Absurd is the man who chooses to be free by donning the shackles of slavery...

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Albert Camus

Are we all Sisyphus? Do we all toil and drive towards that which we will never achieve? That which we can never achieve? Do we push and strain to get the boulder up the mountain, to have the apex at hand, only to have that boulder tumble down to the bottom? And what feelings do we have at that moment? What do we think as the boulder haphazardly plummets to the foot of the mount, erasing all that we had done and hoped to do? What are we to think then? What are we to feel? Are we to become sorrowful and loathsome? Are we to know that this is our fate? To accept? To deny?

It does not matter. Either choice leads to the same outcome. Whether we choose to accept reality as it stands; as a wretched and futile occupation that ultimately leads to death or to give birth to meaning as the precursor of existence. Every stance, from total nihilism to humanistic utopianism, presents each individual with infinite options, infinite choice. Whether existence be finite or everlasting, whether the soul has substance or consciousness be a product of biological processes beyond control, whether we be children of god or the emergent property of evolution; there is no path that is closed.

And it is in those moments, those brief and fleeting periods of lucidity, when the universe is laid out before each person, its infinity made tangible and visible, that we find fear. When we stare into the abyss we find trepidation. We may study the abyss, but it also studies us. It probes our depths and veiled recesses. It reveals our secrets and our denials, lays them bare before us and forces each to confront his own demons. And yet we are deceived. This abyss exists only to deny and negate existence. The abyss is defined, is made up of, is substantiated by the lack of definition, the lack of being, the lack of substance. It is not a denial of existence, but a privation of substantive existence. A being composed of non-being. A dasein which is complete and total in its lacking. An existence that is brought into being through consciousness, and must, as a necessary paradox, be continuously confronted with its own placement, or displacement, in the world. The abyss is nothingness. But this nothingness can only be brought about through a certain kind of being. It, the abyss, can only exist when being confronts itself, when being becomes aware of its place within the world and the possibility of total displacement.

The abyss is an illusion. Its paradoxical nature precludes its existence. It is rendered impossible. But its non-existence is an illusion as well. The abyss exists only when confronted. A battle is waged within the mind, or consciousness, or subject, when consciousness is turned upon itself. Being must realize non-being. Being is affirmed by a collision with itself. For non-being clarifies being in the conflagration and immolation of itself. Through this confrontation it, the abyss, comes forth, terrible and unholy, bringing darkness from the light.

But why is this existence of non-existence, this lack of being, this pit of darkness, this abyss, an illusion?

It is only when the abyss stares back and probes the depths of consciousness that it becomes clear: the abyss exists within us. It is a part of us. For being to be, for consciousness to create and sustain, for each person to be, the idea of non-existence is a prerequisite.

Existence is finite and limited. Consciousness is shackled. Only in existence do we find the line between possible and impossible, the line that separates the finite from the infinite. And consciousness, as it resides and exists within each person, (perhaps within all beings that are alive) finds only one thing incomprehensible: its non-being. We can seek and study and name and grasp, or at the very least contemplate in the abstract, anything except our own non-existence, our total displacement within and from reality; existence unbounded by time and space. This privation of consciousness, of self, is elusive to the self; one cannot experience one's non-being, because being is necessary for experiencing. To be is to be, is to be named, is to be placed. But to not be, to never have been, to lack all substance, is a concept beyond abstraction. It is the shadow cast by the moon, the silent whisper, the echo of taciturn screams, something tangible in its intangibility.

But still, how are we deceived? What is the illusion?

The illusion lies in the very existence of the abyss. It does not exist. Rather, to clarify, it does not have an existence separated from the human consciousness. It is a product of consciousness. The abyss penetrates our innermost sanctum, exposes our hidden selves and forces confrontation with the self because it exists within us. To confront the abyss is to confront the self as a subject and object without limits, a self that is unified with infinity. Here, humbled and infantilized before infinity, we find the ultimate measure of self. Existence appears to the conscious mind to be limited; that is to say, it is nameable, able to be organized and categorized, containing inherent boundaries. But this is simply consciousness imposing its own limits upon the world around it.

But if we take this to be true then there is only one possible conclusion. That the abyss, the infinite, the unbounded, is the true nature of reality. The abyss is created within the conscious mind. It is an illusion that is more real than what we call reality. Through our substantive being we mold reality into a limited and fragmented thing for us to experience. And thus we then must create the illusion of an infinite and unified existence so that we might briefly know reality as it is; nameless and unbounded, infinite and unified, devoid of substance and flush with possibility. In essence we present ourselves with a comprehensible view of what it is to be, so that we might delude ourselves into the notion that we possess knowledge, while the true nature of existence remains to us an apparition that whispers silently in the recesses of the mind.