Recently, I saw a program with Stephen Hawking discussing his theory on Black Holes. Prior to this, I didn’t know very much about Stephen Hawking or his theories, because I assumed I wasn’t going to understand what he was talking about. But then… something really strange happened… it was kinda unbelievable…and it totally tripped me out! So, I want to share this experience with you, because it’s just not fun keeping these things to myself. Ok… so, check this out!
I sat down to watch the show, expecting it to be really boring and difficult to comprehend. However, a few minutes into the program, I totally forgot that I was watching anything that had to do with science. It was beautiful. The computer graphics were stunning, and the planets twirled about in a way that felt like I was being taken for a ride. I became so engrossed in the story that it didn’t feel like science at all.
Mr. Hawking said, the Big Bang was the moment the universe erupted out of a black hole. Then came the part where he was about to reveal what he had discovered was in a black hole, thus revealing the substance and the source of our being. In a very dramatic manner, his profound discovery was revealed through a booming voice that echoed , “Absolutely Nothing… nothing… nothing.” Then the camera zoomed in on a twinkle in his eye.
His whole point was that the universe came from nothing.
I was like, “right on!”
God is “No thing!”
I was elated! I thought Stephen Hawking might be a mystic. I could hardly wait for him to go into the part about the Great Mystery and tell us the meaning behind his discovery. As I waited, I stared at an image of a black hole, and my non-scientific brain thought, “that looks exactly like an eye.” An eye is the symbol for the Hebrew letter AYIN, and get this… it means “absolutely nothing.”
Whaaat?! I know… right?
The EYE of AYIN is also AJNA in Sanskrit and it’s connected to the Third Eye Chakra. It isn’t a physical eye; it’s the spiritual eye, without which, we can only look at the absence of physical matter and see “absolutely nothing.” Only through the light of consciousness can we peer into “absolute nothingness” and see that it contains the essence absolutely everything.
The idea that God is NoThing is the idea that God is beyond all images, concepts or words, but still contains all images, concepts, and words. We know that there are no opposites in God; because God is the unity of all opposites. The essence of “absolutely everything” doesn’t seek to exclude its opposite, “absolute nothingness”—because exclusion goes against the nature of everything. “Absolutely everything” doesn’t destroy “absolute nothingness”… it contains it. You can’t have everything unless you contain nothing. Because everything includes nothing, and everything comes from nothing.
However, I soon realized that Mr. Hawking didn’t know “nothing” in the same way that I know “nothing. Mr. Hawking’s theory might be new to modern science, but the mystics have known this since before there was the Hebrew alephbet. Mr. Hawking’s theory is actually a riddle that is very very ancient…. and one that he so badly missed that I was cosmically embarrassed for him.
“If you take it on the psychological level, you can say that in this light of recognition there is a nuance of a ”nothing but” attitude. This attitude limits and stops transformation and the possibility of further growth. If the intellect does not say, “It appears to me that way,” but is accompanied by that subtle psychological attitude which says, “I know it is just this and not more,” then the “nothing but” nuance brings in what is devilish or Luciferian and destroys everything, especially the growing thing. What is already petrified is no longer important. If I think I know all about plant life and that it is only this and that chemical process, then I block off any possibility of saying more.” – Marie Louise Von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairy Tales
I am in no way insinuating that Stephen Hawking is Lucifer. We cannot know enough about the workings of the cosmos to pass such judgements. If we consider the possibility that we choose the circumstances we are born into. It follows…that Mr. Hawking not only knew the genetic difficulties he would be born into, but he would have chosen the set of factors that would best allow him to fulfill his potential. Who knows? It’s possible that Mr. Hawking came here to play devil’s advocate. Because who does his message hurt? It certainly doesn’t hurt people whose criteria for truth is based on more than rational thought and physical evidence. So then… who did he intend to hurt? Mr. Hawking shared how he was told that his disease was a punishment from God. The twinkle in Mr. Hawking’s eye was not a spark of inspiration, but a flash of anger. I don’t blame him. I have never found a more unChristian attitude anywhere than in some sects of the Christian church. A condemning religious attitude is just as devilish, arrogant, and destructive as the materialistic “nothing but” attitude held by some scientists. Sometimes our view of God and our way of seeing reality needs to be shaken.
