The White Box Dilemma: Part 2
The barren whiteness of my surroundings went black. A cold nothingness gripped my body as I felt my sense of who I was slip away. The sharpness of logic and intellect became immediately dull as the weight of non-existence forced the conclusion that I was nothing. It was so obvious and self-evident, nothing begets more nothing. As I sat there slowly ceasing to be, a magnificent voice of power destroyed the void with the words, “Let there be light!”.
I exist. I exist. I exist!! ….Go.. Go.. Go.. God….I stuttered, is that… you? My question I realized was in vain. I wasn’t actually at the beginning of time so whoever this magnificent voice was, they weren’t going to respond to me. The best way to describe this experience is like watching a 3D movie, but even that comparison doesn’t do it justice. I couldn’t help but be in a constant state of awe as symposiums of color and shades that I didn’t think the human eye was even capable of bombarded my perception. I saw more than just random configurations of geometry and color, I could quite literally see emotion and metaphor.
Everywhere I looked, I felt the sensation of love. This wasn’t a type of love that arose from the stimulation of the senses nor was it a type of love that was conditional. It was deeper than that. This was sacrificial in nature, and made me acutely aware that so much was given so that I could exist. Sacrifice was a part of my being and the only way I could ever feel full was to risk losing it all for something that was more than myself. It would be unfair to call this type of love an emotion really, it was more of a state of mind because within it, I could feel all of the emotions that wax and wane with the human experience.
Metaphor seemed implicit in emotions, yet its infinite variation seemed to underlie everything. Everything (even the most seemingly unrelated of things) was connected in some way. The birth of a child culminating in the destruction of millions, the death of an insignificant animal spawning the philosophy of existentialism, and even the smell of a scented candle and how it would culminate into the generation of a musical masterpiece.
I wanted to know you voice of creation! Can you hear me?
Time sped on. Planets sped around stars as the sun cycled through the sky thousands of times within the span of a minute. Reality was on fast forward as sacrificial love animated physical reality in ways that were almost lifelike. Mountains danced like water across the landscape as I could feel electricity start to crackle through the flesh of the Earth. Life… oh beautiful life…
I… understand. I needed to sit down for a minute, this was all so much to handle…who was the voice which spawned creation?
The information repository generated a tranquil landscape of water and earth. I was now laying on a comfortable couch housed within a screened porch with a collection of scented candles by my side. The smell of each candle produced different emotions and realizations simultaneously inside of me. Calm, active awareness, and the realization that there was an organizing principle to life. Then the information repository spoke.
“The closest word your language has to describe this voice is God, but this is insufficient….the simplest explanation is that the voice is the process by which reality came to be.”
A process…so this voice isn’t an entity?
“This voice is an entity, but it is also a process. It is the personification of the process of order and meaning. There are elements of this voice that are metaphorical and emotional in nature since this process has a metaphorical and emotional element. Most of humanity is very quick to write off emotion and metaphor as something which isn’t real, but as you saw from the story of existence, emotion and metaphor are just as real as geometry and color. Perception unfortunately has this awful habit of labeling everything that it can’t see as a work of fiction”.
I need a minute, this is all so much to process all at once…..I need something that I can interact with, something which can pick my brain. The information repository can only answer questions, but it’ll never be able to meaningfully listen to me. As I thought about what I could possibly create to satisfy my desires, my brain immediately came up with the idea to generate one of my favorite authors. Let there be Aldous Huxley! As I awaited eagerly for this British author to pop into existence, an explosion and the smell of smoke radiated out of the ground. The void shook and the white nothingness which defined everything warped and turned into emotionally tumultuous expressions of gray and brown. I was filled with this horrible sensation that I had done something wrong as disgruntled whispers seemed to twist and turn the smoke to create a vortex of heat and repulsive methane.
As the scene continued to present an increasingly disturbing series of events, I yelled out, “Let there be peace, let there be peace!” in a desperate attempt to make it stop. The chaos continued to no avail until eventually, the whispers subsided and a figure walked out of the mist. It had the physical appearance of Aldous, but the personality of something insidious. Glowing red eyes and a grin of malevolence stared right through me. I could feel its darkness and strangely its lack of presence, as if whoever this was wasn’t fully there.
Let there be death! I screamed as I held my hand in the direction of this menace. Sparks of electricity flew as darkness met light in the void. A terrible shriek equal parts pain and equal parts joy radiated out the mouth of the beast as it continued its slow and steady march in my direction. Let there be a sword with a blade of… pure fire! As the blade popped into existence, I swung it at the darkness. As the blade made direct contact with the beast, I could feel a burning sensation within myself, as if my heart was on fire.
I fell to the ground clutching my chest. The recoil of pain demanded that I let go of the blade. The sounds of my only defense clinked with the surface of the void, echoes of defeat meet emotions of uncertainty. I look up and there you are Aldous, staring back at me with that hideous grin.
“Whats the matter pretty boy? You are so pale. It looks like you’ve seen a ghost!’
Laughter erupts from its hideous mouth, filling the void with negative intent and the horrors which hide within the cracks and crevices of the human heart. Am I going to die?
To be continued
