Tag Archives: quantum mechanics

Now: Physics – Word Existing Beyond Time

Featured

Posted on by
Reply
Here. Now. Nowhere. Always.

I have always been drawn to the insight that appears when two very different ways of seeing the world overlap. Physics asks how things work. Philosophy and religion ask why there is anything here at all, and whether existence has purpose. Can one inform the other at the intersection?

For me, one of those meeting points has always been quantum mechanics. When I first encountered it, I was especially struck by the Planck scale: the scale at which our familiar concepts of space, time, and measurement begin to fail, and where our present theories no longer provide a complete description. It seemed to suggest not just a technical limit, but something almost spiritual: a boundary beyond which we are not permitted to see clearly.

Planck and the Discovery of a Granular World

Max Planck’s work at the turn of the twentieth century began with a practical problem: how matter emits light as it heats up. A poker in a fire starts black, then glows red, then yellow, then white. Classical physics could not fully explain this. Planck’s great step was to propose that energy is not emitted continuously, but in discrete packets: quanta.

This gave us the Planck constant, usually written as h, and with it the beginning of quantum mechanics. Light, which behaves as a wave, also arrives in packets we call photons. Already, reality had begun to look less smooth and more “bitty” than common sense had assumed.

Planck’s constant can also be combined with the speed of light and Newton’s gravitational constant to give the Planck length: an unimaginably tiny scale below which we can not know. It is not simply a smaller ruler. It points towards a frontier where our present theories cease to give a complete description.

The Limit of Seeing

That frontier has always seemed significant to me. In this life, we are not allowed to know everything. Our senses, instruments, and theories take us a long way, but not all the way. Beyond a certain point we move from measurement into trust, imagination, instinct, and belief.

The biblical story of Thomas captures this human limitation. Thomas wants contact, proof, the physical placing of a hand into the wound of Christ. He is not mocked for wanting evidence; he is human. But the story also suggests that there are truths which cannot be reached by evidence alone. The Planck scale has always felt to me like a scientific echo of that same boundary: a smallness beneath which our usual ways of knowing dissolve.

Tim Palmer and Rational Quantum Mechanics

More than a century after Planck, in fact only last year, Tim Palmer at Oxford proposed an intriguing development called Rational Quantum Mechanics, or RaQM. The idea is not that quantum mechanics has failed. On the contrary, quantum theory remains astonishingly successful. Palmer’s question is whether some of its mysteries arise not from nature itself, but from the mathematics we use to describe nature.

Standard quantum mechanics relies heavily on the continuum of real and complex numbers.* Palmer asks whether physical reality may instead be constrained by rational numbers: numbers expressible as ratios of whole numbers. One half and one third are rational. Numbers like pi are not.

A simple picture helps. Imagine a perfectly smooth dial: you could turn it to any position whatsoever. Now imagine a dial with tiny clicks or cogs: it can still point in many directions, but only to permitted positions. If Palmer is right, then at the deepest mathematical level the universe may be more like the second dial than the first. It is not smooth all the way down. It is granular.

Einstein, Randomness, and the Search for Order

This matters because quantum mechanics is often taken to imply that randomness is woven into the fabric of reality. Particles appear not to have definite properties until measured, and events at the smallest scale seem governed by probability rather than certainty.

Einstein was never comfortable with that conclusion. His famous remark that “God does not play dice” was not merely a religious aside. It expressed a deep conviction that the world should be intelligible, lawful, and ordered beneath its apparent strangeness. This was, after all, broadly consonant with Newton’s view. There is a purpose behind this material world.

RaQM can be read as a possible ally of that instinct. It does not pretend that quantum experiments are simple or ordinary. Rather, it suggests that what looks like randomness may arise from our limited access to a deeper mathematical structure. Chance, in this view, may be perspectival: real to us because our view is partial, but not ultimate in the structure itself.

The Block Universe and the View from Outside Time

Einstein’s relativity also changed the way we think about time. In the block universe view, past, present, and future are not separate realms, with only the present being truly real. They are different locations within one four-dimensional spacetime. What we call “now” is the point from which we experience the whole.

