“Nothing”—you end up with something or everything

 

“Hello….Hello…”

“What are you doing?”

 “Nothing” …”

 “Come on …”

“No, I cannot right now….”,

“Why???”

 “I can’t!!! I am expecting some guest today…” 

There you are my, friends!! The word ‘nothing’ seems bizarre. Generally, it stands for the absence of something, the absence of a friend, money, action, a book etc.

These expressions are part of our every-day-reality:

"Who is entering?

“No one."

Who is this “no one”? Let us ask the question– whether one can construct a mental image of ‘no one’. For me, it is a fascist word that compels one to rule out the whole world from its domain. Simply put, the word conjures up the whole and eliminates the whole, like, John Keats exalts the beauty of ‘unheard’ melodies. This expansion of the unheard … spread like a spilt bottle of liquid.

 However, one is enchanted by the complete negation of the totality of Existence. Once one can get at Nothingness, totality slips away and leaves a void behind. 

Language, thus, takes away both the real thing and its surrogate concept. The word ‘sweet’ does not give us the taste of sweetness nor does it bring any sweet thing before us. Similarly, a concrete instance of the word ‘flower’ refers to a flower only and negates the whole world in its singularity. …Lo! We were taught that language is a written mark in which the reality of the earth continues to exist. But here, my friends, it stands against the world because it cannot ‘penetrate the innermost core of things’.

 There are several examples of nothing which never puzzle us. "There is nothing in the box". "You might be hungry because you had nothing for lunch”, which refers to the empty box and not having edible things. Someone asks, “what happens to your project?”, One simply answers, “oh! That was nothing”, that is, it does not materialize. That's why if one thanks someone for doing something, one might reply, "Oh, it's nothing," to mean the effort was not at all significant. After having argument with my friend, we act like nothing happened, which is fine. "I'm nothing in their eyes", “He looks nothing like his father” – several examples, where "nothing" is the absence of meaning, value, worth, relevance, etc. How the poet declares that ‘life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing!"  

 

Thus, ‘nothing’ has a strong potentiality for everything from the blank canvas of the artist, to the creation myths of the universe ex nihilo, "out of nothing" to the richness of the quantum vacuum. The simple reason to mention it means that the concrete nothingness differs from mere abstract non-existence, such as the square circle.

The fact that one can discuss the proposition ‘Pegasus exists’ ‘God exists’ is a proof that ‘God’, as used in that proposition, is a “disguised description” of an almighty being, or a “a fictional horse which has such and such characteristics”.  

“Nothing” is indeed a difficult notion to grasp, it perplexes physicists and cosmologists, yet thinkers throughout the ages have had a good stab at it. The notion has thrown up with so many absurdities and surprises:

 

Steam rises from the cup of coffee

Forming a silhouette against the no man’s land

Naïve me surmise the time is in command 

but it trickles through my fingers just like sand.

 

On the death of his friend Michele Besso, Einstein consoled his widow with the words, "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

 

In this scenario, vacant space is not "nothing" but, rather, a receptacle in which material objects can be placed. This characterization of space reached its pinnacle with Isaac Newton who asserted the existence of absolute space, because "nature abhors a vacuum”. For instance, Śūnyatā like "nothingness" is considered to be a state of mind in Buddhism, meaning thereby achieving Bodhi. Here the tradition allows one to be focused on a thought or activity at a level of intensity of egoless state of being in which one fully realizes one's own tiny status in the cosmos. A classic example of this is an archer attempting to erase the mind to better focus on the shot.

 

Sartre considers consciousness as "nothing" having non-positional quality since consciousness cannot be an object of consciousness, a unique being that exists for itself. Still, the question remains whether consciousness is always and essentially consciousness of something, whether this "something" is a thing, like a person, an imaginary object, etc. a house whatsoever? Although physical scientist flirted with the ideas of basic building blocks, that is atoms — between which space could exist. From his experiments on motion, Galileo inferred the pure motion of an object in vacuo. A reader may be guided on the perilous journey of ether, through Einstein's space-time to the paradoxical world of the quantum to the Higgs vacuum from which all particles gain their mass, to the dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the Universe. I am reminded of Panditji used to talk about several srutis in between the two svar-s, like S to Re and onwards, there is always a scope for conjuring a sruti in between.

