About 5 hours ago, I discovered a black composition notebook at my front door. It was filled with the notes of a philosophy class that my friend, Clarke, went to. Clarke himself wasn’t there, I guess he just left his notebook there for me to take.
Now I must tell you that I actually wanted to know what this class he went to was like. I told him myself that I was curious, because this new professor of philosophy was apparently unlike any others any student has ever heard or come across. This Professor Nihil was rumored to have “seen the secrets of the universe” through unknown methods. Apparently he was forced to leave every university he taught at throughout the country because of the result of his classes: disappearances of a majority of the students and the rest sent to psychiatric hospitals.
He was obviously interrogated by the police in every state he taught in, but after the police looked through his lectures’ notes, well they ended up dead through extreme and horrific suicides. The authorities of every state ended up resorting to the same action: letting him go because of the void of evidence proving him the one solely responsible for the students’ disappearances, insanity and the poor cops who looked into his notes.
So you could definitely say that when Professor McHenry became terribly ill before the beginning of the semester and Professor Nihil filled in for him, that there was a thick atmosphere of a concoction of dread and morbid curiosity.
The thing is though, after reading this notebook and knowing Professor Nihil’s reputation, I’m very concerned for my friend and for my own sanity as well.
This is the transcript for the notes of Professor Nihil’s philosophy class. And of only one night class, the first one itself, that Clarke attended:
Got into class a bit late cause of the huge piss I had to take. When I got inside I noticed everyone else was already here, full class of 22 students, myself included. Professor Nihil didn’t even start the class. It was like he was waiting for me, weird. Once I found a seat in the back, he introduced himself.
“Thank you all for coming,” the professor said, “now I’m sure all of you have heard of me and know very well of why I ended up leaving Utah to California. I want to assure you that you are not in any danger. You have all showed up because you wanted to learn what I plan on teaching you. Either out of morbid curiosity or maybe, perhaps, a sense that I’d tell you the truth of existence, in a philosophical sense of course.”
“Why is your name Nihil?” this redheaded girl in the front row asked him.
“Because I legally changed it to that because the last name I had was not appropriate to what I and my lectures are all about,” Professor Nihil answered. “Are there anymore questions?”
“Do you believe in a God?” this guy a couple seats to my right asked. Adam, Mormon dude in his late 20s. He wore a necklace of the cross of Christ. Oh boy, we know where this is going to.
“Yes I do, but not your Abrahamic deity though,” Professor Nihil replied. His response took Adam by surprise.
“Well, what kind of god do you believe in?”
“The closest thing that man can comprehend of It. God is incomprehensible to our mortal understanding and created everything for an incomprehensible purpose. It is a being that defies everything we know and understand. It is every god every human has ever believed in. It is also every devil. It is everything and outside of everything. Now, I know you we’re probably expecting me to say that I don’t believe in God and that all I believe in is nihilism and science. I’m not an atheist. I am not an anti-theist. I am not an existentialist. I am nothing but a broadcasting station blaring out the sound of the truth of existence to whoever wishes to listen. If you’d like to label me, you can call me a nihilistic theist.”
“But God isn’t any devil,” Adam retorted, “God is a benevolent being that cares about our well-being.”
“Oh, really?” Professor Nihil seemed like he heard the same response billions of times. “Tell me, Adam, what does man do when they’re confronted with something so frightening and chaotic that it is as if they were a child experiencing a fever dreamesque sleep paralysis episode?”
“I don’t know, close your eyes and hope it disappears?”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Believe it’s going to be alright.”
“That right there is the problem. When humans encounter or experience something so alien and terrifying they believe in whatever comforts them. Humans have been doing this ever since our creation. Your version of God is a delusion you force yourself to believe, like many others before you, because what is foreign and terrifying to us is, well, terrifying.”
Adam pretty much was silent for the rest of the class. I guess the dude was expecting to bash against some evangelical atheist lol.