From inside time, events unfold. We decide, wait, regret, hope, and wonder. But viewed as a completed whole, reality may be more like a vast structure in which every event has its place. This does not make ordinary experience meaningless. It simply reminds us that our experience may be a local view of something much larger.

Aquinas and the Question of Why

This is where the 13th-century Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas becomes relevant. Aquinas was not offering a primitive substitute for physics. He was asking a different question. Science can describe how things behave within the universe. Aquinas asks why there is an intelligible universe at all.

For Aquinas, God is not one cause among other causes. God is not another object inside the cosmos, competing with gravity, quantum fields, or mathematics. God is the ground of being itself: the reason why there is something rather than nothing, and why that something is ordered enough to be known. In a deep sense, Aquinas was expressing something that later resonates with Einstein’s conception of spacetime.

That distinction matters. Physics answers questions of mechanism. Theology, at its best, asks questions of existence, intelligibility, and final meaning. The two need not be enemies, provided we do not force either to answer the wrong kind of question.

A Universe Made as One Thing?

Put together, these ideas suggest a powerful possibility. Planck points us towards a limit of measurement. Palmer suggests that the mathematics of the quantum world may be discrete rather than continuous. Einstein urges us not to surrender too quickly to ultimate randomness. The block universe offers a picture of reality as a completed whole. Aquinas asks why such a whole should exist, and why it should be intelligible to minds like ours.

None of this proves God in any crude or mechanical sense. It does something subtler and, to my mind, more interesting. It shows that modern physics has not made the old philosophical questions disappear. Instead, it has sharpened them. If reality is not finally chaotic but ordered; if time may be part of a larger completed structure; if the deepest laws of nature are mathematical and intelligible, then the ancient idea of a rational Logos begins to look less like an outdated metaphor and more like a profound way of naming the mystery. The English Book of Common Prayer refers to God as “the Word existing beyond (space and) time.”

Perhaps randomness is not the last word. Perhaps it is what order looks like when seen from inside the world, through finite minds, finite instruments, and finite time. The deeper question remains: why should there be an ordered reality at all, and why should we be capable of glimpsing it?

 

*Integers are whole numbers, including zero and negative values, while rational numbers are exact fractions made from those integers. Irrational numbers are real values that cannot be expressed as fractions because their decimals continue infinitely without repeating. Together, rational and irrational numbers form the continuous one-dimensional line of real numbers. Complex numbers extend this continuum into a two-dimensional plane by incorporating an imaginary unit.

Meaning and the Number 2

Posted on by
Reply
Waving

This is why, for me, the mystic number is 2.

The Question of Meaning

“Meaning is the essential feature of consciousness…” David Bohm

The first question for me is this: “Is there meaning?” This is, of course, just another way of phrasing “Why?” or “Is there purpose at all?” Surely this underlies all of living for each of us. Sometimes we confront it; sometimes we avoid it — but it is always there. Since we are inside existence, and have no rational external reference point, there can be no purely rational answer. Personally, though, it seems obvious to me that the answer is yes; but that is, in the end, an article of faith, albeit one underpinned by all of the extraordinary “coincidences” in physics that make life possible.

Let’s then take the existence of meaning as a truth. Where does it lie?

Meaning Beyond the Ego

“The dust inbreathed was a house, the wall, the wainscot, and the mouse” T. S. Eliot

It seems to me that purpose is not to be found in what Freud thought of as the “self” or Ego. This is entirely different from Jung’s definition of Self — which is much more interesting. “I”, that is, all of our “I”s, will dissolve as bodies die. At that point, their molecules will be taken up into infinite new forms, just as the body I currently inhabit is made up of atoms that have been part of infinite others — including all of those I have known: my mother, father, brothers, wife, and so on.

Nor do I believe that meaning lies solely within the material world. In fact, the more science uncovers of the “how” of quantum mechanics, the less concrete materiality really appears.

