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A couple months ago, a thread was made that removed the Overvoids non-duality, which is obviously weird considering the general attribute that described the Overvoid was that it is a non-dual void. This thread is not to say that the other thread was wrong, partially at least, it's clearing up a misconception regarding the Overvoid.
Eitherway, after some talks with @Xearsay, we kinda realized something pretty important regarding the Overvoid, the general idea is: what the book of Limbo (as well as other sources) describe as the Overvoid, is most likely Dax Novu. As for why? strap in, cuz this do be long.
To explain this, let's go back to the first time we were introduced to this origin story in DC, Final Crisis: Superman Beyond.
Here, the origin story begins by establishing that the Flaw (everything the overvoid is not) started existing on it's perfection, then the Overvoid begins to examine said Flaw, then here, the Overvoid extends a probe that “secures contact” with the Flaw, and then discovers stories and narratives within it, with the Overvoid itself being the white pagespace of the comicbook, it is essentially exterior to all stories, with Merryman describing the origin of the Flaw to be the story with all the other stories in it, which leads us to the next scan, which tells us how the Overvoid essentially has no idea of the very concept of what a story is, then tells us that because of that, the probe “withdrawed” and the Overvoid was contaminated by the endless play of narrative.
In the Multiversity Guidebook, we get more details into that event here, where it is said that the probe described prior was actually Dax Novu, Mandrakk prior to getting infected, and it also describes in the scan after, where Dax is described as having been contaminated by the endless play of narrative.
To summarize, the Overvoid is a perfect void that notices a Flaw on itself, extends a probe to examine what this Flaw is, then gets "contaminated" by the narratives of the Flaw.
Immediately, we can very clearly see how Final Crisis attributes Dax Novu to be the Overvoids consciousness in these scans, considering when Dax Novu was contaminated, the Overvoid was also described as being infected, when in fact, Dax would've been the one to see what exactly the Flaw was with the aforementioned “Monitor Examination,” and due to that fact, the actual examination down here was conducted by Dax Novu himself, which then means that only he would've been Infected, but the comic tells us that his infection is equated to the Overvoids.
To move further with the following, let's first establish the Overvoids only attribute, its undefinability. The Overvoid is repeatedly described as beyond thought, within DC, that practically extends all things that can be imagined, and all that cannot be imagined, known as the “dimensional superstructure”. This is also explicitly shown in Final Crisis with the book of Limbo, the book essentially represents the whole infinite monkey theorem, where a monkey randomly typing on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will type any possible given text, including the full works of Shakespeare at random, and by the time of Final Crisis, that book was essentially the book that contained an infinite amount of pages, a book that contains all possible books.
Point is, this book is essentially the story of all stories as Merryman describes it, and even it describes The Overvoid as an “immense awareness without limit or definition”. With that set in stone, its easy to just apply that same logic right back at the book of Limbo itself, as that it is simply impossible for the book to capture the actual full picture of the Overvoid, if literally all possible character strings cannot, that is not to say that the Void described in the book isn't the Overvoid, but is to say that it simply does not actually fully understand the full unknowable essence of the Overvoid as the white page, making it, a partially unreliable narrator. And for that very reason, to even attempt to make a statement/thought on the Overvoid, you would've limited it all the same.
Put that in mind and keep it for the next bit. But for now, let's move on to the Overvoids non-duality. There is somewhere around 7 separate instances where the Overvoid is called a non-dual void, four in comics, and three in word of gods.
Perhaps one of the more explicit scans for this is right here, in Green Lantern (2019) #1, the Overvoid is just blatantly described as a “non-dual omni-awareness” now, fret not, these words are not just random mumbo jumbo but actually philosophically mean something. I'll try to use this school of thought [Hegelianism] only to explain it better a little better because of this being a prominent concept in it, but to summarize, Hegelianism essentially posits that reality and idea go through the “dialectical process”, a triadic movement of thesis (a statement about a thing), antithesis (a contradiction to that statement) and a synthesis (a resolution of the contradictions in a higher-level understanding)
A “non-dual awareness”, would be like the final synthesis to pretty much everything, it would transcend all the contradictions that make a subject a subject, and an object an object, transcending divisionality as a whole, in the sense that it would be an awareness, that knows no differentiation from anything, not even dualties, and thus, an awareness that is non-dual. This does indeed exist in the Overvoid, considering the Overvoid, is indeed, a non-dual mind that resolves all possible contradictions.
In Final Crisis: Secret Files, the Source (which we accept to be the Overvoid, even though the reality is more nuanced, I digress), is referred to as the ultimate concept, that contains all concepts (“life and anti-life, evil and good, up and down, in and out, black and white, all at once”), as well as their opposites.
In Doom Patrol vol.1, issue #41, the story introduces a Tower of Babel type concept. Here, a metaphorical "tower" is described as originating from Earth and reaching the heights of the heavens. Here, it is described that advancing through its levels symbolizes an ascent of consciousness toward divinity. In the subsequent scan, it is suggested that Judge Rock has perceived a path beyond the very notion of duality itself, and finally, here, the tower concept signifies a symbolic desire to surpass the literal concept of duality and attain unity with a fundamental state of pure consciousness, I.e. the Overvoid.
Furthermore, in Kid Eternity vol.2 #3, this is more expanded upon with it being stated that all things emanated down from a “pure being” that is without definition. With that emanation being considered falling down through the strata of consciousness, as a form of fall from “non-duality to duality” (I.e. the non-dual awareness we talked about earlier), with it being described here how this "tower" described prior can be climbed, reaching back into pure being.
The Overvoid itself dissolves all contradictions into its unity.
And if the concept described above is maybe a little confusing, no worries, this illustration by yours truly might help explain it better:
This is all explained in the final issue of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, in which Superman, after reading the book of Limbo, and ascending into a more meaningful level of existence to pilot an armor of pure thought (another prominent Hegelian concept), calls Mandrakk the “part of monitor that felt contaminated by the Flaw”, following it with “isn't it obvious?”
The Overvoid itself is a literal mind, not that it is a brain connected to a body, no, it literally is a super-mind that contains everything within itself, being a part of that Super-mind that got “contaminated” immediately implies that Dax Novu was no more, no less, just the part of the Overvoids consciousness (thoughts and feelings specifically) that took issue with the Flaw being put upon this “perfection.” Something that we can already make out without the above, because again, the Overvoid resolves all thoughts overall, obviously by extension including thoughts about its own self.
As seen in the Arthurmag interview above, where Grant says that a sentient being might confuse an encounter with the Overvoid as an encounter with God, but considering the Overvoid would resolve thoughts regarding itself as well, this would be no more then just another resolved thought within it (I.e. the Overvoid is God). So the book of Limbo, eitherway, failed to really capture the full essence of the Overvoid, but what it was able to capture, was Mandrakk.
As if this wasn't already clear enough, in Supergods, Grant explains this further here, by explaining how Mandrakk is at the end of day, generated by the Overvoid as a “what if?” question where the white page of a comic takes issue with the material put on it, with the scan actually saying that Mandrakk is the cosmic vampire that was generated out of the Overvoid as a form of “fighting back” against that material, but again, we can verifiably confirm how Mandrakk wasn't particularly the original probe, that would've been Dax Novu, and how he was reborn as Mandrakk, with Dax Novu being the part of the Overvoids consciousness that took issue with said material.
That is not to say that I think Mandrakk is literally like a second, lower Overvoid, it is to say that the book of Limbo captured a book that is not as “perfect” as the Overvoid, because a statement such as "the Overvoid is the immaculate perfection" would lose its meaning when applied to the Overvoid, simply because if "The Overvoid" and "immaculate perfection" essentially refer to the same thing when applied to a oneness, you haven't conveyed any meaningful information, or at least, information that actually defines the full scope of the Overvoid. With that limited view, this limited scope of the Overvoid will be assumed to be the “part of monitor that felt contaminated”. And we should probably start looking at Overvoid statements in general in that same fashion, that to describe the Overvoid, you would've essentially failed to describe it off the jump. Here is another illustration that should explain it better:
So to just summarize the above, give Non-duality (Aspect 2) back to the Overvoid, because it has never even directly interacted with the Flaw, or is it even possible for the Overvoid to view the Flaw as anything, because the Overvoid resolves all things back into a unity, Mandrakk was simply that part of the mind that is the Overvoid, that felt as if it was contaminated by the Flaw, so if the Flaw is a “contradiction”, the Overvoids awareness has already “resolved” it.
What level of non-duality, then?
Let's get something out of the way, the idea of the initial Flaw seen in Final Crisis was not particularly that it was literally everything that the Overvoid could not be, in the essence that if the Overvoid is completely perfect without contradiction or duality, the Flaw would be all contradiction, and duality, and but specifically, all possibilities that arise out of them, as seen in the second quote above.
This again, is not to say that the Flaw is inherently separate from the Overvoid, considering how Kid Eternity and Doom Patrol explain it, to arise to the consciousness of non-dual pure being, going from dual reality into the non-dual, you'd essentially just be striping down your reality, mind and spirit down back into the Void, as in, the Overvoid exists everywhere, simply at the deepest level.
