By Kenneth Harper Finton

“She has a lot of potential,” someone said. That means that buried within her is a chance, a proclivity to succeed at a task. That potential is not something that exists in the present, but something that could come to exist in the future. Potential does not exist in the present except as a vision or concept but it is a chance of action in the future. She can either fill her potential or fail to do so.

Potentiality is the highway upon which evolution is built. From the appearance of the first bursts of energy to the choices we make on a moment-to-moment basis, we are guided and ruled by future potentiality. That is what brings the world to our senses.

I think it is quite important to find and relate a way that the physical world comes into being. Ontology is about the foundations of being itself.

If energy cannot be created, then all the energy that ever existed still exists, albeit in different forms. That in itself is quite humbling. We are not only made from stardust, but the very atoms in our bodies are ancient.

If the universe is a finite composite of existing things, then it too had a beginning––begging the question as to what was here before the universe.

If the universe is infinite and eternal, then we would not be here at all. Why? Because if energy cannot be created, the universe cannot forever expand into nothingness. Energy would be spread so thin that it could not interact in an eternity. 

The other option, of course, is that energy can be created, but this runs counter to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics which declares it cannot be created.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

We know now that it was primal energy that was present before the universe because it cannot be created. We do not know beyond doubt that mass of any kind was present. If mass were present, it would have been from a previous universe. However mass cannot travel at light speed, whereas energy can.  It is easier to accept that there was no mass before the emergence of the universe, as matter is energy in a temporal form. The primal potential energy that existed before time and space, precipitated mass from the potential energy that has always existed. 

Potentiality has no physical being. It is a property of a system, not of an individual body or particle. As such, it does not come into existence until it becomes kinetic energy. Energy is only manifest when it is released in time and space. Even space contains potential energy. 

Potential energy need not have EXISTED before the universe, but being a property of a natural system, it comes into existence when movement occurs. Primal energy is timeless (immortal), because it cannot be created, and exists only when in motion. At rest, it is a potentiality that needs no measures of space or time until movement occurs. It is the movement that requires energy to materialize from the potential to the actionably manifest. The potential energy in its pure form requires no time or space. It is the perception of movement that actuates the chain of evolution.

That which is beyond the boundary of the universe is the void itself. It is not anything. It is not in time and space. Voidness can be infinite because there is nothing there at all. You cannot travel there because it is not there. You cannot see it because it is invisible. Voidness is not simply the stillness of quantum fields without movement. Voidness is the infinity of nothingness, the original state of non-existence. 

But is there something that can be eternally held in the nothingness of the void? Can the void hold potentiality? Potentiality is not something real––not something that exists. It has no definite time and occupies no space. It is the seed of something that can possibly exist.

If the void is capable of holding potentiality (as must be the case), then it must have the ability to store both the potentiality of energy and the potentiality of awareness. 

Potentiality is not actuality. It need not be in time and space. It can, like the void, be infinite. From the beginning, to begin the unveiling of a universe, potential energy must exist within the void. This potentiality of the void would take up no time or occupy any space because neither space nor time exists in the non-dimensional. Further, if the void can hold potential energy, then it can hold potential awareness and the potential intellect of the natural mind. The void’s potential information can serve as a two-dimensional blueprint for the unveiling of a universe.

We must then suspect that awareness and infinite energy have their origin in the void. They do not exist there, but the probability that they can exist must be harbored in the void. 

The third fundamental for universe formation is information––energy, awareness, and information. These are the three fundamentals. All are invisible and all are infinite––without form or body.

With these three fundamentals, the void has the ability to bring the universe into existence within a single point. Excitation in the potential eternal energy creates an eigenstate in the zero-dimension, a dimension similar to the void––in that it is outside space and time––but unlike the void in that the newly-released energy became kinetic instead of potential and was perceived by the potential for awareness in the void. 

The zero-dimension is infinite in that it sprang from the void by actuating the void’s potentiality.