It seems to me that the frantic search for meaning within things — dialectical materialism — is a dead end, or at least a distraction. On the other hand, the material world must surely be a part of meaning. But part of what?

Meaning as Part of a Whole

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Part of a whole. All is one. Indeed, that is what “universe” means: one thing. Another way of looking at it could be that meaning is found in process — the flow of matter and energy. Perhaps: “the whole flow of energy and matter.” How, though, do we break that down into something we can get our arms around, or understand?

Maybe another way of looking at it is that the material is part of something else, partnered with… mind? Spirit? Antimatter?

Relation as the Site of Meaning

“The relation to the Thou is direct. No system of ideas, no foreknowledge, and no fancy intervene between I and Thou. The memory itself is transformed, as it plunges out of its isolation into the unity of the whole” Martin Buber

That, for me, is where Martin Buber and David Bohm come in. They each talk about meaning as lying within “relation” or “dialogue”: what lies “between”. Buber’s amazing semi-poetic meditation, I and Thou (Ich und Du), has been transformative for me. I would encourage everyone to read at least the first two pages, where he defines the “primary words” as I-It and I-Thou, as opposed to I, Thou, or It alone.

I therefore have two building blocks in my search. First: there is meaning. Second: the place to look for it is relationship.

Why Two Matters

“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence” William Blake

And that is where number arises for me. If meaning lies in relation, then relation requires more than undivided oneness. It requires distinction, edge, and encounter: something that can meet something other than itself.

My daughter, as a teenager, told me she thought that an incredibly important concept was “boundary”, and I have been assimilating that ever since. Without boundary, nothing can be known. You need the “other” to understand yourself.

I wrote this some years ago.

“From zero to hero, the world is born with the appearance of 1. The archetypal boundary is right there in the change from nothing to all. But one is one, and all alone, and ever more shall be so. From 1 to 2, consciousness is possible: granularity and separation. We can understand existence because we have edge: a within and a without. Quantum mechanics shows that everything exists only as a cloud of possibility — until observed. It is the act of knowing that crystallises reality out of potential. Deliberately to mix language: it is witness that causes wavefunction collapse. It is consciousness that creates reality, and that is only possible when edge is born with the advent of the number 2. Duality appears to be a fundamental property of existence. Energy is the flip side of matter (E=mc²); everything is wave and particle simultaneously. Yin is nothing without yang. Ich and Du embrace, and the world unfolds.”

That is why, for me, the “mystic number” is 2. With it comes a consciousness of existence, and the possibility of relation and dialogue, which Buber and Bohm so eloquently place at the core of meaning.

So I return to the first question: is there meaning? For me, yes. It is not found in the isolated self, nor in material things alone, but in relation. And relation becomes possible only where there is boundary, distinction, and encounter.

That is why, for me, the mystic number is 2.

Reality, Relativity and Relationship

Posted on by

What is real? Is there purpose? Are God and Science in opposition?

I want to argue that the answer to these questions lies in the space between – each of us; rather than within matter or within our individual egos. It is within connection rather than the nodes that information and meaning arises. We need to move beyond the sterility of atheism and its opposition to spirituality and seek truth within the links and reflections between traditions of thought. We should also reconsider the insights of thinkers dismissed by logical positivism. Clearly technological innovation has a material facet. It works – though Quantum Mechanics can’t explain how or why. Yet, the internet and self-learning algorithms may in the process of forming a kind of physical nervous system—part of a universe becoming aware of itself. Our imminent, and perhaps immanent, future may reveal that none of us is alone, and that what we see and touch is just one expression of something larger. Perhaps infinitely so. We may – in these particular bodies – be about to discover that we are not separate beings, but have always been part of one another; and of the whole conscious universe.

The Relational Bridge: Relativity, Quantum Physics, Buber and Merleau-Ponty

It is within relationship that we must look for answers—understood simultaneously as relativity, entanglement, embodied phenomenon, and dialogue

Einstein’s Relativity: Space, time, mass, and energy lose their Newtonian status as fixed, absolute background properties. They exist, deform, and take on identity only in relation to observers and other frames of reference.

