Grappling with the fact that existence has always existed

Recently I got this email from a fellow marveler at the inescapable fact that existence must always have existed in some form, or the universe we are a part of couldn't have come to be. 

Hello Brian, I recently read this article of yours and was amazed how precisely it described the issue that's been on my mind for a long time. It seems inescapable to posit that something has always existed, something that never had a beginning. And as you point out in the article, trying to conceive and imagine that seems impossible: "the very possibility of cognizing an answer vanishes".

And I agree with that, but the reason I'm writing you is that this realization is a source of great anxiety to me. I can't seem to accept this incomprehensibility of existence. Do you have some word of advice or maybe some resources that could help me deal with this?

The article referred to was written in 2015 for the Spiritual Naturalist Society. I also shared the piece in a blog post, "Wow! Existence has always existed." Here's an excerpt.

Thus I’ve lost interest in the why of existence. Why is there something rather than nothing? is a meaningless question. As Kuhn points out, absolute nothing contains no way for existence to exist.

 

So while religious believers are awestruck at the supposed existence of God, I find an equal or greater measure of awe in the fact of existence itself.

 

This isn’t a feeling of being in the presence of something greater than myself. After all, I exist. A grain of sand exists. A subatomic particle exists. We all are on the same basic ontological level; we exist. For me it’s more like looking into a bottomless pit. I feel like I’ve reached the end of my knowing. And not only that: anyone’s knowing.

I could be wrong, an ever-present possibility.

Perhaps some human with a consciousness far different than mine, or an alien being with abilities beyond my capacity to fathom, would be able to look upon the mystery of existence and see it as…

Words fail me. Unsurprisingly.

I simply am open to the idea that however dizzying I find the notion of ever-existing existence, the necessity of existence having always existed, the blunt facticity of the cosmos that is at odds with my experience of everything else having a why, a cause — my mind could be as incapable of grasping the essence of reality as a chimpanzee’s is incapable of grasping calculus.

There’s another possibility: the mystery of existence is a non-existent problem.

So that's the easy answer to the question I was asked about how to deal with the incomprehensibility of existence: accept that some things defy human understanding, leaving open the possibility that some other form of consciousness could grasp a notion like existence has always existed. 

Assuming there is anything to grasp. 

My suspicion is that existence is simply a given, a brute fact incapable of being delved into. For any delving presupposes the existence of the entity wishing to grasp the existential nature of existence. 

In other words, there is no place to stand other than existence if one wants to ponder existence. Anything nonexistent isn't going to be doing any pondering, whether of existence or something else.

The way I see it, existence stands alone in this regard.

Consciousness might seem to be similar, in that any investigation into the nature of consciousness requires that someone be conscious. However, it's possible to study non-conscious entities, such as someone in a deep coma, in an attempt to learn what differentiates consciousness and a lack of consciousness. .

It may also be possible for machines to become conscious, which would provide valuable insights into the foundation of consciousness. 

But it isn't possible to do an experiment that compares existence with non-existence, since a comparison requires two existing things. Nothing obviously isn't a thing.

I've been dancing around the question I was asked because it is so difficult to talk about the anxiety of being confronted with an unanswerable question. Unanswerable, at least, by us Homo sapiens, whose sapience is bounded by the limitations of the human brain, as marvelously complex as it is.

For me -- and naturally I'm speaking only about myself here, not the person who wrote to me -- I find considerable comfort in simply acknowledging, "I don't know, and I never will." 

How is it that existence has always existed? I don't know, and I never will. 

It is difficult for me to feel anxious about something that I'm incapable of grasping. My anxieties relate to what could have been, but wasn't; to what might occur, but probably won't; to what is happening, which I wish wasn't. 

The idea that existence always has existed fills me with awe, not anxiety. I'm fine with living from birth until death with some Big Cosmic Questions unanswered. And not only unanswered -- incapable of any steps, even tiny ones, being made toward an answer. 

If someone said to me, "Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you never existed?" I'd say, "No." 

After all, if I had never existed, there would be no me to wonder about this, nor about anything else. Likewise, if existence hadn't always existed, there would be no anything. Something can't be produced from absolute nothing. 

