Chris Snead - Hideous Strength and Ayin

In Hideous Strength, Lewis has the character Ransom make a distinction between what he was experiencing and the term 'space', calling the word “a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it "dead"; he felt life pouring toward him from it every minute." When I read this, I immediately thought of Ayin, the Kabbalistic concept of “potent nothingness” which is not the 'void' of modern conception, but instead is a profoundly creative force. It is from Ayin that all forms come, for it is the simplest of all creations. Ayin is 'nothingness' insofar as nothing can ever be understood about its true nature. It is from Ayin that all being is made manifest, and ultimately all being is made of Ayin – but again, I must stress that Ayin is a union of being and non-being. This may seem contradictory, but I think that this contradiction can be overcome if one looks at time in a different manner. If one is to step outside of time, one would be could be said to be both living and dead at once – and indeed, if all of matter is merely void spinning incredibly quickly in consecutive levels (as modern science would have us believe), then 'Space' could very well be akin to Ayin.