So all dualites, all opposites, and contradictions at the deepest, resolved level, are all the Overvoid. But more importantly, the Flaw, represents these dualities, and as we have discussed prior, the Flaw is pretty much no more than a “resolved issue” in the eyes of the Overvoid, even more importantly, the Overvoid itself is a mind, again, if we were to look at the metaphors here, the Overvoid would be the super-mind, and everything else would be within that mind, a figment of its imagination, just how the Monitors (who, prior to becoming narrative based entities, oversaw the entire flaw) are explicitly also figments of its imagination.
And if this wasn't clear already, the Overvoid is most definitely not just "alien" to duality, but very explicitly transcendent to the very concept of what a duality is, as seen in the Doom Patrol scans.
So not only do I propose just Nonduality (Nature: 1 Aspect 2) to the Overvoid, I propose Nonduality (Nature 2, Aspect 2). I also think this could possibly act as a separate key to either Mandrakk, or the Overvoid (or both) being pretty much just the imperfect version of the Overvoid, the one that is seen in the story with the Flaw.
Justifications
Note: this likely gives some form of Transduality (Type 1) to that limited scope of the Overvoid if it ever becomes a separate key, as that it's pretty much described to be as “limitless”, with the Flaw in particular being the only unresolved contradiction or duality in its eyes.
Agrees: Firestorm808 (agrees with non-duality, uncertain as to which aspect), Alonik (agrees, has a different perspective on Mandrakk), Xearsay (agrees with everything)
Neutral:
Disagrees: Deagonx, Elizio33 (Agrees with Deagonx, although is open to the Overvoids non-duality), VeryGoofyToddler (agrees with non-duality, disagrees with most premises)
Eitherway, after some talks with @Xearsay, we kinda realized something pretty important regarding the Overvoid, the general idea is: what the book of Limbo (as well as other sources) describe as the Overvoid, is most likely Dax Novu. As for why? strap in, cuz this do be long.
To explain this, let's go back to the first time we were introduced to this origin story in DC, Final Crisis: Superman Beyond.
Here, the origin story begins by establishing that the Flaw (everything the overvoid is not) started existing on it's perfection, then the Overvoid begins to examine said Flaw, then here, the Overvoid extends a probe that “secures contact” with the Flaw, and then discovers stories and narratives within it, with the Overvoid itself being the white pagespace of the comicbook, it is essentially exterior to all stories, with Merryman describing the origin of the Flaw to be the story with all the other stories in it, which leads us to the next scan, which tells us how the Overvoid essentially has no idea of the very concept of what a story is, then tells us that because of that, the probe “withdrawed” and the Overvoid was contaminated by the endless play of narrative.
In the Multiversity Guidebook, we get more details into that event here, where it is said that the probe described prior was actually Dax Novu, Mandrakk prior to getting infected, and it also describes in the scan after, where Dax is described as having been contaminated by the endless play of narrative.
To summarize, the Overvoid is a perfect void that notices a Flaw on itself, extends a probe to examine what this Flaw is, then gets "contaminated" by the narratives of the Flaw.
Immediately, we can very clearly see how Final Crisis attributes Dax Novu to be the Overvoids consciousness in these scans, considering when Dax Novu was contaminated, the Overvoid was also described as being infected, when in fact, Dax would've been the one to see what exactly the Flaw was with the aforementioned “Monitor Examination,” and due to that fact, the actual examination down here was conducted by Dax Novu himself, which then means that only he would've been Infected, but the comic tells us that his infection is equated to the Overvoids.
To move further with the following, let's first establish the Overvoids only attribute, its undefinability. The Overvoid is repeatedly described as beyond thought, within DC, that practically extends all things that can be imagined, and all that cannot be imagined, known as the “dimensional superstructure”. This is also explicitly shown in Final Crisis with the book of Limbo, the book essentially represents the whole infinite monkey theorem, where a monkey randomly typing on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time will type any possible given text, including the full works of Shakespeare at random, and by the time of Final Crisis, that book was essentially the book that contained an infinite amount of pages, a book that contains all possible books.
Point is, this book is essentially the story of all stories as Merryman describes it, and even it describes The Overvoid as an “immense awareness without limit or definition”. With that set in stone, its easy to just apply that same logic right back at the book of Limbo itself, as that it is simply impossible for the book to capture the actual full picture of the Overvoid, if literally all possible character strings cannot, that is not to say that the Void described in the book isn't the Overvoid, but is to say that it simply does not actually fully understand the full unknowable essence of the Overvoid as the white page, making it, a partially unreliable narrator. And for that very reason, to even attempt to make a statement/thought on the Overvoid, you would've limited it all the same.
