We may be in for the long haul, Benjamin, but I do not want to take away any of your time from your writing. Please, reply as much/as little as you want.

First and foremost is the human brain, which is the tool we are using to explain the environment we are in. The brain and the environment are not the same. As such, we have a tool that establishes itself an abstract environment, existing both next and inside the actual environment. There are therefore two realities: one real and one an abstract that can nevertheless affect the real reality.

The example of number systems is helpful because they can show us that 1 can have three different meanings, depending on the system used. As such, we can then be awake about not trusting our brains as perfectly declaring truths. Rather, declared truths exist in their own specific contexts. We can declare a 1, but we must declare the context in which that 1 exists to give that 1 its accurate meaning.

As I (and many) see it, the universe we live in is a result. Matter is a result; it is not the original. However, declaring the original with number 1 automatically occupies a space where number 0 may be a much better fit. Not because it was indeed 0, we just said that our material universe is a result, but because 0 is a spot we can fill out in many different ways. Naturally, there will be competition among ideas to fill out that empty spot because we all agree that something was there.

We are most interested in ourselves, right? So what existed prior is particularly of interest if it can explain something about ourselves. That brings me back to the three choices of 1:

• God Almighty (1) only exists when God is found truly within everything and everyone. As such, we are ourselves originally of a perfect state, although we do not find ourselves at that state; we are part of it.
• God next to creation (1) can exist but not in the Almighty format. If so desired we have a God next to creation with the choice of making God mightiest, mighty or just empowered in a plain kind of way. What we choose will of course reflect back on us. We can even make God a villain and recognize that it is true.
• God godself as the starting point for creation (1) indicates that at one point in time and space God did indeed exist as a single pure form of everything. But today, we are the expression in utmost format of that pure form, and what is —hélas— therefore no longer perfect. The vase was broken. We ourselves are its pieces.

There is an additional choice, using 0, but that choice builds somewhat on the third option of 1 in which the prior state could be called God, but that itself was no longer a state of perfection. By not declaring the prior state with 1, but rather with a 0 that needs to be colored in further, an additional different path exists then as well.

• This option is interesting because it declares that the prior state was also not the original state. If we start out with an attempt to unite in the prior state (and this then failing miserably), then we have a prior state that believed a path toward something better existed. Meaning, it was itself not satisfied. From a desire, a further Fall occurred.

Conclusion: What we may ordinarily view as a prior state of perfection may in reality have been the ultimate attempt of that state to reach 'perfection' and then failing in this attempt.

I hope you see that I opened a door that was not opened before (though some parts are recognizable). The larger realities pronounced in your examples in your reply did then also not exist either. There was, for instance, no Godhead at all. The Fall, however, in the attempt to create a Godhead or however we want to call it (plus how this attempt almost succeeded), that Fall did occur, that is, in this version. The prior state was imperfect and its ending was a further step removed from the origin that existed prior to the prior state of the universe.

And that is in a nutshell the point I am trying to make. The positions considered in the brain about the prior state are diverse, and include the option of a falsehood as the reason for the actual result.

Next to the highest and mightiest potential pathways toward creation (and this may also be applied to some of the pathways followed by scientists), there may in reality have been an ordinary pathway. The prior energy from which we were formed could have been of an ordinary quality.

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These are some household items:

• Infinite space is a phenomenon in my dictionary. Phenomena are not a something but they exist with a certain setting. The eye of the storm is a phenomenon, for instance; it does not exist without the storm (nor does it command the storm). The eye is nothing but air in which not all that much is happening. We can see it clearly though; the eye is very easy to recognize.
• Matter can not come from a phenomenon, such as from infinite space, but matter can come from prior energy. Energy does not get lost, which means that we don't have to go look for it.
• I am not interested in the mystical world (not at all actually). I am interested where the line is between the real world and the mystical world, but then mainly from that real-world perspective. I do appreciate analogies and I can see where myths and the likes can be very functional.
• I do not give importance to unity, other than the fact that unity is (can be) highly beneficial. My beef with unity is that there is no there there in unity unless it was created and supported/defended. Money was not a real thing until people started to consider it a real thing. Unity anywhere we find is created and it is not the natural state of the material universe.

I’m curious how you will further reply, Benjamin. Knowing you, it is going to be good.