Creation out of nothing

The Creation of Light by Gustave Doré

Creation out of nothing (Latin: creatio ex nihilo) is the basic activity of the spirit through which it realises itself in continuous acts of unconditional coming into being. The spirit lives in constant creating and creating itself out of itself, and this self is in a higher sense nothing, i.e. no thing, for it is in no way graspable as a definable, i.e. delimitable being. Here there is no great and small, thick and thin, above and below, no color, no sound, no taste etc., but the spirit, in its ceaseless becoming, which, however, appears outwardly as absolute rest, transcends all being that has become, which itself is only a cast-off product of the spirit's activity, manifesting itself as a delimitable outer creation.

The Nothing

„The Oriental felt, but not because he speculated in any way, but because his contemplation compelled him to feel thus, he felt: On the one hand I experience space and time, and on the other hand I experience that which cannot be observed in space and time, which is nothingness for space and time things and for space and time events, but is a reality, just another reality. Only through a misunderstanding did that come into being to which the occidental civilisation gave itself under Rome's leadership: the creation of the world out of nothing, whereby only zero was thought of as nothing. In the Orient, where these things were originally conceived, the world does not arise out of nothing, but out of that real to which I have just referred you.“ (Lit.:GA 200, p. 16f)

In Buddhism, the concept of emptiness (shunyata) refers to this essential nature of the spirit, through which the bonds of conditional arising, i.e. karma, are finally cast off. Creation out of nothing springs from Nirvana (Sanskrit: n., निर्वाण "extinction" or literally "blowing away", from nis, nir "out of" and vā "blowing"), comparable to the Ain Soph (Hebrew: אין סוף "not finite") of the Jewish Kabbalah. Here is the source from which everything arises, and here is at the same time the sink into which all being dissolves again.

According to Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430 AD), creation can only have taken place ex nihilo, out of nothing, if it is to be real creation and not mere transformation. Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 220 AD) went even further in this respect and said that creation actually arose a nihilo, 'from nothing', because if it had arisen ex nihilo, nothingness would already be understood as substance.

Augustine also coined the concept of creatio continua, according to which creation is an ongoing, unfinished process. Isaac Newton was also of this opinion. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz took the opposite view and coined the famous parable of the "divine watchmaker", according to which the world functioned automatically like a perfect clockwork created by God, and countered Newton by saying that he would have to consider God a bad watchmaker if the world were in need of his constant intervention in order to function. In the Christian churches, both views are roughly equally held.

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner: Bewußtsein – Leben – Form , GA 89 (2001), ISBN 3-7274-0890-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Mythen und Sagen. Okkulte Zeichen und Symbole, GA 101 (1992), ISBN 3-7274-1010-8 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Geisteswissenschaftliche Menschenkunde, GA 107 (1988), ISBN 3-7274-1070-1 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Die neue Geistigkeit und das Christus-Erlebnis des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, GA 200 (2003), ISBN 3-7274-2000-6 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.