…TO NOTHINGNESS…
Stage 66 / Wednesday 29 June / From Cervatos de la Cueza to Grajal de Campos / 23 km
The idea of ternary thinking rather than binary thinking opened new horizons to me yesterday. And I search for the signs of new lights as I set off in the dark, before dawn, on the path which will bring me into a new province today, that of León. Daring this approach I feel closer to understanding how one can pass from night to day, from cool to heat, from my night’s rest to movement on the camino ! Shall I know better how to pass in simple continuity from nothing to something? And if I succeed, will I be able to explain: “Why something rather than nothing?”
The moon has already disappeared in the west, the cloudy sky prevents the light from stars being visible, and as soon as I switch off my flashlight, I am truly in the dark: I see nothing! This nothing is the opposite of the presence of lighted objects, for I am walking on a straight, flat path plain in open country, far from any village. This is rather exciting, to risk my safety in forcing myself to advance in obscurity, before the first glow of day quivers behind me in the east. From time to time, to reassure myself, I switch on my flashlight to check that I haven’t wandered off the path.
I arrive at a crossroads where I should normally find a “camino” marker decorated with its St James seashell; I switch on my flashlight and I don’t see it. I see nothing and I panic: “Have I gotten myself lost with my little game of blind camino’s bluff?” This nothing here, this absence of a marker, is purely artificial, it’s not the same as nothing supposed to be the absence of anything. And I panic nonetheless! “A nothing makes me panic! Is it possible?” If so, this “nothing” is not equal to a total absence, since, in order to panic, there must be something to fear. Nothing, “the opposite of something”, is not deprived of presence since it can have an impact on me!
This nothing is also not the same as zero, since zero can result in an equal sum of pluses and minuses, which is not “nothing!” Like the whole of the universe whose total energy would be null, it appears: its energy of mass (positive) is equal to its potential energy of gravitation (negative). To such an extent that what one might believe empty (without matter) is stuffed with energy! Once again, the void is not nothing … And this void is populated with virtual or potential particles which may appear by borrowing energy from the void. Therefore “nothing” may well have given birth to the primordial entity, and here we are with a vision of emergence “ex nihilo” (out of nothing, in Latin).
According to the legendary Laozi, or Lao Tzu, who seems to have been a contemporary of Confucius (five or six centuries before Christ!) Chinese thought said: “What is comes from what is not!” (François Cheng – Five meditations on beauty) [Cinq méditations sur la beauté – Albin Michel, 2008] Chinese thought also says that “ Original Dao engenders the One, One engenders the Two, Two engenders the Three and the Three engenders 10’000 beings.” Thus, far from being empty, an initial vacuity would qualify as the source of the “One,” and eventually of all the following numbers and beings, all this potentiality being included in the unformed, without order or disorder, nor rest nor movement.
Should one believe that the absence of my marker there where I thought I would find it, is in fact neither absence, nor void, nor nothingness, but simply something not manifested? Richer than the “nothing,” the potential of the vacuum, origin of movement and evolution in the universe, can truly then render possible pure consciousness, which means than I can imagine a marker there where one should be! Vacuum or nothing, being or not being, reality or illusion, mirage or miracle: these paradoxes can now jostle in my head with their ineptitude, their plausibility, or their certainty in a ternary mode of thinking. And these paradoxes flow from the affirmation that “The world began from nothing.” In other words, “There has always been something!” How many apparent plays on words then become possible: “All is in all,” “All is in nothing,” “Nothing is in All!”
A thousand games like that titillated my thoughts after I continued straight on through the intersection with no marker. When the glimmers of dawn appeared from the black of the night, I confirmed that my instinct had been good: other markers, real ones, came along to punctuate my walk as far as Grajal de Campos …
From these words “nothing, void” I blissfully arrive at the conclusion that « A void being no thing, avoid nothing !»
