The thread about Nothing

[koan]

So sue me, Seinfeld!

I walked up to my science prof one day and said "Mr. Bogarth...Space." He looked at me and smiled and said "I know."

How do we conceive of the endless or 'nothing'?

[minks]

the endless as in staring across the plains and not seeing an end to our vision....Oiy girl that is inconcievable to a girl from the foothills.

[anastrophe]

my brain hurts whenever i think about infinity.

[BTS]

Yes I think about it, forever and ever

[telaquapacky]

I don't believe in nothin'. I believe there's stuff out there, and beyond that stuff, more stuff, and beyond that stuff, well, you get the idea. Our brains weren't made big enough to grok all that stuff because we don't need to. I have enough trouble keeping all my plants watered. I'm glad there's Someone else minding the big shop.

[koan]

As a teenager I noticed that when I thought of nothing I had unintentionally put a picture frame around it and would basically just move the picture frame around to show that wherever it moved there was still nothing. I had to be satisfied with that for a while. Like 15 years. Then while spontaneously meditating I burst through some veil and found myself in an indescribable state of being everywhere at the same time, though time didn't exist there either. I know there is infinity but as I returned to my natural state the ability to describe it slipped away. It was something I was aware of but couldn't use my senses to observe.

[Jika]

This thread reminded me of a resonant thought from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being...has anyone else read this book?

"The Darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. (Yes if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!)"

Whenever I think of infinity, for some reason I remember this quote, close my eyes and smile.

[Der Wulf]

So Koan dear, tell me how i can tell the difference between the beginning and end of a circle, or if I search for nothing, how will I know when I've found it?

[koan]

Originally Posted by Der Wulf

So Koan dear, tell me how i can tell the difference between the beginning and end of a circle, or if I search for nothing, how will I know when I've found it?

The circle will cease to exist and the nothingness will find you. You will know it has found you because you will stop asking questions.

[Pythos]

From a scientific standpoint.

The air we breathe is a sea of oxygen molecules, (and trace elements too numerous to mention, even if I could recall.) as well as particles of dust, pollen and other stuff that we typically only notice by sneezing. Yet so tiny as to otherwise go unnoticed, and ignored. Even in the vaccum of space there are dust particles, light waves and radiation from our own and distant stars. So, from that perspective can there be such a thing as nothingness? A point anywhere that is not packed full of sub-atomic particles, or whatever there might be that is even smaller?

Philisophically

The usefullness of a window lies not in the frame, but in the space through which light may pass.

The usefullness of a vessel lies not in its walls of clay, but in the space in which water may be held.

It is from there that one realizes that even nothing is something. Even void has value.

Take for instance the symbol of the Yin-Yang. Literally translated as the light or sunny side of a mountain and the dark or shady side of a mountain. Note for a moment, that you can not have a mountain that is all shade.
The symbol represents a myriad of opposites. Light and dark, good and evil, day and night etc.

Look at how the symbol depicts them. A white field with a black dot chasing a black field with a white dot. One could say that the two appear intertwined, even a part of each other when one reflects on the dots.

That's the secret. ( Or the punchline, depends on how you look at it.) That beyond the obvious difference, there is an implied sameness. That although different the two are actually one, because you could not have one with out the other. For how would one know what light was without dark as a contrast. What need would there be for a concept of good, if evil did not also exist.

Could there be life or existance without death or non-existance?

Even nothing is something, as they are interdependent.

As for infinity. The Universe has to be infinite. Why?

Can there be an inside without an outside?

Out beyond all the interesting stuff like stars, planets, galaxies and such. Out in endless expanses of void, as the case might be. There will always be something further even if it is more void. Whatever concivable barrier that might ecapsilate our universe to impede going further. There would have to be, by its nature, something beyond.

As even nothing is something.

The concept of time is similar. It can have no begining since there would always be a moment before. No end since there would always be a moment after.

( Personally I feel that time is completely a human construct, wholly Terracentric, and meaningless on a universal scale. But that is someting completely different.)