Unsong Cosmology

Introduction

http://unsongbook.com

Just going to link this here, for anyone who might be interested in giving this one a read. If you happen to be, then preferably avoid reading this blog, for now, considering how spoiler-heavy it is.

In addition to that, it should be noted that this verse draws all of its overall setting from Kabbalah, and hence I will be using many concepts from it as reference while explaining certain terms and elements of the cosmology, in cases where I deem it necessary. So, without further addo:

Malkuth: The Physical Universe

In Unsong, the physical universe is small, very small. What humans perceived as being outer space was in fact a gigantic crystal sphere surrounding the Earth, 250,000 miles in diameter, whose inside surface was holographically adjusted to give the illusion of depth:

“	“In the beginning,” read Bill Anders, “God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” So for two minutes on Christmas Eve, while a billion people listened, three astronauts read the Book of Genesis from a tiny metal can a hundred miles above the surface of the moon. Then, mid-sentence, they crashed into the crystal sphere surrounding the world, because it turned out there were far fewer things in Heaven and Earth than were dreamt of in almost anyone’s philosophy.	„
	~ PROLOGUE

“	NASA didn’t want to go in blind. First in May, then June, they launched manned missions to investigate the extent and composition of the sphere. As far as they could tell, it was about 250,000 miles in radius, centered on the Earth, and made of perfect flawless crystal except in the vicinity of the cracks. The eidolons of stars and planets seemed to be projected on it in some kind of holographic manner that gave them the illusion of depth.	„
	~ INTERLUDE ז: MAN ON THE SPHERE

It is the only point in creation where the concepts of space and time actually apply in any form, and outside of it there is just the vastness of the Ein Sof:

“	“Exactly, Houston. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong. Nothing has ever been wrong, anywhere. The cosmos is like a flawless jewel, each of whose facets is another flawless jewel, and so on to infinity. Except there is no jewel. It’s all light. No, there isn’t even light. From within Time you can’t see any of it, but when you step outside into Eternity it’s all so…full. It’s so beautiful, Houston.” “Commander Armstrong, you’re not well. Colonel Aldrin is lowering down the cable.” “You really think I’m still in the crack? Listen, Houston. The tzimtzum, the Lurianic contraction of God to create the world, from a higher perspective it wasn’t a contraction at all, it was an expansion. An unfolding of divinity into new possibilities. The vessels didn’t shatter, they rearranged themselves into shapes that only become apparent from a pleroma beyond any dimensions but containing the potential for all of them. Houston, is this making sense?”	„
	~ INTERLUDE ז: MAN ON THE SPHERE

Furthermore, one of the main themes of the story is that the underlying structure of the universe is akin to a fractal: Each smaller part of it reflects and connects to larger ones and to one another, forming an endless self-similar pattern.

This is due to the fact that, simply put, the entire universe is modelled after, and derived from a celestial blueprint known as "Adam Kadmon", which in Kabbalah is known as the Archetypal Man, and defined as a realm embodying the primal thought of God, the most primal embodiment of His infinite light, where the whole of creation is idealized and every aspect of it superimposed into a single point.

