The Book of Non-Existence - Vadim Filatov (best classic books txt) 📗

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