The Spectacular Zero

The class 6 student history text books in India make the following proud statement about the glorious days of ancient India. “Ancient India was a pioneer in science and mathematics. We invented the zero….” The lesson goes on to state various accomplishments in medicine, astronomy and mathematics. All of these are amazing accomplishments in their own right but it is the statement about the zero which has always intrigued me. What are we proud of? of inventing nothing? of inventing a mere symbol for nothing, which is probably the most insignificant number of all? At that time, for the little me, it was even a little embarrassing. We are the proud owners of the sunya (zero). Is that Indicative of how we are a big zero in contribution to modern science, sports, medicine or industry? Yet, the statement was never once retracted. Everybody seems to think that it is an important claim, but nobody seems to explain its importance. So, what is the importance of the discovery of zero? The answer to this question nagged me for quiet a while until I wandered into the fantastic world of Indian philosophy. Its here I realized the true brilliance and the absolutely stunning beauty of the mighty zero.

It is said that the introduction of zero into the decimal system was the most significant achievement in the development of a number system, in which calculation with large numbers became feasible. Without the notion of zero, the descriptive and prescriptive modeling processes in commerce, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and industry would have been unthinkable. The lack of such a symbol is one of the serious drawbacks in the Roman numeral system. In addition, the Roman numeral system is difficult to use in any arithmetic operations, such as multiplication. In India a simple but stunning number system was developed; the ingenious method was of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value. This was a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease, which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions. We should appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by Greek antiquity.

It sounds like a very basic property of a simple but natural counting system escaped the brilliant minds of society everywhere else in the world except in India. It’s like somehow the Indians stumbled upon the idea which was the most natural counting system possible. It is descriptions like these that undermine the importance of zero to the discovery of fire or the wheel by cavemen. What’s the big deal? These are natural phenomenon which existed from eternity. This is the way things are, eventually a self aware being was bound to stumble upon these principles. So, Hello! what’s all the hype about?

The reverence for the zero is not about its use as a void place holder in a decimal counting system, the secret of the zero is in its very meaning. The invention of the zero should actually be the “revelation” of the zero, not a mere discovery, a revelation nothing less! Considering the true meaning of the zero, this revelation is perhaps the single most important of all ideas ever conceived by the human mind. Its incredible implications on our very existence and the conflicts that it evoked in belief systems of other cultures, led to the furious suppression of the true meaning of zero. The meaning of the zero to this day remains the niche knowledge of the most advanced of spiritual seekers.

Charles Seife in his book “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea” says “Cultures girdled themselves against zero, and philosophies crumbled under its influence, for zero is different from the other numbers. It provides a glimpse into the ineffable and the infinite….Zero is powerful because it is infinity’s twin. They are equal and opposite, yin and yang. They are equally paradoxical and troubling. The biggest questions in science and religion are about nothingness and eternity. …yet through all its history, despite rejection and exile, zero has always defeated those who oppose it. Humanity could never force zero to fit its philosophies. Instead zero shaped humanity’s view of the universe and of god.”

Charles then starts the first chapter of his book with a hymn from the Rig Veda.

“There was neither non existence
Nor existence then;
there was neither the realm of space
nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred? Where?”

The humble zero demands such reverence, fear, unease, confusion and mystery. No wonder mystics from all lands and all cultures have strived to understand it and command the power of its knowledge. Zero is known by various names as the Hindu sunya, meaning "void" or "empty" , Arabic sifr, meaning "vacant", Roman cifra, Latin zephirum or zephyrum , zeuro, zepiro, cifre , English zero and cipher and several other forms: naught, tziphra, sipos, tsiphron, rota, circulus, galgal, theca, null, figura nihili and zilch.

The Zero is a representation of what does not exist. It is used in our numerical system to denote the non existence of a place. Example 101 has no tenth component unlike 111 which has one tenth component. 121 has two tenth components. For the number 101 to make sense, you need the zero to indicate that this is a 3 digit number and not the two digit number - eleven. So what you need is a “Void Place Holder”. The tenth place is occupied but the value is nothing. This goes to number systems of any base like binary(base 2) or hexadecimal (base 16).

