From Another Realm
There is yet another way to conceive of the movement from nothingness to something (Being). We can consider that an idea, feeling, or fundamental sense of Being comes from something other than our conscious mind. We don’t need systems-thinking or a Medici Effect when facing the Void or a Mystery. There are other sources and other realms that can lead us from nothingness to something. The most widely acknowledged source for many generations of “believers” in Western Cultures has been God. We find inspiration, guidance, and even an entire theological perspective coming “out of nothing” (ex-nihilo) from a divine source. Whether this be the guidance and inspiration offered Joanne d’Arc as Warrior-Queen or the troubling conceptual conversion offered C. S. Lewis, the God of Christianity has often been the source of new-birth—be it Joan of Arc’s courage or Lewis’s theology.
Secular Realms: recent neurobiological studies of the conversions and revelations of Christian saints and theologians suggest that the realms may be secular rather than sacred. Visions might be optical migraines, while words from God might be coming from conversations between the two hemispheres of the human cortex. Courage might be founded on a deep fear of uncompleted addressing of childhood trauma, while conversion experiences could be nothing more than the transitions that occur during our adulthood (often precipitated by a major intrusive event). Finally, we might find that there are spiritually based events that can be assigned to a specific sector of our brain (“God spots”) rather than to any outside (divine) source. The periaqueductal gray area of our brainstem might have more to do with our religious inquiries that create something out of nothing than does a voice emanating from Mt. Sinai.
Since the paradigm revolution offered by Sigmund Freud at the start of the 20th Century, another source from a different realm has often been identified as the vehicle that delivers “something out of nothing.” This source is the human unconscious. The unconscious—and dreams in particular—have often been a source of scientific inspiration (Albert Einstein), technological innovation (Nikola Tesla), or creative art (Salvador Dali). The vehicle for this movement of nothingness into being has been identified as the removal of censorship and cultural barriers (Freud, 1930/2010; Freud, 2009), the regression of the ego (Kris, 1953), the process of incubation (Ghiselin, 1961/1985) or the creation of structures that promote novelty, autonomy, and flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013).
Peremptory Ideation: I wish to introduce yet another source of nothingness becoming something. This source is a specific process that operates in the human conscious. A noted psychoanalytically oriented researcher, George Klein (1967) proposed that in our internal world (psyche), we create a specific idea or image that begins to “travel” around our psyche (head and heart). This train, already filled with ideas and images, picks up fragments of unconsciously held material (memories, feelings, and thoughts) along the way. The ideational train operates much like the aforementioned avalanche and other forms of “strange attractors”. The train becomes increasingly rich and emotionally powerful as it picks up new intra-psychic material. It gains increasing energy from this unconscious material. An ever-expanding Something is formed ex-nihilo by this ideational train, its initial, primitive content.
At some point, this ideation begins to pull in material from outside the psyche. External people and events suddenly take on greater saliency (more emotional power and vividness). Klein suggested that this ideation takes priority when we are valuing, attending, and remembering in the external world. It assumes a commanding (“peremptory”) presence. A positive (reinforcing) loop is created, with the external material now joining the interior material. They all cluster around the original ideation.
