Descriptions:
Video Description
“The claim that God does not exist sounds alarming, but this short lesson makes it feel strange and strangely comforting. Lyam Christopher begins with Saint Anselm and the famous ontological argument, an argument that tries to prove God through pure logic, with no physical evidence at all. Anselm said that God is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, and that such a being must exist in reality, not just in the mind. Christopher turns that old proof around and shows it actually points the other way.”
“The paradox is this: for a thing to exist, it has to stand out against everything else and be graspable, at least a little. But God, by definition, is too vast to be grasped by any human mind. So God cannot be one more object among objects. That is why this idea is called negative existence. Kabbalah speaks of the veils of negative existence, while the Eastern traditions call the same thing the fourth state, turiya, the silent background behind waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. The course work in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation is built on exactly this background, and Christopher shows how that hidden nothing gives all the ritual its shape.”
“Then comes the reassuring heart of the lesson. The background is not a monster waiting to swallow you; it is the source from which every bubble of experience rises. Yes, the ego may panic as it feels itself dissolving, but that panic is just the foreground defending itself. The deeper wonder is that you were already made from that background and will return to it, and nothing about you is actually lost. God cannot be wrapped up in a concept, and that is precisely why the mystery remains open and full of life.”
Full Video Transcript
Alright, it’s that time again. Time to make the next video.
So, this is something that I’ve always wanted to give a little lesson on.
It was one of the favorite things that I struggled with back in college, I believe it was.
Something called the ontological argument.
The ontological argument for the existence of God.
And there is this dude named Saint Anselm who came up with this famous argument.
And it’s basically an a priori argument, which means it doesn’t require any evidence to be logically sound.
All right. And so when we go through this argument, you can decide whether it is actually logically sound.
all right um now saint anselm tries to prove that god actually exists what i’m going to point out
here is that his argument actually proves that god does not exist but i think you’ll find as you go
through as we go through the argument together that it’s kind of a reassuring type of non-existence
all right and the reason i’m bringing this up is because this is this kind of a framework that i’m
going to be showing you here is kind of the backdrop for all of the ritual work in the
Kabbalah magic course and for all of the ritual work that you might conduct in theology or in
tantra or any non-dual type tradition and it’s kind of fundamental to any kind of spiritual
practice in my opinion to have this sort of ontological argument looming in the background
and forming everything you’re doing in the foreground.
All right, so let’s look at the argument itself.
Now, I have to warn you, St. Anselm existed at a time,
it was right after the Dark Ages.
This is before Chaucer.
And if you’ve ever tried to read Chaucer, it’s pretty nightmarish.
English has evolved significantly since then, for better or for worse.
it has, and so if you try to read Chaucer, it’s like, is this English? This looks like half German,
half English. All right, so I don’t know what dialect Chaucer was writing in. I’m not really
an expert on that. Actually, Saint Anselm existed before the time of Chaucer in the 10 hundreds,
and his writing is actually easier to read than Chaucer. So I’m not sure why that is. Maybe
somebody can explain that if you are a really deep English major. Here is the ontological argument
itself. So you might want to like freeze the screen here and read it for yourself. I’m going
to take it a step at a time and then demonstrate why it is so important to hermetic work or the
work of theurgy or the work of tantra or any spiritual path for that matter, especially a
non-dual type path this is the first part of the argument all right so he begins remember he’s
trying to prove that god exists all right uh even the fool when he hears of a being than which
nothing greater can be conceived now this this use of then is really confusing i don’t think
then works that way anymore in english so we can translate that to of even a fool when he hears of
a being of which nothing greater can be conceived understands what he hears and what he understands
in his understanding and what and what he understands is in his understanding
this is not a very difficult concept really okay anything that you can understand is sort of
encapsulated in your understanding so in other words your understanding of things around you
is limited because you are a limited human being so when you form a concept of something that you
see or experience it is now held within your understanding okay so this is a bit confusing
here because a being of which nothing greater can be conceived is within your understanding okay
