What do you think this Gnosticism quote is attempting to explain?

"There was when naught was: nay, even that "naught" was not aught of things that are. But nakedly, conjecture and mental quibbling apart, there was absolutely not even the one. And when i use the term "was" I do not mean to say that it was ;but merely to give some suggestion of what i wish to indicate, I use the expression "there was absolutely naught". Naught was, neither matter, nor substance, nor vapidness of substance, nor simplicity, nor impossibility of composition, nor incompatibility, imperceptibility, neither man, nor angel, nor God ; in fine, anything at all for which man has ever found a name, nor by any operation which falls within range of his perception or conception."

By Basilides. What do you think he is trying to convey?

Before God existed there was absolutely nothing at all - no space, time, feelings, thoughts, anything, not even silence, darkness or light. There are no words to explain what it was called or describe it because there is nothing to explain or describe.

He is giving you his explanation of his "naught" that is a "naught" beyond the bounds that we normally would conceive and he makes an extended number of contexts that we might consider the use of the idea of "naught" and he is extolling that the particular "naught" he is considering is beyond all these other "naughts' that might be more commonly considered.

I imagine he is doing this as part of an argument to express that it is not really possible to solve the problem of "where does everything originate from", which is usually and commonly handled by various conceptions of God.

As an aside: I have a mathematically oriented friend who can picture the universe as a matter of chance, as a statistical probability. Like flipping a coin. There is a fifty/fifty chance. it is equality as likely for there to be a universe as there is to be no universe, But of course you need the one for the other to exist. ; ^ >

To Basilides God was Absolute Negation, i.e. reality itself - not a personified being. Similar to Aristotle's God as Awareness of being without consciousness.

By mystics in every religious tradition, this has often been used to describe the human psychological state - emptied of ego - that conforms to God, meaning that it is a state of pure causality. Whatever has been arrived at (ideal/idea) before or after this state has been 'entered' is created in reality. Basilides believed that faith was a latent force which only manifests its energy through the coming of the Saviour (essential being).