Buber’s I-Thou: Translates this physical intuition directly into human ontology. An isolated, self-contained object (I-It) is a mechanical abstraction. True existence and genuine encountering occur strictly in the dynamic, unobjectified space between entities.

Bohm’s Implicate Order: Extends quantum entanglement to show that subatomic particles are not separate billiard balls colliding in a void. Instead, what we perceive as separate material objects in the Explicate Order (the classical materialist view) are merely localized, folded ripples in an unbroken, undivided ocean of movement—the Implicate Order.

Merleau-Ponty’s Chaire (The Flesh): Solves the Cartesian divide between body and world through the phenomenology of perception. Merleau-Ponty demonstrates that reality is composed of a continuous, sensible fabric—the Flesh of the World (la chair)—that bridges the visible (physical matter/body) and the invisible (meaning/consciousness). Perception is not a mind analyzing an external object; it is the world perceiving itself through the embodied subject.

Meaning, purpose, and physical properties do not reside inside isolated components; they emerge strictly through interaction.

The 1970s Blindspot & The Dogma of Mechanical Reductionism

I studied evolutionary biology in the 1970s. The years since have demonstrated how little we know; but my goodness we were arrogant. Science had killed the need for God.This was the era of the gene-centered models popularized by Richard Dawkins and E. O. Wilson. They provided mathematical clarity for specific population dynamics, but they suffered from an overarching philosophical mistake: confusing a biological mechanism for the total nature of reality.

The whole basis of thought has evolved (alas Dawkins hasn’t caught up).

  • 1970s Reductionist Model: Genes & Particles > Consciousness (an Accidental Illusion)
  • 2020’s Relational / Panpsychist Model: Intrinsic Experience & Fields link Matter, Life, and Awareness

By reducing human consciousness to an evolutionary illusion generated by “selfish genes,” 1970s sociobiology relied on 19th-century mechanical determinism while ignoring quantum non-locality, panpsychism, systems ecology, and the observer problem.

Teilhard de Chardin, Imanishi, and the AI Substrate

It is a striking irony of modern science that figures dismissed by mainstream atheism paved the way for understanding contemporary technology:

  • Kinji Imanishi’s Sumiwake: Demonstrates that living ecosystems self-organize through habitat segregation and species co-existence rather than pure Darwinian warfare.
  • Teilhard de Chardin’s Evolutionary Vector: Traced the cosmic arc from Geosphere to Biosphere to Noosphere (planetary mind) toward an ultimate point of convergence.
  • Artificial Intelligence as Infrastructure: Machine learning neural networks aggregate, process, and compress collective human thought into an interactive global matrix. AI acts as the physical substrate realizing Teilhard’s Noosphere—a planetary central nervous system.

4. Is Reality Evolving or Is Awareness Emerging?

The distinction between physical evolution and emerging awareness dissolves when viewed through a panpsychist or relational lens:

  1. In classical materialism: Physical matter randomly evolves, and subjective awareness accidentally pops up at the very end. There is possibly no purpose to existence.
  2. In a panpsychist / relational framework: Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Physical evolution is simply awareness structuring itself into higher levels of complexity to reflect upon its own nature. There is most probably purpose to existence.

From subatomic wave-particle duality to ecological interdependence, and from Martin Buber’s human encounters to the global AI network, existence is not a collection of isolated particles fighting for survival. It is an undivided reality waking up to itself. Something that most likely has a purpose and direction.

I am with de Chardin. I speaking personally. I believe that the force that propels evolution is Love. A personal love that sustains us and all-that-is. My enquiry has brought me back to Christianity.