“	“RABBI AKIVA PROPOSED THAT THE VERSE HAS BEEN MISINTERPRETED. ‘GOD MADE MAN IN HIS IMAGE’ MEANS ‘GOD MADE MAN ACCORDING TO AN IMAGE BELONGING TO GOD’. IN OTHER WORDS, MAN WAS BUILT TO A SPECIFIC CELESTIAL BLUEPRINT. WE CALL THAT BLUEPRINT ADAM KADMON, MEANING ‘ORIGINAL MAN’. ADAM KADMON IS THE BLUEPRINT NOT ONLY FOR MAN, BUT FOR THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THIS BLUEPRINT AND THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS THE BASIS OF KABBALAH.” Sohu cut through a scale, and was rewarded with a spurt of blood for her efforts. She shrieked and almost fell off the cloud. “Aaak!” she said. Then: “Sorry. I was listening. Really.” “NOVICES IN KABBALAH EXPECT THERE TO BE A SIMPLE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN ASPECTS OF ADAM KADMON AND OBJECTS IN THE UNIVERSE. FOR EXAMPLE, ONE PART OF ADAM KADMON MIGHT DESCRIBE HUMANS, ANOTHER MIGHT DESCRIBE TREES, AND ANOTHER MIGHT DESCRIBE THE STARS. THEY BELIEVE YOU CAN CARVE UP THE DIFFERENT FEATURES OF THE UNIVERSE, MUCH LIKE CARVING A FISH, AND SIMPLY…” “No,” said Sohu, who was still trying to wipe blood off herself. “No fish-carving metaphors.” “THEY BELIEVE YOU CAN CARVE UP THE DIFFERENT FEATURES OF THE UNIVERSE, ENTIRELY UNLIKE CARVING A FISH,” the angel corrected himself. “BUT IN FACT EVERY PART OF THE BLUEPRINT IS CONTAINED IN EVERY OBJECT AS WELL AS IN THE ENTIRETY OF THE UNIVERSE. THINK OF IT AS A FRACTAL, IN WHICH EVERY PART CONTAINS THE WHOLE. IT MAY BE TRANSFORMED ALMOST BEYOND RECOGNITION. BUT THE WHOLE IS THERE. THUS, STUDYING ANY OBJECT GIVES US CERTAIN DOMAIN-GENERAL KNOWLEDGE WHICH APPLIES TO EVERY OTHER OBJECT. HOWEVER, BECAUSE ADAM KADMON IS ARRANGED IN A WAY DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENTLY FROM HOW OUR OWN MINDS ARRANGE INFORMATION, THIS KNOWLEDGE IS FIENDISHLY DIFFICULT TO DETECT AND APPLY. YOU MUST FIRST CUT THROUGH THE THICK SKIN OF CONTINGENT APPEARANCES BEFORE REACHING THE HEART OF -”	„
	~ CHAPTER 9: THE ART DIVINE

God and the Divine

Standing at the top of the cosmology, beyond all else, is the Ein Sof, the formless and ineffable God which encompasses and surrounds creation, in a state of "Eternity" beyond time and space.

“	“NO. I AM NEIL ARMSTRONG. ELEVEN MONTHS AGO, I FELL THROUGH A CRACK IN THE SKY INTO THE EIN SOF, THE TRUE GOD WHOSE VASTNESS SURROUNDS CREATION. LIKE ENOCH BEFORE ME, I WAS INVESTED WITH A PORTION OF THE MOST HIGH, THEN SENT BACK INTO CREATION TO SERVE AS A MESSENGER. I AM TO SHOW MANKIND A CITY UPON A HILL, A NEW JERUSALEM THAT STANDS BEYOND ALL CONTRARIES AND NEGATIONS.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 23: NOW DESCENDETH OUT OF HEAVEN A CITY

The precise scale of God? Well, early in the story, specifically in Interlude ג, the concept of larger sizes of infinity discovered by Georg Cantor is briefly commented upon, with the narrator restating Cantor's own beliefs: That even if the hierarchy of infinite numbers is itself unending, there must be a quantity so large that it contains and describes the total amount of them. This is what he deemed to be the Absolute Infinite, an inconsistent multiplicity that surpasses all conceivable numbers, and which he identified as an expression of God.

“

Cantor began talking about how his discoveries were direct and personal revelations from God, who wished him to preach the gospel of infinity so that an infinite Deity could be better understood. He posited an Absolute Infinite, beyond all the forms of infinity he had discovered, with which God might be identified. Finally, he declared: “I have never proceeded from any Genus supremum of the actual infinite. Quite the contrary, I have rigorously proved that there is absolutely no Genus supremum of the actual infinite. What surpasses all that is finite and transfinite is no Genus; it is the single, completely individual unity in which everything is included, which includes the Absolute, incomprehensible to the human understanding. This is the Actus Purissimus, which by many is called God.”

