Course XXXIV - Teaching 11: Theology of the Non-Existence

Just as the so-called philosophies and theologies of the “existence” have brought into being and greatly developed all those things typified as knowledge, so certain schools that had adhered to those postulates typified as “non-existence” have inspired the mystic movement in Humanity as a whole.
Aims and issues in these schools are essentially supra-physical, put aside the knowledge of the phenomenal world, and try to grasp the Fundamental Principle of the manifestation and of its substratum, that is, all those things that exist beyond the primordial principle.
But this means that, ultimately, one must think about the Non-manifest Essence in order to discover its source.
Obviously, one should no reason too much in order to notice that this Non-manifest Essence would stop being unknown and non-manifest in the event of discovering it.
The human mind, however, recognizes to be unable to grasp this mystery, and any efforts in this sense would be vain.
So, the only way to grasp God, instead of being through the mind, should be through a state of similarity, where supposedly the non-manifest aspect stays and yields this fruit: ecstatic knowledge. As one can see, this way of focusing the knowledge of God is essentially mystic, and goes on to be till our days the basis of the whole mystic movement, as we can easily check it in Saint John of the Cross’ writings, whose thought guides the entire contemporary Christian mystique.
In fact, the human mind, according to the doctrine, is entirely unable to grasp Divine Mysteries, and as the result of it, its fundamental exponents and great masters never have talked about the Non-manifest One. Thence, the reproach formulated by atheism.
But certainly, the true doctrine does not deny, state, talk or think up about “It”, but simply points how any being –through his own efforts– can achieve higher illuminative knowledge.
The fundamental principle of the so-called doctrine of non-existence is essentially included in the concept of non-permanence.
In fact, according to exponents of this doctrine, the observation of the phenomenal world –the cosmic manifestation– permits to see a constant flow and change in forms and aspects. No moment of relaxation or rest.
Try to grasp a phenomenon at certain moment, and just when you feel that the mind has grasped it, this phenomenon does not exist any more, has disappeared, cannot be actually under control.
Actually, it does not exist and is just a subjective perception of the mind, which is impossible to have under control.
So, as fundamental postulate of this doctrine, we are told that manifestation is nothing more than successive, momentary and unreal perceptions.
And the subjective character of the phenomenological observation is emphasized by the words “perceptions” instead of “sensations”, because senses in se and per se do not give knowledge of the phenomenal world, except through the mind, and this grants a subjective-human character to perception and knowledge.
But permanence is admitted even in this non-permanence doctrine. The concept of absolute unity of God –of the One– remains as an indestructible axiomatic conception in man.
In this frame of continuous changes and instability, the concept about permanence of the One, of the Absolute Self, as some schools call it, takes shape; this postulate leads to this inevitable theological conclusion: if you can consider that only the Absolute Self is permanent, then nothing on Earth, on the Universe, is Self. Everything is “non-Self”.
Everything is unstable. Sensations, perceptions, bodies, consciousness, everything is “non-Self”, illusory.
Nothing like that is substantial; it is just void appearances, deprived of substance and reality. So, the human ego is just an uninterrupted series and succession of unreal subjective images, void images, fruit of deceitful ignorance.
The development of this concept, till its last consequences, is characteristic in this doctrine that inevitably leads its followers to despise material and mental forms and ultimately mystique.
In accordance with its negative conceptions about the reality of the phenomenal Universe, this school basically follows a method of negation.
In this sense, they needed to follow the method of ancient schools, and first to have and know all aspects of the phenomenal world, and later to deny them.
First, they knew the physical world, and later, they denied it as illusory and false.
Later, they repeated the process in the mental field, trying to reduce here synthetically all concepts to their simplest forms, and then they rejected them as apparent and void, in order to reach a purely spiritual knowledge through annihilation of the mind.
Contemporary mystique has preserved many of these concepts and methods of the ancient doctrine, as you can easily notice remembering Saint John of the Cross’ statement about the night of senses, of the mind, et cetera.
Also, one cannot hold that this doctrine produced or may produce a true theology, because its tendency, instead of being mental-rational, responds to faith, while its masters mainly point to the form, to the way to follow in order to get rid of the ignorant illusion and share the blissful state of harmonious likeness with God.
