A Note on the Nature of Reality

(10:45 p.m. - 1:45 a.m. August 30, 1923)

The elements of reality consist of

a) An infinite variety of individuals

b) An infinite variety of possibilities

The latter are evidently abstraction; but so are the former, since their nature can only be appraised by means of their realization, in one possibility or another to produce.

c) the infinite variety of events,

Each event is thus the result of a combination of any member of a) with any member of b).

An event is an actuality susceptible of being conceived or observed. It is a unit, a thing in itself, a fixed and unalterable element of history. Its reactions with other events produce events of the second order. The reactions involve the use of the ideas of causality and other conditions for the sake of convenience of description. An event of the first order is simple and absolute. It is thus not possible to discriminate effectively between any two such events. There is no standard by which to measure them. Events of the second order are not merely not simple but infinitely complex, for while any one of them is determined principally by a very few, only events of the first order, yet even the remotest of these has some influence though infinitesimal upon determining the centre of gravity of any given event of the second order. It is evidently possible to discriminate between events of the second order. We take a number of such and note the quality common to all into whose composition enters some particular event of the first order, thus indirectly we obtain some idea of the nature of these events of the first order themselves.

Events of the second order being able to compare their complexities, whereas their ancestors knew themselves equally infinite, develop the sense of egoity. Imperfection is thus the first condition which renders pride possible. The idea of the ego once conceived, the rest of the degradation follows swiftly and logically. The ego's first instinct is self-preservation. He therefore resents change as being the essence of what is hostile to him. This is the root of all delusion, for an event of the first order would understand that even were it possible for it to change, whatever it might become would be equally infinite and identical with itself.

This deluded ego does not understand that the stability it seeks is only possible by virtue of an infinitely elastic frictionless system of change. Its ambitions are therefore idiotic and suicidal.

Each impact with every event produces some change in itself, despite its stubborn resistance. It becomes obsessed by observing this fact and so enters the trance of Universal Sorrow from that of Universal Change.

The original error is in attributing a real difference or personality to the factitious differences between various combinations of elements taken at random, having first led to the delusion that Change is destruction, and next to the obsession that awareness is anguish, brings matters to a climax by so darkening the original understanding of all things wherein they appeared diverse yet identical because infinite, unique yet perfect; because interchangeable, in a deliberate attempt to shut out pain by shutting out perception; that the nature of the understanding itself was fundamentally shattered. The identity-in-diversity of all things, the assurance of each by the inclusion of a pair of contradictions in every idea, the absolute independence yet necessary interdependence of all things, simply ceased to exist as the norm of consciousness. Instead each fragment of thought was assumed to possess a separate existence, and was mistaken for reality. It was unintelligible, unnecessary, purposeless, and absurd. Only in rare cases was it possible to reconstruct from a few lucky dispositions of the elements sufficient words to make it a tenable supposition that the apparent senseless disorder might be capable of organisation into an intelligible structure.

The effect was as if a page of type had been 'pyed'. No letter by itself means any thing; nor could the existence and nature of the alphabet have ever been guessed from observation of the chaos of metal, had not chance decreed that here and there a few combinations of letters had fallen so that their juxtaposition suggested the existence of some original arrangement in which their conventional relations were used to express some intelligible idea.

In this short essay I have endeavoured to trace the cosmic catastrophe (I choose to consider it in that light in order to make myself intelligible to uninitiates) from the original error of making a difference between things which differed only insofar as one chooses to select on the principle of differentiation itself. Right up to the actual state of affairs which confronts every human consciousness from birth, that delusion which persuades him that his sensory impressions possess an existence of their own instead of being, as they are, meaningless conventions whose only function is to assist the composition of an intelligible reality, just as the crude cubes in a mosaic are individually unable to express any fraction of the whole, though necessary to the composition thereof each in its assigned place.

The method of science is that indicated above. We take advantage of any frequent recurrence of peculiar groupings deducing therefrom some few fragmentary hypotheses as to their ultimate function in the lost unity and taking their existence in defiance of the probable expectation as evidence that their association is not due to chance but to design. It is clear that any such law approximates to reality as any single phenomenon such as the senses suppose to be real can never do. But the laws of nature are no more real in themselves than the laws of orthography are poetry or even grammar. By synthesising these laws it seems possible to reach an entirely new order of existence related to those laws as phrases to words, very much as laws stand to phenomena in the relation of words to letters.

But it seems almost too much to hope that any conceivable synthesis will suffice to reconstruct the original idea of truth and reality, for this belongs to an order of thought which is almost by definition inconceivable.

Is there then no prospect (of) reaching reality? I think there is, but the first condition is clearly to abandon the intellectual process, implying as it does the ineradicable existence of those very principles of contradiction, incoherence, and unintelligibility which are the symptoms of the very disease which afflicts us.

We must, on the contrary, seek in ourselves that quintessential self about which all these concretions have clustered. We must destroy in particular the idea which rules the Abyss that diversity implies contradiction, and contradiction unreality.

We must next get rid of the fear to face reality caused by the trance of sorrow which arose from the assumption that change involved destruction and thence attack the still deeper error of assigning real existence to transient groupings of the elements of existence and identifying oneself with any particular combination, having thus destroyed the delusion that by selecting any given number of things the result is real in the same sense as they are in themselves. It is possible to perceive the source of that delusion which is to suppose that their apparent diversity implies that any one of them is either limited in itself or susceptible of differentiation from the rest, whereas its individuality is an arbitrary convention essential to the comprehension of the truth which its function is to describe partially exactly as each of the natural numbers in respect of Aleph Zero. Each natural number is unique being like no other. It is infinite as possessing all possible relations with the others. It is meaningless in itself and can only be understood by observing its relations with the rest. It is necessary to the series which would otherwise lose the characteristics of a continuum, which is its nature. Each number has precisely the same value in its relations with the whole.

Let us now imagine how we might come to misapprehend what a number is. The first error will be to imagine any number as independent of the series and limited; the next to suppose that any possible manipulation of any set of numbers may result in a new number not already in the series and essentially different from some similarly constructed unit. Next comes the temptation to prefer one such complex to another and seek to withdraw it from the operations of the universal law of mathematics observing that every contact soever with other numbers proves this ambition impossible, one may desperately pretend that such is not the case and thereby blind oneself to the most obvious truth of things. The result will evidently be to lose all comprehension of the laws which one has begun by seeking to deny, and from that moment, every operation soever, of nature must appear arbitrary and meaningless. As explained above it is useless to attempt reconstruction on the principles which give rise to the disaster. We must resolutely reject each error in turn and realize in ourselves the original truth that our individuality is so to speak simply one of the numbers in the series, Hadit in the heart of Nuit.

[Yorke Collection NS 94]