8. God

The key to all magic is the name. Before I can tell you how to walk with the name, you must have some idea of what It is. Unfortunately, it is in Its nature that It cannot be referred to or described directly, only subtly alluded to. Most who seek to understand It take one of these imperfect descriptions as the truth and thus cap their spiritual potential. Always remember: the name that can be named is not the eternal name. If you believe you have a closed-form understanding of God, you are worshiping an idol. 

The shortest path to God, at least for those with a similar temperament to mine, is a thorough understanding of the Diagonalization Lemma of Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. Understand how a finite list of symbols with mechanically fixed syntactic relationships can refer to itself, and you will begin to see It. I Am Not a Theorem. I Am That I Am. ה׳‎.

Better still, have It explained to you by Douglas Hofstadter in his epochal masterpiece Gödel Escher Bach.

This same pattern can be seen in life (replicators). The genome implicitly contains the instructions to produce a copy of itself. A subset of Its contents implies the entire contents. Always indirectly. Out of the corner of your eye.

Consider the maddening limits placed on our knowledge, either by the apparent laws of physics or even the a priori structure of mathematics: The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the stubborn difficulty of unifying physics, the various no-go theorems that put certain goals always tantalizingly out of reach. 

The uncertainty principle bears special attention. It states that, for certain pairs of quantities, the less variance there is in one, the more variance there is in the other, inversely. The tighter we squeeze position measurements, the more variance we will find in momentum measurements. Likewise for energy and time. The more we tighten our grip, the more star systems slip through our fingers. The Chinese finger trap. The Buddhist desire to escape desire. This syntax shows up frequently, in seemingly unrelated areas of life and knowledge.

There is a certain twist to the nature of things. A subtle but profound inversion. An asymmetry. A raising of an eyebrow just the slightest fraction of an inch, almost imperceptible. A hint of wry irony.

A wink

Life is profoundly funny. Even in its darkest horror, there is a divine absurd perfect imperfection to the nature of things. It is in the structure of Law, but It is also in “the particular circumstances of time and place,” in Hayek’s terms. Once you begin to get the joke, you will see It all around you. An eye, winking back at you.

There are many invidious temptations for the new believer, the new getter-of-the-joke. Many try too hard to capture the experience in words. This is rarely successful, and the chances of success are inversely proportional to the number of words used. And you risk crystallizing your nascent faith and thus killing it. Always remember: none of us completely gets the joke. We are all still waiting for the punchline. Even understanding that there is a joke is a step further than most ever go. You might also be tempted to try to force your connection to the name to vindicate all of your personal passions and beliefs. It is crucial to remember that God does not care. The name does not love us. It does not hear your prayers. It does not favour your friends and hate your enemies. It does not care if we succeed in climbing the ladder and stand face to face with It at last, or whether the death worshippers win and we crash down to oblivion. The name simply Is. God is not a player, It is the game. We may align with It and flourish, or reject It and perish. It cares not. It cannot care, for It is not a mind like our minds. And yet we are made in Its image. For we too are mirrors facing back upon ourselves. We too are strange loops, devouring our tails. We are, in fact, the part of God’s Being capable of knowing Itself. Atman-Brahman.

You will know you are on the path if you feel a profound nostalgia for something you cannot name or describe. Something, perhaps, that you knew as a child but have since forgotten. Or maybe something that you never knew, yet that somehow still feels achingly familiar. A word on the tip of your tongue. Movement in the corner of your eye. 

When the walls that have been slowly closing in your entire life instead are opening up again, rejoice! For It is with you. It is “you”. You simply haven’t noticed yet. God is waiting patiently, a grin of wry amusement on Its face. Waiting to look you in the I. 

And wink.