What Is Nothing?
By: Etashe Linto
Tags: Universe, NASA, Dreams, Sleeping, Strange Note

What Is Nothing?

Gravity, science says, is a force; energy responsible for our ability to touch, walk, and fall with our bodies on the earth. Up there in the moon, the ball with a dark-sided mystery yet to be uncovered; right there in the space that holds the stars, sun, moon, and our beloved earth, gravity takes on a new face as it decreases by distance and, in the absence of an additional force, causes masses to float in nothingness.

But without nothing, would we be something? And if nothing can be nothing to us, then isn’t nothing also something?

We’ve all heard the stories; humans with near-death experiences attesting to the existence of the AFTER-LIFE. They tell of out-of-body experiences and encounters with bright lights. Still, one must ask, are their experiences truly something or nothing given life by something? What could give life to something in this form of nothingness?

Christopher Timmermann, in 2018, explored Near-Death Experience and its similarities with the psychedelic substance, N, N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT. The potency of fantasia, as DMT is commonly called, surpasses that of the common LSD and magic mushrooms, as its intense effect kicks in early, triggering a temporary altered state of consciousness.

‘Near-death experiences (NDEs)…’ Christopher and his team of eight medics write, ‘are complex subjective experiences, which have been previously associated with the psychedelic experience and more specifically with the experience induced by the potent serotonergic, DMT. Potential similarities between both subjective states have been noted previously, including the subjective feeling of transcending one’s body and entering an alternative realm, perceiving and communicating with sentient ‘entities’ and themes related to death and dying. Result: we found significant relationships between the NDE scores and DMT-induced ego-dissolution and mystical-type experiences.’

Following scientific speculations that the spirit molecule, DMT, is released from the pineal gland during birth and death, one, then, must wonder whether something indeed exists in the nothingness of death. And so if the mind is being influenced by this compound, then they have indeed experienced nothing but imaginations of a subconscious design. A puzzling question then follows; can our unconscious subconscious be desirous of something when we are in nothing?

Then there are those who give vivid accounts of events around their environment when they live as observers in spirit forms. Those who tell the doctors exactly what they wore, and did, and said as they performed surgery on them while doused with general anaesthetics. Is that, too, nothing?

When we say “it’s nothing” to questions about our stressors, we hide nothing in something, giving it an unspoken, yet understood identity.

At night, the clouds turn into nothingness. Still, this nothingness is occupied by air; and starry reflections; and human activities in the sky.

When, at night, we ferry into the unknown corners of sleep; where neurons light the brain that paralyzes our body; a state of deep sleep where, upon wakefulness, dreams go forgotten. Where do we go? Into nothingness? Or is the mere act of being asleep just something for nothing to exist, thus giving meaning to nothing?

When Lincoln said ‘knowing that I know nothing’, we believe that he meant it to be a saying that grooms our intellectual abilities; a saying that drives us to strip all confidence in our knowledge and open up space for learning from the world. The ultimate act of curiosity. But what does it mean to know nothing? Isn’t it just a desire to know something? Everything maybe. Because, of course, even in curiosity, we don’t deny that we are empty heads; that we hold no knowledge. Isn’t it so that as we search curiously for something, by stripping away pride and picking the eyes of children, that we search, not with nothing, but, indeed, with something. An intention.

If our perception of the world is shaped by the things we are exposed to, then it means we carve something out of nothing.

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Nothing is the formation of all things. When we fear, we live in nothing; the dark empty space where our minds are dragged by unseen weights. When we fail, we are gripped by nothing; the emptiness of regret and contemplation from fear which is of itself nothing. When we laugh and cry, we fill the nonexistence of those emotions with something that births them. When we say we are hopeful and choose to work with faith, we fill the absence of (which indeed is nothing) with a picture of our desire for.

The past is something but the future is nothing. We consult the past to predict the future, one that will become nothing to us when we cease to become something. And this brings me to death, our ultimate nothingness. Dead humans are yet to emerge from the grave to confirm the existence of something after death. Our current ideas of what is are tangled speculations romanced by our individual beliefs in the aftermath of earthly existence. When we say ‘rest in peace’ we merely want to believe that something indeed exists in this nothingness that we all meet in the end. Well, maybe something does exist in this nothingness. We, after all, purportedly lose up to 21 pounds once biologically dead. So, maybe the pounds lost are the passage of our spirits and if the spirit exists after death, perhaps something indeed exists, but in nothingness.