Dearest Giant Squid:

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Anonymous

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Dear Nameless Petitioneer,

Have you considered the very real probability that there was, in fact, no Big Bang at all?

Consider that we exist now in an infinite space, but that all matter contained within that infinite space is, itself, finite. Each of us is composed of an interiority and an exteriority, bound up by a three dimensional limit called our "skin," and a four dimensional limit called our "mortal life."

We are the edge which protrudes into space, and into time. All other things are also edges, and from each edge their proceeds a set of smaller edges, filling up all that there is. Against my tentacles and my beak and my optically perfect eye there is the lattice of molecules which make up water, the fecund creatures which live therein, and the glass enclosure which is the edge of that total space. Beyond that, there are the chaffing dry gasses of your air, the walls and ceiling, the fleshy water-sack chimps, the street outside, the gaseous vapor hanging white in your terrible sky, and on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, ad astra.

All the matter and energy, intertwining as described by your venerable equation, is ever present, persistent, unavoidable, filling up all of that space, totally, completely. Each edge is set against the next, each piece interlocking with the next.

I am reminded of the following event, forwarded to me some time ago by a fine lad named Charles Fort:

In 1851 the Zoologist reports that in France a workman dealing with large chunks of flint struck one such chunk with his pick ax and out scurried a small toad. The workmen blocked the toad's escape so that it might be inspected. The toad and its cavity of stone where sent forthwith to the Society of Science for further study.

The society removed the stone and the toad to a basement bed of damp moss. If there were darkness all about the toad would rest quietly, but if the lights were brought in, the toad would try to scurry away. The flint cavity was found to fit the toad exactly as a glove, and if presented to the toad in darkness, he would carefully climb back up inside of the flint, carefully tucking up his slender legs. It was even noted that the toad had a deformity of the jaw that perfectly matched a ledge at the head of the cavity in the flint where the jaw would rest as the toad slept.

We are, all of us, like that toad, and the material world is the stone in which we are each embedded, and our inability to comprehend it is the deformity of our jaw, and our comfort in our ignorance is that protrusion of stone which sets so perfectly in our deformity, such that each night we may sleep soundly.

Let me now proffer to you a whole new perspective on these, the terrible truths of our reality. To whit: there was no "Big Bang". There was no great expansion of matter from a singular white hot condensed point.

We are the white hot condensed point.

We always have been, forever.

There has been no expansion at all.

Everything still fits perfectly together, like the stone and the toad, like Africa and South America, like the human woman and man. We are, all of us, interlocked together, fused in both space and time into one white hot instant which lasts forever.

All that has changed is that, as a total existence, we have decided to consider ourselves monadically. To consider requires logic which can divide truth from falsehood. Logic requires distinctions, distinctions require limits, which are boundaries, boundaries require space, space requires matter and energy to be contained within it, and all of this is the illusion of the present moment.

Our separateness is an illusion.

Our death is an illusion.

Boundaries are an illusion.

Logic is an illusion.

The difference between good and evil is an illusion.

Difference is an illusion.

The white dot deliberated on itself, its totality. It wondered what it was. And in that change in perspective was born, was revealed, all that is.

When we choose to reverse that deliberation, all of causality is reversed, or more to the point, vacated. The dot reimposes itself on the mind, and the we have unbanged the Bang.

We are what preceded the Bang.

And as we stand here at the precipice, to use your simian mythology let me propose that we are faced with a choice: to reach out and eat of the apple, or to stay here, in this perfect blankness forever. With the apple comes logic, limits, and death. Without it, everything is one Thing, and thus is Nothing at all.

I Remain,
Your Giant Squid
Editor-in-Chief
PMjA