[MD] Fundamental Reality and Creation

[Ham Priday]

To those whose metaphysical quest has been preempted by the pursuit of "the 
intellect" -- 

Now that we have the intellect squared away, or at least in the throes of 
being defined, I would like to take up the most fundamental of all 
questions -- What is Reality and how does it create?

Inasmuch as the world, the individual, experience, and intellectual thought 
all participate in Reality, it seems to me that this is logically the first 
question a philosopher should be obliged to answer. There's a method to my 
madness, of course, and your answers can help resolve a logical problem in 
my metaphysics that I've been struggling with for years.  It concerns the 
'ex nihilo' principle, which has been disputed by some here (for the wrong 
reasons, I believe), but I may have an explanation that will satisfy them.

As a universal principle, I think most of us would agree that we can't get
something from nothing.  Getting something from nothing refutes the laws of 
logic, thermodynamics, relativity, and cause-and-effect.  Even an 
evolutionist understanding of creation places the beginning as the "first 
cause", whether it's a big bang or an unbalanced mass of energy.  Few, if 
any, physicists accept the idea that an absolute void can give rise to 
anything, let alone an  infinite universe.  Yet, the universe was created 
and does exist, and I've been criticized for stating that nothingness is the 
ground of its existence.  Okay, so far?

Well, I'm about to propose that there is a singular variance to this rule 
and   I'll explain it using analogies, so please withhold your logical 
arguments until you have a grasp of the concept.  My idea has to do with the 
reduction of an absolute.

Pretend for a moment that absolute reality is a solid block of concrete, a 
block so large that it has no boundaries.  Now, suppose a fracture occurs in 
this concrete monolith, effectively dividing it in two.  Since the block 
occupies all of space, the "crack" would necessarily be infinitesimal, like 
the imaginary line that serves to describe geometric figures.  Nonetheless, 
for all practical purposes, the block has undergone a difference: it is no 
longer a unity but has spawned an "other" by virtue of that infinitesimal 
fissure.

In my website thesis I use the analogy of the mountain climber who has 
ascended to the highest summit and for whom further progress can only be 
descent.  Both analogies demonstrate that an absolute source is the singular 
entity for which creation, difference, or the appearance of otherness is 
exclusionary rather than additive.  Note that they do not refute the 'ex 
nihilo' principle.  They do not assume nothing as the primary source.  What 
they suggest is that for an absolute source the creation of difference is 
"reductive" in nature.  Only an absolute entity creates by "exclusion", 
which is to say that existence is not something "added" to nothingness but, 
rather, the potential of nothingness to create the appearance of divided 
otherness.

Whether you call the primary source God, Supreme Being, Dynamic Quality, the 
Intellectual Level, Sensibility, Consciousness, Atman, or Life-force, if you 
believe that this source is absolute, I submit that the ontogeny of creation 
must follow the principle of negation (i.e., exclusion or reduction) as 
outlined above.

I doubt that you'll find any clarifying statements from Pirsig on this 
topic, but would like to see how you respond and to what extent you agree 
with this proposition.

Thanks, folks.
Ham