„

Seemingly in support of Cantor's beliefs, Chapter 17 discusses a traditional jewish children song, and then extracts the following symbolism off the lyrics:

“

Rabbi Reuben Margolis relates the song to a Midrash. King Nimrod of Sumer demands Abraham worship the Fire God. Abraham refuses, saying that rain extinguishes fire, so if anything he should worship rain. Nimrod says okay, fine, worship the Rain God. But Abraham refuses again, saying that wind drives away the rain clouds, so if anything, he should worship wind. So Nimrod commands he worship the Wind God, and then other things happen, and finally Nimrod tries to kill Abraham and God saves him. The lesson is that all hierarchies end in God, who is above all things.

„

He is also described as being the animating spirit of the world, and its ontological ground, which albeit inert, possesses many mystical Names that, when spoken aloud, can manipulate the world to various different degrees and produce many magical effects:

“	There is even a Monogrammaton. The sages took the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and decided that exactly one of them was a Name of God. That letter is “he”. It’s the fifth letter, and it makes an hhhhhh sound like English H. The sages say that the breath makes a hhhhhhhh sound, which I guess it sort of does. Breath is the animating spirit of human existence, God is the animating spirit of the world. It sort of checks out. “He” is pronounced like “hey” or “hay”. “Hey” is a word we call to get someone’s attention. Attention is consciousness, the highest level of thought, corresponding to the sephirah Keter. When we shout “Hey!” at someone, we are speaking a holy Name of God, invoking the Monogrammaton to call forth the Divine within them. “Hay” is a thing that cows eat. Cows eat hay and we eat cows. We never touch hay, but it is indirectly sustaining us. It is the ontological ground, the secret that gives us life although we know it not.	„
	~ INTERLUDE ד: N-GRAMMATA

His true name, however, is said to be the holiest and most dangerous of all, as it would allow any individual that uttered it to govern the entirety of creation in a near-omnipotent state, giving them the power to shape whole Worlds. It is referred to as the Shem haMephorash, the "explicit name", and is known only to Metatron.

This is believed to be due to the fact that knowing the true, mystical name of a supernatural entity (such as an Angel or a Demon) gives one the power to control them, and thus, following this logic, knowing the True Name of God, would grant dominion over the creator Himself, or at least the manifest aspect of Him.

“	“Mr. Smith-Teller,” he said. I winced internally. I mean, I suppose if they didn’t know my name now it wouldn’t have taken them too much longer to find it out, but it still hurt. Kabbalists are notoriously fussy about who knows their true name. I’m not sure why. When an angel or demon is hidden in some sort of incarnate form, knowing their true name gives you power over them. Knowing the Shem haMephorash does the same to God, or something. I don’t think there’s anything like this for humans, but there’s still just something that feels very careless about letting your enemies have such an important word.	„
	~ CHAPTER 14: CRUELTY HAS A HUMAN HEART

And then we are told the explicit reason behind the power of the haMephorash:

“	“Because any good enough description of God is also a notarikon for His Most Holy Name.” “…really?” “God is One and His Name is One. God is One with His Name. People always say God isn’t a person, but then what is He? To me, He’s always been a sort of logical necessity. The necessity for everything in the cosmos to be as good as possible. Understand goodness and you understand God. Understand God and you understand His Name. Understand the Name and you can remake the world. That’s the kabbalah. The rest is just commentary. Excruciating, unbearable commentary that kills everyone you love.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 72: AND BUILDS A HEAVEN IN HELL’S DESPAIR

The Ein Sof is also described as unbound by the basic dichotomies and principles which exist in the created world:

“	“That’s why you never drink the water in San Francisco,” John told Ana. “It’s not some mystical blessing upon the city. It’s just a couple milligrams of LSD per liter of drinking water. A single swallow and you end up partaking of the beatific vision as mediated through Neil Armstrong. They keep the LSD around to maintain the trance and induct anybody else who comes in. I’ve been here half a dozen times and it still creeps me out.” “Okay,” said Ana. She looked out the window again. The iridescent sphere was starting to pulsate. “John’s too humble to say so,” said James. “But he saved your life. We saw that thing you did with the winds, and went up to investigate, but by the time we got up there you were way gone. He was the one who brought you down.” “Dragged you out of the Ein Sof and into the created world,” said John. “That’s the only way to do it, remind you of all the dichotomies and tradeoffs and things that don’t apply up there.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 23: NOW DESCENDETH OUT OF HEAVEN A CITY

Namely, some of the basic principles used to drag people out of it are:

“

Someone grabbed her body, the part of her that was stuck on the tower, the part of her that meant nothing. “Stop!” he told her, in a man’s voice. “You’ve got to come back!” Ana soared. She circled the Transamerica Pyramid, and the giant lidless eye watched her course impassively. “Listen!” said the man. “One plus one is two. If you don’t eat, you die. P implies not not P. Prices are controlled by the law of supply and demand, and are the only fair way of managing scarcity.” Ana began to lose altitude. “Organisms evolve according to the laws of natural selection. Reproductively fit organisms pass their genes on to the next generation. Uh. The wages of sin are death. Everybody dies. In a closed system, entropy always increases.” Ana flapped her arms vigorously, trying to regain altitude, but her flight had never come from wings to begin with, and she fell further. “Matter can’t be created or destroyed. Uh, calculus. Taxing a product disincentivizes its production. The light speed limit. No mathematical system can prove itself consistent, or else it would be inconsistent.”

„

However, as God is an infinite and unknowable force, His full extent cannot be realized within the physical universe, and thus the divine light which He emanates must be filtered through ten mystical channels known as the Sephirot, descending from the absolute divinity of God and shaping it into the basis of the material world, in accordance to the blueprint of the Adam Kadmon, mentioned above, which is just pure light devoid of any vessels or filters.

“	Malachi 3 describes God as “like a refiner’s fire”, but only because the ancient Hebrews didn’t know the word “H-bomb”. God is infinite energy, uncontrollable power, likely to scorch and burn anything He touches. If God even touched the Universe for a second with His little finger, it would shatter like a dropped egg. So how does God create the universe? How does He sustain it? Ha’Ari proposes a system that my 21st century mind can’t help but compare to electrical transformers. If electricity went straight from a nuclear plant to the light bulb in your house, your light bulb would blow up. Instead, the electricity goes from the plant to a huge transformer that can handle it and make it a little less powerful, then from there to a smaller transformer that can handle that level of power and make it a little less powerful in turn, and so on to your lightbulb. God’s power, then, passed through the ten sephirot as “transformers” that converted it to a voltage capable of affecting the world.	„
	~ INTERLUDE ו: THERE’S A HOLE IN MY BUCKET

The ten sephirot, together with the twenty-two paths which connect them together, form a structure known as the Tree of Life, a "machine" of sorts whose full extent lies beyond time and space, and which was eventually hacked by the Archangel Uriel, who found a way to manipulate the sephirah and rewrite the fundamental nature of reality, "retconning" it into a self-sustaining world whose primary substrates were the laws of physics and mathematics, as opposed to the Divine Light of God.

“	“A LONG TIME AGO THERE WAS A WAR IN HEAVEN. ALL OF THE ARCHANGELS FOUGHT THAMIEL, AND THAMIEL WON. I DID NOT LIKE THIS RESULT, SO I ADDED A NEW STRUCTURE AT THE ONTOLOGICAL BASE OF THE UNIVERSE, A LAYER THAT REINTERPRETS ADAM KADMON. I CONVERTED THE WORLD FROM A SUBSTRATE OF DIVINE LIGHT TO A SUBSTRATE OF MATHEMATICS. THIS PREVENTED ANGELS AND DEMONS FROM EXISTING IN ANY MORE THAN A METAPHORICAL WAY. WHEN THE DIVINE LIGHT ENTERED THE UNIVERSE I CHANNELED IT INTO A RESERVOIR SO THAT IT DID NOT INTERFERE WITH THE CLOCKWORK.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 16: IF PERCHANCE WITH IRON POWER HE MIGHT AVERT HIS OWN DESPAIR