A gradual achievement of the rational mind by the Aryans and the nationalization of Humanity, brought about a natural decadence in this doctrine, and were it not for its revival through Gautama Buddha, whose teachings revived the flickering flame of mystique and of the path of pure faith, any paradigm of this pure spiritual doctrine would not have survived till our days.
After observing the suffering of Humanity, Gautama Buddha understood that their liberation is not dependent upon refined reason, clever metaphysical discussions, accumulation of knowledge, and development of subtle thoughts, which ultimately can lead man to mental anarchy. So, he always avoided metaphysical discussions and formulated his doctrine in such a way that any man can practice it totally detached from his intellectual capacity. Rather than a new transcendental system, he gave a new concept about duty and moral to his contemporaries and posterity.
Gautama Buddha observes the human suffering and discovers that desire is the root of suffering.
Desire applies to objects of desire, namely, to objects of the phenomenal world, and as these objects are unstable, transient, changing and perishable, their loss constantly implies grief and disappointment. And grief and disappointment become source of this suffering dogging our covetous Humanity attached to phenomenal objects and forms.
This formulation exposes at once a connection between the particular doctrine of Gautama Buddha and the general system of non-existence or non-permanence. Also, one glimpses a method that he recommended, which consisted in overcoming the desire through his eightfold path.
He formulated a transformation doctrine, being conscious of the deep impression caused in the soul by continuously changing things.
So, life becomes a constant becoming, an uninterruptedly serial manifestation, transformation and extinction. Phenomenal world –the world of senses and mind– only exists moment by moment. Independently of the long or brief duration of a state, everything is becoming, to such an extent that Gautama Buddha says as a capital point of his teaching, “Everything that is subject to an origin is also subject to destruction”.
This becoming has no beginning or end. No static moment can be when the becoming comes to be, because as soon as you think up something having attributes of forms and name, it stops being that which it was, changes and is something different.
Likewise, Gautama Buddha connects the concept of instability to that of subjective perception of phenomena, and states that the (living) Universe is a reflection of the mind.
Just through ignorance one sees and believes in stable things and forms instead of seeing and believing in continuous and uninterrupted processes. So, a continuous flow, artificially separate in sections, is called things, but this is illusory, since life –the Universe– is not a thing, or even the state of a thing –it is a continuous change or movement.
In order to explain the continuity of the world and for lack of a substratum, of a permanent point, Gautama Buddha includes in his doctrine the law of causation as basis of the continuity. Later, the concept about the eternal continuity of the becoming derives from this law of causation.
If something emerges, there is certain cause from which it came to being. If that is absent, this does not become; if that stopped, this stops.
So, what is called a thing is only a force, a cause, a condition, to such an extent that the doctrine states: all things are the product of conditions, and the whole world is conditioned by causes.
Here is the question: if everything responds to a causal law, what about the original cause that has set the system into motion?
Gautama Buddha does not see or find anything permanent in the constant flow of the phenomenal world, but one cannot interpret it as if he had said nothing is real at all.
Gautama Buddha ever eludes the metaphysical field; he gladly admits facts of phenomenal experience so that that the Universe is a living whole, constantly changing and evolving, which refuses any self-division into definite and permanent objects. He does not affirm or deny that there is something permanent behind constant change, and remains indifferent and does not go beyond the experiential world. That is why he insists: world phenomena only have conditioned experience such as one’s intellect grasps them.
But Gautama Buddha recognizes the Non-manifest One, and admits that to go out of the world of born things and wrapped up in the causal series would be impossible without the Non-manifest One, even though he does not thinks up about Him.
So, the causal picture is complete; on it, the intellect demands a non-conditioned being as condition and cause of the universal phenomenal series.
The Non-manifest One is not in se part of the phenomenal series and cannot have such a condition because it is out of the law of causation, contingency and dependencies.
But the Non-manifest One cannot be totally detached from this law, because in such an event this law would be unreal, for lack of cause and substance.
So, one can notice that everything looks like being real, but is not so. The whole manifestation, the whole existence is a flow from one to another point, and the man is involved in the process and unable to discriminate and separate being from non-being.
So, Gautama Buddha understands human limitations and does not try to enter a inscrutable field and, remaining in the practical range of Humanity as a whole, he passes to Humanity his liberation doctrine though the practice of fundamental virtues.