Parlor Games: Being and Nothingness

Q: What is a “thing”?

A: A “thing” is something that “is”.  From a systems perspective, for a “thing” to “be”, it must have a “content” which has a “context”.  A context constrains and influences the content.  In the world, any Thing + its Context combines to be perceived as a new Thing which then has its bigger, more encompassing Context and so on.  Eventually every Thing is included.

Q: What is the context for Everything?
A: Nothing.

Q: Is Nothing some-thing?  (Because, if it is, then it needs a context.)
A: Yes, nothing does need a context.  We know that a pure vacuum (i.e. total emptiness) can spontaneously generate matter-antimatter particles (e.g. positron-electron.) So “Nothing” is actually a “Potential” (i.e. a “potential something”), and potential things constrain and influence actual things. (Something similar seems to apply in the psychosocial realm.)

Q: What is Everything + Nothing?
A: Existence (think of “existence” as a name referring to «everything that does exist and everything that could possibly exist».) So Existence is a new “thing”.

Q: Can Existence have a context?
A: Yes, it must.  But this context can now only be imagined as something which could have no descriptors at all and could not possibly exist (because if it could exist it would be part of existence above).  A common name for something like that is GOD (but not the «God is Love» or «God is Spirit» type of God).  Such a GOD can only have a name to enable reference to it.  I will use GOD as the name.  Although God “is”, God cannot “exist” in any way that we normally understand existence (as previously described).

Q: Does GOD have a context?
A: No. GOD has no descriptors or constraints or influences and so cannot have a context.  However, having no qualities, GOD can be thought of as permeating and being intrinsic to all existence—if one could imagine that something so extraordinary could coexist with what is ordinary. The only alternative I can imagine is that some special type of barely imaginable nothingness (quite distinct from ordinary nothing, of course) must have been created by GOD.  This special nothingness would enable existence i.e. [everything+nothing] to happen within it … starting, of course, from the Big Bang.

But who can know such things for sure?

Q: Have we achieved anything by this little excursion?
A: I doubt it, but I hope you have enjoyed this little reflection.

It was sparked by my current work on the “Better Self” frameworks.  It turns out that the Primal Quests (the «purposes of life») give rise imaginatively to Model Beings that fullfil these Quests perfectly, and these Beings include Divine Beings that “exist” on Divine Planes.  So this is how divinity is located within THEE.  (Spirituality is something else entirely and it is located in various diverse places within the Taxonomy according to the specific issue.)

WK