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The Truth Behind Existence

There are (in my opinion, objectively) 2 options upon death:

Every organism experiences existence, but only organisms with the necessary level of neurological complexity possess consciousness. Thus, for generality, I make reference to experience in this text, even in situations where consciousness would be more often referenced.

The first listed option is simple, and probably the position most atheist and agnostic people would, at first glance, gravitate toward. At the very least, this option seems to be understood by most, whether they believe it to be true or not. This is because this option stems from 2 common ideas: that the absence of experience (death) is a timeless, formless, nothingness which can be thought to propagate through the universe at infinite speed, and that experience (consciousness) is a purely physical (and chemical, electrical) entity-specific phenomenon. However, I would like to clarify that believing the first option to be true doesn’t directly logically follow from the view that experience (consciousness) is a purely physical phenomenon, and furthermore that, while this physical view on experience (consciousness) is generally seen as the logical counterpart to spiritual views surrounding soul-bound entities (or, more often, entity-bound souls), the second option doesn’t necessitate a spiritual view whatsoever, and thus a physical view of experience (consciousness) doesn’t rule out the second option, either.

So what does the second option mean? The will to express the second option in words alone is my main reason for my writing this. Because, to me, it is actually the more plausible option of the two. What makes the second option so hard to express is its obligation to make a connection between the sequential experiences of unrelated entities without implying that an entity’s experience somehow exists outside of its life or persists beyond its lifespan. However, this is exactly what I seek to express as precisely as possible, because I am almost certain of its truth. The second option stems from 2 core principles: that experiences are limited to as many as are needed for all entities in the universe and, like the first option, that the absence of experience is a timeless, formless, nothingness which propagates through the universe at infinite speed. In some sense, the second option is an extension of the first, in which an absence of experience is not a propellant to the end of the universe, but instead a propellant into the next new experience that arises in the universe.

Visualizing the two options and their differences can be done by imagining a series of timelines that span the duration of the universe. These timelines can be used as frames of reference for individual (or sequential) experiences over the course of the universe. Here’s a visual example (COMING SOON):

To be honest, that’s really all there is to it. The diagram speaks for itself. As to why I’m so convinced of the second option: experience, to me, does not discriminate based on entity. Experience arises shortly after conception and is extinguished when the corresponding organism dies. All that is happening is that experience is extinguished in one organism upon its death and arises upon another organism’s conception; in a sequential fashion which could hypothetically be examined from an external perspective. For the entities themselves, this perspective is both irrelevant as well as almost certainly inaccessible. It is almost certainly inaccessible for quite obvious reasons, but it is irrelevant because there is no link between subsequent experiences aside from their chronological correspondence.

07.04.2024Philip Suskin