When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
--Walt Whitman

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Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control;
these three alone lead one to sovereign power.
Tennyson

You can't have something without nothing. Can you?

I suspect that the original matter was always there.

__________________
peace for all
love for all
bliss for all

...may your journey be graceful...

If anything is possible, then the statement, "anything is possible," is possibly false.

Well, it happens, but it is rather rare (speaking physically).

Let's not commit so many fallacies.

1. Color is not something that 'exists;' we conventionally use the word color to describe various kinds of visible light. So it's ridiculous to say that color existed before the painting... or to say that color exists at all.

2. 'Something without nothing?' ... It seems to me that whenever there is something, there is NOT-nothing. Hence something is ALWAYS 'something without nothing,' because the two are ontologically opposed to one another. Unless, that is, you completely change the meanings of the words in a failed linguistic trick contrived to squeeze some spiritual mysticism out of a silly assembly of opposites. 'Something without nothing' is a tautology.

I'd have to disagree on both points. First, in regard to "black hole", 'black' is not being referred to as a color, but rather the absence of color. To perceive color, we must be able to see light, but in a black hole where light cannot escape, we see nothing, which our brains then interpret to be black.

Regarding nothingness, the perception of 'somethingness' is based entirely on our perceptions, experiences, knowledge, and beliefs. It is very difficult for most people to even conceive of what nothingness would be like, because we don't have a common frame of reference that would allow us to perceive 'nothing'. That doesn't at all mean that it doesn't exist, only that it falls beyond our ability to understand. So questions like "what was there before the big bang" or "what lies just beyond our universe" is, as Dr. Hawkings put it, like standing on the north pole and asking ourselves what we will find if we walk due north. To our minds, the question is meaningless, or at best, a contradiction. And yet we are constantly coming upon things that cannot be honestly understood. Where did a thought come from before it became a thought? Was the thought always there, or did it suddenly come into existence? How about a "second"? I've never seen one. I doubt that anyone has. We can define it with tremendous precision, but how do we KNOW that there is going to be another one? For that matter, assuming that there IS another, where does it come from? If it did not exist before it actually happens, does that mean that it comes from nothing? After all, we know that time and space are two sides of the same coin, neither separate, yet neither quite the same as the other, and we know that time moves at different speeds according to the observer, which is to say that it is dynamic rather than static.

Pretty heady stuff for this early in the morning!

I am is just I am, but since God is I am the question arises automatically What am I? Even though God is pure beingness and has no definition, the questioning alone creates the opposite of ...and the separation from.....

With other words I am is silence but since this silence is all and not nothing I am is expressed through creation and experience I am what? Thinking will bring us to no thought and to oneness and then it starts all over again. I am...what? LOL

Now, that's something to look forward to. I think I have to come up with another ending : )


P.S. To the original question: No particles, no energy, no illusion..... just pure beingness.

Ah yes, I often sit for hours, after having physically altered my ear drums so that they are constantly pushed in via another wonderful trick I've learned, and enjoy the beautiful sounds of my favorite music. Oh wait a minute. If the ear drum is always pushed in and not vibrating then there is no sound. oops.

You can't have sound without silence and in the exact same way you cannot have something without nothing. Some-thingness is a vibration between Some-thingness and No-thingness. Sound/Silence, Is/Isn't, Existence/Non-existence, Light/Dark, On/Off, Something/Nothing, 0/1...

To have something and NOT-nothing is to have a front and no back or an up and no down or black and no white. It's meaningless. And it's a scientific material fundamentalist fallacy to think it's possible says Fortyone. But I'm not so sure of myself, so who knows. :-)

Whoa whoa whoa... let's not reify everything here! Seconds don't "exist," they don't come from anywhere and don't go anywhere, etc, etc. "Second" is a conventional standard of measurement we've contrived to compare sequences of events. So of COURSE we can't see one. A second is not an object. It is not energy. It is not matter.

...And if you relate the existence/nonexistence "vibration" to the something/nothing "vibration," then you must be saying that "nothing" is "Non-existent." Which means you agree with me by accident of your hyperventilating polarization.

Don't pretend like every noun in our language is somehow metaphysically real. This error has been committed by many ancient philosophers, from Plato to the Sarvastivadins to the Visistadvaitins and now to you. Thankfully in the last century (owing much to steps taken in the philosophy of science) people began to take a step back from language and to study it in an intellectually honest way. All of us need to do the same, and we need to be more careful with our metaphysics.

The statements and arguments still stand and are still valid. Ignoring them, or making believe that they have no meaning doesn't make them less valid. I also agree with universal opposites...yin and yang. If existence is real, non-existence is real. Up/down, hard/soft, positive/negative, good/bad, somethingness/nothingness. Without one, there is no gauge for the other. I can make believe that black holes don't exist because I've never seen one or experienced one. But no matter what I say, that doesn't meant that they don't exist, and the mathematics certainly points to their existence. Even observational data does. Still, that neither means that they do or don't, and that is my whole point.