On the Aught

In Somerset Maughm’s The Razor’s Edge, protagonist Larry Darrell says, “A God that can be understood is no God”.

So, if there is Something that was before all Time, is now, and will be even after the end of Time, with Time here being defined as the lifespan of the current universe, it is beyond personhood, beyond being, beyond effability.  In other words, Something Eternal.  The word Aught, “A-U-G-H-T”, derives from two Old English words that in turn ultimately derive from two Proto-Indo-European words literally meaning “eternal thing”.  Since that’s about as nonspecific as possible, for purposes of the following set of conjectures, let’s call this Something Eternal “The Aught”.

The Aught has no name.  It has no need of a name.  Since it is the one and only Something, the one and only Eternal Thing, there is no other Something from which it needs distinguish itself.

The Aught produces yet claims no possession; it redeems yet requires no gratitude; it sustains yet exercises no authority.  It has no need of obedience, worship, prayer, praise, adoration, supplication, benediction, love, respect, or even acknowledgement.  It just is.

The Aught is both perpetual and ever-changing, flowing through and animating all that is throughout spacetime and beyond, transcendent yet immanent, metacosmic yet omnipresent, eternal yet omnitemporal.

The Aught is the Source of all that is, the Course shaping its formation, and the Force energizing its manifestation.  From our perspective, these are different things, but in reality they are One.

The Aught favors none; there is no Anointed One, no Chosen People, no Exceptional Nation, no Elect Species; not on Terra, not in the Milky Way, not in the entire Universe.

The Aught does not need us nor want anything from us; individual beings are too infinitesimal and ephemeral within the Universe for it to take much note.

The Aught is neither male nor female.  It does not take sides, nor have sides.  From it emanate both light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos, yin and yang, life and death, integrity and entropy, creation and destruction, everything and nothing.  Each of those antitheses is defined by its opposite.  Without their counterpoints, none of them can exist, and the fact that those opposites exist in competition with each other is what give us choice, the choice which is the definition of freedom.