Zero. I wonder who came up with that Idea. A word, a concept, an unending hole with infinite vastness; without perceptive reality; a non existence. It is neither dependent on time nor on space but still in some way is linked with this universe. Do you have any least possible idea of nothing being something? A ‘thing’ being portrayed which doesn’t exist.
Imagine a growing fetus in a mother’s womb, evolving to be a child, which you must have seen on TV.
If we go to the point when the universe started, a very small nebula, so small that it would be impossible for you to perceive, at that moment there weren’t any physical laws. Your conscience imagines from it’s experiences, where physical being and the world around you, are all dependent on natural laws. Can you go back before big bang? Is it possible? when there wouldn’t be any concept of ‘back’ before it! The time started from there, it is continuously flowing, and we are just experiencing the present.
Aborigines say, what stands in front of us is our past because we can see it, and what lies behind is our future, lying in oblivion.
Aren't we all just in the present, flowing with the evolving universe, existing concurrently like a part of it. This universe is seeing itself from its own eyes, through us!
Our past is just a memory, an imagination of our mind and the future is just our desire…
Can you break down anything which you can think of? Things which are directly visible breaking down to molecules, atoms, photons, quark and to that smallest ‘thing’ which reaches closest to nothingness. That smallest ‘thing’ which is a common factor between everything and I am not talking about electrons or photons or neutrons, the ‘thing’ which they are made up of, which our microscopes haven’t found out yet. Aren’t we experiencing that same ‘thing’ from different concepts, whether it is time, space, energy, matter or mass? That’s what Einstien proved from e=mc^2, i.e., energy and mass are equivalent and c^2 is the converting factor of units like you multiply 24 to convert day into hours.
Let me put it this way, you are experiencing that ‘thing’ like you experience time by using different units such as seconds, minutes, hours, months and years. They are all actually representing the same thing which is a moment but from different perspectives. In the same way you are experiencing this universe from different perspectives with concepts like time, space, energy, mass and matter. Where that smallest ‘thing’ came out of nothing, where the potentiality of something to be created lies. As said by Stephen Hawking that this universe came out of nothing and will continue to come out of nothing due to the law called gravity.
What are we doing? Aren’t we finding patterns in this universe which leads to information, leading to knowledge, resulting in the perception called science? A perceptive reality and not an actual reality.
The existing ‘we’, mingling, coinciding, rooting with nothingness to yield colors of a majestic rainbow; aroma of a pure, genteel flower blossoming in a wondrous land; the effulgence of a sparkling, innocent face of a person in a beautiful moonless night, walking down the road, passing by you. Isn’t that world our perception, our imagination? If I look into your brain, I will just find electric current flowing through neurons. What is this world to a bat which looks at it like we see an ultrasound? Would you be able to imagine a world as seen by a chameleon, rotating both its eyes 360 degrees in opposite direction? When you say you are seeing something, you are not actually seeing but interpreting different wavelengths which reach your eyes, flowing in your brain as electric current.
Where is that image in your brain when you imagine a beautiful sunset? A dream, where you are falling down from a cliff, terrified, experiencing it, desperately trying to come out of that nightmare. And finally you wake up with a shudder, gasping for air, exuding your horror, perspiring with terror.
Where are you imagining it? No! Not in your brain and that’s the hard question. Your brain is just interpreting signals passed as electric current through various senses. You wouldn’t find any color, taste, touch, smell or sound in your head, it’s just interpretation. Where is that knowledge of this perceptive world hidden? The world which is so different from other species’s experiences. Aren’t we observing a perceptive universe rather than the actual universe through our limited senses?
Science hasn’t come out with a reason for this perception. Yes! it has found out which part of our brain works on this perception through various technologies. But there is not even one theory where that color, taste or sound lies. Your own body, the way you are seeing and feeling it, is a result of your perception. does that consciousness lies in nothingness? What we call with different names such as soul or spirit, independent from the concepts of time and space.
What world is that, where non-existence gives birth to this ‘thing’ whose presence is interpreted by consciousness, giving the ‘thing’ a pattern, and that pattern leads to information which we conceive, such as a tree, a star, flower, hill, water and everything which you see, feel, hear, taste or smell. This existence lies on nonexistence.
A great philosopher once said “Nothingness is the essence of God.”