“

“I have determined the basic structure of the world. The way God becomes finite. The machinery that transmutes divinity into finitude is based on a series of ten sapphires. They are not exactly located within space-time, but you can think of them as sort of coextensive with the outside of the crystal sphere surrounding the world.” Gabriel noticed that, as usual, the only time Uriel got any emotion in his voice, the only time he would even make eye contact, was when he was talking about something totally irrelevant and uninteresting. “This is the Tree of Life. It converts pure structure into material reality through a series of four levels. There is a bottleneck in the last one which connects the sapphire called Yesod to the one called Malkuth. By filtering this bottleneck, I can control the flow of the divine light of higher spheres from entering the physical world.” “The divine light sustains existence. Any impediment to its radiance would make the universe crumble into dust.” “No. I can shift the world into a different stable equilibrium which can run indefinitely on an internal mechanism independent of the divine light.” “How?” “With math. I am changing the world into math.”

„

“	Uriel plucked a geometer’s compass out of the storm. He crouched above the tree. The clouds behind him parted to reveal the setting sun, and for a second he was framed in the golden light, ancient in aspect, terrible in majesty, tracing circles only he could see. A moment of intense concentration and it was done. “It looks the same,” said Gabriel. “It is and is not,” said Uriel. “It is as shady and green as it was before. It will grow and give seeds. But it does not partake of the divine light. It is made of math. It is built of atoms of different varieties, which I have charted here.” He pointed to one of the various tables sketched out in black fire upon the storm wall. “Its branches grow in a very particular fractal pattern, as per information which I have encoded inside it in a massively parallel base four system.” “Only God can make a tree,” said Gabriel angrily. “I am not creating. I am converting. I have written a script which is gradually crawling the universe at the level of Yetzirah, converting all divine objects into their mathematical equivalents. Simultaneously I am gradually raising a metaphysical dam across the path from Yesod to Malkuth. By the time the world is fully insulated from the divine light, it will be running entirely on mathematics and able to maintain itself. A small amount of divine light can be deliberately allowed to enter in order to breath fire into the equations. The rest will remain in the upper spheres, intact.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 20: WHEN THE STARS THREW DOWN THEIR SPEARS

The Tree of Life is itself divided into Four Worlds, each representing a stage of conceptual expansion/contraction where the light of God is transitioned from the divine and into the finite. Those being, from lowest to highest:

• Assiah (World of Actions), the lowest of the four worlds and the one which corresponds to the physical sphere of existence, where all laws of nature operate seamlessly and the concepts of space, time and causality are set firmly in place by the operations of the rest of the Tree of Life, with the divine light provenient from the upper worlds having finally made its transition from the divine and into the finite.

• Yetzirah (World of Formation), the world of dreams and possibilities, where consciousness emerges and the unformed light provenient from higher worlds is shaped into more defined archetypes and conceptual objects. It is above Assiah and more fundamental than it, as everything in the physical universe is just a metaphor for incomprehensible things residing in Yetzirah.

“	“IN THIS WORLD, YOU ARE A BODY. IN YETZIRAH, THE DREAM WORLD, YOU ARE A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS AND POSSIBILITIES AND ARCHETYPES. GO TO THAT WORLD.” “How?” “YOU DO IT EVERY NIGHT. NOW YOU WILL DO IT WHEN WAKING. STOP THINKING IN TERMS OF THINGS AND THINK OF THE MEANINGS BEHIND THEM.” “I don’t know the meanings behind things!” “YES YOU DO. THEY ARE THE CORRESPONDENCES YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH FOR YEARS. SPACE IS A METAPHOR. TIME IS A METAPHOR. ALL THE CLOUDS AROUND US ARE METAPHORS. MY VOICE IS A METAPHOR. TAKE ONE STEP IN THE DIRECTION OF THE THING THAT THEY ARE METAPHORS FOR.” “I don’t think the clouds are a metaphor.” “EVERYTHING IS A METAPHOR. EVEN IF THERE WERE A CASE OF SOMETHING NOT BEING A METAPHOR, THE EXISTENCE OF THE CASE WOULD DEFINITELY BE A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 44: A WORLD WITHIN OPENING ITS GATES

