The Abstract is what has always been and always will be, the Essential Principle behind all things, the first substance. At its deepest level, it is eternally in an unmanifested state. Its nature is that of the infinite itself and is unalterable. It is unknowable and unfathomable. It is beyond perception and, therefore, we can only intuit it. Nothing created it. It has no beginning because it does not have time. Nor does it have space, despite its vastness.
The appearance of worlds is the consequence of the Abstract’s tendency to manifest generative processes. Although it lacks dimensions completely, the Abstract is the precursor of them. Dimensions are the fundamental properties of worlds; they are characterized by bestowing concrete and definite degrees of freedom that allow the movement of systems through space-time. The worlds, universes, beings, objects and their underlying dimensions are the emanations of the Abstract, but at the same time they are not Itself.
The conception of a world begins with a shuddering of the Abstract, an inexplicable fluctuation that contradicts its immutable nature. This disturbance causes the emergence of something from the deepest of emptiness, something that cannot yet exist, but which harbors the possibility of being: the Primordial Nagual. This is a separation in the form of a focal point or island of potentiality within the Abstract itself. However, this island, being the Abstract immutable, has to be placed at an apparent distance from It. This is the Great Paradox, since, on the one hand, nothing can be situated outside the Abstract, and on the other hand, everything that exists must do so outside of It. This is the mystery of Creation, given that the two premises are true in spite of their contradiction.
The Primordial Nagual is made in the image and likeness of the Abstract, and is therefore as empty as It. Yet within this nothingness full of potentiality of being, a first movement immediately occurs that, this time, will be in the image and likeness of the very disturbance that occurred in the Abstract. This first movement is always a contraction-expansion, a first heartbeat, a first breath, which will begin to fill everything. Thus the temporal dimension or beginning of time is created. This event is also the conception and starting point of the gestation of the partner or counterpart of the Nagual – the Tonal. This is how the most intrinsic property of the natural order emerges – duality.
The Primordial Tonal is a direct consequence of the incomprehensible capacity of the Nagual to break away from the Abstract. The Tonal encapsulates the possibility of the concrete, and therefore it is the one with the power to bring order to chaos, definition to the indefinite, movement to stillness. The Tonal is the polar complement of the Nagual, its Alchemical Partner. If we could tell its story in a linear way, then I would reiterate that everything begins with the Great Paradox, with the stirring of the immovable Abstract. We already know that the Abstract is immutable; so how will it be moved? Yet the truth is that it does move, and this is what generates a disturbance in stillness, a first note that sounds in the deepest of silences, a ray of light that makes its way through the eternal darkness. This first movement represents the act of conception. As I have already remarked, this vibration, the Verb, must necessarily occur outside the Abstract, as an externalization of Itself, due to its infinite immutability. But, since the Abstract has neither inside nor outside, we find the fact that the mechanism through which the concrete appears is beyond syntax and is therefore inexplicable. Nevertheless, it is possible to study and to a certain extent understand the processes that arise from there.
In their primordial aspect, the Nagual and the Tonal are still like a sea of probabilities without defined forms or functions; this is why the first duality remains semi-abstract, being the outcome of a first break in symmetry, an inevitable consequence of the creative process originated by the joint appearance of both facets.
The Nagual has gestated the Tonal and this, in turn, will create the conditions to allow the Nagual to manifest itself and to live in a linear way. Because of this, the Nagual will reciprocally have its own conception and gestation within the Tonal. The one fecundates the other, gestates it and sees it born so that, again, the other fecundates the one, it gestates it within itself in order to be able to bring it into the world. The Tonal will generate Creation and the Nagual will experience it. The Nagual will bestow the capacity to be, the Tonal will bestow the capacity to exist. The Nagual will be the observer and the Tonal the observed. The result of the alchemy between the Primordial Tonal and Nagual will therefore be the conception of the world, the inception of time. In the first moment, the world and the observer are the same, so we still find ourselves with an enormous degree of abstraction. We are still within the scope of the original tremor. It will be necessary to complete the process of gestation of the world so that this first fluctuation will not simply be reabsorbed back into the Abstract and thus returned to nothing.
In order to escape from abstraction, the first thing the Tonal does is to contract, because it needs to defend itself from the Abstract. Depending on the energetic potential produced by separating the Abstract from itself (the nature of its tremor), the Primordial Tonal will have a certain amount of contractive power that will serve as an initial spark in the formation of the universe. The first contraction will instantly generate a new rupture of symmetry, a new duality will appear in the form of expansive force, aiming to promote growth and continuity. So, the first law to be manifested in the world is that of contractive-expansive duality. The resulting jolt of that pair of forces must have a great deal of energy behind it – enough for the Tonal, along with the Nagual, to be able to escape re-absorption into the Abstract. This first movement, the first breath, is called Intent and triggers the appearance of another dual process that, on the one hand, stabilizes and unifies what has just been created, and on the other hand, encloses and contains it. This second act is called Will, the will to conserve-limit the singular, the One, the original energy-information. Immediately a third duality must arise, this time with the mission of fragmentation-ordering, of giving meaning and purpose to Creation, dividing and separating the One into ever more numerous parts, and then making permutations on them, thus allowing the emergence and increase of complexity. This third act is called Intelligence, the ability to analyze and synthesize.
When the first Trinity is formed (Intent, Will and Intelligence) the gestation of the world ends, to make way for its birth. The world already lives and exists in a concrete way, has space and its time begins to unfold. The creative cycle (expansion, limitation, separation, contraction, unification, organization) will be repeated countless times within this world, within this new bubble of attention. The Tonal will seek to ensure the stability of Creation by progressively increasing the symmetry and complexity of the universe-system in a race to keep disorder and entropy below the level at which it would compel the existing to be gobbled up back into the Abstract. The Nagual will manifest itself through the multiplicity of focuses of attention (living beings) that will experience, in turn, the cycles of conception, gestation, birth, life, death and transition.
Although I have told their stories in a linear way, as if there had been a beginning, in reality there never was, neither for the Nagual nor for the Tonal. Both are a way of speaking about the Abstract, and neither of them was created, they are an immanent part of the Whole. The two are as inexplicable and infinite as the Abstract itself, because they were always Itself.
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The Nagual and the Tonal by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.