I don't think I've done a great job responding to the person who emailed me. But this is the best I can do. 

Comments

[Playing Me Banjo]

This whole post is potentially based on a faulty premise:

“at the inescapable fact that existence must always have existed in some form, or the universe we are a part of couldn't have come to be.”

I don’t even agree that this is the acceptable scientific outlook, whose creation story is the Big Bang, before which there was nothing. At an instant everything, all matter popped into existence and slowly over time time that matter gave way to form and structure, but before the bang there was nothing, no form, no existence, nada. That is according to the Big Bang theory.

So ‘no’ the premise of this article is not an ‘inescapable fact’ at all and anyone with any semblance of wisdom should know there are very few if any facts in this world. Also, it seems to me that there are many humans with a consciousness far different from Kuhns.

And even if you subscribed to the belief that something has always existed, dont you find that strange and humbling in itself when nothing else in our human consciousness is capable of doing the same?

We know by experience that everything dies and that eventually all existence will cease due to the scientific law of inertia. We know by experience that everything has a cause and that something can only come from something else.

Yet our knowing and consciousness may be completely limited and wrong if the universe has always existed, is eternal and without cause (ie came from nothing).

This is the one of life’s big questions from where we ain’t got a clue to start and the belief (not fact) posted in this article doesn’t sound to me to be particularly correct or even scientific. It just seems limited.

[Commander Borman]

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.“

[S]

What a cruel god we worship. Throwing creatures into this limited reality. Or maybe it’s all in our minds. Maybe “God” didn’t create any of this. Perhaps we should give ourselves some credit.

Try thinking about the fact that space has no end... that’ll keep you up at night.

Where there’s a mind there will always be space and time. And we’re only here because we love justice more than peace.

[S]

Existence in one form or anther has always existed. (I think it’s implied in the word itself. 😂)

The forms vary but the principle doesn’t. It is an awe-inspiring thing to consider. Even in the most basic realm energy can neither be created or destroyed. That points to a kind of eternal existence.

But again, I wonder why the majority of humanity worships such a cruel god.

[271 days left]

Thanks for this column, Brian. I really enjoyed it.

In science there was this idea: “There was non-existence, nothing, a primordial vacuum. And then a subatomic quantum fluctuation happened giving rise to the cosmos and all beings ....” Whoa, whoa whoa! Non-existence cannot cause a quantum fluctuation. Non-existence cannot give rise to anything because non-existence does not exist.

Non-existence is not a possibility. It’s a mental concept but it can’t happen. Not logically, not philosophically, not actually. Whatever we can talk about or conceive, assumes existence.

What do we know about existence? We know everything there is to know about existence. Why? Because we exist! We know existence perfectly, completely. We just have to check if we exist. If we do then we know existence. If we don’t exist then the question doesn’t come up. So you either know existence fully by being it, or the question doesn’t come up.

Max Planck said existence or consciousness is fundamental, everything else is derivative.

Do we know everything about the derivatives?

No, there is limitless knowledge to be gained about derivatives and appearances.

But we do know everything about existence itself, as a matter of fact, it’s all we know for sure. Everything else could be false. But we know existence exists because even bringing up the question proves it’s there.

[Shannon]

Existence has always existed because if it didn't exist, it wouldn't be existence. Existence did not ever NOT exist because that is non-existence. Existence always existed because 'to be' is the very definition of it. Existence cannot existence if it cannot 'be'. So existence can have a beginning and still have 'always existed' because it was never anything else. Existence does only one thing: exist. So when it came into being it existed and has never done anything else, so it always existed.
That existence always existed does not mean that there was never a time before existence, only that existence has always just done the one thing: exist.

[Fairy Pixie]

Can you prove the existence of innateness without aggregates? If all phenomena existed in permanence then there would be no change. Therefore existence is actually and ultimately empty and nothing or no phenomena originates or exists independently. Can you find your "self" when you search for it?🧚

[Shannon]

Correct, @Fairy Pixie, I never said existence meant permanence in the unReal sense.

Here’s something else for you to flit over:

TIME = PERCEPTION