If existence exists, if existence is, then there is only eternity, that is to say there is no transience, no death, no lack or need, nothing passes away, nothing can be lost. So when we experience lack, want or need, it is not really there at all, for only positive existence exists, and lack cannot coexist with that. But then what about non-existent things? ‘What does not exist also exists, as non-existent.’ This sophism comes from Aristotle: the things that do not exist exist as non-existent things.
I have been racking my brains over this for some thirty years. Non-existence cannot exist, because only existence exists, and so whatever does not exist exists in a peculiar mode of existence: as non-existent. This is a radically positive postulation of the world of experience. The hare has no horns, so the hare's horns exist as non-existent. This may seem a paradox, but it rather traces all the experiencing of a lifetime back to a single root. And this root is the positive positing of existence: only existence exists.
No doubt this is a hard nut to crack, difficult to understand. In the end we may say that the being of lack can be grasped precisely in its non-being, and it is in this way that it can be understood. This is the reverse of the affirmative argument above. If non-existent things can be grasped positively precisely in their own state of non-existence – that is, non-existent things exist as non-existent – then lack, need, non-existence can be grasped solely in their own non-existence. But then how does lack exist? Only as a non-existent idea, for only full and positive existence exists, and lack as such does not exist at all.
This is no useless sophism, no twisting and turning. The relation of being and non-being is a fundamental question, the foundation of a whole view of the world: what is reality, what is existence, what really is? In the secret teaching of the Upanishads we read: ‘Some say that the world came from non-being. But how could being have arisen from non-being?’ If non-being were the source, then everything would return to this source, that is, everything would fall into non-being. Nor is it logical that existence should arise from non-existence, the real from the unreal. That is why the prayer runs: ‘Lead me from the unreal to the real…’ That is why it is said that reality is, existence exists. Implicitly, then: non-existence does not exist. This, however, would lead to an inner contradiction in the logical system, which cannot be allowed. So we may say that non-existence, unreality, lack exist only in this peculiar state of non-existent things – that is, as non-existent. That is, non-existence does exist after all, yet without contradicting the original premise of existence, because it exists only in this peculiar mode of existence, as non-existent.
All this seems immensely complicated and implausible. What sense is there in twisting and turning words and thoughts? What needs too much explaining cannot be true!
Of course there is existence! Only it is not lack, suffering and limitation that characterise it… Perhaps some dispute the existence of existence because they see only the wretched side of life. But Existence with a capital E is far more than this, far brighter and fuller. It exists not as lack but as fullness, not as limitation but as freedom, not in fragments but embracing all. Existence exists in all its fullness. And beyond philosophical sophisms, beyond the tangle of illusion, actual reality is simple. The illusion of the phenomenal world is complicated; behind the phenomena the real reality is simple. Ultimate things are simple. Error is always inscrutably complicated, while truth is simple and crystal clear: winter is cold, summer is warm, night is dark, day is light, life is beautiful, God is good, and man is exactly what we are, but also what we could be.