I remember when I first saw a documentary called Zeitgeist, and I heard for the first time that Jesus was only the most recent version in a long line of dying and rising sun gods who were all born of a virgin and hung on a tree. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was the story of Jesus just a myth? To me… a myth meant a lie. I didn’t realize that mythology was really a psychic truth, because I had not yet begun to live my own mythology. Whether or not the story Jesus was historically true or not (which I believe it is), is beside the point. The point is that Christ became not only universal but transpersonal because he lived his Truth to the very end; therefore, he made it possible for us to realize the Christ within our own selves.
“The life of Christ, understood psychologically, represents the vicissitudes of the Self as it undergoes incarnation in an individual ego and of the ego as it participates in that divine drama. In other words the life of Christ represents the process of individuation. This process, when it befalls an individual, may be salvation or calamity. As long as one is contained within a church or religious creed he is spared the dangers of the direct experience. But once one has fallen out of containment in a religious myth he becomes a candidate for individuation.” — Edward Edinger, The Christian Archetype.
Back then… I thought the recurring story of Christ meant that it was a cheap copy cat and a lie. My whole reality just felt like it shattered. What if there was no God? What if there was “absolutely nothing?” “Nothingness” is a terrifying prospect for a young developing ego. Yet, losing one’s religion seems to be a right of passage for spiritual maturity. It seems that God must die for us… or rather, the images we project onto God must pass through the fire. Nothingness feels like annihilation. It feels like death. I was stuck with this desperate sinking feeling about the true nature of reality… and I had to find answers. I read what all the Christian apologists had to say, but their answers were all pretty lame. Apologetics means defending the faith… and I could say a lot about this and we would be here forever, but Jung said it best when he called it “a defense against the experience of God.
At the time, I was attending a Christian University and I asked my theology professor “How do I know the Bible is the Word of God?” He replied, “because it says so.” My heart dropped. I had been taught that the Bible was the literal Word of God. If you know how the Bible was constructed then you know this is a problem. Conflict is the only way the Self can manifest; to meet with the conflict is to meet God. I quietly closed my bible and put it away, and I promptly went to the school office and changed my major to Psychology. I decided to put my faith in science…. without realizing that Psyche means Soul. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to live a lie. But I had this problem… despite my ontological confusion… I knew my heart belonged to God, and I knew our connection was real. The conflict began to settle down beyond the verbal and rational explanations down into the psychic and intuitive realization. So, I threw out all theories about God and everything my Christian religion had taught me. God would have to speak for himself. And She did. She found me in AYIN.
The sages say that that AYIN (absolute nothingness) is more existent than all the being in the world. The inner power comes from AYIN because thought can’t grasp it, nor can reflection see it. Transformation is only possible through AYIN. To be transformed you must arrive at the level of AYIN. AYIN strips off one form, and puts on another. No vessel can contain God, unless you think of yourself as AYIN. Only in a state of AYIN can you attain the awe of God’s vastness, through realizing that there is no place empty of God. When you become AYIN — You are no longer independent of God—You are God.
Here’s how Jesus put it:
“Blessed [ or Fruitful] are the poor in spirit,
[the very empty ones, the beggers for spirit, those aspect of Self that are yearning for Spirit], for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
The Kingdom of Heaven isn’t a place we go when we die… if we’ve been good. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you;” and “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The Kingdom of Heaven is a place that already exists within you and it’s something that’s accessible right now. It’s a state of consciousness. In order to understand “The Kingdom of Heaven” we must start “In the beginning.” We must go into AYIN.
The ancients taught… “In the beginning God was in a state of AYIN,” — a state of total emptiness. Because it is only in this state where authentic creativity is possible. The more we self-empty… the more we find the flow.
Job said, “Wisdom, Where is she found? Wisdom comes into being from AYIN.” AYIN is the root of all things.
It was out of this state of emptiness that Wisdom was born. She tells us her story in Proverbs 8.
“I am the deep grain of creation, the subtle current of life. God fashioned me before all things: I am the blueprint of creation. I was there from the beginning, from before there was a beginning. I am independent of time and space, earth and sky. I was there before depth was conceived, before springs bubbled with water, before the shaping of mountains and hills, before God fashioned the earth and its bounty, before the first dust settled on the land. When God prepared the heavens, I was there. When the circle of the earth was etched into the face of the deep, I was there. When the stars and planets soared into their orbit, when the deepest oceans found their level and the dry land established the shores, I was there. I stood beside God as firstborn and friend. My nature is joy, and I gave God constant delight. Now that the world is inhabited, I rejoice in it. I will be your true delight if you will heed my teachings. Follow me and be happy. Practice my discipline and grow wise.”
