Steve Hagen - The Grand Delusion

Why is there Something rather than Nothing?

Humans have grappled with some version of this existential question for millennia yet today we seem to be no closer to answering them than were our forebears of hundreds of generations ago.

Does God exist?

What does it mean to exist?

What is mind?

What constitutes measurement? This is a big problem for physicists.

We could just move on from these questions but what exactly is motion?

All of these fundamental questions and many, many more stem from a single error, a single unwarranted belief, a single Grand Delusion. Clarifying this Grand Delusion is the aim of this book.

Most of what follows is a dialogue between me and ANYONE: a nave but earnestly questioning character who could be, well, anyone a person of any gender, any age, who may be anywhere on spectrums of learned and benighted, pious and profane, serious and silly.

When what I point out causes you to want to cut in with an objection, it is my hope that ANYONE will speak for you.

Be patient, though. I wont always get to your question or objection when it first arises. But Ill likely circle back to it later on.

Time Out!

Every now and then, the main text of this book will be interrupted and augmented by Time Outs such as this one, set in this fashion. These contain additional background or contextualizing information that directly relates to what is being discussed. I recommend not skipping over them.

Endnotes and several appendices provide additional important information that further expands upon what appears in the main text. These are not mere references and citations. Much of the depth of this book will be found here.to you, but because some terms will be used in non-standard ways.

One other thing: at times, I will repeat a key theme yet every time a theme is repeated, we will go a little deeper and look at ever more subtle aspects of a topic. I invite you to greet each iteration as though meeting it for the first time.

Although ANYONE repeatedly fails to acknowledge it, there are two truths. References to conventional or everyday truth relative truths related to concepts, ideas, and objects appear in lowercase. References to Absolute Truth are capitalized. This allows a critical distinction which will become evident over the course of the text to be made without further qualification. Much of our confusion stems from the fact that our everyday conceptual terms cannot refer to Ultimate Truth or Reality, but only to conventional, relative truths. More on this later.

References to Awareness of Truth and Reality, such as knowing or seeing , are indicated in my remarks (but not in ANYONEs) through the use of italics . Conventional uses of these terms without italics refer to the knowing or seeing of thoughts, feelings, ideas, or objects in the conventional sense in which those words are generally used. This, too, will become both clear and familiar as you move through the book.

Bold text will be used for simple emphasis. Bold italics will be used for technical terms.