On the land we now call Iraq, much of Western civilization first flowered. The Greeks called it Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers,” (Tigris and Euphrates) Sumer was the first Mesopotamian civilization dating back to 5000 BCE. The Babylonian civilizations date from about 500 BCE. As known in the western world, the Babylonians first used the notation of a “void” place holder. This placeholder used to be a blank space but was replaced with a symbol. This was strictly a positional notation. Their system was sexagesimal (base 60) Unlike our decimal value system which uses nine distinct signs to represent numbers 1 to 9, the Babylonian sexagesimal place-value system has only two numerical signs, not fifty-nine, as one might expect. It uses only two signs: a vertical wedge for 1 and a crescent for 10. According to a Babylonian legend the original shape of the zero was said to be derived from the teachings of the Buddha.

The zero was discovered in India by the Arabs who understood the stunning simplicity and practicality of its use in mathematics. It is the Arabs who taught the European tribes about the zero. There is still a huge debate about when this happened, was this as recent as the 13th century CE? It cannot be because In 500 BCE the Persian empire has spread to the very borders of India. if the Babylonians knew about the zero in 500 BCE, roughly the time of the Buddha. It had to have happened at around that time. As knowledge evolved, it unavoidably had to be influenced by the tyranny of the ignorant. The Roman empire existed from about 300 BCE to 400 CE. The Roman numeral system completely banished the zero. Such a stupid idea! Why do you need a symbol to denote “nothing”? and why a zero placeholder? Hence the Roman numeral system did not use the zero. This more than anything else sealed the fate of the Roman numeral system.

Buddha was a breakaway radical from the much older and the incredibly complex Vedic system. The earliest estimated date of the Vedas is 6000 BC. He rebelled against the increasingly abstract definitions of the infinite in the Vedas. Many Hindu sects were headed in one direction exploring the complex nature of existential reality when Buddha went to the opposite extreme – nihilism, exploring the void. Ironically what he discovered about the void turned out to be as complex as the teachings in the Vedas. His efforts to bring the higher knowledge to the millions were not successful. The majority of humanity was not ready, prepared or capable of assimilating the highest knowledge from the Buddha. Buddha had to devise simple, understandable statements that were palatable to the masses. Exactly like the later Christianity or Islam. His deepest teachings in the Buddhist sutras were reserved to the more prepared; the more trained monks who dared to go all the way. According to the Babylonian legend the shape of the zero is derived from the Buddha. When he was meditating he formed a circular shape with his index fingers and thumbs meaning void. By doing this he was saying that in prayer you should make your mind blank. This void was the same idea as the blank space between numbers. So in order to be able to define the number of blanks they used the symbol in the shape of a 0.

Amazingly the mighty zero was lying quietly for thousands of years in India unknown to the rest of the world. The Shape of the zero itself is that of a circle, the only shape with no beginning and no end, the very definition of the sanathana dharma- The Indian philosophy of the Eternal way of life, The only way of existence from eternity till eternity, without beginning or end. The zero existed long before man was born and will remain long after man is gone. Why is it so intriguing, why do Indian mystic philosophers and an ever increasing number of western intellectuals go gaga over the zero.

Here are some equations from commonly accepted principles. It is expected that these can never been proved. They are “assumptions” made in order to enable mathematics to exist. For all observable phenomenons, except the strangest hypothesis in Quantum Physics, these assumptions seem to have worked.

2/0 = Infinity (generally held Taboo, the division by zero rule, cannot be defined, understood or comprehended)
2*0 = 0
2+0 = 2
2-0 = 2
0+0 = 0
0/0 = Infinity (this is a profound result but is only academic, safely ignored because division by zero is not allowed )
2+Infinity = Infinity
2/Infinity = 0
2*Infinity = Infinity

Zero is a symbol for "nothing.". As easy as the concept sounds, this has posed numerous problems to conventional arithmetic. Consider 4/2 = 2, what number will you get if you break 4 into 2 equal parts? The answer is 2. Now What number will you get if you break 4 into zero equal parts? Many thinkers including mathematicians presume the answer to this question as, “it is impossible to break anything into zero equal parts”. Try to break an apple into zero equal parts! That is the reason division by zero is Taboo. It’s referred to as “undefined” and hence this division is forbidden. Interestingly an answer can be found in the hypotheses of Indian philosophy. The infinite exists right within the zero. Its sounds incomprehensible because of the strong rooted assumption that something that exists cannot be divided into zero parts. The problem is right there, the assumption that something exists. How can you convert something that exists into something that does not exist? (zero – the void). If you let go of the assumption that something exists, then nothing exists!!! The apple does not exist, hence it can be divided or multiplied by anything and will still remain how it was before and will always be part of the infinite existence which is one with non existence or zero. Thus anything divided by zero will dissolve into infinity. Infinity is that which nothing can distort, nothing can add to it and nothing can subtract from it. only from it can all other numbers be derived from, It is eternal, and unchangeable. The definition of the absolute entity in Indian philosophy, the Brahman, the eternal self out of which all material existence manifests. God himself!