“

“WHAT ARE THE CLOUDS A METAPHOR FOR?” “Form and formlessness, light and darkness, things hidden and revealed, God. But no, it isn’t that at all. It’s more than that. It’s hard to explain.” “NO. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN. LANGUAGE IS PART OF THE MATERIAL WORLD. THIS IS HIGHER. TAKE ONE STEP TOWARDS THE THING YOU CANNOT EXPLAIN.”

„

• Briah (World of Creation), the world where the divine light of God is filtered and interpreted into the fundamental components of all existence, although they are not archetypes like the objects residing in Yetzirah, just sparks of creative energy which will eventually become archetypes. It is above Yetzirah in the same way that it is above Assiah; that is, even Yetzirah is a metaphor for it.

“	In 2001, she was sitting on her cloud, studying Torah, when Uriel suddenly asked her “DO YOU FEEL IT?” “Feel what?” “YOU TELL ME.” She stepped into Yetzirah, examined the archetypes. Looked out through the dreamworld, saw all the dreams in place. She needed a higher vantage. She very gingerly took another step up, into Briah, the place that even Yetzirah was a metaphor for. There were no archetypes in Briah, only wellsprings of creative energy that might eventually become archetypes. Something about a mem. A samech. A lamed. Mem connected Hod to Netzach; Samech connected Hod to Tiferet. Lamed connected Hod to Yesod. Hod was splendor, Hod was energy channeled for a purpose. Mem. Samech. Lamed. M-S-L. Three different aspects of splendid, directed energy.	„
	~ CHAPTER 52: THE KING OF LIGHT BEHELD HER MOURNING

• Atziluth (World of Emanations), the highest and most primal of all worlds, where the light of Ein Sof still exists in unity with His infinity, completely unformed and lacking any separate existence from God, or the awareness of it.

In Kabbalah proper, the four worlds are often explained in a "top-to-bottom" manner through the allegory of a teacher imparting a lesson to his student: Atziluth, the World of Causes, is represented by the teacher having a single spark of inspiration, unformed but brimming with potential, Briah is symbolized by the teacher elaborating and solidifying this concept inside his head, compressing it into a concrete idea, and Yetzirah is represented by the penultimate stage, when the teacher finally transmits this idea to the student, who comes to fully comprehend it and then apply it to whatever their surroundings may be, instantiating it into the world (This being itself the final stage, Assiah)

The aforementioned hierarchy where lower worlds are just metaphors for more fundamental things existing in higher worlds also corroborate with the above statements that God is necessarily the pinnacle of all things, and above all kinds of hierarchies, as everything is a metaphor for God, an expression of His infinity which repeats itself across all scales, with the only thing apart from this being God Himself.

“	“Of course it’s a metaphor! Kabbalah says that everything is a metaphor for God, the only thing that’s not a metaphor for God is God Himself. That doesn’t mean you can just dismiss things as metaphors and fail to explain how they correspond.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 71: BUT FOR ANOTHER GIVES ITS EASE

---

There are however, other aspects to the divine that are even more abstracted and concealed than the Ein Sof. This is briefly alluded to in this interlude, where, to summarize it, the main characters discuss the concept of divine simplicity, where God is idealized as an entity of pure wholeness that is not comprised of any smaller or more fundamental parts, and partakes in all attributes and characteristics.

