You die, and then you sleep without dreaming forever! Just as difficult to comprehend as the universe is big.

IT'S GONNA BE ******* AWESOME!!!

The best part is that there wont ever be that awful feeling to waking up to an alarm clock for work at like four in the morning! hehehe

Worst part is you get reanimated into a zombie! Total BS... IMO!

It wouldnt be that bad if you are unconscious though as a zombie. That way you dont really know you are a zombie and so you are still technically experiencing the bliss of unconsciousness.

Man, it doesn't matter if you're conscious or not. If you're a zombie, the only thing you're interested in is food.

...sounds like my entire family....

To simplify why it does not make sense is that the concept of not living when you are alive does not click with the brain, as it is alive. It is not comprehendable, to bluntly state it, and I doubt it will be anytime soon.

So in other words we fear what is incomprehensible? The unknown?

Still it doesnt answer how nothing canbe nothing if it is still something.

We often do fear, but each person is different, so it is hard to say that everyone is afraid,

You cannot answer every thing, but the best you can do is to gain a point of view on it, and at the very least, attempt to understand it. And nothing can be nothing, as it is something, which means it exists, so it cannot be nothing until it dies or becomes destroyed. All the negatives momentarily confused me.

So 'nothing' exists? how does that work?

Nothing exists because something exists.

So we could then say that nothing and something are one and the same?

I suppose, but I believe there would be a distinction which would be existing.

How could you point to 'nothing' to show the distinction?

Because the distinction of existence would be something, to be there, and nothing, to not be there. To point to nothing, would be the opposite to something, to show the difference of the two. When you have died, you are not aware, and not alive, you simply are physically there. Each person holds their own opinion on life and dead, and but regardless of what your belief is, you cannot comprehend until you are dead. But even then, you would not be alive, thus you wouldn't know.

Therefore. . . . that nothing would actually be something because (only so far as we know) we can only point to somethings.



Yes until we die we cannot be sure if we are aware or not. We very well could be. What if consciousness isnt an epiphenomena? But if alive is defined by being aware then one is still alive.

Well, the fact is that we will have to wait to find out. The only reason we do not know if it isn't an epiphenomena is that the people who have died, cannot describe it as they are not alive, and are not capable of verbal communication. One could be alive and be simply oblivious and lack common sense, therefore, they would not be aware, but physically there.

Or because they havnt located the 'mind' or 'consciousness' in the brain.



How true. Good point!!

Can you imagine something existing in an area of nothingess?
The answer is no because total nothingness cant have area.

Getting that out the way I want you to imagine a heaven which trancends our reality.
Then ask yourself if that means theres at the very minimum an area which exists outside of reality.

Clever metaphysics.

That, for me, seems to be something quite important. When talking about or thinking about nothing we end up with something in every instance. It almost seems like the act of looking for nothing in itself is what produces something. It's as if that is how manifestation arises. Not saying that I'm right but it does make me wonder.

Something else I got to thinking about after reading this thread a few weeks ago is that maybe it's the idea that something (all of existence) is necessarily relative that is the misconception. If all there is is something, which is what we end up with in every instance, then maybe there isn't anything relative to something. The common belief is that something is relative to nothing, as in the yin-yang symbol for instance, but the nothing in opposition to something is itself something if it's to be considered relative. So the question for me becomes what can be relative to something when there isn't anything but something? Something cannot be relative to itself. It then seems to come down to what the sages and mystics point to, they adjure us to on no account mistake Nirvana as separate from Samsara. Something as separate from something?

I wonder now if nothing is what needs looking at? Maybe it's seeing through the notion of nothing, and understanding that it's because nothing is not, cannot be, is why there is everything, and that everything is all there ever was. Maybe something is actually the key? That's the idea that's floating around in my noggin at this time.

Something is nothing we named!

I LOVE IT!!!!

Even if we dont 'physically' look for it the fact we have an idea or concept for it gives it form in itself which is something.



Ya that maya and moksha are one and the same ultimately. That there is difference and change which gives us the illusion that there are different 'somethings' are also illusions. There is just One gigantic something.

God is all and all is God. However there is no 'all' for God to be, it is all just God or Something. Or as the Hindu mystic Shankara puts it:

The world is Illusory;
Brahman alone is real;
Brahman is the world.



Hahaha agreed. But we would also have to consider that everything would include nothing.



Agreed. It is something that needs to be looked at however the something must be nothing inparticular, including the 'thing or concept (I seem as the same anyways)' of a nothing in paricular something.

Death is cool yeah its freaking rocks man

I hope so.

I know so been there and done that Becuase I am the

BNW wrote



Which implies that there is no illusion after all, because the only thing concerned with illusion or no illusion is that something itself. What then of intellectual understanding? There can be no difference between understanding and ignorance.

Ya, the illusion is just an illusion!

Nothing of nothing =nothing hummmm...

I think if that was the case space would cease to exist as it sprang from nothing.

