Doubt and the Will to Exist

“Why do we continue existing?” This is an essential question because existence brings along with it the desire to expand existence. Be it in the domain of the medium or the consciousness. In a world where trillions of entities co-exist, each with its own consciousness and its own medium and, more importantly, with that identical desire to expand, it means that, ultimately, every existence in itself is in conflict with everything else.

It then becomes important to understand that desire itself because it is the singular thing that constructs and changes reality. Two possible outcomes can surface in one’s imagination when taking this desire to its end. What distinguishes the two outcomes is our belief about the world. If we believe in the physical world we perceive and that that perception is the end, i.e., there is nothing else beyond this world, then we arrive at the first outcome. In that case, when the consciousness expands into everything else, and there is only one consciousness in the whole ‘world’, permeating everything, then (as per the reasoning in the earlier article) that state of the entity is just stasis. Now, because of our assumption that stasis is equivalent to death itself. So, then the question becomes, why take the detour?

Let’s now take the contrary position regarding that assumption, i.e., say there is something beyond the world we perceive. Then, at that state, when a single consciousness permeates everything in this world, that consciousness will enter a meta world. Now, by induction, what we can then imagine is a new battle taking shape because it stands to reason that in this meta world, there are multiple entities again, each one a consciousness that permeated each of their respective worlds and now long to permeate this new world that they just entered. So, we are back to square one and in a recursive fashion, there is an eternity of that constant battle which gives the consciousness the immortality it longs for, but at the price of continuous suffering.

There are two parts in this conclusion that need clarification. Firstly, terming this process suffering is not cynical because the expansion of the consciousness, as stated before, is a process rife with conflict. Secondly, it is eternal because the assumption of the existence of a meta world, if valid for this world, should be equally valid for the meta world as well. Further, even if one believes the contrary and denies the existence of another meta world, then the meta world being the end, points to the conclusion of the first case, which is stasis, and thus the question again, why take the detour?

Thus, ultimately both paths lead to either stasis (a death equivalent) or eternal conflict and suffering. Now, with this conclusion in mind, if we examine the question of what fuels our will to exist, the only answer that comes to mind is doubt. This conclusion is only valid as long as the rationality that is the tool used to arrive at all of this is good enough to analyse existence in the first place. That is because if an entity genuinely believes in its knowledge and the chain of logic, as described above, it should have no will to exist. So, all the push about being confident is just fluff because a “rational” being, aware of its rationality and “confident” in its map of the world, would not continue to exist in the world. It is the “what if” question that drives it. “What if” the idea that consciousness is in conflict is incorrect. “What if” the map is not the territory and, as several theologies propose, there is a single consciousness? “What if” there’s a way to expand with some threshold that gives the best of both worlds? “What if” there’s an eternity without endless suffering and conflict, which is not a stasis?