Parmenides maintained that reality is such that the "All is one," by which he meant that the "All" is a kind of homogeneous sphere. By this he concluded that all appearances to consciousness such as change, motion and nothing are mere illusions. Even though he used good logic to arrive at these conclusions, for all intents and purposes his conclusion was useless and meaningless.
The practical truth is that man lives in a world of appearances, change, motion and nothingness. Even if all this were an illusion, this world, nevertheless, is the only one we know and as such becomes indistinguishable from reality itself.
Therefore, nothing must be real to the mind. Nothing can be no appearance, and yet it is real. Nothingness can only be real as an idea in the mind. How consciousness acquired this singular idea of nothing when it never appears remains a real mystery. Man's finite mind is just too small to ever figure this out on his own.
Yet, this fact reminds us of other ideas that could not have been acquired by direct experience even though they are real. Their usefulness to consciousness makes them real. "Infinity" is a real idea even though it has never been seen, felt or smelt. "Justice" has proven itself to be a useful concept even though no one has ever directly seen it. One suspects that these kinds of ideas could only have been given to the mind by an infinity being the possibility of everything. But this means that the Infinite must know everything; consciousness being one of its possibilities. If this is true, then there must exist an Infinite Consciousness that we call God.
The first use of nothingness is that it is space. We move through it and we observe motion in it. Space separates objects and thereby contributes to their recognition as individual objects. In addition, something and nothing together unify the world into a whole. How we humans can outwardly move through a mere idea in our minds is another real mystery. One possible explanation ( with due credit to Bishop Berkeley) is that space is a perception in the mind of God.
The second use of the idea of nothing is that it separates ideas in the mind into individual, recognizable ideas. By use of the idea of nothing, the mind can separate general ideas such as "roundness" or "redness" and recognize that they apply to all things round or red. If one imagines two objects in one's mind, one round and the other red, one will notice that they are separated by a space which is the idea of nothing. Also, one thought follows another in moments of time, but that which divides one moment from another is the idea of nothing.
The mind holds the power to create or invent different systems, selecting those ideas that compose each system from all of the ideas that we know. The creations of these systems has been a continuous process throughout the history of mankind. Some of these systems are most useful because they benefit the most people. Others are far less useful because they benefit only a small number of people while being detrimental to the rest. Some systems benefit no one. They are simply destructive. Many such systems have been invented and created by man such as: systems of law and government, education, religion, science and technology, roads and many others.
The word "nothing" has two basic meanings. The first meaning is simply "emptiness" or the "void." In the second meaning, "nothing" should really be two words; "no thing." In this case, the "thing" means any object of consciousness, and "no" means to equate the "thing" with the negative. The objects of consciousness can never be negated by nothingness, but consciousness can use the idea of the negative to equate a particular object or idea with the negative in order to exclude that object or idea from inclusion in a system which consciousness is in the process of creating, inventing or considering. For example, when one considers the simple system called: "a straight line," one will always keep "no curves" out of this system.
Whenever man creates a particular system, whether beneficial or destructive, he always includes those ideas that fit in with the other ideas, or those ideas that he desires to be in his system, and excludes all others by using the idea of nothing. The third use of the idea of nothing is that of a principle or rule that excludes all unwanted or unuseable ideas from any system under consideration.
One of the laws of the universe is that information cannot be destroyed. True ideas cannot be destroyed, but they can be considered to be equal to nothing as far as their inclusion in any particular system is concerned. False ideas cannot be destroyed either, but the difference between these two ideas is that false ideas are actually equal to nothing whereas true ideas can only be considered as equal to nothing in order to exclude them from a system. For example, when an idealistic philosopher contends that certain materialistic ideas are "not real," he does not mean that they can be destroyed. He only means that they are equal to the idea of nothing as far as his idealistic system is concerned. He also may believe they are false. For another example, the false theory that produced the false idea of "aether" in space, can never be destroyed as ideas, but the false idea "aether" actually means nothing in the sense of "empty."
True and false systems alike always comprise true and useful ideas, but false systems always produce false ideas. False ideas are real as ideas, but because of their equality with the idea of nothing, they always indicate an absolute nothingness hidden by the idea of nothing. Thus, the fourth use of the idea of nothing is that it indicates an absolute nothingness that lies outside of human experience. As a simple example of this truth, consider the false system called a "mermaid." A mermaid comprises two true systems called a "fish" and a "female." If one subtracts these two true ideas from the false system, one is left with the idea of nothing as a product of this system. But the true idea of nothing actually indicates the nonexistence of the mermaid. So, if one then subtracts even this true idea from the false system, one is left with an absolute nothingness which constitutes the actual nonexistence of the mermaid. Nonexistence constitutes the only unreality. Humans never experience it except as it is indicated by the idea of nothing. Nonexistence seems to be nowhere and at no time.
If humans never experience unreality then all appearances must be real whether given to the mind or coming into the mind through the senses. The whole of reality appears as something, the idea of nothing, or as ideas equivalent to nothing.
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