Another argument is that if you have a 1 in 10 chance of something happening then you have a 1/10, or 10% chance of it happening. It's inconsistent and can't be defined what odds of 1/0 (1:0) are. Out of 0 events an event happening one time is just erroneous and invalid. Or is it? Consider the current understanding of the creation of the universe - the big bang theory. This is one theory which has stood through the most severe scientific scrutiny not to mention condemnation and ridicule by the Christian church because the theory contests the 6 day creation theory of the Bible. The theory has stood the critical examination by eminent physicists and had common acceptance over all. Yet still, nobody knows what happened at the exact moment of the big bang. The theory breaks down totally at the very event of the big bang. This theory is forced to stop speculation at the infinitesimally small point at which supposedly all the matter and all the energy in the universe was condensed to! Imagine that! Imagine condensing the weight of this room, this building, this city, this country, the earth, this galaxy, the billions of other galaxies to one single point smaller than the tip of a pin? This point should contain infinite mass and infinite energy! Because one step beyond that the point would disappear, there will exist nothing but a void, a true state of nothingness, not even space.

From common perception how can anything get created out of nothing? Impossible! All known mathematics breaks down at the exact point of creation. All equations of the big bang run into “undefined” territory Thus to explain the big bang theory mathematically it is essential to have his infinitesimally small point from which the universe emerged. The logical conclusion seems to indicate that the universe was created from absolutely nothing! the void – zero. It’s only within our narrow understanding of existence that all mathematical knowledge makes sense to us, hence the ancient treatise of existence – reality and Maya. All science and mathematics known to man is successful within the realms of Maya. It breaks down miserably once reality is reached. When you reach zero or infinity every theory blows up.

The Vedas say that the universe was created out of the actions of prana the life force acting on akasha the ever present body of potential spread across the entire universe. What is perhaps referred to as dark energy in current quantum mechanical models of the universe. Einstiens in 1917 created a cosmological constant Lambda in his general theory of relativity. For his theoretical static universe to exist Einstien had to add a mathematical fudge to align the equations. Later when Hubble discovered that the universe was not static at all but is expanding at mind boggling speeds, Eienstien withdrew this mathematical fudge and called his failure to predict a dynamic universe the biggest blunder of his life. Now cosmologicts have discovered by the study of 1A (one A) supernovas that the universe is expanding at a much higher rate of expansion than what the quantum mechanical equations predict. The only explanation seems to be an invisible low density energy source exerting negative force on the universe causing galaxies to move away from each other at a much faster pace. This energy is predicted to occupy 73% of the known universe. In fact the matter that we know of constitutes only 4% of the entire universe. The remaining 23% is said to be in the form of Dark matter as that in black holes.

The current Quantum mechanical model of the universe proposes the Heisenberg uncertainty principle Nuclear physicists today say that every atom in the universe right now is being sustained in its known form by the continuous creation and destruction of elementary particles out of empty space! These elementary entities appear out of nothingness and disappear out into nothingness. It is said that this is what the Vedas refer to as the eternal cosmic dance of Shiva. Who is also called Nataraja the lord of the dance. This is happening every nano second in every atom in the universe. The position and angular momentum of any fundamental particle cannot be known at the same time. The state of a fundamental particle can only be predicted as one of the states in the so called probability density cloud. The entity that collapses these probabilities into one reality is held to be the observer the act of observation or consciousness.