that’s not really possible because if you are trying to conceive of something that uh of which
nothing greater can be conceived it’s going to be much bigger than your understanding can contain
all right but there’s a reason why it can be said to exist within your understanding even though it
transcends your understanding it goes beyond your understanding okay if by transcending your
understanding i mean this thing this god concept is god thing it’s much bigger than you so how
could you possibly hold it within your understanding you cannot encapsulate god because god is much
bigger than you okay that’s actually quite a simple concept the language here makes it difficult
and assuredly that of which nothing greater can be conceived cannot exist in the understanding
alone here saint anselm now is saying that well yeah if if it arises within your understanding
if it’s god it’s going to have to be bigger so yes god can’t arise within your understanding
but he’s much bigger than your understanding so you can only see a little piece of him at a time
you can’t see the whole thing if he’s bigger than you how can you possibly contain him within your
limited understanding okay but conceivably there are parts of him that you might be able to see
they sort of pass through your understanding and as they pass through it’s like oh
that must be part of god something like that okay therefore if that of which nothing greater
can be conceived exists in the understanding alone the very being of which nothing greater
can be conceived is one of which a greater can be conceived but obviously this is impossible
this is basically acknowledging that uh you the same thing we’ve been talking about if it arises
within your understanding it can’t really be god as it is right there okay because god is much
greater than can be contained within your understanding okay so if you’ve got this god
concept that you’ve kind of wrapped your head around okay um that concept itself cannot be god
because god by definition is greater than anything you could possibly understand all right however
that that doesn’t mean you can’t see god okay because if something’s much bigger than you can
possibly understand you could see part of it possibly okay so it’s not really possible for
you to apprehend god in your limited understanding see this is not really so complicated because
everybody kind of has heard that you oh our human mind can’t possibly comprehend the majesty and the
greatness that is god hence there is no doubt that there exists a being of which nothing greater can
be conceived and it exists both in the understanding and in reality so if there is something much
greater than can possibly you can possibly can conceive it would exist both within and beyond
your understanding okay so if it’s really so big you can only see part of it and it exists beyond
outside of your understanding okay now there’s a problem with this okay because he’s actually
proving that god does not exist okay um so in order for something to exist it has to stand out
versus something else this is pure phenomenology okay so something can be conceived to exist you
have to be able to apprehend it it has to stand out versus something else and if god by definition
cannot be compared to anything else because he’s too big then he doesn’t exist and if we we might
want to clarify this a little better okay so we’re kind of saint anselm kind of proves that god does
not exist now this gels very well with the way that um kabbalah presents the mystery of the
godhead it also gels very well with the void of buddhism okay these are concepts that are much
older than saint anselm in western philosophy saint anselm is someone who’s given credit for
coming up with the ontological argument this is not original to saint anselm it’s it it arose in
buddhism and in vedanta well before uh anything in even in western civilization even arose actually
okay and this is something that even i would imagine shamans understood long before
civilization began possibly well okay shamans uh to to wrap your head around this well you can’t
really wrap your head around it by definition but to understand it um it’s helpful to adopt
the view that the universe is a drama okay so uh what we have here is a stage with nothing on it
so in this sort of conceptual framework here nothing can be said to exist to exist yet because
there’s nothing on the stage okay so this is the ultimate background of non-existence behind
everything that exists anything that exists is something that can now stand out in the foreground
but the background behind existence is non-existence okay uh and that’s the language
gets really tortured here because I just said the background is non-existence but that doesn’t make
any sense you mean non-existence is that’s kind of the way St. Anselm was trying to paint it well
non-existence is in the background therefore it is but no no no the only things that can be said
to exist are in the foreground and the things that exist in the foreground are the things that you
can conceptualize in other words you can circumscribe them with your mind you can wrap
head around them you can see the contours all around their edges and now they become objects
