Why the Universe exists Timelessly: A Journey Beyond Nothing
If someone says, how did something come from nothing? What are they really asking about? Most of us think we know what somethingness is, but what exactly is nothing? Let’s find out.
We cannot imagine nothingness, that is, if we are referring to a nothing prior to existence. We can describe the type of nothing that is common in our lives, the nothing that we encounter everyday. There is nothing here or there. There is nothing to talk about. There is nothing in the refrigerator. That type of nothing is something empty, something lacking substance, something uniform or plain or simple. But the other nothing that is prior to existence is a special case in terms of semantics and meaning. By definition, words simply can’t describe it, so it is different than everything else that we define with words and everything else imaginable.
In truth there are two very different nothings, and presently the two are entangled together when they don’t belong together. In other words, there is actually something wrong with the word nothing as we use it today. If we carefully study the definition of the word nothing we can discover two very different definitions of nothing. One definition of nothing is a physically real condition that has no discernable form or substance, such as a white canvas, or a uniform void in empty space. This type of nothing is real and exists, and is actually quite ordinary. An empty refrigerator has nothing in it. A white artist canvas has nothing painted on it. The real nothing is always a place or a space that is uniformly undefined, where there are no distinct things. There is just one thing, like one color, or just space alone, so we call it nothing. But the other definition of ‘nothing’, is nonexistence, which is a very difficult concept to understand when defined separately from the real nothing, which is the very reason we confuse the two. We confuse the two out of need, because one we can describe, the other we cannot.
When the dictionary defines nothing as ‘something that does not exist’, it is reasonably obvious that the syntax of the phrase makes no real sense. How can ‘nothing’ be a something which does not exist? In fact simply using any word in an attempt to mean non-existence creates a sort of riddle. How do we make a word refer to something that doesn’t exist? What word can represent a form that isn’t a form; a thing that isn’t a thing? What language can define a concept that has no reality or meaning?
Of course we cannot solve the great old riddle of how something came from nonexistence. It’s the ultimate oxymoron, and the ultimate contradiction in terms. We cannot even refer to a state of nonexistence when there is no such state, and no such form, to refer to. Any attempt to describe it isn’t describing it. Any word representing it, isn’t representing it. Non-existence can only really be defined as something that cannot be defined with a word. It can only refer to something that cannot be referred to. Obviously there is a vexing fundamental problem here. Any attempt to define a nonexistence using any meaningful idea or thought, by using the meaning that otherwise defines all language, that defines our reality, is predestined to fail.
Nonexistence cannot be. It cannot exist. It cannot even be meant. And that predicament, that total paradox, is very different from the real nothing that exists and can be talked about. And the fact that we confuse these two concepts is the very reason we don’t yet clearly understand why we exist. We exist because there is no alternative. There never was a non-existence in the past and there never will be a non-existence. Existence is the default setting of reality. Existence belongs here. It has always been.
The Real Nothing:
Imagine you are standing in a white world, like the commercials or movies portraying heaven. In this world there is nothing but white everywhere. The oneness of white extends away from you in every direction. You try to look out into the distance, but because there is just the one color you can’t tell if the space of this world extends out forever or if its edge remains just out of reach. As you reach out your hand, you realize that your physical body provides the only sense of distance here. Your body is all that exists in a giant field of nothingness. There is no length or width beyond your body. There is no distance to anywhere else, because there isn’t anything else to measure a distance to. So if your body happens also to turn white, then suddenly all sense of dimension is erased. The very meaning of place and distance is lost. Soon even the one color of white will disappear from your experience. You will soon become blind to white, because you don’t have any other color to judge the meaning of this one color against. Soon, for you, this endless white world becomes nothing at all.
If you were born into this one color dimension you wouldn’t ever be able to see it, you would not even know it was right there in front of you, since you would not have any other color or shade of gray to reference it by. Someone who is blind, for example, doesn’t see black or darkness, because even if they did temporarily upon initially going blind, the black quickly loses meaning for them because it is just one color, and without differentiation the mind interprets such a world as a perceptual nothing. And in fact the mind is correct, because this is the real nothing that exists in physical reality. The real nothing is just singular form. A real nothing is a singularity, and a singularity is all a real nothing can ever be.
Within a singularity, all distances and locations lose meaning because once there is a perfect unity, a oneness, then every object, every distance, every place, is the same as any other. Singularities are commonplace. Any single color is a singularity. A perfect blue sky is a singularity. The most common everyday example of a singularity is the ordinary empty space we travel through, which is why we typically refer to it as nothing. Never the less, singularities can have content. Most everyone has heard the idea of a polar bear in a snow storm. Singularities can even be full instead of empty. Suppose we take everything from a household refrigerator, put it all in a big stove pot, add some water, and begin stirring. After we cook all this awhile all the distinct parts begin to break down and blend together evenly into a soup. If we keep heating and stirring this stew for five or six hours, or two or three days, eventually all the many ingredients will unify into a single paste-like substance. Many have become one. All the ingredients of the refrigerator are still in there, within the one, they have just transformed into a singularity.
There are extreme cosmological singularities in our distant past and our distant future. Singularities are an interesting novelty of reality because, in the same way all the fruits and vegetables, the condiments, the juices and milk, in the refrigerator all vanish in creating the paste, all the physical properties of our universe suddenly vanish into thin air at the stage of becoming a singularity. If we imagine the infinity of all possible universes unified into a singularity, it would still have no size or properties. In fact if all possible worlds are at some ultimate level unified into a whole, the totality becomes something we perceive as nothing at all. The great unified whole is the white world. It can be imagined the size of a pin head small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, or an endless space stretching out forever. It can be said to exist in any point of space, as well as every place in space, here, there, and everywhere.
Why “this is” rather than “that is”? It’s because we are pointing to this, rather than pointing to that. It’s because we are still within this rather than within that. it’s because we are at this state rather than at that state.
Why we could think the opposite while it doesn’t exist anywhere (based on our consideration logically). It’s because our first thought was (already) derived from reality but when we were thinking the opposite, it was based on the structure of the thinking itself where there was no obligation for our second thought should be linked to reality.
We were thinking “because if we could think of it then there was reality of it”. But the fact is that we are thinking now and it may be derived from previous thought rather than it was derived from reality itself (at the same level that was owned by previous thought). In the sense that our current thinking may not only be linked to the previous thought but it may be linked to reality but there is no assurance compared to the previous thought (that already linked to reality). Forcing it would be considered as inequality comparison.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
– It’s because we are making inequality comparison. By hoping that our thought (about “nothing”) must be linked to reality as already happened on our previous thought (about “something” that could be traced back to reality). It’s far beyond as it should be. It may be considered as inequality comparison (it may or may not be considered having link to reality). We think there is something that “it doesn’t make sense” but actually it makes sense that we are dealing with inequality comparison.
+++ “Inequality comparison” doesn’t have to be considered having no relation with reality, it’s just that may have or may have no relation with reality. +++
– Essentially, it’s because we are STILL within not nothingness. Otherwise we will see nothingness as our neighbor. In other words, we were thinking about “exist” within not nothingness, and while we were thinking (finding, formulating, defining, observing, and similar to these) about nothingness, the fact that we were STILL thinking it within not nothingness. There is no escape. We are POINTING TO (saying about something as) nothingness. It’s because we are STILL within not nothingness (something).
”Someone who is blind, for example, doesn’t see black or darkness, because even if they did temporarily upon initially going blind, the black quickly loses meaning for them because it is just one color, and without differentiation the mind interprets such a world as a perceptual nothing.”
I am the only one here trying to imagine how it would be to be blind now? Seeing a nothingness that isn’t black. Fucking mind-blowed. The book Blindness by Jose Samarago just went to a new dimension to me.
Thank you for sharing this mindbomb.
The mainstream view of nothingness is of a ‘complete darkness’ and the word ‘darkness’ refers to pure black. That’s why people are so afraid of death. The current view of death in our society is that when you cease your organic functions, so does your eyes, so they expect everything to turn black. People are afraid of being locked in a dark room when they die. Like if they would still be conscious to realize that. Of all possibilities, we take the most depressing one.
@fercgomes, “Seeing a nothingness that isn’t black” – but that’s the thing….you wouldn’t actually “see” anything. You wouldn’t have a sense of sight. Sight wouldn’t even exist to you. You wouldn’t even know what it means to see. It’s a complete mindfuck to think about, but the best way to imagine it is to imagine not having your sense of sight at all, which is hard to do, because when people try to imagine that, they imagine blackness. But imagining blackness is still imagining that you’re seeing something. If you see black, you’re still “seeing”. So trying to imagine not having a sense of sight is a very hard thing to think about.
@chodebalm, Maybe the very fact of imagening something, is a ‘sight feature’. We never cease seeing while we’re alive, even when we close our eyes, we are still seeing, just in a very, very low light ambient. Even with the eyes closed, some light still enters. Try it, close your eyes then look to a source of light. Nothingness is way beyond our understanding. We can’t imagine it. It is too mind-fucking.