I’ve really struggled to get my head around the concept that a ‘thing’ is also ‘not-the-thing’. I understood the basic idea that a ‘thing’ cannot exist without ‘not a thing’. A solid cannot be a solid if it is not surrounded by space.
But to then say both are one and the same fuzzled my mind. Then I recently came across someone describing it on a forum like this:
Any given ‘particular thing’ (for example, a ‘tree‘) is always in a constant state of change, which is to say that ‘the tree‘ is in fact a ‘process’ rather than a ‘thing’. This process can ONLY be occurring if the necessary conditions are present. These conditions are ‘not the tree‘, and are naturally comprised of ‘other processes’, ALL of which can ONLY be occurring if the necessary conditions are present. These conditions are ‘not those other processes’, and are naturally comprised of ‘other other processes’, ALL of which can ONLY be occurring if the necessary conditions are present, and so on, ad infinitum.
Therefore, ‘the tree‘ could not possibly be occurring in exactly the way that it is without the ENTIRETY of ‘not the tree‘ (i.e. the rest of the universe) occurring in exactly the way that it is. In this way, ‘the tree‘ naturally includes the entirety of the rest of the universe within it’s own existence, and so there is no REAL difference between ‘the tree‘ and ‘not the tree‘.
I spent the week mulling it over and finally I think the light is dawning so I’ll try and explain it my way!
If a tree was growing against one of the walls of my house it would only have branches coming out of 180 degrees of its trunk. There are no branches on the other side because my wall is in the way.
Now lets say I demolished my house, kept the tree and laid a lawn. Then someone who had never been to the area before came by and saw the tree. He would think it was odd that it had all its branches on one side but he would be able to theorise why.
“The tree must have grown that way because there was an object on the side with no branches.” he could muse.
He would not be able to know what the object was – a house, a wall, perhaps just a truck parked up for many years and yet all the information is probably there.
But the central point is that the tree developed as it did because of things that were ‘not the tree’. Without the house it would have grown into something that more resembled what we expect from a tree.
This is the limit of the human mind. A rough idea that something might be the way it is because of ‘not-that-something’. However we do not have the mental capacity to take in all the information which would be needed to see all of ‘not-that-something’
Take the tree 20 meters from my house. It would not look exactly the way it does if my house was not here or if my house was a slightly different shape. However the difference would not be clear enough to see even though, theoretically, if I moved the house tomorrow the tree would contain all the information a witness with the the right intelligence needs to know to form a picture of what house was there.
It would also give all the information needed to provide a history of the world, perhaps even the universe. A branch is missing because a butterfly flapped its wings in Mexico and set off a chain of events that resulted in a storm down my way – all those ‘not-the-tree’ events recorded in the tree.
So things are as they are, and developing as they are, because of all the other things and the way they are developing. We’re just not bright enough to deduce this unless presented with extremes like my one sided tree and even then we can only do so to a very limited degree.
The final jump then is to the oneness.
Well if whatever else is going on in the Universe, and has gone on in the Universe, can be seen in my tree then my tree is both the ‘tree’ and ‘not-the-tree’. The ‘tree’, in some ways, is just a giant recording device of other events – we just don’t have the mental ability, or the computing power, to interpret it and extrapolate those other events.
And this is the oneness of it all. Our tree can describe the entirety of the universe. How odd is that and yet it makes perfect sense.
The ‘tree’ is also ‘not-the-tree’ therefore they are one and as ‘not-the-tree’ includes everything else then everything is one thing!
If you fancy a slightly different perspective this is also covered in The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams:
“The Total Perspective Vortex is a device built as a practical application of the theory of atomic interactivity. The idea is that, if every atom of the universe is affected by every other atom of the universe, then it is theoretically possible to extrapolate a model of the entire universe using any single piece of matter as a starting point. The Vortex does this employing a piece of fairy cake as its extrapolatory base”