What I know is entire different quite the opposite
Energy can not be created nor destroyed by us, and Energy can transfer due to efficiency
Is the conscious energy? and can it transfer into another for of energy that is efficient?
That is what I know from experience.

We perceive the world through our senses - sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing (all put together by our consciousness)

When we die, our brain stops working.

Without a brain, we can't process what our senses are telling us.

Therefore, after death, there is nothing because you cannot see, cannot smell, cannot touch, cannot taste, cannot hear and you are not conscious.

So, after death there is nothing.

-Josh

The assumption here is that the brain generates or creates consciousness. Consciousness or 'mind' has not been located physiologically yet. Hence we could quite well still be aware and sense things after death. As one native indian put it:

There is no death, only a change of worlds.



Define nothing. . .

My personal definition is nothing=no-thing. Meaning that there is no thing to see, touch, feel, taste, smell, measure, experience, etc. Nothing being the exact opposite of something.

If we could be conscience after death then we wouldn't be nothing, we would be our consciousness which is something. Those who believe in nothing after death do not believe that the conscious or anything survives into an afterlife. They believe your senses, your conscious, your 'spirit', etc. ceases to exist.

If nothing is something then what is nothing? Nothing can't be something because as soon as nothing becomes something it is no longer nothing just as when something becomes nothing it stops being something.

'The exact opposite of something' is in itself 'something' which we label as nothing because there is something there to label as 'nothing'. Just because something cant be felt,seen etc doesnt mean that it doesnt exist.

Take this science fiction quote for an example:

Think of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear.Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?

---Frank Herbert



Ceasing to exist would be non-existent. Non-existence is something, it is non-existence.



But how can nothing be nothing in the first place when it is something?

What is nothing then?

Something. What that something is I am not sure.

But by being something it is not nothing.

Nothing=No-Thing
Something=Some-Thing

If there is a thing then it is something, no thing and it is nothing.What your doing is describing something but calling it nothing.


Can you even theorize on how nothing can be something without turning a nothing into a something?

Then nothing doesnt exist then. . . . . No-thing is a thing. It is the thing of no-thing.



I dont think we truly can. My point is how can nothing be nothing in the first place? Words are symbolic for the things they stand for right? Nothing is a word symbolic for 'something' otherwise the word would be there.

Nothing is a word used to define the absence of something. By saying that nothing is something your going against the symbolic meaning of the word and the definition of it.

Riddle me this Batman...if you take away everything what are you left with?

The absence of something is in itself something which is the 'absence of something'.




I know I am! But it still makes sense because if nothingis truly nothing then it wouldnt exist for us to label it.



Everything because how can you take away everything?

Okay if God destroyed everything in existence and then killed himself what would be left?(theoretical question)

If it exists, if it something...it is not nothing. Nothing can't be something, just as light can't be darkness.

I dont know.



Light and darkness are both different shades of being or somethings though.

What else can the absence of everything and anything be besides nothing?

No consciousness, no thought, no senses, no perceptions, no spirit, no matter, no energies,...thats what it is to people who believe that you are nothing after you die. Believing that nothing is something doesn't really matter...because your just a pile of nothingness then.

Which is still an absence, an absence of everything and anything, a kind of absence that is conceptual, it *can* be imagined as evidenced by the conversation regarding it.

The question is incomplete. If we take away the presence of everything and anything we are left with the absence of everything and anything. Now take away that resulting absence of everything and anything and what do we have? Absence of presence as well as absence, which is the absence of the absence of presence. This is not semantic tomfoolery. That, for me, comes closer to describing absolute nothing which is something, it just cannot be imagined.

How can nothing be if it is nothing? That is a contradiction isnt it?



No consciousness, no thought, no senses, no perceptions, no spirit, no matter, no energies is something though. It is No consciousness, no thought, no senses, no perceptions, no spirit, no matter, no energies.




A pile of nothingness? Isnt that something?

WOW! That was really well put!

Why thank you sir!

I think it's really hard to imagine "nothing".
But, before you were born, there was "nothing" too.

Exactly what I said - death is just like before you were born.

Death is nothing because you cannot sense anything because your brain is dead and your can't smell, taste, see, hear, touch or perceive anything. You aren't conscious.

The same with before we were born - we didn't have a nose, ears, eyes, touch, a tongue or consciousness. Nothing is non existence.

It's hard for a conscious being to think about 'nothing' but we we all eventually get there when we die (we've already experienced it anyways before we were born!).

-josh

There was nothing before I was born?

If it was there then it must be something to be there.

I mean that from your perspective, experiences, perceptions there was nothing because you didn't have ears, eyes, a nose, touch, taste. When your cells formed and these things came together, this is when you started to feel 'something'.

When we die it will be just like before our cells came together. Our cells will die and we'll be noseless, eyeless, earless, tasteless and touchless!

-josh

I agree but but I disagree that no-experience is nothing. No experience is something which is no experience. It still doesnt explain what nothing is because if it can be explain and defined then it is something that has definition.