Is your present awareness of "something" really undeniable? I think that it's this basic assumption which lies at the heart of the paradox you outline in the question details.
The crux of the matter is this: How can you be sure that what you feel to be you, as a fixed origin of conscious awareness, that has the quality of a 'something', and is aware of other 'somethings', is actually the true nature of your experience?
I posit that this feeling of ourselves, as fixed points of conscious attention, is actually an illusion created by the peculiar way the human mind functions, and that the true nature of our conscious experience is intrinsically mysterious. That is, what we are in the essence of our conscious awareness is a presence can't be 'pinned down', and does not have the quality of a fixed object.
What makes human consciousness very peculiar among life forms on this planet is not only that we can think in terms of symbols, but that within our prefrontal cortex we have an extra piece of circuitry that, because it allows us to watch our own thoughts as if we were aside from them, creates the illusion of a fixed locus of conscious awareness, that is the unchanging centre of our experience. In other words, the mechanism of being able to reflect upon the flow of thoughts creates the vivid experience that we are a fixed centre of awareness that is separate from the thoughts themselves, and the changing sensations of our subjective experience, but this feeling does not accurately reflect the true nature of our conscious awareness.
Take a look at this image:
The human experience of being a fixed centre of conscious awareness is almost exactly like this. In reality, there is no ring that is a substantial entity in itself, but rotating the sparkler through the air at a fast enough speed creates the illusion that there is. Our minds work in very much the same way. Because your thought process is constantly chattering away, and we have this extra circuit that allows us to watch this process as if we aside from it, this whole mechanism creates the very convincing illusion that there is an unchanging centre to our experience. But, like in the image, this feeling is created by a flow of constant change and is not a reality in and of itself. It is created by the dynamic mechanism of the mind, but is not actually intrinsic to our experience.
What has happened is that, due to millennia of human social conditioning, we have come to identify ourselves totally with this reflective extra piece of circuity because it creates the sense of being a fixed agent of conscious action, which is essential to complicated human activity. Furthermore, this feeling of being a fixed object is likely a deeply unconscious reaction to the sheer insecurity and impermanence of our own situation. That is, it gives us the feeling that we are not identical to the constant stream of change that characterises our ageing bodies, and the universe more generally, but the stable observer of these things. The peculiar nature of our reflective minds allows us to create the feeling that we are a substantial entity that stands aside from our experience, but we are mistaken in thinking that this feeling is the same thing as being a fixed centre, separate from the changing tides of experience.
Now, it is precisely this deeply entrenched feeling that we are a 'something' that has led to our assumption that this universe must, logically, be constituted by any number of other 'somethings' that interact with each other in a similar way that billiard balls do. That is, it is your illusory experience of yourself as a fixed, unchanging object that creates the subject/object duality that we take for granted. Because you feel yourself to be a substantial entity 'over here', in a fixed, unchanging position, you therefore infer that the tree outside your window must also have the same quality 'over there' (despite the fact that we know the tree is a highly dynamic process). What we don't see is that we only feel that we must exist in a universe of 'somethings' because we have the the vivid feeling that we ourselves are a 'something', but that this experience is an illusion.
So, what is the true nature of our conscious experience? Well, if you pay close attention to your own mind, you may become aware that there is a presence at the seat of your experience that is much more diffuse and difficult to objectify than what you ordinarily feel to be 'me', as the conscious mind. If you are able to go further, and still the thought process altogether through a practice such a meditation, you may make the rather shocking discovery that there isn't really a centre to your experience at all. That is, there is change in your experience, and there are sensations, but there is not a substantial entity to which these experiences pertain. The true nature of your conscious experience can't actually be pinned down by the mind, and yet that is what you fundamentally are. It is more akin to the nature of water than of a fixed object. Your true nature is a sort of 'flowing', but there is no point from which the flowing seems to emanate.
Furthermore (and even more shocking), implied by the realisation that there is actually no centre to your experience, there is also the realisation that you can't actually find anywhere within direct experience a division between what you define as yourself, and what you define as the universe 'out there', because there is no fixed point at which you can stand and say, "Here I am!". That is, it doesn't appear that there is any point to stand aside from experience or confront it. There is simply this single flow of experience happening, and it can't actually be 'bitted' or divided up into separate things, because none of it has the quality of an object. Neither consciousness or reality experienced without the filter of the thought process seem to possess the quality of 'thingness', and so we can't actually say where one form begins and other ends. Reality as directly experienced seems to have the quality of a single integrated field of energy, that essentially 'flows', and there doesn't seem to be anyone (or anything) that can, as it were, stand aside from this flow and examine it as if they were separate from it. There is merely the indivisible flowing, and everything that exists is that.
Basically, what you are at the deepest level is change. But the extremely spooky thing is that there is nothing doing the changing. The apprehension that this universe consists of separate, indivisible objects to which change happens is an illusion created by the primary illusion of your feeling yourself to be an unchanging object. Not only is 'change' simply an independent reality in and of itself, totally unknowable to the mind, but since nothing that exists has the quality of an unchanging object, the whole universe is essentially irreducible. That is, as ludicrous as it sounds, there is no actual difference between you and the tree outside your window, or the rings of Saturn, because there is no 'point' at which experience can be cleft into fundamentally separate parts. You are not a substantial entity that lives 'in' a universe, 'on' a planet called Earth, but the indivisible fabric of the cosmos itself, experiencing itself from the point of view that you call 'me'. And, the basic essence of the whole show is, well, nothing. Or, rather, 'no-thing'. Every single one of us is the entire cosmos and nothing simultaneously, because the notion that the universe is separated out into distinct objects is nothing other than a stubbornly persistent human social fiction.
So how can something come from nothing? Well, it can't, because as totally absurd as it may sound, 'something' is merely a phantom created by the peculiar mind of man. What we call the human condition, and all the struggles and frustrations that accompany it, is nothing other than an ongoing futile attempt to make nothing into something; to pin down and hold onto a universe the very nature of which is change. We are not a superior species, but a cosmic joke; the grandest hoax never played on nobody.
~Sam sara
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