By the same token, the very next determination in Hegel’s _Logik_ — namely, Nichts, nothingness — is also a predicate of the Absolute. "Es folgte hieraus die zweite Definition des Absoluten, daß es das Nichts ist; [...] das Nichts, das die Buddhisten zum Prinzip von allem wie zum letzten Endzweck und Ziel von allem machen, ist dieselbe Abstraktion." ("It followed from this the second definition of the Absolute, that it is nothingness; [...] nothingness which the Buddhists make into the principle of everything as well as the final purpose and aim of everything is the same abstraction.", Enz I §87 Anm.)

Nothing is more entertaining than the above  tickle-and-bump buffoonery of two well-known transcendentalist tomfool clowns acting out their comedy routines before a post-Christmastime audience sated with a sickening superfluity of plum pudding, cranberry sauce and chocolate biscuits. Nothing is more amusing within the commedia dell'arte community of philosophy, particularly in that branch of the farce housed 'neath the billowing canvass of the *Big Top of Being* than the Heideggerian Harlequinade.

Bhagwan in Motley

     The clash of cymbals and the honking of car-horn bulbs which heralds and accompanies the entrance into the reificational ring of the two red-nosed transcendentalist drongos - the standard German thinker-character-clown and the sly, migratory, oriental-sponger agonist is guaranteed to have the mushroom audience on their feet and out in the aisles shouting for more before the spiritual slapstick routine has even begun.

     I refer not to the author of  Der Öffentlichkeit-Agent of the Osho quote, nor to the Ringmaster Der Zirkusdirektor of the Hegel citation, but to the white-faced sawdust-dusted Coco Hegel himself and his oriental sidekick Osho, formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, known many throughout the Indian subcontinent as *Bhagwan Baggypants.*

	As with all religious routines posing as philosophy, the act is aimed at a heterotrophic audience who are incapable of producing their own mental energy, but obtain such soporific sustenance like fungi from sucking at the decomposing detritus of dead ideas. The routine is timeless - the script predictable. The knockabout prop of *death* is introduced almost immediately.
Mushroom-audience  grown from Recycled Dead Ideas

       A black box with a large white question-mark painted upon its four sides is drawn into the reificational ring on a small cart drawn by a pocket-sized dog dressed up in a Periot's conical hat. The *auguste* member of the duo, the po-faced Coco opens the box and delves within. First he extracts a string of sausages which he places around the neck of his fellow droll - Bhagwan Baggypants with exaggerated seriousness.

Next he digs into the box again and this time comes out with four large painted cards. Each one bears a word. The words are: *DEATH =* and *NOTHINGNESS =* and
*TRUTH =* and *THE ABSOLUTE.*

The audience falls silent, for such words are guaranteed to overawe any gathering dumb enough and sufficiently intellectually disabled to pay good money to watch such low-grade entertainment. Only the sound of the opening of sweet-wrappers and the crunching of empty beer-cans breaks the hush.

All at once four little dog-carts pulled by tiny dogs enter the ring. Each cart is fitted with a metal frame surrounded by tiny bells. The frames have slots and are clamped to the carrosserie. The two clowns slide the painted boards into the frames.

With a crack of Ringmaster's whip and a whoop from the philosopher-clowns the little canine quartet race around and around the outer section of the ring to a background cacophony of honking horns and tinkling bells, drawing the two-wheeled carts with their abstractional advertisments behind them.

With a whistle from Bhagwan Baggypants the dogs stop their circular junketing and move dutifully to the centre of the ring and stand in a tail-wagging row.

For the initial line-up the words read:

DEATH = NOTHINGNESS = TRUTH = THE ABSOLUTE.

Another whistle from the Bhagwan and the little dogs change their line-up position.

Now the message reads:

TRUTH = THE ABSOLUTE = DEATH = NOTHINGNESS.

Another whistle and the statement reads:

NOTHINGNESS = TRUTH = THE ABSOLUTE = DEATH.

     Whistle follows whistle and trite word-combination follows trite word-combination. One by one the audience, stand, leave their seats and drift up the aisles and out from beneath the brightly-lit marquee of flapping canvass and into the moonless dark with its wider canopy of twinkling stars.

*The biggest load of pretentious crap I have ever seen in my life,* mutters one complainant, drawing up his collar against the cold night air.

*We wuz robbed!* says another bitterly, *I brought my kids here to be entertained, not to be subjected to the juvenile abstruseness of quasi-wise weirdos.*

*They are no more than mumbling mummers,* interjects a third.

*Do they think that a mere juggling and jiggling of semantic abstraction is *PHILOSOPHY?*

*Those poseurs should be run out of town for conning the townsfolk! shouts a fourth.

*We demand our money back!*

*Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! Out! screams the crowd as the cry is taken up by the streaming departees that have spread out from the flapping exit. The muttering macrofungi suddenly quieten and disperse across the field like the parasitic hair-like filaments of some monsterous myxomycota, sucking at the grass and plant matter in the manner of some grotesque Heideggerian scleroderman hoover.

Alone within the darkened tent the two rejected clowns sit upon the black box wiping the motley from their sweat-streaked faces. The little dogs sit around them, whimpering expectantly to be released from their harness.

*I think it is time we dreamed up a different act Bhagwan,* sighs Coco, *The public are starting to see through this crap and they don't laugh any more.*

*What about trying an Indo-European version of a Nigerian 419 fraud, named after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that it violates, on the Internet?* queries the dusky droll.

*I read that such con-tricks employ as many as 250,000 people in Nigeria - surely there is room for two clapped-out so-called philosopher to make a few reichmarks or rupees? The techniques of the scam are very similar to transcendentalist *philosophy* - the name-dropping, the let's pretend, the reality-challenged audience, the lowbrow target market, the audacity and presumption of idiocy on behalf of the patsy - it will be as easy as falling off a log.*

The Bhagwan draws a white rabbit from within a voluminous hidden pocket. It runs a short distance and sits in the sawdust washing its face with its paws. The dusky defrauder digs deeper and out comes a crumpled newspaper. *It says here that the Nigerian scam is hugely successful. According to this 1997 article losses just in the United States alone total over $100 million in the last 15 months, and that's just the ones which are known of. Most people don't report them.* *It's the same with ex-trannies,* murmurs Coco in the guttural asphyxiate croak that passes for German, *most are too ashamed to admit that they were ever taken in by the guff - it is as if they were frightened of being caught out downloading porn - they would hate the neighbours to find out.*

Hegel in Costume

      The weird philosophical duo smile and shake hands. The writing is on the wall.

*It's the library tomorrow and a hunt for books by Nigerian philosophers. We we'll call in at the *Transcendentalist Joke Shop* on the way and buy some black slap, and penis extensions - we might as well look the part! *

Silently, without a backward look, they leave the huge tent behind them and followed by the four little dogs and the hopping rabbit walk with squared shoulders towards the huge silvery moon that has suddenly popped up to greet them from behind its metaphysical mountain lair of Crifasian darkling clouds.