for you and if they sink back into the background then they cease to exist they cease to be objects
or they cease to be concepts in your mind so this is why in the uh in my videos i’ve been presenting
these various bubble diagrams and and as you might recall i’m not sure what video this was from i
i think it was from the four worlds of kabbalah uh i i presented this as a four level diagram
and all you can see are three levels there’s the waking consciousness and then there’s your
dreaming sleep and then there’s your dreamless sleep and what else oh there’s the background
behind that there’s the white space behind that which is in vedanta is called turia which simply
means the fourth level or some people call it deathlessness all right so this background that
has no bubble limiting it there’s no bubble around the white space okay um it just has no boundaries
goes it seems to go on forever it’s limitless that’s the level that’s furthest in the background
that is the background of non-existence and in kabbalah we have the veils of negative existence
which is kind of the same concept so these um in order in order for the universe to come into
existence there has to be a space opened up within that white field of nothingness and then the
these various things begin to sort of bubble forth within it and they can be said then to exist
but anything outside of that big cavernous space is non-existence and the way kabbalah presents it
is negative existence okay but you know it simply means if you can’t wrap your mind around it it
can’t be said to exist there’s no uh your if your mind cannot make an object out of it it does not
exist and uh this is your levels of consciousness as they step forward from that background of
non-existence all right and the interesting thing is that when you begin to make progress in
uh spiritual work uh your mind you get your mind gets better and better at sinking into the
background but eventually this is going to cause for most of us it’s going to cause a panic attack
because what we be what we we begin to notice is that oh my god i’m dying i’m disappearing
i’m becoming non-existent i’m going to be overwhelmed and destroyed by whatever’s in
the background yeah another way of looking at it the ego is in the foreground and it exists
it’s bodied forth by the higher self and the higher self is bodied forth by the non-existent
background okay so this is pretty much proof that god does not exist because god is not an object
he cannot be circumscribed by the mind and the only things that can be said to exist can be
wrapped around they can be wrapped up in bubbles okay only objects can be said to exist to exist
or concepts which are concepts in the mind are like abstract objects that also stand forth
forth from the non-existent background okay or the negatively existent background so um if you
read uh dion fortune’s mystical kabbalah this is explained quite in depth um i’m hoping maybe i
explained it a little better here uh and what you’ll notice is that um this fear of being wiped
out you know when you die uh you begin to notice that well everything kind of comes forth from this
background which is constantly body bodying forth things so is there really anything to fear
yes and no because we of course we have natural biological instincts uh in the field of the
universe that have evolved to fear disappearing back into non-existence but of course that
non-existence is god and that’s basically what saint anselm was selling was selling was saying
for some reason he basically was assuming that the thing in the background or that no thingness
in the background exists and that makes his ontological argument ultimately confusing
okay but if you look at things in terms of phenomenology um things that become phenomena
can only be seen to exist if you can conceptualize them or wrap your head around them or put put a
bubble around them to understand them okay if you can’t put a bubble around it to understand it
then it doesn’t really exist, okay? It’s too far in the background to exist, okay? And what you’ll
notice, like in your middle pillar work, this is kind of, if you draw a line between divinity down
to the higher self and down to the ego, draw a line straight down there, that’s kind of what the
middle pillar is, okay? And that middle pillar, does it exist? Does it not exist? Well, it kind
of doesn’t okay it’s just an aid to get you to tune into these kinds of diagrams and what you
might begin to notice is that when you look at a standard tree of life diagram like the one i have
behind me back here back here right um i’m hoping that this sheds some light on diagrams like that
so it’s a helpful way of looking at them all right and that so that sphere at the top of that
diagram is pretty much up there in divinity like it’s up there in divinity right there
okay and then the higher self is pretty much at tif tifareth doth tifareth and ego is down in
yosod and malchuth okay hoping that helps none of these diagrams are correct there are only
tools to get you to understand how things stand forth from the background of negative existence
All right. That’s a relatively short video this week for once. All right. Until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher