“If the expansion of the universe is being accelerated, then the cosmological constant tells us that empty space contains tremendous energy. Because energy and mass are equivalent, the energy of empty space acts as a mass, and that mass interests astronomers.” — Michael A. Seeds, Horizons: Exploring the Universe
Inspired perhaps by the stories our cultures preserve —or even by intuition, many of us somewhat naively believe that the universe began with Nothing. (Or, alternately, some kind of infinitely dense speck — but what was that speck expanding with/in?).
If one takes the matter seriously, it’s a bit hard to imagine, since thinking about Nothing reifies it, transforming it into something. Even as a thought experiment, it’s thorny. You can’t actually get your hands on Nothing; what you can get is various sorts of absences; for example, the absence of objects within a container. Although I suspect we can evade the reification issue with some fancy philosophical jargon, the crux is that where there is a context you cannot have “The Big Empty”, in part because the recognition or existence of context carries the implicit capacity of becoming. And, by the way, those recognizers matter. They are the place where this whole problem of Nothing starts (and where, inevitably, it shall exceed all limits previously applied).
Nonetheless, if we suppose that this all started with Nothing, this Nothing is really something anyway, because... well, just take a look around (and within you). If Nothing can be shaped into all of this, or catalyzed into containing all of this, it must be some very interesting stuff indeed.
•••
What we think about Nothing has rather significant implications, not the least of which is the complicated and perhaps infuriating philosophical issues which arise with getting Something from Nothing ‘in the first place’. Incidentally, formally deriving 1 is no small nor unimportant matter, and is apparently far (vastly) less intuitive than we might think…
Ideas about the nature of Nothing, and emptiness of various sorts (we will save conversations regarding Zero for another time) are crucial root elements within our semantic and conceptual systems. In general we are inclined to take Nothing for granted, presuming that lack of content renders (it) valueless, uninteresting, etc. In fact, with even a small amount of direct exploration, this myth is given the lie.
It turns out to be extremely important what sorts of models we form about Emptiness in general and Nothing in particular. If our ideas are too limited, erroneously informed, or discourage us from direct exploration and learning we are in serious danger.
Unexpectedly whatever we think about the nature of Nothing — is hidden within any specific thing we may think of or examine*. It is my experience that Nothing is actually multiply referenced (within any thing, being, word, sum, idea, or relation) in an astonishing fashion that few of us are imaginative enough to allow, let alone discover.
So let us begin here, with Nothing (so to speak). Not the empty sort of vacuous nada too commonly volunteered by somewhat confused minds through well-meaning mouths. No. Not mere absence. This is Nothing @ All. The unthing(ness).
•••
In order to more clearly understand what I wish to point at, it will help to perform a thought experiment using your visual imagination.
Imagine a cube made of lines, like the necker-cube. Now, slowly subtract lines (in whatever fashion pleases you or is easy) until your cube becomes a square (4 lines). Now subtract three of the remaining lines until a line remains. Allow this line to shrink toward its middle (one of my favorite things to imagine a line doing) until you’re left with a very significant (it’s all there is!) dot. Finally, allow the dot to start to shrink toward its own middle (as if it had one), until it seems to be gone. For the moment, we’ll go ahead and agree that it actually does go away. It disappears. And then...
Have we arrived at Nothing? Well, we got to an abstraction of nothing. This is the place where things usually become rather confused, because most would say that ‘there’s nothing there’. But to make that move, we have to overlook some fundamental features of this little drama —and sometimes this is necessary or desirable — but when we fall into this habit automatically we invite disaster. One of the important issues here is that this habit turns out to be very difficult to avoid even if one is aware of both the problem and its importance.
But let’s return to our thought experiment. Those of you who are really looking can already see a variety of issues, but the one I want to highlight is that what is left is anything but Nothing (and indeed, I set it up this way from the beginning). There’s something left, but it’s a nothing-y sort of thing. Very general.
The context.
•••
In fact, the two most important things in the whole game remain — the basic ground of your visual imagination (which, not really being a thing, is a great place to play with unthings), and you, yourself, the living metacontext (that might be someone who produces contexts).
So the living context remains even after the ostensible contents have departed (with the dot); the possibility of imagining a new form, say, a circle, for example. But what is actually present here is dynamic, intrinsically intelligent, and alive. It’s you.
It’s me catalyzed by my simulations or imaginings of you into writing this, and you, here with my records.
The subject(s) with(in) the context(s).
Within the interplay between your imagination and these letters the myriads of contexts and subjects meet and come toward the possibility of emerging into meaning. This meaning doesn’t happen according to rules or experts. It’s you. You are the meaning. There’s nothing missing, nothing extra to be added. Neither descriptions nor translations can improve you. No definition will ever encompass you.
Perhaps you can begin (or proceed) to understand why it could be dangerous at this point to think: “There’s nothing left” — even in a casual way. In fact, everything we started with is still present, but the imaginal shapes we entertained have been transformed back into potential, and thus seem ‘gone’.
Where, exactly, did they go?
•••
The context is intrinsically silent. Mirrorlike, it reflects — but not in the way a glass mirror does — not in the way we expect from our common ideas about reflections. Alice’s ‘looking glass’ is not the sort of mirror you or I are commonly familiar with. Although it makes reflections — they are alive in their own right. The mirror itself is not an object. In fact, there is no class of noun that can encompass it. It is to things as [makers of map-makers] are to maps. Though its nature is stillness, it also rises constantly toward myriad potentials of expression. As you, in you. As us, together.
Beyond all models, and before all the descriptions, we live with and through each other just as we have throughout the histories of organismal development on our world. We represent an entirely new mode of the expression of ‘Nothing at All’, and as we all can clearly see the expression is exuberant, vital, and diverse beyond imagining.
Every boundary we ascribe to things and beings, events and relations, is instantly exceeded and transformed by the very reality in which we carry on these sometimes obsessive acts.
One message we may draw from this is mysterious and awe-inspiring: the way things evolve and are expressed is so fundamentally amazing that no model or synergy of them shall ever encompass The Real. This may be demonstrated without the fanfare I here provide, but what I mean is not merely what I have said. What I mean is that the Everything is growing in such a way that the laws of yesterday are not always the laws of today in precisely the way our ‘objective’ observations imply. And this applies to Nothing as surely as it does to Anything.
Although I have questioned the wisdom of modeling Nothing, I feel that we should urgently continue our curious experiments, perhaps taking encouragement from the very strangeness of the task. For the moment, I hope you will begin to deeply consider the fact that the absence of specificity is not actually Void (akin to pure emptiness). It’s not enough to say that language is a trap here, nor even to show how it is a trap, but luckily, we comprise the key that unlocks this subject, and that happens to be the only way it ever unlocks.
Make the ‘Fibonacci Gesture’ — and reflect yourself! When you see this reflection (and the strange gap in-between) you will understand something very amazing about Nothing, and in so doing, I suggest that your ability to comprehend and experientially contact any specific thing will be radically transformed.
I hope you may discover that Nothing @ All is a very strange thing indeed, and greatly unlike what we have and continue to be trained to expect.
:::Afterthoughts:
• Suppose that Nothing is Pure Undifferentiated Potential (something like pure potential for expression). What might catalyze such an apparently inert substrate into the explosively diverse and colorful expression that we recognize as the visible universe?
• Of the models for the Universe listed below, which most closely matches your own? [Have you explored any of the others deeply?]
A: There’s no word for it, something like metaBeingWayThing
B: It’s an organism, or like one.
C: It’s essentially mechanical, or metamechanical.
D: Mixture of B & C.
E: Depends on your angle of approach, which depends on the purpose implicit in your question.
F: It is the expression of God.
G: It’s an illusion or reflection, like a special kind of dream.
H: (Your own model)
Each of the answers can be seen to represent a path from Nothing to Something, or an angle of departure from context into subject...
•The Universe is often spoken of as if it were bounded, even by scientists. If so, is it Nothing that lies beyond the bounds? If this is true, is this ‘context’ in which the Universe exists?
•Suppose it were possible for something to have -1 dimensions. Can you begin to imagine something (visually) that feels or seems similar to this idea? Can you proceed from there to -2?
•(How Nothing Connects - Involution of Generality/Nothing as a link to Everything) A model where it turns out that it is actually Nothing that connects us— but not in the way some materialist fantasies would imply — in a way so unique as to be nearly unimaginable. Nothing @ All = the tiny piece of Nothing in each form or being which is linked to a single position ‘outside of time’.
• I once heard an uncommon joke from an unlikely source. It went (something) like this: ‘Do you know why God is intangible?’ ‘No, why?’ ‘Because if this was not the case, the universe would be a solid.’ (Image of universe as a single contiguous solid followed [laughter on both sides]).
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