Notes on Nothing:
The Joy of Being Nobody
by Anonymous
The author of this book has chosen to remain anonymous. The story of who they are is not important. This could be anyone’s story.
It could be yours.
$15 / £12
$12 - Launch Sale Price
112 Pages ~ Paperback
FROM THE AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION:
This is a book about Nothing. You could also say it’s a book about Everything. Most accurately perhaps, it’s a book about Nothing-as-Everything and Everything-as-Nothing.
It takes as its spine an account of a specific experience that seemed to happen to me, during which there wasn’t very much “Me” around. There have been many names given to these kinds of “non-experiences”, depending on what tradition or viewpoint they are being seen from.
Here let’s call it a meeting with Nothing, that never actually happened.
This book is meant to be read by those who may identify as “spiritual seekers”, those who would never dream of doing so, and everyone in between. These pages make no such distinctions. I have tried to write as much as possible from direct experience, and to avoid using other people’s frameworks or phrases. So you won’t find explicit references to things like “Advaita Vedanta” or “Zen” or “non-duality” and so on.
I’ve chosen not to use my name on the cover of this book. This is because who I am does not really matter. The story of me is only a story - it’s no more and no less important or ordinary than that. These pages don’t seek to teach anything. They don’t prescribe anything. I don’t claim here to be any kind of “expert” or “guide” or even to be credible on these matters.
If this can be my story, it could be anyone’s. It could be yours.
You might call this account only a suggestion of a possibility. A kind of report from Nothing, written as evocatively as this writer is able. Some readers might find these words frustrating, or irritating, or even nonsensical. Others might find that the words resonate. They might find with one reading or repeated readings that there can be an inducement of something in the words, beyond the attempt to intellectually understand them.
If you choose to read these pages as a work of fiction, or an imaginative projection, or “thought experiment”, that’s also fine.
Either way, take heart, dear friend: Nothing is really gained or lost.
Print book + Audiobook + eBook
PRAISE FOR NOTES ON NOTHING:
“My old friend went into his garden one day and had an experience of nothing. Of being nothing in the midst of everything. Of realising that everything is also nothing. Sometimes I feel I have this non-experience when I’m writing. Maybe you have had it doing whatever you do, or don’t do, or just while sitting in a garden… It’s a very hard thing to put into words: impossible, actually. But sometimes poets and musicians and wise souls gesture towards it, beautifully. That’s what my old friend has done here. Give your self the slip for an hour. Read this book.”
— Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth and The Fraud
“To the question of why is there something rather than nothing, the author’s response is that there isn’t. And since there is nothing rather than something, he has nothing to persuade us of, nor any prescription to offer us either. That in itself comes as a relief. What’s shared instead in this beautiful book is an experience its author has had, and so which we might have too. There’s no map to this experience, which is the experience of nothing after all, but even to read of it is to feel one’s sense of self and world exerting a little less pressure and getting subtly rearranged.”
— Devorah Baum, writer and filmmaker, author of On Marriage
“Like a saner P.K. Dick undergoing a gentler VALIS-type experience, the author offers insights on the weeks in which he ceased to be. This eloquent, sparse and wise book nudges readers sideways into the calm revelation of emptiness.”
— John Tresch, Professor of History of Art and Science, The Warburg Institute, and author of The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science
“This small gem of a book straddles the ego’s dilemma of falling into and then out of a deep enlightenment experience. It is a normal and natural struggle to vividly remember and make sense of such an experience, even though it is inclined to vanish in its own emptiness. As this captivating memoir reminds us of our true nature, it should be placed among the spiritual classics. Both inspired and inspiring, Notes on Nothing is a must-read for all those interested in exploring the miracle of consciousness.”
— Michael Gellert, Jungian analyst, Zen practitioner, and author of The Way of the Small: Why Less Is Truly More and Legacy of Darkness and Light
“It is difficult to find words to describe what happens when our sense of a separate self dissolves – because, as the author discovered in his garden, nothing happens. Here he has reached beyond the silence to craft an eloquent, personal-yet-nonpersonal testament to the true nature we all share. His account is all the more affecting as it unfolds within ordinary family life, and affirms its value. The truth he uncovers – beautiful and poignant in equal measure – leaves us with precisely nothing to do, except feel its light shine.”
— Clare Carlisle, Professor of Philosophy, King’s College London, and author of Spinoza’s Religion and Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard
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