Being Is Knowing Completeness
Empirical metaphysics of non-dual understanding
It does not matter what you believe, it is of no consequence what you perceive, and it even makes no difference what’s the actual nature of Universe, there is an indisputable reality that there is existence. This tautology is as obvious as the fact that you are reading these words.
And it cannot be otherwise.
Yes, the famous questions, “Why is there anything at all?”, or, “Why there is something rather than nothing?”, asked by philosophers such as Leibniz, Wittgenstein, or Heidegger are rather redundant. Reason this is so is that nothing or nothingness, which is mere absence of form and designator but which still exists (as no-thing and no-thingness as is the case with e.g. silent darkness of dreamless non-REM sleep), is almost always confused with non-existence.
Yet, non-existence, in the sense of simple negation of existence (or being), does not exist (obviously).
Of course, one can speculate that that proposition merely reflects limitation of language and logic, but if existence was not at some point in time, it could not have emerged from non-existence later on, because there would be literally no way and no ground for it to do so, as well as no one to flip it into existence. Similarly, non-existence makes absolutely no sense in terms of space (space is). Neither within a single existence nor, more bizarrely, between multiple instances of the same.
Thus, existence, which is by definition indivisible — it uniformly “bestows” itself to make various (no-)things be — is primary (or absolute) Substratum of all. Infinite in time, space, as well as form, and also that which predates all these phenomena — neither time and space nor any form could be if they lacked existence, or, better said, if they were not (but existence is not an attribute!).
Therefore, there always is, and that’s why the above questions are clearly redundant. But to the defense of everyone who asked them — we naturally connect being with things and concepts, because that’s how the world of phenomena appears to us on the relative level.
The question then is, who is us? Who is you? Who am I?
As it turns out, the only existence you can empirically verify is your own. Not by thinking, as Descartes erroneously assumed, but by realizing the one who knows the thinker. Once one knows the unknowable, once one realizes that-which-knows, it’s obvious that consciousness is also the ground of one’s being — relative personal as well as absolute, but still equally subjective, “I” — and as I have written elsewhere, consciousness is empirically without names, forms and attributes, because all of them are what is observed or known.
Thus, consciousness as such, or knowing, is equally uniform, continuous, and indivisible — whole Universe, all its substances and attributes, appear within (or as movements of) a single mind that comes to life while being known. Furthermore, consciousness is inseparable from being — while you are, you know.
And since everything exists indivisibly, you are Universe which proclaims through the mouth of your relative personal existence, “I am.”
Such realization reveals the self-contained completeness of being and knowing, the inherent perfection of Substratum of all (this completeness and perfection is traditionally, and quite understandably, associated with bliss and joy). Thus, being is knowing completeness, knowing is being complete, completeness is being knowing as much as it is knowing being. All permutations of these three words (within the limited framework of language) point to the same Absolute, to the same ground of being and knowledge.
And that Absolute is you.