Put that in mind and keep it for the next bit. But for now, let's move on to the Overvoids non-duality. There is somewhere around 7 separate instances where the Overvoid is called a non-dual void, four in comics, and three in word of gods.
Perhaps one of the more explicit scans for this is right here, in Green Lantern (2019) #1, the Overvoid is just blatantly described as a “non-dual omni-awareness” now, fret not, these words are not just random mumbo jumbo but actually philosophically mean something. I'll try to use this school of thought [Hegelianism] only to explain it better a little better because of this being a prominent concept in it, but to summarize, Hegelianism essentially posits that reality and idea go through the “dialectical process”, a triadic movement of thesis (a statement about a thing), antithesis (a contradiction to that statement) and a synthesis (a resolution of the contradictions in a higher-level understanding)
A “non-dual awareness”, would be like the final synthesis to pretty much everything, it would transcend all the contradictions that make a subject a subject, and an object an object, transcending divisionality as a whole, in the sense that it would be an awareness, that knows no differentiation from anything, not even dualties, and thus, an awareness that is non-dual. This does indeed exist in the Overvoid, considering the Overvoid, is indeed, a non-dual mind that resolves all possible contradictions.
In Final Crisis: Secret Files, the Source (which we accept to be the Overvoid, even though the reality is more nuanced, I digress), is referred to as the ultimate concept, that contains all concepts (“life and anti-life, evil and good, up and down, in and out, black and white, all at once”), as well as their opposites.
In Doom Patrol vol.1, issue #41, the story introduces a Tower of Babel type concept. Here, a metaphorical "tower" is described as originating from Earth and reaching the heights of the heavens. Here, it is described that advancing through its levels symbolizes an ascent of consciousness toward divinity. In the subsequent scan, it is suggested that Judge Rock has perceived a path beyond the very notion of duality itself, and finally, here, the tower concept signifies a symbolic desire to surpass the literal concept of duality and attain unity with a fundamental state of pure consciousness, I.e. the Overvoid.
Furthermore, in Kid Eternity vol.2 #3, this is more expanded upon with it being stated that all things emanated down from a “pure being” that is without definition. With that emanation being considered falling down through the strata of consciousness, as a form of fall from “non-duality to duality” (I.e. the non-dual awareness we talked about earlier), with it being described here how this "tower" described prior can be climbed, reaching back into pure being.
The Overvoid itself dissolves all contradictions into its unity.
This sentiment is shared again here, when Grant refers to the Overvoid as the conscious ground of being that underlies everything, including all contradictions.
The idea here being that throughout all things, differentiation exists through contradictions, a dog is not the color blue, because there are inherent contradictions between the subject and the predicate, for something that has no contradictions between anything, all divisions lose meaning, and by extension, all dualities also lose meaning, so the in-comic “non-dual” statements also support the WoGs above, but eitherway, we already do completely understand that to this higher level consciousness, the Flaw (all contradictions) is essentially just one big contradiction.
And if the concept described above is maybe a little confusing, no worries, this illustration by yours truly might help explain it better:
Which then brings us all the way back into the beginning of this thread, the book of Limbo interpreted Mandrakks contamination to also mean that the Overvoid itself also got contaminated, and also interpreted the Overvoid to view the Flaw as a contradiction, something that obviously does not add up when we look at all the other scans, and by extension, the book also had to view the Overvoid prior to the probe as just the probe's consciousness.
This is all explained in the final issue of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, in which Superman, after reading the book of Limbo, and ascending into a more meaningful level of existence to pilot an armor of pure thought (another prominent Hegelian concept), calls Mandrakk the “part of monitor that felt contaminated by the Flaw”, following it with “isn't it obvious?”
The Overvoid itself is a literal mind, not that it is a brain connected to a body, no, it literally is a super-mind that contains everything within itself, being a part of that Super-mind that got “contaminated” immediately implies that Dax Novu was no more, no less, just the part of the Overvoids consciousness (thoughts and feelings specifically) that took issue with the Flaw being put upon this “perfection.” Something that we can already make out without the above, because again, the Overvoid resolves all thoughts overall, obviously by extension including thoughts about its own self.
As seen in the Arthurmag interview above, where Grant says that a sentient being might confuse an encounter with the Overvoid as an encounter with God, but considering the Overvoid would resolve thoughts regarding itself as well, this would be no more then just another resolved thought within it (I.e. the Overvoid is God). So the book of Limbo, eitherway, failed to really capture the full essence of the Overvoid, but what it was able to capture, was Mandrakk.