The void space between these sub atomic particles inside every atom at any given point of time, is so vast that it can be concluded that atoms contain 99% empty space! so you and me are 99% empty space at this instant. So who or what am I? If I exist only one percent and all I can see is nothing but 100% existence. I can imagine why maya or illusion is so powerful. 99% of what I think I am, does not exist according to Quantum physics! So yes, it appears that an event can occur where the probability of occurrence is zero. In fact the probability of an event occurring out of zero possible events is infinite! thus 1/0 = Infinity. The probability is impossible only if we assume that nothing can be created out of nothingness. This has been proved wrong by quantum physics. The universe is continuously being destroyed and recreated from nothingness. Starting from there, every molecule, every cell, every muscle, every body is being continuously created and destroyed every nano second of existence. This has been happening from eternity and will continue to do so till eternity.

Consider the Vedic proposition that there exists nothing but “that”. We have infinity as the only thing that exists; all theorems are mere representations of interplay of its infinite sub elements. No wonder in ancient India the approach to knowledge has always been all encompassing and all integrated - religion, philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy, ayurveda, medicine, art, music, astronomy, sex, yoga, surgery… each one rooted in the eternal truth, each one connected to the other, which is finally one with “that” - existence itself. It looks like the grand unification theory, the present holy grail of science was already well formed in the Vedas. This is the truth, the eternal way of existence, the sanathana dharma.

The Indian belief system collectively called the sanathana dharma places knowledge above all else, above all things which command respect, above all human goals and aspirations. It is said that the gods bow down to a learned man. It was in this land that sages and philosophers dared to defy mighty kings and emperors, long before JRR Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings. In India, all ideas, all knowledge is derived from the knowledge of the Brahman, the eternal self who is everywhere. It is the source of infinite knowledge and wisdom. All knowledge was accumulated by direct observation of existence, of reality. Perhaps it was considered impolite to flaunt knowledge of something which is very visible to anyone who truly seeks? How can you take pride in the fact that you can see in the land of the blind? How would you explain what light is? to the blind? How would you document such an experience? The only way is for you to teach them how to see. The first symptom of the truly learned is humbleness. The more you know, the more you realize how much more there is to know. The great poet Rabindranath Tagore cried at this realization of the infiniteness of knowledge and the humble stature of the human mind. Thus to be able to realize any portion of this infinite knowledge one has to transcend the limitations of the human mind. The yogi declares that this is possible and that the only way to accomplish this is to become part of that infinite itself. Further he declares that one is already a part of the infinite, one just need realize this by reducing the infinite manifestations of maya (illusion) to zero. This is the spectacular relation between infinity and zero. It is said that if one observes with a still mind by moving the mind towards the void, towards nothingness, eliminating every thoughts that rises and be in a state of pure consciousness, all laws of nature will be revealed. For thousands of years this teaching was imparted by word of mouth and by memory (Shruthi and Smrithi) it is only in the last couple of thousand years that people began writing these Ideas down.

Quantum physics predicts the existence of an underlying sea of zero-point energy at every point in the universe. This is different from the cosmic microwave background and is also referred to as the electromagnetic quantum vacuum since it is the lowest state of otherwise empty space. This energy is so enormous that most physicists believe that even though zero-point energy seems to be an inescapable consequence of elementary quantum theory, it cannot be physically real, and so is subtracted away in calculations. The basis of zero-point energy is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, one of the fundamental laws of quantum physics. According to this principle, the more precisely one measures the position of a moving particle, such as an electron, the less exact the best possible measurement of momentum (mass times velocity) will be, and vice versa. The least possible uncertainty of position times momentum is specified by Planck's constant, h. A parallel uncertainty exists between measurements involving time and energy. This minimum uncertainty is not due to any correctable flaws in measurement, but rather reflects an intrinsic quantum fuzziness in the very nature of energy and matter.

The existence of an actual vacuum was a subject of debate among scientists from the period of Aristotle all the way till this century. Since light, magnetic fields and heat all travel through a vacuum, something must be there. Borrowing a word from Aristotle, scientists described various kinds of 'aethers' that exist in even the hardest vacuum and that pervade space. Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism reduced these different types to just one, called the ether. Various experiments were developed to detect this ether, of which the most famous was the Michelson-Morley experiment, which failed to find it. Finally, in 1905, Einstein banished the ether by means of special relativity and allowed the true vacuum to exist but not for long. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle of 1927 led particle physicists to predict that particles would arise spontaneously from the vacuum, so long as they disappeared before violating the uncertainty principle. The quantum vacuum is a very active place, with all sorts of particles appearing and disappearing. Careful experiments have demonstrated that the quantum theorists are correct in this interpretation of the vacuum... Furthermore, starting in 1980 with the theory of the inflationary universe, particle physicists have told us that the entire universe was created as a 'false vacuum', a quantum vacuum that has more energy in its nothingness than it should. The decay of that particular vacuum to an ordinary quantum vacuum produced all the mass in the universe and started the Big Bang.

