Playing With The Realization That Nothingness Is The Truth Of What Is
Nothingness is with us day in and day out, at all times and all places. Understanding it bridges the illusory gap that separates us from the truth of what is. Playing with it helps awaken us to who we are.
Unfortunately, language is inherently flawed when it comes to discussions about the truth of what is. As soon as you express in words what you take to be the state of affairs, you are already in the quandary of eliciting concepts or object images that are necessarily incomplete distortions of the content of the attempted expression. With that said…
What do I mean by Nothingness and how does it even make sense to talk about it, especially since “nothing” is necessarily not an object, even when our discussion seems to assume so? On the face of it, just glancing at the compound word itself, we have two words: “no” and “thing.” I will assume that a thing is what we mean when we speak of an object or entity. A key feature of all objects is that they lack permanence. They arise and fall; they appear and disappear. A particular thing might be said to last for moments or for centuries, but it eventually succumbs to the ravages of time and disappears. Another way to put it is that things are time-bound. Nothing or nothingness is not. It can be said that if objects have opposites, Nothingness might be considered their opposite.
As soon as one tries to get a sense of the meaning of Nothing, an image of a thing or many things arise(s) and one attempts to make the comparison with its/their opposite. The considered absence of such things or the comparison of there being things with their absence, can provide a meaning for Nothing conceptually. This is a natural first approximation, but it does not really do the trick.
In order to identify any particular object or thing, one has to be able to distinguish it from its background or context, from the rest of what is. In The Book of Not Knowing author Peter Ralston describes the significance of distinction in what we take to be our experience of things. It is distinctions that comprise a thing, that set it apart, i.e., its shape, color, size, and texture, and allow us to distinguish between the thing and its surroundings. Each of these distinctions, in turn, are themselves what we take to be things:
Distinction is everything. It makes up our entire world and everything in it. A rock is a distinction. What distinction is it? It is the distinction “rock.” We may also make a distinction regarding the color of the rock, the weight of the rock, the size and shape of the rock, the substance of the rock…and any other “piece” of information or perception about the rock….1
However, distinction or separation is only notional and based, in part, on our perceptual acuity. For example, two people, Jim and Joe, may look at the same scene. While Jim is able to detect a breeze swaying the bushes and leaves, Joe has better vision and is able to see that a man dressed in camouflage is moving about. Joe is able to make a greater number of distinctions and sees more objects than Jim, who simply sees movement in the bushes and leaves.
We never actually experience objects as separate from ourselves even though we typically interpret them that way; we experience only colors, sounds, smells, feelings or other perceiving related to our senses. And each of these sensory phenomena are intrinsically bound up with awareness such that none of the sensations we have occur apart from that awareness/consciousness.
In his work describing the Direct Path, Gregg Goode has underscored how we mistakenly interpret our perceiving by using the example of the sight of an orange:
Vision deals with colors alone. Vision can’t distinguish between
a. “orange color” and
b. “an external physical object to which the orange color belongs.”
- That distinction is conceptual, not visual. Therefore, to believe that the color belongs to the orange or that the orange has this color is to believe a concept. It isn’t our direct experience. Our direct visual experience simply doesn’t make claims about what’s there, what’s causing our experience, or what something is. 2 [emphasis in original]
Thus, all objects exist as mental constructs. We live and move in a world that is like The Matrix. In order to know that an object is “out there” or “in here” one has to perceive it as such. But the perception of an object out there is not the object. And the thought of an object in one’s mind is also not that object.
All distinctions are invariably judgments, even if such judgments ultimately get baked into the proverbial cake, become second nature and automatic. In other words, there is nothing inherently correct about our judgment concerning the color or shape of a thing. As we have shown in our example with Jim and Joe, one may not be able to detect that a thing is present, even when others claim it’s there.
If the failure to make certain distinctions can lead one to deny the existence of an object, it is the ability to see past such distinctions that can enable one to understand the indivisible, inseparable, non-dual nature of what is.
So, let’s add the “No” of Nothing. What would it be like if Nothing is or if there were no thing(s)? If the distinctions we make are all relatively false, merely judgments concerning mental constructs with no actual objects “out there,” maybe there really is nothing here and the objects out there are illusory or non-existent. If so, then we already know what it’s like when there is No-thing.
Looking at this from another angle, Jed McKenna has described the situation, as follows:
- If you understand that consciousness is what consciousness is conscious of, then you know all there is to know. 3 [Emphasis in original]
- Consciousness is true, but what consciousness is conscious of is not…4 [Emphasis in original]
For the purpose of explaining how this works, I am going to assume that “consciousness” is the same as “awareness”. Thus, both the definition and “mechanism” of consciousness/ awareness are as follows: Consciousness is what consciousness is aware of. Consciousness is true. What it’s aware of, its objects, are not. To the extent that any objects exist, they exist in consciousness. If one speculates that there are objects independent of our awareness, that is all well and good, then we have speculative objects out there, but such speculative objects do not exist independently or outside of consciousness.
If consciousness is what it is aware of, and no objects exist apart from it, it follows that all things are none other than consciousness. But, ironically, that in which all things arise, consciousness, is not a thing.
Now suppose you could imagine consciousness as separate from its objects. And further suppose that that of which you are conscious, things, simply flit in and out of consciousness. And that even you, as an I-object, are just one of the objects flitting in and out of consciousness. You would then know yourself to be, in fact, no-thing. And, given the arbitrary judgments that separate one thing from another, and even separate thought-objects from awareness, those very objects would then be understood as no-things in and of themselves.
And then where would the distinction be between who you are and who anyone else is or who you are and what any object is? And would you not then awaken to the understanding that you and they are none other than consciousness? And why stop there? Once having established the self-same nature of consciousness and who or what you are, there would be no limit to what might be explored and experienced, even as there never has been any such limit.
If a thing is none other than consciousness and consciousness, that from which things arise, is not a thing, then nothing is both that from which things arise and none other than what those things, in fact, are. So, we have a peculiar situation in which nothing turns out to be everything and everything exists in and as a function of nothing. And, if we can see the paradox, that one cannot be apperceived without the other, the realization emerges that truly nothing separates us from the truth of who we are!__________________
1. Ralston, P. (date unspecified), The Book of Not Knowing: Exploring the True Nature of Self, Mind and Consciousness [Kindle version] Retrieved from Amazon.com, Sec. 24: 17, at p. 528.
2. Goode, G. (2016) After Awareness: The End of the Path [Kindle version] Retrieved from Amazon.com, at p. 127.
3. McKenna, J. (2013) Jed McKenna’s Theory of Everything: The Enlightened Perspective [Kindle version] Retrieved from Amazon.com, at p. 47.
4. Ibid, at p. 50.
