By Kenneth Harper Finton

My friend Tim believes that the universe is infinite. If you could travel in a straight line forever, you would see nothing but stars and dust with galaxies, clusters, and planets so far beyond our sense’s ability to perceive that we could never find an end. It keeps on going forever. Even if matter is not present, Tim believes that space goes on forever. That is his picture of an infinite universe. 

The problem with this image is that it is impossible to know. If energy cannot be newly created or destroyed (according to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics), then energy simply changes form. There would not be enough room in eternity to have infinite matter unless the universe is also infinite. Objects like the universe have a place in space and time. Therefore, both space and the universe must be finite. When the universe expands, everything is bigger and farther apart. In an eternity, the whole of finite matter that composes all objects would be so large as to be totally separated from one another. 

So what is the universe expanding into?

That which is beyond the boundary of the universe is often called “voidness”. 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. In this case, potentiality is the invisible seed of something that can possibly exist.

If the void is capable of holding potentiality (as I assume must be the case), then it must have the ability to store both the potentiality of energy and the potentiality of alertness and awareness. Both are essential components of world formation. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines potential as “existing in possibility, capable of development into actuality.” See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/potential.

Potentiality is not actuality. It need not be in time and space. It can, like the void, be infinite. From the beginning, in order to start the unveiling of a universe, potential energy must exist within the void. This potentiality of the void would take up no time nor 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 energy have their origin in the void. They do not exist there, but the potential to exist must be harbored in the void. 

There are three fundamental necessities for the universe to exist––energy, awareness, and information. 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. In modern terms, an excitation of a cosmic thought in the potential eternal energy of the void creates 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 becomes kinetic instead of potential and is perceived by the potential for awareness in the void. Movement, like the released energy that creates a thought, creates a zero-dimension that is infinite and unique in that it sprang from the void by actuating the void’s potentiality.

Is it any wonder then, that this voidness would be interpreted as God by our ancestors, both remote and recent? The void has the property of holding the potential to activate nature itself with the potential energy and awareness that is somehow stored within it. 

Tim’s wife also believes in an expanding universe that grows faster and faster as objects speed away from one another. If you ask her what the universe is expanding into, the answer is that “the universe is all there is. Nothing exists without it. It keeps getting bigger. It is not expanding into anything because there is nothing in which to expand.” 

That is precisely my point… at the remote end of the universe is the void, just as in the remote beginning.

The good thing about the void is that it can be anything you want it to be. It can be God, Buddha, Allah, Jupiter, or Ra the Sun God. It can be the Tao, the heavens, Nirvana, or altered consciousness.

What is created can be nature, reality, illusion, Maya, or something in between. It can be nothing and everything at once. Nothing really exists but the void and the realized potential it has wrought.