Lemuel indicated the apartment with a wave of his hand. “All these apparent objects - each has a name. Book, chair, couch, rug, lamp, drapes, window, door, wall, and so on. But this division into objects is purely artificial. Based on an antiquated system of thought. In reality there are no objects. The universe is actually a unity. We have been taught to think in terms of objects. This thing, that thing. When Null-O is realized, this purely verbal division will cease. It has long since outlived its usefulness.”
…. As Dr. North watched intently, Lemuel rushed about the apartment gathering everything together in a heap. Then, when all the books, pictures, rugs, drapes, furniture, and bric-a-brac had been collected, he systematically smashed everything into a shapeless mass…
“You see,” he said, exhausted and pale from the violent effort, “the distinction into arbitrary objects is now gone. this unification of things into their basic homogeneity can be applied to the universe as a whole. The universe is a gestalt, a unified substance, without division into living and non-living, being and non-being. A vast vortex of energy, not discrete particles! Underlying the purely artificial appearance of material objects lies the world of reality: a vast undifferentiated realm of pure energy. Remember: the object is not the reality. First law of Null-O thought!”
”| — | Philip K. Dick’s “Null-O”. The Null-O’s go onto to try and destroy the world with “E-bombs” so that the Earth can return to a state of homogenous matter. |
