excludes sacral purposes of the Non-existence.

 

Our meeting in the Nothing is inevitable.

Hi, the Captain of Soul!