The Mystery of Nothing
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.
Creation. The next concept after time is creation. We are here at the beginning, and now creation begins.
We tend to associate the concept of creation with the physical realm. We create things.
The first few verses of the Bible make it clear that these words describe that what was being created was the physical world.
Before this point in time (and we can never really know whether or not time, itself, was actually the first thing created by God or if it existed before the creation of the physical) there was nothing physical.
At least not as we know it.
No light. No ants. No mountain springs. No meteors. No spinach.
Zip. Nada. Nothing.
Which means that all that existed before The Creation was Nothing.
It takes a bit of mental calisthenics to grasp just what is being taught us here.
If we can even perceive what that is.
When I ask you, What is outside of our universe?, you will answer, Nothing!
And I could then, in turn, respond to you, Exactly.
Which might make you scratch your head, or even shrug your shoulders.
Because we don’t consider the concept of nothing as being anything, even an answer to an answer.
It is, after all, nothing.
We don’t even have to acknowledge it.
But, think a moment, What is outside our universe?
How does nothing exist, even in its nonexistence?
What does nothing do when it is outside our universe?
The answer to this last question is that nothing outside our universe does the same thing it does before creation, perhaps, even, before time: it sources.
We don’t think of nothing as being a source because we don’t experience it as that in our everyday lives. We don’t go to an empty cupboard and expect to find the makings of dinner there. We would even be considered as mentally deficient if we did.
But if we think about that beginning, that very beginning, there is God and his Spirit.
Where did they come from? How could they exist “in” nothing? Before there was “anything”?
Are they, also, nothing?
Perhaps we have all heard of a black hole, a place in the universe where the gravitational pull is so strong that once something goes into this space it cannot come out again. Not even light.
Is that what our universe is nestled in, perhaps? If so, how did God and his Spirit get out? (Not to mention time.)
So we have to think beyond that. Beyond imagining a giant tug-of-war between God and his Spirit and gravity.
Because you would have to admit that something (the black hole) existed before The Creation of the universe.
And here we are again, outside the universe. Beyond the universe.
Somewhere else.
Except in that being, we are actually nowhere.
I am hesitant to call it even an energy.
It is something that is not.
And we don’t want to think of what is not, only what is.
So what is nothing?
It is, clearly, the source of all that is.
Even God.
But it isn’t something that was generally brought into creation even to be understood.
It stands outside our universe because no matter how hard you try, inside the universe, things are.
To exist, we need air to breathe. And food to eat. And lots of other things.
Things.
This is what this is all about.
Things and the state of no thing.
I have a lesson, The Lesson of Zero. It goes like this: Out of nothing comes everything. The example given for this lesson is the birth of a child coming out of a woman’s womb.
So, it’s not a very literal example because we all know that there is something in a woman’s womb that allows a baby to be formed and then to come into the world.
I think the concept of nothing is just one of those things that we can only meditate on. Consider. Speculate.
Because our very existence defies the existence (as it were) of nothing. Real nothing.
Nothingness.
It is interesting that we have even the word. Because words hold concepts.
The word, itself, is from the Old English, and it meant, something of so little consequence that it doesn’t count as deserving notice.
We use it that way sometimes: Oh, it’s nothing.
Not exactly meaning, all physical creation no longer exists here.
We are unable to do that.
We can use it to mean, an absence of something, as in, I looked for gold in that mine but found nothing.
Which just means, not here, not not existing altogether.
So we just have to give in and admit our limitations in this matter.
But at the same time allow ourselves to “know” that everything came from nothing.
And just admit that we don’t really know what that means.