Special Essay

If there had ever been absolute nothing, there could never have been a now. Yet now undeniably is.
We are here. Experience is occurring. Therefore, absolute nothingness must be impossible.

If it were genuinely possible for there to be nothing at all, then the existence of something would be inexplicable. Something cannot arise from nothing, for nothing has no properties, no causes, no capacity for change, and no potential. There would be no condition from which emergence could occur—no time for an event, no place for anything to appear, no principle by which becoming could begin. In the absolute sense, nothingness cannot produce anything because it cannot do anything. It cannot even be.

Absolute nothingness is impossible. Yet something is. We experience it directly.

This leaves only two coherent possibilities: either there was never truly nothing, or “nothing” is not what we assume it to be.

“No spacetime” cannot exist in space or at a time. There is no “outside” of spacetime, because “outside” presupposes space into which one could go. There is no “before” spacetime, because “before” presupposes time.

Thus, “no spacetime” equates to non-being in the absolute sense. It would an empty region, the absence of existence altogether. And such non-being cannot exist.

There was never nothing. There was only undifferentiated Being—from which particular beings arise.

Being is not contingent; it is necessary. Therefore, something must always have been. Existence exists because existence cannot not exist. Being, awareness, the ground of reality—whatever name we give it—must be fundamental.

From this perspective, spacetime, matter, and energy are not the causes of Being. They are modes of its expression. They are ways in which Being appears, differentiates, and becomes knowable. The foundational question therefore shifts. It is no longer, “Can there be no spacetime?” but rather, “What is it that is, such that spacetime can arise from it at all?”

What is often called “nothing” before creation is not a void of non-being, but awareness without contents. Not absence, but infinite potential. Not emptiness opposed to fullness, but the convergence of both. Before space and time, there is awareness—not personal awareness, not a mind with thoughts—but the luminous fact that something is.

Something exists because awareness never ceased. The universe is awareness made visible.

The so-called void, the absence of spacetime, is the unexpressed potential that precedes expression. It is the stillness before manifestation, the silence from which form emerges. When we say that spacetime appears, we must ask: appears to what? That appearing—that knowing of being—is consciousness.

Something did not come from nothing. There was always Being—sometimes manifest, sometimes hidden.

What is called the void is not barren; it is fertile. It is an unmanifest field of possibility from which all forms arise. From this view, the central question reverses entirely. It is no longer “How does matter produce mind?” but “How does mind—or awareness—differentiate into matter, energy, and spacetime?”

Spacetime, matter, and energy are representations within consciousness, not containers that hold it. Consciousness is not inside spacetime; spacetime arises within consciousness. Consciousness is not created by matter; it is a fundamental feature of reality itself. Awareness is self-existent. It does not come from anything else; it is that from which all “somethings” come.

This leads to the final and unavoidable question: is consciousness merely local—a property of brains, or is it Non-local, universal, that transcends location and separation. The ground from which all forms arise? Not confined to an individual brain or point in space, rather than isolated, self-contained entities.

There was never nothing. There was awareness: still, silent, unexpressed. And out of its infinite potential, form and spacetime arose.

Hence, consciousness is a larger field of awareness rather than individual minds. What appears as separate consciousnesses are localized perspectives arising within one shared, underlying consciousness.

The world is not outside awareness. It is an appearance in it.