Once, in the throes of this heavy dextromethorphan trip I closed my eyes and saw the end of the universe. Not in a temporal sense—I wasn’t envisioning Armageddon or anything like that—but rather I saw that the universe was finite. My intoxicated and delirious brain had taken me over the vast reaches of space across billions of light-years through myriads of brilliantly glimmering galaxies until finally I came to an abrupt and startling halt. There, in the dark obscurity of distant space I encountered a menacing-looking wall so large I couldn’t tell where it began or where it ended. My brain could take me no further; it was the end of the journey. I had known no bounds, either physical or mental; my understanding was total. Suddenly, a sense of angst started to creep up on me little-by-little until it was so acute I was horrified to realize what I had just seen. The universe is limited, I thought. It is walled off! And then it hit me. We are all inmates in this colossal cosmic prison, condemned to act out the same routine day in and day out ad nauseum in the continuous loop that is our human tragedy. I had been sitting in my comfy office chair while exploring the universe, and when I realized what that giant barrier meant I recoiled violently, almost snapping the back of the chair clear off the seat.
With this epiphany came another: once we reach the end of the universe as I had, all hope is lost. That night I traveled farther than anyone ever had only to find that our universe is a prison and our freedom an illusion. We are no different from the convicts in San Quentin or Sing Sing who have been sentenced to a confined existence of daily redundancy. Our prison is bigger, but our fate is the same. Like the convict, we are restricted by limitations—the enemy of hope, which all humans possess and count on. We base our lives not just on how things are but how we would like them to be, and we often act in such a way so as to try to bring about some desired end. Hope is a fundamental component of the human condition. It is what keeps us going and gets us out of bed in the morning. Hope is the human being’s raison d’être. The realization of our hopes is contingent upon our overcoming the limitations standing in the way. With the end of limitations comes the end of hope.
So imagine my terror when, after having transcended all possible human limitations, I ran into that wall. I could go no further not because there was some other limitation I needed to surmount, but because there were no more limitations. Period. In my total understanding I knew that the wall could not be broken through or overcome in some way because I knew exactly "what" was on the other side. Nothingness. Oblivion. The Void. To think or speak of what was beyond that wall is entirely senseless. And I fully concede that I'm doing the concept no justice by attempting to name it because what I’m referring to is, after all, unnamable and unsayable. It simply cannot be said; for we do not possess the linguistic tools to describe it, nor do we even have the mental capacity to conceive of it. But in that moment sitting in my chair a universe away from planet Earth, I Understood, and never had I been so unnerved. Perhaps Wittgenstein was right when he said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Know your limits...even if you can reach the stars.
With this epiphany came another: once we reach the end of the universe as I had, all hope is lost. That night I traveled farther than anyone ever had only to find that our universe is a prison and our freedom an illusion. We are no different from the convicts in San Quentin or Sing Sing who have been sentenced to a confined existence of daily redundancy. Our prison is bigger, but our fate is the same. Like the convict, we are restricted by limitations—the enemy of hope, which all humans possess and count on. We base our lives not just on how things are but how we would like them to be, and we often act in such a way so as to try to bring about some desired end. Hope is a fundamental component of the human condition. It is what keeps us going and gets us out of bed in the morning. Hope is the human being’s raison d’être. The realization of our hopes is contingent upon our overcoming the limitations standing in the way. With the end of limitations comes the end of hope.
So imagine my terror when, after having transcended all possible human limitations, I ran into that wall. I could go no further not because there was some other limitation I needed to surmount, but because there were no more limitations. Period. In my total understanding I knew that the wall could not be broken through or overcome in some way because I knew exactly "what" was on the other side. Nothingness. Oblivion. The Void. To think or speak of what was beyond that wall is entirely senseless. And I fully concede that I'm doing the concept no justice by attempting to name it because what I’m referring to is, after all, unnamable and unsayable. It simply cannot be said; for we do not possess the linguistic tools to describe it, nor do we even have the mental capacity to conceive of it. But in that moment sitting in my chair a universe away from planet Earth, I Understood, and never had I been so unnerved. Perhaps Wittgenstein was right when he said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Know your limits...even if you can reach the stars.
-Max
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