Into (and out of) the Void
“The vacuum is truly a ‘living Void’, pulsating in endless rhythms of creation and destruction.” - Fritjof Capra
Our ultimate underlying reality —it’s a tall order of a concept for us to digest, whether we want to consider this a spiritual force (intelligent design flowing through everything) or a scientific one (sub-sub-atomic currents of energy).
The question over whatever it is that fills empty space is one that bridges both science and spirituality together, carrying our curiosity more than perhaps any other question has been able to thus far.
What is nothingness? What exists all around us, if anything? What happens when we arrive at pure emptiness?
In other words, what do we find in the proverbial Void?
Regardless of who has the most to say about this void, whether Einstein or an army of Taoists, a common-denominator is that of its unifying characteristic; in the words of Frijtof Capra, which will be echoed ad nauseum throughout this piece, it is:
“The ultimate unified field from which springs not only the phenomena studied in physics, but all other phenomena as well.” — F.C.
And so we arrive, almost always, at the proposition that whatever exists in this void is something that ties everything together, something from which everything emerges.
Beautiful cohesion — if only it were so easy to understand.
We inevitably get into the whole chicken and the egg bit: can something come from nothing? Does nothing exist if it’s conducive to something?
Fortunately, we’re saved by an important distinction: emptiness versus nothingness.
“Both sides argue that emptiness is not to be taken for mere nothingness — it is, on the contrary, the essence of all forms.” — F.C.
Emptiness is not nothing.
In fact, emptiness is so not nothing that it functions as something of an opposite of a true vacuum.
In other words, it can be likened to the faucet and not the drain.
Some more words from Capra, touching on the discoveries made by physics, serve to contextualize this idea:
“The distinction between matter and empty space finally had to be abandoned when it became evident that virtual particles can come into being spontaneously out of the void, and vanish again into the void… according to field theory, events of that kind happen all the time.”- F.C.
We know this to be true (i.e. anti-matter or dark energy), though we don’t know the science behind it (i.e. labels like anti-matter or dark energy).
And, where things begin to get a bit more interesting, is where we begin discuss probabilities and possibilities.
“The vacuum is far from empty. On the contrary, it contains an unlimited number of particles which come into being and vanish without end.” — F.C.
Some will argue that emptiness is not to be considered a state of mere nothingness but, rather, a field of possibility, one which “contains the potentiality for all forms of the particle world.”
A common Buddhist sutra indeed assertively spouts that: Form is emptiness, and emptiness is indeed form. An Ouroboros of existence — of creation and destruction.
But some present a more reserved argument, looking at the fluctuations rather than the scintillations; at the gesticulation of reality rather than the generation of it.
Is the void really the source of something? Or is it just another medium, hosting the kinds of activity that we can’t understand.
In other words, maybe it’s not the drain, and maybe it’s not the faucet — it’s the tub itself. Or the whole bathroom.
Take the adjacent but less inclined words of Walter Thirring:
“The field exists always and everywhere; it can never be removed. It is the carrier of all material phenomena. It is the ‘void’… Being and fading of particles are merely forms of motion of the field.”
And so we circle back to what form and formation really means — does it entail a process of creation (something from nothing) or a process of modification (something from something else)?
Regardless, it reveals to us a very telling secret of the universe itself, one that perhaps offers more important of an answer than any question we can ask: reality is more dynamic than even we can appreciate.
“The phenomenal manifestations of the mystical Void, like the subatomic particles, are not static and permanent, but dynamic and transitory, coming into being and vanishing in one ceaseless dance of movement and energy” — F.C.
The fluctuations and excitations — they need not only exist in the chambers of particle accelerators or in the nebulae swirling about our cosmos; they exist everywhere, especially in the spaces we’d generally consider to be ‘nowhere’.
They exist in all forms — biological, chemical, intangible.
The ‘void’ thus has infinite creative potential, and this circles back to a very important point that Capra, science, physics, and spirituality all make: the universe is dynamic, ever-changing, always-moving.
It’s a point that we make time and time again in different contexts and through an infinitude of elements that define our existence.
For biology, it may be contextualized as evolution; for technology, it may be defined as innovation; for culture, it may be regarded as progress; for physics, it may be considered entropy.
It’s a simple and resolute fact: everything is part of the dynamic and ever-charging, always-moving nature of the universe.