non being
Nonbeing occupies a charged and contested position across the depth-psychology corpus, operating simultaneously as cosmological ground, psychological cipher, and ontological limit-concept. In the Daoist lineage — Zhuangzi, Wang Bi, and the Daoist scriptural traditions catalogued by Kohn — nonbeing (wu) names the absolute, placeless, and timeless source from which the ten thousand things emerge; it is not mere absence but the generative condition of all presence, the ‘Heavenly Gate’ through which being passes. Wang Bi reinforces this by insisting that nonbeing cannot illuminate itself through nonbeing alone but requires being as its vehicle of disclosure — a dialectical intimacy that resonates with Hegel and anticipates Derrida’s analysis of Aristotelian time as nonbeing. Corbin’s reading of Ibn Arabi introduces a theophanic twist: creation proceeds at once from being and nonbeing, the divine imagination veiling what it reveals. Aurobindo interrogates the Vedantic Nothing as a ‘zero which is All,’ refusing mere nihilism. McGilchrist and Derrida engage Heidegger’s notorious formulation — das Nichts selbst nichtet — treating nonbeing as an active subject rather than the privation of presence. Campbell records the archaic Hindu formula — ‘In the beginning this world was merely nonbeing’ — as mythological first principle. Throughout the corpus the central tension is soteriological and psychological: whether nonbeing is to be feared as annihilation or embraced as the hidden ground of transformation.
The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself.
Zhuangzi posits nonbeing as the absolute cosmological ground — the Heavenly Gate — from which all existence necessarily proceeds, and in which the sage conceals himself.
, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, 2013thesis
Nonbeing cannot be brought to light by means of nonbeing but must take place through being. Therefore, by applying ourselves constantly to this ultimate among things that have being, we shall surely bring to light the primogenitor from which all things derive.
Wang Bi argues that nonbeing discloses itself only through being, establishing a dialectical dependency that grounds all derivation in a generative nothingness.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994thesis
What is this Dao? It is a name for nonbeing [wu]; it is that which pervades everything; and it is that from which everything derives. As an equivalent, we call it Dao. As it operates silently and is without substance, it is not possible to provide images for it.
Wang Bi explicitly identifies the Dao with nonbeing, characterizing it as the imageless, all-pervading source from which all things derive.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994thesis
The ground of being, however, cannot be itself a being; otherwise, infinite regress would render the logic of the Laozi suspect. For this reason, the Laozi would only speak of the Dao as ‘nonbeing’ (wu).
Kohn explains Wang Bi’s logical argument that the Dao must be designated nonbeing to avoid an infinite regress in the theory of cosmological causation.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000thesis
nonbeing of a nonbeing, constitutes the positive act. In this sense it is permissible to say that the universe originates at once in being and in nonbeing.
Corbin, reading Ibn Arabi, identifies creation as a theophanic act in which the negation of nonbeing is itself positive, so that the universe’s origin requires both being and nonbeing simultaneously.
, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis
This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive conception. We erect a fiction of nothingness in order to overpass, by the method of total exclusion, all that we can know and consciously are.
Aurobindo reframes the Nothing of certain philosophies as an affirmative Absolute beyond conceptual grasp, exposing ‘nonbeing’ as a heuristic fiction for transcending finite categories.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
“In the beginning this world was merely nonbeing,” we read in a sacred work of the Hindus; “It was existent. It developed. It turned into an egg.”
Campbell cites the Hindu cosmogonic formula to illustrate the mythological universality of nonbeing as primal, pre-manifest state from which existence emerges.
, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 2015supporting
Nothing, like Being, is no thing. Neither is it the mere absence of a thing: it is a subject of action, Heidegger implies (it positively ‘noths’). There is nothing to which
McGilchrist explicates Heidegger’s das Nichts selbst nichtet, arguing that nonbeing is not privation but an active ontological force, a subject rather than a mere lack.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Nothing, like Being, is no thing. Neither is it the mere absence of a thing: it is a subject of action, Heidegger implies (it positively ‘noths’). There is nothing to which
McGilchrist explicates Heidegger’s das Nichts selbst nichtet, arguing that nonbeing is not privation but an active ontological force, a subject rather than a mere lack.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
God as negatio negationis is simultaneously total emptiness and supreme fullness… According to the Tao Te Ching, the tao is ‘the deep source of everything. It is nothing, and yet in everything’.
McGilchrist draws a cross-traditional convergence, linking Eckhart’s negatio negationis, Boehme’s Ungrund, Lurianic tzimtzum, and Daoist nonbeing as cognate expressions of an ontologically generative emptiness.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
God as negatio negationis is simultaneously total emptiness and supreme fullness… According to the Tao Te Ching, the tao is ‘the deep source of everything. It is nothing, and yet in everything’.
McGilchrist draws a cross-traditional convergence, linking Eckhart’s negatio negationis, Boehme’s Ungrund, Lurianic tzimtzum, and Daoist nonbeing as cognate expressions of an ontologically generative emptiness.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Being is nontime — time is nonbeing insofar as being already, secretly has been determined as present, and beingness (ousia) as presence.
Derrida, reading Aristotle through Heidegger, identifies nonbeing with time insofar as both are excluded from the privileged determination of being as presence.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
Scripture on the Origins and Deeds of Emptiness and Nonbeing… describes first the three energies and their creation of the world, then focuses on their spiritual parallel in the states of emptiness, nonbeing and serenity.
Kohn documents a Daoist scriptural tradition that treats nonbeing as one of three spiritual states — alongside emptiness and serenity — attainable through cultivation of essence and vital energy.
, Daoism Handbook, 2000supporting
there is a practice called Meditation on True Emptiness, in which the practitioner lets go of habitual ways of thinking about being and nonbeing by realizing that these concepts were formed by incorrectly perceiving things as independent and permanent.
Thich Nhat Hanh presents the Buddhist meditative dissolution of the being/nonbeing dichotomy as a corrective to the false perception of things as independent and permanent.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
particles, which cannot be confined by concepts of space, time, being, or not being.
Nhat Hanh invokes Oppenheimer’s reading of the Anuradha Sutra to suggest that both quantum physics and Buddhist teaching resist the confinement of reality to the binary of being and nonbeing.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988supporting
If one knows Him as Brahman the Non-Being, he becomes merely the non-existent. If one knows that Brahman Is, then is he known as the real in existence.
Aurobindo cites the Taittiriya Upanishad to frame the soteriological stakes of the nonbeing question: to identify the Absolute with nonbeing alone is to court existential self-annihilation.
, The Life Divine, 1939aside
Then the one, which is not, partakes, as would appear, of greatness and smallness and equality? Clearly. Further, it must surely in a sort partake of being?
Plato’s Parmenides demonstrates the logical paradox that even that which is said not to be must partake of being to any extent at all, thereby implicating nonbeing in a structure of partial participation.
, Parmenides, -370aside