A befuddling abstraction: life before the Big Bang.

Try this…

Imagine a silent void where neither time nor space exists. Nothing. No short-lived elementary particles. No waves of light.

Not. A. Single. Quark.

Struggling?

The very idea is absurd, to conceptualise nothingness, because nothingness in itself is self-contradictory. To think of nothing is to think of something.

Fine.

Perhaps you can stop thinking altogether. But no—that’s not right either. Absence of thought isn’t nothing. Your neurones still tick and fire, even in blissful slumber or the deepest states of unconsciousness.

And yet, I’m here to tell you that you’ve experienced nothingness before. Right before those two sets of deoxyribonucleic acid fizzled together in the miracle that is life. Remember that?

Of course you don’t—there’s no-thing to remember!

Confused?

Me too. Join me in this spiral of utter bamboozlement and discombobulation!