Yes and No

The Yes Foundation

Den Bosch/webcam 16 september 2011

Gott spricht nur immer Ja, der Teufel saget Nein;

Drum kann er auch mit Gott nicht Ja und eines sein.

God always says Yes, the Devil says No;

Therefore he cannot be Yes and One with God.

A quote from the 16th Century mystical thinker Angelus Silesius. God always says: Yes.  He is himself a Yes: an infinite affirmation, an affirmation of existence. Everything that exists, inhales and exhales this Yes. It repeats it. Just by its act of being, all that exists  repeats this Yes. Even if it says No. Even my No says: Yes. I cannot deny this. I cannot deny this arch-Yes, this original Yes underlying each affirmation and each negation. This arch-Yes derives from an arch-Yesterday. Today repeats this Yesterday. Today, I am repeating Yesterday’s Yes.

The Devil denies. He says No. He doesn’t want… What does he not want? Just anything, he does not want as such. He rejects. He declines. He does not want to repeat this arch-Yes that has always already resonated. Even though he himself always already repeats it. Even the Devil affirms. If the Devil says No, he cannot deny that he also says Yes. His negation affirms itself. It says Yes by saying No. If the Devil says: I don’t want this or that, he cannot deny implying: True, indeed, I DO not want this or that. It is true that I do not want it. I affirm that I do not want it.

If God says Yes, and the Devil says No, then the devil cannot silence God’s Yes. He just repeats it.

The devil cannot deny Yesterday. He cannot deny the day before he was born. He always comes too late.

The devil’s No is a way of saying Yes. If we assume that for example War is a huge denial, a denial of Peace, of Law and Order, of Art, of Philosophy, of Religion, then even War breaths a Yes. There is a Yes even in War, however atrocious it in itself is. The No cannot deny the Yes by simultaneously repeating this Yes.

Then why is there a No? Why is there War? Why is there a devil saying No?

I don’t know. Nobody does. Nobody knows why there is a No. Knowing itself, the activity of knowing, the notion of knowledge as such, already implies this negation. Every determination implies a negation. For example: if I know that the world is round, I know that it is not flat. So knowing the reason for the existence of this No already obeys to its logic. If someone claims: “I know why there is a No in this world, let me explain you”, then one may easily reply: “you are lying. For if you had truly known the reason for this No, you would not have known. True ‘knowledge’ of the No cannot be knowledge anymore. No, it can’t.”

And why is there this Yes? Can we procure the foundation of it? Is there a Yes foundation? No, there is not any. The Yes cannot even be said to have founded itself. It is just there. And we repeat it, just by being there. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yes, we do.