Is The Void Just Internet Fabrication?
I drafted this piece a long time ago.
Research like this takes time, and I originally held off on posting it because I assumed it would be too dense for some of you. While I sat on it, a few bloggers published well-researched posts covering parts of this same territory. I’ll be linking some of them below for anyone who wants additional reading.
Still, I wanted to share my own breakdown, because this question keeps resurfacing.
Is the void something internet manifestation spaces invented?
A label people attached to imagination, dissociation, or wishful thinking and then repeated until it started sounding legitimate?
At the same time, the internet has done what it usually does. It has taken a complex subject, stripped it of nuance, and scattered half-explanations everywhere.
So I want to approach this properly.
I’m breaking this into three parts:
And yes, I’m including science intentionally.
For some people, spirituality becomes difficult to engage with when it is explained through language so abstract that it starts sounding inaccessible.
Looking at psychology and neuroscience gives us another way to approach the conversation.
I’m also clarifying this upfront.
Including philosophy or science does not mean subjective experience suddenly requires laboratory approval to be taken seriously.
Experience has always existed before explanation.
Long before internet spaces began using the word void, traditions across the world were documenting states involving stillness, altered awareness, and release from ordinary identification.
The Mandukya Upanishad describes Turiya, often referred to as the fourth state of consciousness.
It exists beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.
Awareness is present, yet the mental activity that usually fills conscious experience recedes.
The Bhagavad Gita repeatedly addresses detachment from identification with thought, action, and outcome.
There is a strong emphasis on loosening psychological attachment without losing awareness itself.
In Buddhist philosophy, concepts like Śūnyatā and Anatta dismantle the assumption of a fixed self.
Identity is examined as something conditioned and constantly arising rather than permanently existing.
Meditative traditions built around these ideas often describe states where the usual sense of self becomes significantly quieter.
Taoism approaches similar territory through stillness and non-forcing.
The Tao Te Ching repeatedly points toward emptiness as openness.
A condition where mental rigidity settles enough for direct awareness to become clearer.
Even within Kabbalistic thought, concepts such as Ayin describe a form of nothingness beyond ordinary conceptual grasp.
A state preceding form and definition.
These traditions are separated by geography, language, and historical context.
Even so, they repeatedly return to experiences involving reduced attachment to identity and unusual clarity of awareness.
(Parmenides) (Plato) (Pascal)
Philosophers have spent centuries questioning how stable identity actually is.
Parmenides challenged the assumption that reality is fundamentally fragmented and changing. His work proposed unity beneath apparent multiplicity.
Plato questioned whether direct sensory experience offers full access to reality. He treated ordinary perception as incomplete. A starting point rather than a final conclusion.
That line of questioning naturally extends to identity.
If perception can mislead, then so can the assumptions built from perception.
Even Pascal, writing from an entirely different context, observed how difficult people find simple stillness. His reflections on distraction and internal restlessness remain surprisingly relevant.
People often discover just how attached they are to mental movement the moment they try to sit without engaging thought.
Across these thinkers, one recurring observation appears.
The self people experience daily has never gone unquestioned.
Modern science examines these experiences through cognition and neural activity.
The Default Mode Network, often associated with self-referential thinking, plays a major role in internal narration, autobiographical processing, and identity continuity.
Research has shown that changes in this network often correspond with reduced self-referencing and quieter internal commentary.
People frequently report feeling less identified with their usual sense of self.
Cognitive science also offers useful insight through predictive processing.
Your brain continuously builds models to organize incoming information.
Identity functions as part of that system. It provides continuity. It organises experience into something coherent.
When aspects of that predictive structure temporarily relax, the experience of self can shift with it.
Psychology has also documented states involving ego attenuation and altered self-processing.
These are not automatically interchangeable with what people describe as the void.
Still, they demonstrate that the sense of identity most people experience is far more flexible than it appears.
So, Is It Internet Fabrication?
The internet did not invent experiences involving profound stillness, reduced identification, or awareness with significantly less mental interference.
What it did invent was a new vocabulary around those experiences.
Some explanations are thoughtful.
Some collapse years of philosophical and contemplative nuance into oversimplified claims.
Poor explanation does not erase the existence of the experience itself.
People have been documenting states adjacent to what many now call the void for centuries.
The underlying observations have existed for far longer than social media.
For anyone interested in exploring broader historical references surrounding this topic, I’ll be linking a few well-researched posts below as additional reading.
VOID STATE METHOD (but scientific)
proof that every single person has been lying about the void and shifting.
𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱𝘀, 𝘆𝗲𝘀.🪷ᝰ.ᯓᡣ𐭩要有光
More 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 techniques 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐀𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.
THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT VOID STATE FROM ANCIENT TEXT
Was Reality Shifting Known in Ancient Times?
