
My Own Personal Nothingness: From childhood hallucination to theoretical physics - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/60/searches/my-own-personal-nothingness-rp
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allemagne
The childhood experience sounds a lot like dissociation. It can be terrifying
and it can be somewhat pleasant.

On a darker note it can be associated with childhood trauma, but having had
episodes every so often when I was younger and a little less often as an adult
I can confirm that it's not exclusively caused by traumatic experiences.

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kr4
Yogis of the yore have contemplated deeply on the subject of nothingness,
consciousness, will, mind and intelligence. I can point to one such very
interesting read here:
[http://tripura.omswami.com/2012/01/chapter-12-illusory-
unive...](http://tripura.omswami.com/2012/01/chapter-12-illusory-
universe.html)

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amvalo
I have a milder form of this hallucination every few months or so. Certain
thought patterns related to "arbitrariness" trigger it, for example asking why
earth has the continents it does, a question to which there is no satisfying
answer.

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IAmGraydon
It's called derealization, and it's a protective mechanism the brain uses to
remove itself from painful stimuli, which typically manifests alongside a
sense of anxiety, although obvious anxiety is not always present. Yours is
likely triggered by an underlying need for control, which is usually satisfied
by understanding the world around you in-depth. You can control what you can
understand. When you come to a question with no satisfying answer, the sense
of control is broken and your brain perceives it as a threat, which causes
derealization, thereby removing the painful stimuli that the thought is
causing. All of this happens at a subconscious level. Many people with PTSD
have this feeling of derealization on an almost constant basis, as their
brains are hypervigilant and tend to perceive harmless stimuli as potentially
painful and/or threatening.

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amvalo
I guess my brain perceives being bored on a long bus ride as unduly painful or
threatening.

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madengr
I thought Michelson and Morley disproved the ether, not Einstein?

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ShabbosGoy
Does the concept of “nothing” exist in our physical Universe, though?

Even a vacuum has vacuum energy, virtual particles, etc...

