Nothingness an abstract concept?

I've always felt intuitively that death isn't the end of consciousness - and have had experiences that give me reason to believe it isn't.
But I consider the possibility that consciousness may end upon death - but I've always had the sense that if that were the case (not saying that it is, just a possiblity I feel I must consider) - is this an abstract concept?

The idea of me, a conscious being, thinking that I can have an accurate mental picture of what it is like to not be conscious? It feels easy to say "Oh maybe it's just nothing, maybe it's like sleep" - but the more I think of this - the more i feel this is impossible to even imagine.

By definition every thought, every feeling, every mental picture, every intuition I can ever have, of what "nothing" would be like -, are all formed in my conscious mind - is the idea of nothingness, a totally abstract state that is simply impossible for any conscious mind to have any accurate picture of?

In some hypothetical situation where science had somehow proved beyond any doubt that there was no consciousness after death, and somehow we all knew they were right (i emphasise "hypothetical" - i still feel that as a concious being, I would be no nearer to understanding what this nothing actually means.

I've been fasciated by this question - of whether "nothing" is something totally abstract to a conscious being - ever since a very powerful experience as a teenager, meditating - trying to find a thing to focus on, I found myself trying to envision what it would mean if the universe, all of reality, had simply never come into existence - and found it an incredibly strange abstract idea to try to visualise.

I don't think I can "visualize" nothingness...even typing that seemed silly!

When I think of it, I think of it being like before I was born. I wasn't. And someday I won't be again, and before I was born I wasn't sad thinking "how sad that I don't exist" and after I am dead I won't feel sad about not existing either.

However, during life, sometimes I feel sad thinking about how once I didn't exist and how someday I will cease to exist. but that is a function of consciousness, which I didn't have prior to conception and won't have after death.

So, in some sense, because I have known what the world is before someone is born and after they die, I can imagine how it will be when I am gone. I still can't conceptualize how it would be for me to not exist. There is no way for me to do that.

[Fairyana]

I've never thought of that before, but it does make sense. How can we picture nothingness, when, in trying to picture it, it comes up as "something".

I think science will someday prove that consciousness is the fundamental element from which all matter and the universe comes from. I think you'll enjoy this blog, by Bernardo Kastrup: http://www.bernardokastrup.com

I find reading about science interesting, how difficult it is to talk about what happened before the big bang (if that theory is correct - it's coming into question in science recently) - the idea that before the big bang, wasn't nothing in the sense we think of it - the big bang created space and time with it - so before if there wasn't even any empy space, or passing time - it's mind-bending to try to think about it.

Maybe conciousness is the same - trying to picture what is outside/before/after consciousness, is just a totally abstract concept from the point of view of us here within conciousness.

[Jom]

When we sleep we dream, or I do, or did anyway last night, as did or do every night. And as I sleep another me is awake directly under me, on the other side of the globe.




Hmmm... what was I thinking?

I don't know, I lost my thought. So here I sit, looking and feeling at... nothing. But waiting for, um.... silence, before thought.

[CrystalSong]

Once, when I was dying of Shigella Dysentery, my consciousness found itself in The Void.

There was nothing there, just darkness and a single awareness, that awareness which was me, felt no temperature, no sense of distance in the Void, nor end to the void, there was no movement of the awareness, no time, the awareness had no identity, not 'human', not male or female, no fear, no want, no desire, no emotion or response at all, not sick, not out of body, or in-body, no desire to be anywhere else....

there existed only one thing in the Void - I Am.

Many years later I would learn this experience is often experience by spiritual seekers and one of the more profound experience one can have in the awakening of consciousness experience. Those who've been to the Void are more than happy to be back in body doing something but also no longer afraid of the what might happen after death of the body.

Perhaps it could be said the Void is ... a Pause button.... Nothingness observed by consciousness.