The sages teach that Wisdom was the first manifestation of God. She is “Ein Sof” without end, and she is “Ohr Ein Sof” infinite light. She is both the firstborn Daughter of God and she is the Mother of God. I know that might not make rational sense… that is, unless… you’ve had to reparent yourself? If so, then you can understand the level on which we are speaking here, because you’re already connected with her. She is The Great Mother. The Hebrews call her Chokhmah. In Greek her name is Sofia. She is Lady Wisdom of Proverbs. In The Song of Songs she is personified as the Shulamite Woman— the Woman of Wholeness and Peace. Her presence is called Shekinah, but I call her Big Mama. She is the Black Madonna, the Queen of the South, Queen of Mysteries… the dark goddess. She’s dark because we aren’t conscious of her. She carries our darkness for us… those aspects of Self we don’t want to look at. We cannot know Wisdom until we look at our darkness. We civilized people are so quick to project and judge our own darkness in everyone else. Darkness is a metaphor for anything we aren’t conscious of… just as light is a metaphor for consciousness. To find Wisdom… you have to go into your darkness and make the Night Sea’s Journey or what the Mystics call “The Dark Night of the Soul.” As you pass down the hall of mirrors—- all those false aspects of self— you arrive at the one true mirror. The Eye of AYIN. You stand there totally naked, vulnerable, and exposed in front of Wisdom’s unbearable light. Then she asks… Did you come to get your gold?
Buried deep within our darkness is buried treasure. All those dark unconscious rejected aspects of Self that she’s been carrying for us also carry our gold.
I have been writing more about this…but I have to tell you about the master teacher who led me to AYIN—My cat, Etzgo.
It was the day I found my cat’s remains in the after we had suffered a traumatic and devastating fire after a water heater exploded. I had been searching for him for 11 months because I didn’t know if he made it out or not. I checked the shelters every night, because I wasn’t going to give up looking for him. Then one evening I got an email from one of our neighbors who reported seeing a cat who met Etzgo’s description. We wasted no time going to see if it was him. It turned out not to be him, but we were already there, so I decided to clean all the burnt rubble from the tower. It was a sacred place for me… and it was a deciding factor in why we chose to move there. The tower was the place I went to pray when the weather was warm. But in the winter months, no one went in there because it was too cold and was too difficult to warm it up enough to where anyone could stand it. The fire happened on January16th in the dead of winter. Etzgo never went in the tower, and it was the only place I didn’t check for him the night of the fire. We started to head back to the tower to get him, but Jenni said, “he doesn’t want us to die.” She was right, if we went back there we wouldn’t come out alive.
Then I found his remains in the tower. Oh my heart! I couldn’t believe it. Why was he in there? Why didn’t I just go check? Seated in my nest of ashes, my heart poured out love and sorrow over his body. Yet somehow I knew he was not in the remains I was weeping over. I could feel him so strongly in that tower. As I laid his body in a wooden box… I heard Big Mama say, “Remember…there are two realities; you have to deal with both.” I could feel Etzgo’s eyes looking at me. That’s how we communicated. He would just look at me and I would know what he was saying. He knew me. He saw me. I knew he had led me to that tower for a reason, and I just had to follow him and find out why. I painted one of his eyes in the tower as a memorial. I began to realize that what was
happening was way bigger than me.
Our fire happened January 16th 2021. In Tarot the 16th card of the Major Arcana is The Tower. It’s known as The Tower of Destruction. It is, perhaps, one of the most feared cards in the deck… it signifies sudden change and destruction, but also transformation. It is death in the service of Life. In Tarot, each card of the Major Arcana is associated with a letter of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet. The 16th letter of the Hebrew Alph-Bet that is associated with the Tower is the Eye of AYIN.
…”Remember, there are two realities, you have to deal with both.”
… everything comes from nothing.
Edinger, Edward. The Christian Archetype. Inner city Books
Von Franz, Marie Louise. The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairy Tales. Inner City Books.