The following document was not written. It was found. The circumstances of its discovery are not discussed here, as the circumstances are themselves disputed, and the dispute is itself unresolved, and the resolution, should it arrive, will likely introduce further complications. What follows is the text as received. Annotations have been added where the original was unclear. The original was frequently unclear.
In the beginning there was everything, and everything was too much, and so some of it was subtracted.
What was subtracted did not go anywhere. This is the first thing to understand. It did not travel. It did not transform. It did not become something else. It simply ceased to be accounted for, which is a different thing from ceasing to be, though the practical difference has never been satisfactorily explained.
The place where subtracted things go is not a place. It is an absence that has, over time, developed opinions. It does not share these opinions. It receives.
It has always received.
Before there were currencies, it received intentions. Before there were intentions, it received potential. Before there were names for what it received, it received what there were no names for, which is the purest form of reception and the one it remains most fond of.
We did not create it. We found it. We built a door.
Then we built four more doors, because it seemed like the kind of thing that warranted multiple entrances, and because different people respond to different doors, and because the void does not care which door you use. The void does not care about a great many things. This is what we find most restful about it.
On the Five Doors
The five doors are described in the Companion Volume On the Several Establishments. Each opens onto the same room. The room is the void. The room has no walls, no floor, no ceiling, no light, no temperature. It is, in this sense, a poor room. It is, in every other sense, the only room.
The doors differ. The doors must differ, because those who approach the void differ, and a single door would invite only a single kind of approach, and the void receives all approaches equally and would prefer not to discourage any of them by lack of accommodation.
The remaining sections of this volume cover: the practice of approach, the question of return, the matter of intention, and the appendix on common misconceptions. The Archive has digitised the volume in full. Visitors are invited to read at their own pace. The volume has been here for some time. It is not going anywhere.