 

When one allows oneself to do nothing, one gives the brain a chance to process experiences, consolidate memories, and reinforce learning which triggers more imaginative ideas. This confusion on the problem of Nothingness has mostly arisen due to the equivocation of such statements as “Nothing is there,” which may mean either the negation of something or affirmation of “nothing” as a separate entity. So Nyaya, a school of Indian philosophy, accepts it as real entity. 

 

 After a good search for an important paper, my mother asked me  –  “have you searched properly?” and I answered “yes,  there is nothing, I saw nothing therein the drawer.” What is this nothing which lies coiled in the heart of existing, like a worm. Even if one negates, one derives from it that which is negated. As the pot is held by its emptiness inside, human is held by the awareness of their nothingness. I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness, and lo!! Nothingness eludes all our efforts to capture the molds of intransitive writing to its logical conclusion. Carroll is over and over again seen to be fascinated by the idea that Nothingness is more than what meets the eye:

“The cat appears from the void and slowly vanishes back into it leaving behind him just a grin”. Can a cat’s grin exist without its master? Carroll does not hesitate, he is certain that it does. 

 

We think of nothing as "zero" when we define it mathematically. …."Zero minus zero becomes a null set. That's as close to nothing as I can imagine. And if you do the reverse, you put a null set in another null set, you create zero." It is said that everything returns to zero or nothingness before being created a-new, emptying the mind of all worldly thoughts and detaching from the awareness of physical body in order to attain liberation and peace. The number zero has very special functions in calculation. Anything added to or subtracted from zero remains unchanged. Any number multiplied to zero gives zero while any number divided by zero gives infinity. Interestingly, when we add zeroes after a number, its value grows ten times.

Thus, there is an entire factor of nonexistence within our physical world…. enormous emptiness between the nucleus and electrons and the universe, so to say, does not exist; it only happens! Spontaneously.  The Big Bang theory indicates that all matter was compressed into a single black hole, and the String Theory proposes that the idea of a zero-energy universe emerged from a vacuum of energy or nothing—where all the positive energy of mass is balanced by the negative energy of gravitation.

Science shows how we can observe an object shaking to and fro around in a three-dimensional space. However, once that object wiggles in a fourth dimension, it leaves our awareness……It still exists, but we can't observe anything in dimensions beyond ours. Quantum physics has shown that particles can move from one location to another instantaneously without living anywhere in between. It is just like a cartoon character that is drawn on a two-dimensional piece of paper. That character cannot visualize what is happening above or below that flat surface….... Does that mean that something doesn't exist just because we can't see it? How about when the Vedantins say that by pronouncing ‘नेति, नेति (not this, not this)… one reaches the zenith of अनिर्वचनीय अनुभूति (indescribable experience) which is beyond the grasp of any sense organ, similar to (तुरीय (fourth one.  In computing, "nothing" can be a keyword used in place of something not assigned, a data abstraction. The Romantic Agony   is rooted in the long mystical tradition of apophatic thinking – thinking that seeks knowledge through negation.

Human existence is a conundrum whereby each one of us exists, for as long as we live, within an overall condition of nothingness, that ultimately permits free conscious choices which again represents a limit on unbridled thoughts.. The dichotomy causes dread and anguish also, which later on becomes a subject of rich ground to explore. Subsequently, humans seek to flee from this abyss of nothingness through indulging into some kind of action.

In his stylistic masterpiece, “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Ernest Hemingway confronts his readers with the omnipresent fear of nothingness. The main characters of the story show different ways of dealing with that problem, but only the older waiter is able to present a satisfying solution, that life does not need to be senseless and end in despair, as long as one keeps composure and protects one’s own dignity and the dignity of others.

 If one wants to be, one will have to drop all concepts of one’s being. One will have to disappear, by and by, and melt into nothingness, again rising to something—a defining moment in the life of every mankind:

I am nothing,

worth nothing, feel nothing.

Yet, sometimes I long to be something,

something more than nothing.

I am finally something.