Who is What and What is Who, and Always the Twain Shall Meet

HvB spends considerable time on the irreducible distinction between essence and existence. In short, "the attempt to express even in the barest terms that something is cannot be made without stating what it is." It seems that for the subject, the most basic complementarity is between isness and whatness -- without which there could not be a subject. What is is I AM, and vice versa.

This might sound eggheady, but it's no yolk: to exist is be something, and to be something is to exist. The more you become who you are, i.e., manifest your essence, the more presence you will have. Therefore, there are degrees of existence, so that many if not most human beings are "not all there," while others are more or less "fully accounted for."

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but Jesus would be an example -- the quintessential example -- of someOne who was "completely here." Or, one might say that because he was completely here, so can we be; that is, we can be by virtue of sharing in his being (insert relevant scriptural passage from Nomo here __:__).

Therefore, because of this complementarity, "as soon as we begin thinking we have gotten our hands on either essence or existence, it points immediately to the other pole as the seat of the mystery" (HvB). This very much reminds me of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum physics, whereby the more one knows about the position of a subatomic particle, the less one knows about its velocity, and vice versa.

Now that I think about it, it also reminds me of Uncle Hyman's uncertainty principle, in which it is impossible to choose between the pastrami and corned beef, since both are "to die for."

In fact, I don't think it would be stretching the analogy to say that essence is analogous to the nonlocal wave, whereas existence is analogous to the local particle. But in reality, anything is always both, in a way that our linear minds cannot comprehend because of the very fact that they are linear and in the field of local time. (You could say that Finnegans Wake was an attempt to tell the entire story of mankind from the nonlocal perspective, which is why the book is so perversely impenetrable to the [merely] logical mind.)

But obviously, since our minds are at one with the very processes that undergird the cosmos, there must be some deeper way in which they mirror this complementarity. And indeed there is, for it is none other than O-->(n), O being (among other things) the nonlocal ocean of being, (n) being its local manifestation. (Looked at another way, O is the "Father," ¶ the "son," at least through adoption.)

Alternatively, another way of looking at it would be through the lens of Ignacio Matte Blanco's "bi-logic," in which there is always a complementarity between the asymmetrical aristotelian logic of our conscious mind and the "symmetrical logic" of the unconscious mind.

In fact, I would say that what we call the "unconscious" is actually the realm of symmetrical logic, in the absence of which we could not be human. Without it, we would be like automatons living in flatland -- like a Vulcan, as it were. On the one hand, the symmetrical logic of the unconscious is what provides the "spice of life," so that nothing really is (merely) as it appears to be. However, it is also where mind parasites hide out, safe from the prying eyes of the conscious mind. You could definitely say that symmetrical logic is a mind parasite "force multiplier."

As I think I explained in the Coonifesto, mind parasites would not be so problematic if it were simply a matter of showing the person the flaw in their logic: "oh, how stupid of me! It's illogical to for me to dress in women's clothing and hang out in a biker bar."

The problem is that, because they are lodged in the unconscious, the mind parasites partake of the logic of symmetry; it is not that they are illogical, but that they operate along the lines of an entirely different kind of logic. (Best intro to the difficult ideas of Matte Blanco here; here is the only other thinker of whom I am aware that applies his ideas to theology, albeit in a more liberal manner than I would).

So, it seems that being, which is one, eternally bifurcates into essence and existence. This is the irreducible business of isness, through which everything is always more than it is. Thus, as HvB explains, being "bears in itself a wealth that cannot be consumed like a finite sum of money." Rather -- and this is an important point -- "It has a secret opening, through which never-failing replenishments of sense and significance ceaselessly flow to it from eternity."

This is none other than "Coon Central," or "upper Coonopolis." where I would prefer to be a stooge over being a prince in the comparatively mundane world of the therebelow. The "secret openings" to which HvB refers are of course the vertical springs that dot the landscape for those with activated cʘʘnvision -- you know, the manley inscape hatches which free us from the gaol of life.

On the one hand, existence is an outpouring of being, a nonstop revelation. But on the other hand, for this very reason, it is ultimately an "impenetrable veil." Why? Because even while existence reveals essence, no one ever gets to the essence. Rather, people only imagine they do -- simple, quasi-animals such as atheists, radical leftists, IRS agents, etc. I don't know what I'd do if my existence weren't magically renewed each morning. But thank God,

"No knower ever exhausts the marvel that things simply exist; and even if a lover were to imagine that he truly knew his beloved's essence, he would still daily renew his thanks to the beloved for the sheer wonder of her existence" (HvB). And this is why the male Raccoon is so thankful for his daily broad.

The sword of being slices right between essence and existence: