true nothingness

[Vlitmer]

the philosophy of true nothingness fascinates me because, to me, it is one of the most inconceivable concepts for the human mind to grasp.

id bargain if you asked a random person on the street to imagine nothing they would think of an empty room, some might think of just a white or black space. but it's impossible to imagine nothing. nothing isn't white or black because you need colors, light and wavelengths for color to exist. not only that but an observer to confirm the existence of the colors. true nothingness is no colors, no light, no dark. it's nothing. and its truly inconceivable because every time someone tries to think of nothing, they inevitably end of thinking of something that encapsulates what they think nothing is rather than true nothingness.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this opinion of mine as well as anything you'd like to add.

 

[yuiluy]

Well i can't commentate on nothingness, as i feel you said pretty much all their was, but i heard people refer to very deep meditation as that feeling of nothingness, especially in buddhism. So if you feel like that topic interest you, you should try and get there, maybe you'll feel enlightened

 

[taschr]

There are formless realms in multiple meditation traditions that describe nothing. The seventh jhana is the realm of infinite nothingness, there is the Qabalistic Ain which is translated as nothingness, but neither of these are true nothingness. True nothingness implies a lack of an observer, these states are better described as no-thing-ness. When someone sits in the seventh jhana or contemplates the Ain, they've stripped away every object of awareness, but there is still the fact of bare witnessing happening.

The seventh jhana can go on to become further refined into the realm of neither perception nor non-perception, which is a very trippy state where even the very idea of knowing becomes difficult to pin down. But even here there's still something happening, some gossamer-thin thread of awareness that can't quite extinguish itself. This is at the edge of what consciousness can do, but you still haven't stepped off into actual oblivion or cessation of perception.

The only way to achieve true nothingness would be to not be there at all, which means it's not a state one can verify from the inside. The Buddhists have something close with nirodha samapatti, total cessation. Consciousness stops, mental formations stop, perception and feeling cease entirely. What the meditator experiences upon entering and leaving this state is a gap where they were present at the very moment of cessation and present again at the very moment of reawakening. The gap in the middle of true nothing is completely unknowable.