"He who is beyond all exists as the relative universe.
That part of Him appears as sentient and insentient beings.
From a part of Him was born the body of the universe,
and out of this body were born the Gods, the earth and men."

- Rig Veda

Osho Rajneesh reads this about sunya-the zero from the Buddhist Heart Sutra , "Shunya means emptiness; but not negative, very positive emptiness. It means nothingness, but it does not mean simply nothingness; it means no-thing-ness. Shunya means void, void of everything but the void itself is there, with utter presence, so it is not just void. It is like the sky which is empty, which is pure space, but which is. Everything comes in it and goes, and it remains. Shunya is like the sky -- pure presence. You cannot touch it although you live in it. You cannot see it although you can never be without it. You exist in it; just as a fish exists in the ocean, you exist in space, in shunya. Shunyavada means that everything arises out of nothing"

- page 48 The Heart Sutra

The Casimir effect refers to the tiny attractive force that appears between two uncharged plates in a vacuum. This Casimir force is only measurable when the plates are extremely close together (several atomic diameters). This force was predicted in 1948 by Hendrik Casimir, a Dutch theoretical physicist. It was experimentally verified in 1958 by Marcus Spaarnay, again at Philips in Eindhoven while he was studying the properties of colloidal solutions. The recognized cause of the Casimir effect is the quantum vacuum fluctuations (zero-point fluctuations) of the electromagnetic field between the plates.

Yes, it was known for sometime that there might exist infinite energy in the vaccume! The classical void, where there exists no known molecules of anything. Its pure nothingness. In 1957, Lee and Yang, initiated a great revolution across physics by suggesting the strong prediction of broken symmetry. Its experimental proof was provided by Wu the same year. Lee and Yang won a nearly instant Nobel Prize in December 1957. That asymmetry is used by charges and dipoles for extracting and pouring out Electromagnetic energy from the vacuum!

Reference: (a) T. D. Lee, "Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions," Phys. Rev., 104(1), Oct. 1, 1956, p. 254-259. Errata are given in in Phys. Rev. 106(6), June 15, 1957, p. 1371; (b) T. D. Lee, Reinhard Oehme, and C. N. Yang, "Remarks on Possible Noninvariance under Time Reversal and Charge Conjugation," Phys. Rev., 106(2), 1957, p. 340-345.

In the words of Swami Vivekananda “According to the raja-yogi, the external world is but the gross form of the internal, or subtle. The fine is always the cause, and the gross, the effect. So the external world is the effect, and the internal, the cause. Therefore the external forces are simply the grosser parts of that of which the internal forces are the finer. The man who has discovered and learnt how to manipulate the internal forces will get the whole of nature under his control. He wants to arrive at the point where what we call nature's laws will have no influence over him, where he will be able to go beyond them all. He will be the master of the whole of nature, internal and external. The progress and civilization of the human race simply mean controlling nature. The yogi proposes to himself no less a task than to control the whole of nature, to master the entire universe!”

It was not until 1997 that the precise magnitude of the Casimir force was measured by Steve K. Lamoreaux of the Los Alamos National Laboratory along with Umar Mohideen and Anushree Roy from UC Riverside. Because using two parallel plates would require impractically high standards for precise alignment, a plate and a nearly perfect sphere were used. Within a margin of error of 5%, the intensity was found to be just that predicted by quantum theory; defined as the zero-point energy of the Fourier modes of the electromagnetic field between the plates.

