Did you ever think too hard about what there would be if there were no universe, and suddenly find yourself in a total mindblow? I do this sometimes. I did it earlier today. My thoughts go:
What would there be if there was no universe? There would just be… nothing. So the foundation of our universe rests on… nothing. All of our history, everything that’s ever happened, is… nothing.
But how can there be no existence of anything at all? Not even a universe? Not even nothing?
Which is too much for my brain to wrap itself around. So then I start to feel that I myself don’t exist, that my identity and every memory I’ve ever had and every care I have is not just insignificant but non-existent, or even something there’s no word for, and I feel completely foreign to myself. I feel like a figment of my own imagination. This usually takes a few seconds to wear off; I have to seek refuge in the famliar — the world around me, my everyday thoughts — for it to do so.
It is, to be honest, one of the scariest mindblows you can do to yourself. Every so often I worry that I’ll get stuck in that mindfuck and never be able to snap out.
But it’s also quite a trip.
Bartender, I’ll have what he’s having.
This is why people invented religion, so that certitude could innoculate them against mindfucks.
If God exists, then the mindfuck is a mindfuck.
Weird. I used to have these very thoughts on occasion as a kid and it would depress me terribly. The thought that there was nothing. And then the depression would quickly give way to the mindfuck.