Being the concept of "existence" in its purest form, God would then be the simplest and most fundamental possible thing, apart from his logical diametric opposite: Nothingness. In binary terms, those two would then be the digits 1 and 0, respectively, carrying only one bit of information.

One of them, though, suggests that if God and nothingness still denote a small amount of information in these symbols, then neither of them can be the simplest possible thing, which would then be neither 1 nor 0, neither God nor nothingness, just the absence of information entirely.

The interlude then associates this with the concept of the "Atzmus", which in Kabballah is the name of the most primal essence of the divine, which is essentially a complete absence of thought or description that cannot be talked about or referred to in any form, devoid of anything whatsoever. The Atzmus being the simplest possible thing is thus dismissed, because it cannot be talked about, and can't even be considered a "thing" in the first place. To shamelessly quote wikipedia:

“

The term in Hasidic philosophy for the divine source is Atzmus ("essence"). While the Ein Sof of Kabbalah can only be infinite, Atzmus, rooted higher in the Godhead, is beyond finite/infinite duality. As the Etzem, it both transcends all levels, and permeates all levels. This is reflected in the paradoxical acosmic monism of Hasidic panentheism, and relates to the essence of the Torah and the soul.

„

---

While speaking to Job as the Voice of God, Metatron also describes a primordial realm that exists as the Garden of God, a paradise beyond existence, where millions and millions of different universes exist side-by-side, each corresponding to a Possible World ranging from the simplest and most perfect to the most flawed. Adam Kadmon itself is merely one seed that gave birth to one universe among many.

“	“I AM BEYOND SPACE. TO ME THERE IS NEITHER LEFT NOR RIGHT NOR MIRRORED REFLECTION. IF TWO THINGS ARE THE SAME, THEY ARE ONE THING. IF I CREATED TWO PERFECT UNIVERSES, I WOULD ONLY HAVE CREATED ONE UNIVERSE. IN ORDER TO DIFFERENTIATE A UNIVERSE FROM THE PERFECT UNIVERSE, IT MUST BE DIFFERENT IN ITS SEED, ITS SECRET UNDERLYING STRUCTURE.” “Then create one perfect universe, and some universes whose structures have tiny flaws that no one will ever notice.” “I DID. I CREATED MYRIADS OF SUCH UNIVERSES. WHEN I HAD EXHAUSTED ALL POSSIBLE UNIVERSES WITH ONE FLAW, I MOVED ON TO UNIVERSES WITH TWO FLAWS, THEN UNIVERSES WITH THREE FLAWS, THEN SO ON, AN ENTIRE GARDEN OF FLAWED UNIVERSES GROWING ALONGSIDE ONE ANOTHER.” “Including mine.” “YOUR WORLD IS AT THE FARTHEST EDGES OF MY GARDEN,” God admitted, “FAR FROM THE BRIGHT CENTER WHERE EVERYTHING IS PERFECT AND SIMPLE. THERE IS A WORLD MADE OF NOTHING BUT BLISS, WITH A GIANT ALEPH IN THE CENTER. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD MADE OF NOTHING BUT BLISS WITH A GIANT BET IN THE CENTER. AND SO ON, BUT MAKE A MILLION MILLION WORLDS LIKE THOSE, AND YOU START NEEDING TO BECOME MORE CREATIVE. YOU NEED MORE AND MORE STRATAGEMS TO SEPARATE WORLDS FROM ONE ANOTHER. WORLDS WHERE INCREDIBLY BIZARRE THINGS HAPPEN AS A MATTER OF COURSE. WORLDS WHERE RANDOM COMBINATIONS OF SYLLABLES INVOKE DIVINE POWERS. AND THE MORE SUCH THINGS I ADD, THE MORE CHANCE THAT THEY TEND TOWARD EVIL. YOUR WORLD IS VERY FAR FROM THE CENTER INDEED. IT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF A VAST WASTE, WHERE NOTHING ELSE GROWS. ALL OF THE WORLDS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN PLANTED THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN ABOMINATIONS OF WICKEDNESS. BUT BY COINCIDENCE PILED UPON COINCIDENCE, YOURS WAS NOT. YOURS WILL GROW INTO A THING OF BEAUTY THAT WILL GLORIFY MY HOLY NAME.” “It will?” “GENESIS 1:31. I LOOKED AT THE WORLD, AND I SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD. I BEHELD ADAM KADMON, THE SEED OF YOUR WORLD, AND SAW THAT IT WAS A GOOD SEED. THAT IT WOULD GROW INTO MORE GOOD THAN EVIL. THAT IT DESERVED A PLACE IN MY GARDEN, BESIDE THE MILLION MILLION OTHER SEEDS THAT WOULD GROW INTO OTHER WORDS, SO THAT AS MUCH GOODNESS AS POSSIBLE COULD BE INSTANTIATED IN THE COSMOS.”	„
	~ CHAPTER 71: BUT FOR ANOTHER GIVES ITS EASE

