What happens when you are born, when consciousness begins? Isn't like a light suddenly being switched on? It's not in nothing, not in nowhere, it lights up a stage that is already set, even if not much is yet revealed, many things are in place that will only make sense later, when the performance begins, the actors. But when was it set up? That happened before, in the dark, no one was there to see, it was in preparation. But surely that's the real beginning? The stage-hands knew what to do. They arranged the props, put down chalk marks. It's not consciousness but if it makes no sense without consciousness then in some sense it is so already, it is only there to be seen, has no other being. When did it really begin, when was the point that separated nothing from something? Nothing is infinite possibility, something is determination, the ruling out of almost all of those possibilities. And death, the extinguishing of the light, the empty set, then the set is dismantled, then the theatre is torn down, then the place where it once was is erased, and the 'was' too, the space, the time, wiped away like a dream. Who knows but the witness, the infinite emptiness witnessing itself without consciousness, unchanged.