Today there are major scientific experiments in progress to harness the infinite potential of what is being called the “Zero point Energy” http://www.zpenergy.com/

consider the commonly accepted principle 4/0 = Infinity. What we are saying is if you are able to break anything into zero equal parts you realize nothing less than infinity itself!. This is the very challenge of the Raja Yogi. The shunya, that is, the voidistic state of the Buddhists, and the brahman or ethereal plane of the Hindus (of Shankaracarya) are not different. Therefore, the Buddhist’s shunyavada, the philosophy of voidism or nihilism, and the Hindu's or Shankara's brahmavada, the philosophy of monism, are simply different words that mean the same thing. Infinity and zero are the expression of the same thing - “that”. And as the Upanishad proclaims “Tat Tvam Asi” – “Thou art That”

Another explanation of how the infinity of possibility is hidden in the zero is in Taoism. Taoism states that by 'doing nothing' one could 'accomplish everything.' Lao Tzu writes:

The Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and lords observed this,
The ten thousand things would develop naturally.
If they still desired to act,
They would return to the simplicity of formless substance.
Without form there is no desire.
Without desire there is tranquility.
In this way all things would be at peace.

Lao Tsu , literally “old sage” the commonly accepted founder of Taoism, taught that all straining, all striving are not only vain but counterproductive. One should endeavor to do nothing (wu-wei). But what does this mean? It means not to literally do nothing, but to discern and follow the natural forces -- to follow and shape the flow of events and not to pit oneself against the natural order of things. It says first and foremost to be spontaneous in ones actions. In this sense the Taoist doctrine of wu-wei can be understood as a way of mastering circumstances by understanding their nature or principal, and then shaping ones actions in accordance with these. This understanding has also infused the approach to movement as it is developed in Tai Chi Chuan. This has been perfected by Buddhist monks like those of the Shaolin temple in martial like Kung Fu. In Taoism the central vehicle of achieving tranquility was the Tao, a term which has been translated as 'the way' or 'the path.' Te in this context refers to virtue and Ching refers to laws. Thus the Tao Te Ching could be translated as The Law (or Canon) of Virtue and it's Way. The Tao was the central mystical term of Lao Tzu and the Taoists, a formless, unfathomable source of all things. The definition of the Tao is eerily similar to the zero point quantum state with infinite energy predicted by Quantum Physics.

The Tao-

There is a thing, formless yet complete.
Before heaven and earth it existed.
Without sound, without substance,
it stands alone and unchanging.
It is all-pervading and unfailing.
One may think of it as the mother of all beneath Heaven.
We do not know its name, but we call it Tao.

25. [Bodde].

Deep and still, it seems to have existed forever.
4.

Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable, they are one.

From above it is not bright;
From below it is not dark:
Unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
Form of the formless,
Image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it - there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.
Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.

Quantum physics is like the fantastic teachings of the core of all religions. The infamous JZ Knight of the Ramtha School of enlightenment proclaims “Quantum Physics is the science of the gods”. It is a collection of postulates and theories, a collection of hypotheses that cannot be verified by external scientific instruments. The only way to verify these is through the mind. Richard Feynmann gives this introduction to a lecture about quantum theory - "Do not take the lecture too seriously . . . just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself "But how can it be like that?" because you will get . . . into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that."

David Quinn, in the Wizard Forum posts this

“The core delusion of the mind, which forms the basis of all other delusions, is the belief in inherent existence. I refer here to the instinctive and deeply-held belief that things really exist in an independent, objective manner. From this core delusions spring the thousands of beliefs which make up religion, science, agnosticism and atheism. In each case, one is creating imaginary entities (such as God, matter, objective existence, etc) in order to explain a "reality" which is falsely imagined to exist in the first place. As soon as this core delusion is eliminated, every other delusion concerning the nature of existence naturally falls into a heap - like the sudden collapse of a stack of cards - and it is here that the mind experiences enlightenment. What the enlightened person perceives, in his enlightenment, is the formlessness of Reality, sometimes referred to as "emptiness" or "the Void". He perceives that everything is causally created and an illusion of the moment, including his own self. He sees that there is nothing at all which is objectively or fundamentally real. There is nothing to seek or grasp, nothing to explain or resolve, nothing to uncover or know. There is only the purity of Nature relentlessly producing whim after whim after whim. This is Nature as it really is. This is Ultimate Reality.”

So it seems, that after enlightenment, one realizes that the infinite forms of existence which has blinded us, deluded us, made us kill each other in greed or rage, made us scheme and plot for land or gold, made us hate and strive for illusory glory, made us wage war for wealth or women was all actually contained in the one infinite, unchangeable and ultimate reality. The sunya!