“

“I don’t buy it,” said Ana Thurmond. “YOU DON’T THINK IT IS WORTH IT?” “I think you should have offered us the choice.” “BEFORE THE WORLD, I SPOKE TO ADAM KADMON IN MY GARDEN. I OFFERED HIM THE CHOICE TO REMAIN IN THE PARADISE BEYOND EXISTENCE, OR TO TASTE OF GOOD AND EVIL, BE SEPARATED FROM ME, AND ATTAIN INDEPENDENT BEING. HE CHOSE THE LATTER.”

„

In particular, he describes a perfect universe where there is no concept of time and space, and its inhabitants exist as incorporeal entities, whose nature is absolutely flawless, and who stand in golden thrones contemplating their own perfection.

“

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, saying “WOULD YOU PREFER I HAD NOT CREATED YOUR UNIVERSE, EVIL AS IT IS? WOULD YOU PREFER TO BE VOID AND EMPTINESS?” “No!” said Job. “I would prefer to live in a universe that was perfect and just!” “I CREATED SUCH A UNIVERSE,” said God. “IN THAT UNIVERSE, THERE IS NO SPACE, FOR SPACE TAKES THE FORM OF SEPARATION FROM THINGS YOU DESIRE. THERE IS NO TIME, FOR TIME MEANS CHANGE AND DECAY, YET THERE MUST BE NO CHANGE FROM ITS MAXIMALLY BLISSFUL STATE. THE BEINGS WHO INHABIT THIS UNIVERSE ARE WITHOUT BODIES, AND DO NOT HUNGER OR THIRST OR LABOR OR LUST. THEY SIT UPON GOLDEN THRONES AND CONTEMPLATE THE PERFECTION OF ALL THINGS. YET I ALSO CREATED YOUR UNIVERSE, THAT YOU MIGHT LIVE. TELL ME, JOB, IF I UNCREATED YOUR WORLD, WOULD YOU BE HAPPIER? OR WOULD YOU BE DEAD, WHILE FAR AWAY IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE INCORPOREAL BEINGS SAT ON THEIR GOLDEN THRONES REGARDLESS?” “I would prefer to be one of those perfect beings on their golden thrones.” “WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR YOU TO BE SUCH A BEING? THEY HAVE NO BODIES, NO EMOTIONS, NO DESIRES, NO LANGUAGE. WHAT WOULD IT MEAN FOR ME TO CREATE A VERSION OF YOU WITHOUT BODY EMOTION DESIRE OR LANGUAGE, VERSUS TO CREATE SUCH A BEING BUT NOT HAVE IT BE YOU AT ALL? IS A VERSION OF YOU WHO IS INFINITELY WISE STILL YOU? A VERSION OF YOU WHO IS A WICKED IDOLATOR? A VERSION OF YOU WHO IS EXACTLY LIKE NOAH, IN EVERY WAY? THERE IS NO OBJECTIVE COSMIC UNEMPLOYMENT RATE.”

„

Discussions

Discussion threads involving Unsong Cosmology