“I want you all to disregard everything you’ve ever been told,” Professor Nihil told everyone, “everything every culture, religion, society and belief and philosopher and spiritualist has told you. Unlearn it all and start anew. Now that you have, what do you see going on around this world?”
“Sex,” one guy said. Obvious womanizer right there.
“Yes,” Professor Nihil replied, “what else?”
“War,” a blonde haired goth girl in front of me answered. “People have been killing each other for centuries, dude.”
“Love,” the girl next to Adam responded in a sweet innocent tone. You could tell she never heard of oral sex or even smoked weed. One of those pure religious people. Girl, what even in the hell are you doing here in this type of class?
“Hatred,” this Australian guy said. “Fuckin pollution. People killing the environment and the wildlife. People having to work multiple jobs just to survive. Surfing though, fucking awesome.”
“Surfing is wild, I must admit,” Professor Nihil replied with that whole “he ain’t lying” face. “So we’ve gathered that there’s pleasurable things happening and horrible things happening as well. Why is that?”
“Because that’s how life is,” the Aussie put it frankly.
“Indeed that’s what life is, a combination of good and horrible things happening simultaneously. But you didn’t answer the question. Why is it like this?”
Nobody answered.
“Determined chaos,” Professor Nihil revealed. “Everything is predictable chaos with a similar pattern. The similar pattern is putting it simply though. But if we looked at it, from our restarted and new point of view, with, what we’ve deemed sane and insane, we would deem this determined chaos to be insanity.”
“I don’t get it,” the goth girl spoke her confused mind.
“Look at it. Look at the nature of life. Organisms killing and eating each other for their own survival. Repeating comfort routines that align with their biological wiring. Experiencing constant battles of polarizing stimuli of the negative and positive. Yet those senses feed off of each other. Pleasure cannot exist without pain. And pain cannot exist without pleasure, for how can you know what pain is if you’ve never felt being deprived of pleasure? Life is a constant chaotic war determined to spread blindly to whatever direction as it struggles to seek permanence of pleasure. When that search for permanent pleasure itself is agonizing. Life is blind chaos going nowhere for no reason, that we know of so far based off of simple observation and deduction.”
“So what you’re saying is,” the goth girl began speaking, “is pretty much pessimistic nihilism?”
“Kind of, but not exactly,” Professor Nihil replied. “It’s pessimistic in that point of view because it causes discomfort. When in reality it is just nihilistic chaos. Nihilistic insanity.”
“Wait,” I started speaking, “so what the hell are we supposed to do with this information if it is indeed true? How in the hell is it going to help us as a species?”
“There is one way it can help us as a species,” Professor Nihil answered my question. “But it requires this knowledge combined with you studying the notes I prepared for tonight’s class.”
For some reason I felt this intense dread in the air.
Professor Nihil pulled out a violet folder of what seemed to be notes and sketches. He took all 23 pages and taped them onto the whiteboard. Now, I cannot describe them perfectly. But it looked like to be some extremely ancient hieroglyphic text and these ominous looking geometrical things with eyes. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I
Jacob, your friend Clarke is somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Safe from everything. Some of the other students however are, well, lost. I did my best to save them from that fate but they clung too hard to what was causing their pain in the first place. I have gone away, for I know now that this time the police here in this state, will desire to kill me anyways and create whatever reason to justify their actions. I did not kill Clarke. I did not kill the students. I set them free and showed them the infinite truth with my notes. If you wish to know what they know, what I know, all you have to do is write in the last page of this notebook for me to show you, and I will. Be afraid, for the truth is terrifying. It does not bring tidings of great joy to all people. But it reveals All. It us up to you if you wish to be enslaved to death and whatever lies beyond or you can be set free by the hands of the truth of the infinite and of nothing.
That’s all that’s left of the notes. And there’s exactly one blank sheet of paper at the end.
I don’t know what else to say, guys. I don’t know what the fuck else to say. This is insane. This is fucking crazy. I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. But what he’s said just feels too terribly true, it’s unsettling. I don’t know what to do. I might end up writing in the last page to ask him to show me what he showed Clarke and the others.