As if this wasn't already clear enough, in Supergods, Grant explains this further here, by explaining how Mandrakk is at the end of day, generated by the Overvoid as a “what if?” question where the white page of a comic takes issue with the material put on it, with the scan actually saying that Mandrakk is the cosmic vampire that was generated out of the Overvoid as a form of “fighting back” against that material, but again, we can verifiably confirm how Mandrakk wasn't particularly the original probe, that would've been Dax Novu, and how he was reborn as Mandrakk, with Dax Novu being the part of the Overvoids consciousness that took issue with said material.
That is not to say that I think Mandrakk is literally like a second, lower Overvoid, it is to say that the book of Limbo captured a book that is not as “perfect” as the Overvoid, because a statement such as "the Overvoid is the immaculate perfection" would lose its meaning when applied to the Overvoid, simply because if "The Overvoid" and "immaculate perfection" essentially refer to the same thing when applied to a oneness, you haven't conveyed any meaningful information, or at least, information that actually defines the full scope of the Overvoid. With that limited view, this limited scope of the Overvoid will be assumed to be the “part of monitor that felt contaminated”. And we should probably start looking at Overvoid statements in general in that same fashion, that to describe the Overvoid, you would've essentially failed to describe it off the jump. Here is another illustration that should explain it better:
But at the end of the day, what is the Overvoid, then? It is the white page that the comic is written, the White page is a non-dual awareness that has no “contradiction” within it, that is to say, to state that the Flaw is a “contradiction” to it as the book says, is false, because the state that the Overvoid exists in, has no contradictions, so the Flaw doesn't particularly even “exist” within it, as I will get to in a second.
So to just summarize the above, give Non-duality (Aspect 2) back to the Overvoid, because it has never even directly interacted with the Flaw, or is it even possible for the Overvoid to view the Flaw as anything, because the Overvoid resolves all things back into a unity, Mandrakk was simply that part of the mind that is the Overvoid, that felt as if it was contaminated by the Flaw, so if the Flaw is a “contradiction”, the Overvoids awareness has already “resolved” it.
What level of non-duality, then?
Let's get something out of the way, the idea of the initial Flaw seen in Final Crisis was not particularly that it was literally everything that the Overvoid could not be, in the essence that if the Overvoid is completely perfect without contradiction or duality, the Flaw would be all contradiction, and duality, and but specifically, all possibilities that arise out of them, as seen in the second quote above.
This again, is not to say that the Flaw is inherently separate from the Overvoid, considering how Kid Eternity and Doom Patrol explain it, to arise to the consciousness of non-dual pure being, going from dual reality into the non-dual, you'd essentially just be striping down your reality, mind and spirit down back into the Void, as in, the Overvoid exists everywhere, simply at the deepest level.
So all dualites, all opposites, and contradictions at the deepest, resolved level, are all the Overvoid. But more importantly, the Flaw, represents these dualities, and as we have discussed prior, the Flaw is pretty much no more than a “resolved issue” in the eyes of the Overvoid, even more importantly, the Overvoid itself is a mind, again, if we were to look at the metaphors here, the Overvoid would be the super-mind, and everything else would be within that mind, a figment of its imagination, just how the Monitors (who, prior to becoming narrative based entities, oversaw the entire flaw) are explicitly also figments of its imagination.
So to summarize, duality as a whole is literally a figment of its imagination, if viewing dual systems as a whole (as well as the very integral property that makes dualites: contradictions) as fiction isn't qualitative superiority, I do not know what is (it is.)
And if this wasn't clear already, the Overvoid is most definitely not just "alien" to duality, but very explicitly transcendent to the very concept of what a duality is, as seen in the Doom Patrol scans.
So not only do I propose just Nonduality (Nature: 1 Aspect 2) to the Overvoid, I propose Nonduality (Nature 2, Aspect 2). I also think this could possibly act as a separate key to either Mandrakk, or the Overvoid (or both) being pretty much just the imperfect version of the Overvoid, the one that is seen in the story with the Flaw.
Justifications
The following either becomes justification for a separate key, given to either Mandrakk or the Overvoid (or both), or just a note under the Overvoids page explaining what we talked about above.
Note: this likely gives some form of Transduality (Type 1) to that limited scope of the Overvoid if it ever becomes a separate key, as that it's pretty much described to be as “limitless”, with the Flaw in particular being the only unresolved contradiction or duality in its eyes.
Agrees: Firestorm808 (agrees with non-duality, uncertain as to which aspect), Alonik (agrees, has a different perspective on Mandrakk), Xearsay (agrees with everything)
Neutral:
Disagrees: Deagonx, Elizio33 (Agrees with Deagonx, although is open to the Overvoids non-duality), VeryGoofyToddler (agrees with non-duality, disagrees with most premises)
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