We live in a physical world that leads us to believe that physicality—matter and the forces that govern it— is all there is.
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If we are just matter, we must go the way of matter—from dust we come, to dust we return. However, if way down underneath we are actually something other than matter, then we would have a different destiny.
 
Let's explore this question with a simple thought experiment. Atom is a word invented by the Greeks to describe the smallest thing. But now we know atoms are comprised of smaller parts called protons, neutrons, and electrons. But reason tells us that even those parts have to be composed of parts, those parts composed of parts, and on and on. If we think there will end up being a really, really small fundamental particle, reason tells us that that particle has to be made of parts as well. Therefore, taken infinitely, matter must boil down to nothing—in the physical particle sense.
 
That's where just thinking takes us.

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Einstein's famous equation, E=MC², affirms our reasoning. E is energy, M is mass (matter), and C is the velocity of light. Using simple algebra, the equation can be rearranged like this: M=E/C². Since both things on the right side of the equation, the speed of light and energy, are nothing in the touchy-feely material sense, and they equal matter, then the matter of which we are composed must be nothing as well.
 
That, in turn, jibes with modern quantum physics. Beneath the billiard ball atom models with nuclei, electrons, protons, and neutrons that look like tiny solar systems, are subatomic particles known as quanta. Quanta are a growing family with names such as quarks, leptons, bosons, baryons, mesons, fermions, gravitons, and superstrings. Over 200 quanta are now known to reside within the nucleus.
 
These subatomic particles are not just clustered together like a bunch of grapes. They're traveling about in the nucleus at 40,000 miles per second. Physicists can't get matter to stand still long enough to have a good look at it. Even if they did, they wouldn't see anything any more than they could see a thought.
 
A superstring, believed to perhaps be the smallest unit, is 100 billion, billion times smaller than a proton. It's not actually a particle, but more like a vibration. Physicists arrived at this idea by exploring the results from supercollider machines that explode atoms into pieces, and with mathematical calculations that give me a headache just to look at them.

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As superstrings vibrate, they create the harmony that manifests as the subatomic particles, nuclei, electrons, atoms and molecular matter that makes up you and the goulash you're having for dinner tonight. Superstrings mean that the various forms of matter are—way down underneath—not matter, but more like different tunes. In other words, we're back to nothingness in the material sense again.
 
 
Even before we dismantle matter into the nothingness of vibrations by using our thought experiment, Einstein, and quantum physics, the basic structure of an atom is already primarily the nothingness of space.

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Take one atom and expand the nucleus to the size of a pea and place it on the 50-yard line of a football stadium. The outer walls of the stadium and parking lot would be where the electrons are. Everything in between is space and forces. If the nucleus were the size of a soccer ball, the electrons would be ten miles away. If all the space within the atoms that make up your body were removed, and all the atomic parts compressed to the density found in an atomic nucleus, you would fit on the head of a pin.
 
The point being, atoms that comprise us and the physical world we perceive as solid, are essentially all empty space. Matter is, in effect, an illusion, a perception created by material brains that have the ability to perceive something from nothing.

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So, in effect, the touchy-feely world we experience, including our brains and bodies, is not real in a material sense. It is an illusion, a product of something other than mere matter and energy.
 
Mind/thought, a nonmaterial thing, is the only reasonable explanation for the prodigious information and genius that underlies us and the rest of our physical world.

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Words of Wisdom: 
There are three truths, objective (reality), personal (anything), political (propaganda). Only objective truth matters.