tradução
Quando tudo o que você percebe tiver sido enxertado em você, de modo que o mundo inteiro seja seus brotos e galhos e você seja o tronco, então as raízes dessa árvore cósmica mergulham no nada dentro de você: além de qualquer coisa que exista, muito além de onde os sentidos possam alcançar. E pode parecer inútil perguntar em que essa árvore poderia estar enraizada.
Mas, na época de Empédocles, havia uma resposta muito específica para essa pergunta sobre onde estão as raízes de toda a existência. Elas estão no Tártaro.
O Tártaro está além de tudo o que existe. No entanto, isso não quer dizer que ele possa ser simplesmente descrito como inexistente. A inexistência normalmente significa a negação da existência; o Tártaro, porém, é algo completamente diferente. Muito mais vasto do que o espaço, que é uma parte da existência, é o poder do puro nada além deste mundo dos sentidos que torna tudo possível, mas no qual apenas nada pode sobreviver.
E conectar esse mundo percebido pelos sentidos a essa vastidão, enraizando tudo no nada, é automaticamente deixar tudo para trás sem ter que fazer nada. Não há necessidade alguma de negar a existência criada por seus sentidos; de ignorá-la; de tentar rejeitá-la ou sair dela. Pelo contrário, simplesmente por afundar até suas raízes, você é atraído sem nenhum esforço para a realidade que está além.
original
When everything you perceive has been grafted onto you so that the entire world is your buds and branches and you are its trunk, then the roots of this cosmic tree plunge down into the nothingness inside you: beyond anything that exists, far beyond where the senses can reach. And it might seem pointless to ask in what such a tree could be rooted.
But in Empedocles’ time there was one, very particular answer to that question about where the roots of all existence lie. They lie in Tartarus.
Tartarus is beyond everything that exists. And yet this is not to say it can just be described as non-existent. Non-existence normally means the denial of existence; Tartarus, though, is something altogether different. Far vaster than space, which is a part of existence, it’s the power of sheer nothingness beyond this world of the senses that makes everything possible but in which only nothing can survive.
And to connect this sense-perceived world to that vastness by rooting everything in nothing is automatically to leave everything behind without having to do anything. There is no need at all to deny the existence created by your senses; to ignore it; to try rejecting or climbing out of it. On the contrary, simply by sinking down right to its roots you are drawn without any effort into the reality that lies beyond.
You will already be rather familiar with that place. For it just so happens to be where this whole book started.
Here are the furthest limits and boundaries of existence where the cosmos comes to an end—past even the land of the Hyperboreans and the mythical world of Apollo.
Here is where Parmenides came to meet the goddess. Here is the source of an understanding, more logical than reason, more commonsensical than anything conceived of as common sense, more down-to-earth than this earth itself, which is so radical it quietly dismantles every notion and leaves nothing.
There is nowhere left to go and no need to go anywhere once you are here, because everything is inside you now. And everything is so small. However huge any scientists choose to make the age of the cosmos, you are more ancient. However far into the distances of outer space they claim it reaches, you reach further.
And you are fresher than time: the indescribable treasure that was never lost and that no one exists to find. For in the whole universe of shifting shapes and forms you are completely alone.
But, once you have realized this, you might just happen to throw a glance over your shoulder for the briefest moment and catch a glimpse of those who are like you—your true companions.