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The philosophical view known as Idealism posits that reality is, in some necessary way, linked with and dependent on cognitive perception and the understanding of ideas. This is not necessarily to say that the physical matter of one’s body or things outside of one’s body occur only in consciousness, but that one’s knowledge of their reality only occurs in consciousness and thus, their reality is interdependent on consciousness. Even if one doesn’t agree with Idealism, one could still agree with the premise that our mind creates – or allows – our sense and experience of being. And so, if our mind and consciousness are lost upon death, then we are faced with a non-being of reality. A point at which we could no longer even imagine everything in the universe being removed because, as the imaginer, we would be too. This of course would potentially be the absolute nothing. It is strange and rather terrifying to consider this; that we can be something for now and nothing forever. But perhaps only because of the fact that we are nothing forever, can we be something for now. A negation of all other things across all other time and space, a being amidst everything else, and nothing more; and perhaps only because of which, we are something right now. The nothing comes first. Nothingness precedes consciousness, and the conscious act of negating, or imagining nothing, is an act that is derived from the nothingness. In other words, the non-being acts on being, allowing the intellect to negate everything except itself back to it. For example, by self-identifying our self as our self, we have determined that we are our self minus everything else, which is to also say, we are who we are and nothing else. Our total sum of perceptions and understandings, all determined through this same process of negating every individual thing from everything else, consolidates into the last and final negation of self-knowledge. Nothing isn’t the opposite of being nor what everything come from per se, but what allows something to be at all. It is possible that nothing doesn’t necessarily create everything but rather, serves as the backdrop that allows everything. Like a blank canvas is to the painting, nothingness is to the being of the canvas itself. Likewise, to the painter painting and every particle involved. It could then follow that, at the risk of more seemingly rhetorical wordplay, everything and nothing are one, in simultaneous, interlocked coordination with one another, everything contained by nothing, nothing supposed by everything. The blank canvas to the painting. The nothingness to all space and time. In the words of Alan Watts, “So in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it’s your reality, then how can anything contaminate you? All the ideas of you being scared and put out and worried and so on, it’s just nothing. It’s a dream. Because you’re really nothing. But this is the most incredible nothing. So, cheer up! You see?
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