Why Does The Universe Exist?
Why Not Just Nothing?
Why is there something as opposed to nothing?
For a few years now, this question haunted me, depressed me, and made me explore some
disturbing concepts and theories.
Asking this question is opening a Pandora box of paradoxes.
So, proceed with caution!
I have to say; I see no point in life.
It is certainly beautiful, unbelievably rich and complex of infinite magnitude.
But why any of this?
Whenever I raise this question, more than most automatically assume that I am severely
depressed.
Let me be clear, I am not severely depressed.
Just mildly, like the rest of us.
But the depression or the dissatisfaction stems from the fact that we actually don't
know where we came from and where we are headed.
We feel claustrophobic.
It is a cruel joke.
Not knowing and still being peaceful is not in the human system.
We are by nature, curious and we are explorers.
But we absolutely cannot find out how this all came to be and that is where the cruelty
lies.
There must have been a point, where there was absolutely nothing.
Nothing existed.
No time, no observers, no matter, nothing.
Just a great void.
I call it, 'The Great Black'.
So what started it all?
Assuming if the 'Big Bang Theory' is right and that's a big 'if', because our scientific
understanding about the universe is constantly changing and evolving.
If you are unfamiliar with the Big Bang Theory, it is a cosmological model that aims to trace
the beginning of the universe.
It is said that there was no time before big bang because nothing existed before big bang.
The theory states that everything, I mean, everything that comprises the universe was
compressed by the factor of billions.
So much space and matter was created in such little time because even time itself was compressed.
Where we are right now was only made possible by the creation of planets and solar systems.
You see that the galaxies and planets are created after such a long time and it is still
expanding.
In a way universe is also evolving.
Our scientific understanding of the universe begins at 10^-43 seconds after the initial blast
So we don't even know what happens at point zero, let alone what was there before big bang
That point in the universe is called 'Grand Unification Epoch', where all matter and energy
in the universe are combined and compressed.
We know what happens after the tiny point was created.
Explosion, creation of universe as we know it etc. etc.
But what created the tiny point?
We only understand linear progression, right?
An effect must have a cause.
Surely, an effect cannot cause itself.
There must be a cause to have an effect.
If I clap my hands, I produce a sound.
Sound cannot produce itself.
But what if an effect can cause itself?
Could It?
Some argue that it can.
We know so little, that we are constrained to think in linear progression in order to
navigate our three dimensional reality.
Big Bang Theory only states that the universe was a lot hotter and denser and smaller at
one point.
It can't go back to a point where there was absolutely nothing.
Well, some argue that it is because that universe is eternal.
It has no beginning.
We have to throw away our understanding of physics in order to assume that.
Just because it was a lot smaller that what it is today, it doesn't necessarily mean that
it was non-existent at one point.
Many, even from ancient civilizations argue that Universe is eternal.
Only things that had a beginning need a cause for its existence.
It is just an eternal effect.
Why was it small?
Well, because it was all compressed.
There was no life, or conscious observers.
Now we are in it, so it needs to accommodate us.
We look, so the grandeur exists and maybe, it exists for us to look.
I’ve been meditating for a couple of years.
I don't have enough discipline in me to follow a regular schedule.
I meditate whenever I feel like meditating.
On one of my meditation sessions, I went to a strange place.
Now, I know what this sounds like.
But this 'place', was just black nothingness.
But what was so strange about that?
Usually when you close your eyes, you don't see anything.
But the intensity was the strange part.
It was not the same black space that you encounter when you close your eyes.
Because when you close your eyes, you still see.
You can feel when a light is turned on.
In fact, I was meditating for over ten minutes.
That was the first time where I felt a pull.
I was drifting somewhere in a void.
That's how powerful it was.
You know those dreams that we have, like we are falling from somewhere so high.
You actually struggle to breathe, right?
That's how it was.
But I wasn't sleeping.
I also stopped to think that maybe it was me falling asleep and being conscious of the
fact that I was falling asleep; a beginning of a lucid dream, maybe.
But I ruled that out after further examination.
What I saw then was something extraordinary.
It was just a blackness of incredible intensity.
I felt so minuscule in front of the grandeur void.
I am only using the word 'blackness' for the lack of a better word.
It was neither black, nor white.
It was nothing.
It was magnificent.
It was nothing I've ever encountered before.
It was truly a great void.
The sheer intensity of that space made me panic and open my eyes and it felt like I
came back to my reality with such force.
When I opened my eyes, it was 1:37 am and my roommate was peacefully sleeping.
The apartment was dark.
I was back in my couch.
I am a skeptic myself and I know how listening to something like this and still trusting
the narrator takes a big leap of faith, but I knew what I saw.
That's when I began using the term 'The Great Black'.
I don't know if that's truly the great black, because I remember thinking that it was mind
bending.
So the very fact that I was aware of my 'self' and my thoughts mean that it was not the actual
nothingness.
Even my thoughts and my sense of self shouldn't exist there, right?
We are now just starting to take a good look at the quantum universe and it is changing
our collective perspective.
Like how the 'Double Slit Experiment', taught us that things change just because we are
observing it.
So, a conscious observer shapes his/ her own reality.
'Schrödinger's cat' is a thought experiment that was devised by the Austrian physicist
Erwin Schrödinger.
To simplify his words:
There is a cat in a box (yes, this is where that expression comes from).
Alright, there is a cat in a box with a radio active substance, a hammer and a bottle of
deadly acid; all connected together.
The radio active substance is so small that in one hour, there is a 50% chance for an
atom to decay.
If it decays, the hammer bangs the glass bottle of acid.
The acid kills the cat.
If the atom doesn't decay, the cat is alive.
The entire box is closed.
What do you think?
The cat is either dead or alive, right?
50-50?
No.
Until you look, the cat is both alive and dead.
In the absence of a conscious observer, it exists in all probabilities;
in a state of superposition.
The moment you look, the state of superposition collapses and you are presented with a linear
choice; one or the other.
Either the cat is dead or alive.
Experiments like this proves us that the reality is subjective and
it is a rabbit hole with no end.
It then leads us to another question
Is Universe, then, a conscious entity?
We know that in every corner, so much more than we can handle is going on and we are
sure that we are presented with a reality that we are capable of handling, but nothing
more.
If we study it, understand it and look further, our knowledge expands, and so does the universe.
At this point, I am sure that we are not looking because it exists.
It exists because we look.
Like a bone thrown to a good dog.
I think I’ve always had an existential crisis, you know.
Even as a kid.
Well, do you have any burning questions like this that’s related to reality or any kind
of philosophy?
If you do, I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
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