I hope this doesn't offend anyone, for these are only the beliefs of one person and I do not expect everyone to agree.

The Void

The Void is a place that is not a place, a state of conciousness much sought after, yet entirely non-existent. After all, "void" means nothing, right? It's part of that "New Age" nomenclature that might well stretch into infinity. So what is the void anyway? It depends on who you talk to.

In my opinion most members of the New Age Community first learned about the void back in the 1960's and this information was passed down, from whence it came burstng into the collective conciousness thanks to the works of Tim Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner's interesting, though sometimes fanciful, translation of The Tibetan Book of The Dead. This notorious "Harvard three" made the void sound like a perpetual psychedelic fantasy of colors and lights.

But, according to The Tibetan Book Of The Dead itself, the void is actually something quite different from this psychedelic fantasy. In fact, it isn't a something at all. It's a nothing.

In classic Buddhism, the word for void is "sunyata", which means simply "emptiness". But there's a catch to this particular emptiness. It actually signifies the emptiness that occurs after you have poured something out of a container. So the void is where you go after you empty out all your garbage, all your thoughts, all your conditioning, everything human and imperfect and so on.

If everything is a creation of the mind, then what is left over? What is there that had not been created by the busy, active, restless entity that is in your mind?

And the answer is, you guessed it, the void. The void is the primal state of emptiness which occurs when everything else is cleared out. This emptying is, in fact, the goal of most Eastern meditation.

There is also a void in the Western tradition. And no, I don't mean just a gap in our knowledge. I mean a conceptual void, similar to the ideas in the Eastern Philosophies.


It is mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis of the Bible: "The Earth was without form, and void: and darkness was on the face of the deep." Is this the same void? You bet it is. The actual Hebrew term is "tohu bohu", and it is a peculiar void indeed. Way back in Babylon, the primal chaos, or void from which all things sprang, was perceived as a dragon and the dargon's name was Tiamat. The Hebrew Bible contains a great deal of common Near Eastern myth disguised as theology. Tohu bohu, therefore is none other than the cosmic dragon Tiamat - meaning chaos and the void are seen in the Western tradition as a kind of serpent or Dragon, a formless chaotic energy from which all things began.

The dragon is a lady. Tiamet is a female dragon, and one suspects that Tohu Bohu was the same. In Babylon, a godly patriarch named Marduk kills the dragon, in the Bible Yahweh does the same thing - except the Dragon has taken on a different name and is referred to as Leviathan.

So focused rational conciousness exerts its control over the mystic, mysterious, serpentine, and feminine depths of energy which is the void.

Some say at this point that this is not necessarily a good thing. But do take note of the fact that this Western void seems decidedly feminine in it's character. After all the dragon was a lady. Can we say the same of the Buddhist void?

W.Y. Evans-Wentz, the original translator of The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, says that: "Bliss is the father, and the void which percieves it is the mother. Radiance is the father, and the void which percieves it is the mother. Intelligence is the father. Void is the mother.

East or West, all the same. The void is where you go when you lay down the heavy burden of the intellect and return the the empty eternal space of the cosmic mother.


Nirvana

Nirvana will blow you away, literally. The word "nirvana", strictly translated, means "blown away", or (even better) "blown-out". So in real terms, contrary to popular belief, nirvana is not a place. It's not a condition of self-indulgent bliss, and soft music and sweet aromas won't get you there. Nirvana is a state of conciousness, but even that is not totally correct. Nirvana is a state of "no-conciousness".

According to the Budda, whom I am sure you will remember, humans are all just packed full of stuff - food and clothing, ideas and emotions, friends and lovers, memories, physical aches and pains, worries about the mortgage and so on. At present, for instance, I'm personally packed full of concerns about the pesky raccoon who keeps thinking my garden hose is his toy and biting it to pieces accordingly. We're so packed full of stuff that we are always going around in circles. Everything is muddy and unclear. The only way to deal with this, Budda says, is to get empty. Blow all that extraneous stuff out of your mind and right out of your life. Blow it all away.

We are all conditioned. Everything we do is conditonal. Nirvana is unconditional. Better than that, it's absolutely unconditioned. And when we are unconditioned, we are free.

Now if you are thinking that nirvana sounds suspiciously like the void, you're right. In fact, the Universe has it's own Nirvana and that's the void.

Some of the most famous magicians in the Western tradition have asserted that you can't really create magic unless you begin with emptiness. The Czech magus Franz Bardon placed emptiness at the beginning of his program for magical development: "Step One: First get empty, then you can make magic".

The "founder" of Chaos Magic, Austin Osman Spare, remarked that he did most of his best magical work while floating in absolute emptiness. (And of course, they call it Chaos Magic because chaos is in the void, and the void is where all magic comes from, and the void is empty, and well... you get the idea)

So it isn't actually The Void versus Nivana for they are the same, yet not the same. But it was a catchy title for a thread, don't you think?

Reminds me of the series of books the word and the void.Only that was good and evil heh.

Well conscious void is merely breaking the barrier down to other things, never a complete void.Mew:/

That was great. Thank you.

If you would like to look into these concepts further, here are some references.

"Buddism: It's essance and development." Edward Conze. Harper, 1959.

"Near Eastern Mythology." John Gray, Bedrick Books, 1985.

"The Tibetan Book of The Dead; or The After Death Experiences on the Bardo Plain, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering." W.Y.Evans-Wentz. Oxford University Press, 1972.

"Initiation into Hermetics: a course of instruction in ten stages." Franz Bardon. English Translation by A Radspieler. Osiris-Verlag, 1962.


I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

That is certainly... interesting. haven't been able to understand it completely yet, but considering that it is 4:40 AM here at the moment and my head doesn't work, it's normal. Can't say much about it now, but will try to when I'm less tired...

Not to move the thread off topic, but this seems like it ties in well with Akira, Akira the character seems like someone who has become void . . .

*bump*