Reading List 

1. Classical Evolution, Heredity & Sociobiology

  • Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species (1859) – The foundational text of modern evolutionary biology and natural selection The Descent of Man (1871) – Extends evolutionary theory and sexual selection directly to human origins and morality.
  • Alfred Russel Wallace Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection (1889) – Wallace’s comprehensive overview of natural selection, detailing where his views aligned with and diverged from Darwin’s.
  • Gregor Mendel Experiments in Plant Hybridization (1866) – The foundational paper establishing the discrete physical laws of genetic inheritance.
  • Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene (1976) – Popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the concept of the meme. The Blind Watchmaker (1986) – A defense of cumulative natural selection against teleological arguments for design. The God Delusion (2006) – The flagship text of “New Atheism,” arguing against supernatural belief from a strictly mechanical evolutionary perspective.
  • E. O. (Edward O.) Wilson Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) – Synthesized animal behavior and genetics to found sociobiology. On Human Nature (1978) – Applied sociobiological principles to human culture, ethics, and religious behavior.
  • Robert Trivers Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers (2002) – Collects his groundbreaking 1970s papers on reciprocal altruism, parental investment, and parent-offspring conflict.
  • Stephen Jay Gould The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002) – Gould’s masterwork critiquing hyper-adaptationism and presenting punctuated equilibrium. Rocks of Ages (1999) – Introduces NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) regarding science and religion.
  • Richard Lewontin The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (2000) – A critique of genetic determinism, emphasizing the reciprocal interaction between organisms and their environments.

2. Relational Physics & Quantum Mechanics

  • Albert Einstein Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916) – Einstein’s accessible explanation of how space, time, mass, and gravity form a relative continuum.
  • Louis de Broglie Researches on the Quantum Theory (1924 Doctoral Thesis) – The original formulation of wave-particle duality for matter.
  • Niels Bohr Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature (1934) – Collects Bohr’s early writings framing the Copenhagen interpretation and quantum complementarity.
  • David Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order (1980) – Outlines the undivided holomovement, connecting quantum entanglement, non-locality, and consciousness. The Undivided Universe (with Basil Hiley, 1993) – An ontological interpretation of quantum theory.

3. Relational Philosophy & Phenomenology

  • Martin Buber I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923) – The foundational text on relational ontology, distinguishing I-Thou encounter from I-It objectification.
  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty Phenomenology of Perception (1945) – Demonstrates that consciousness is embodied and rooted in perceptual engagement with the world. The Visible and the Invisible (1964, Published posthumously) – Introduces his ultimate concept of “The Flesh of the World” (la chair).

4. Systems Ecology, Biosphere & Gaia Theory

  • Kinji Imanishi The World of Living Things (Seibutsu no Sekai, 1941) – The foundation of Japanese ecology, introducing habitat segregation (sumiwake) and species co-existence over individual warfare.
  • Vladimir I. Vernadsky The Biosphere (1926) – The landmark scientific work demonstrating that living matter is a primary geochemical force transforming Earth.
  • James Lovelock Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979) – Formulates the hypothesis that Earth acts as a self-regulating super-organism.
  • Lynn Margulis Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (1998) – Outlines symbiogenesis, arguing that cooperation and cellular fusion (endosymbiosis) drive biological innovation.

5. Mind, Noosphere & Panpsychism

  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin The Phenomenon of Man (1955) – Traces evolution from the Geosphere through the Biosphere to the Noosphere and the Omega Point. The Future of Man (1964) – Essays exploring global interconnectedness and technological integration.
  • Édouard Le Roy The Origin of Human Life and the Evolution of Mind (1928) – Early philosophical lectures co-formulating the concept of the Noosphere alongside Vernadsky and Teilhard.
  • Philip Goff Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (2019) – A defense of panpsychism as the solution to the hard problem of consciousness. Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023) – Argues for teleology and purpose in the cosmos beyond traditional monotheism or materialist reductionism.

6. Quantum Brain Theory, Morphic Fields & Unorthodox Mechanics

  • Roger Penrose The Emperor’s New Mind (1989) – Argues that non-computable physics and quantum mechanics are required to explain human consciousness, ruling out classical AI consciousness. Shadows of the Mind (1994) – Expands on Orch-OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) in microtubules alongside Stuart Hameroff.
  • Rupert Sheldrake A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (1981) – Introduces morphic resonance and non-physical structural fields. The Science Delusion / Science Set Free (2012) – A critique of the ten core dogmas of modern scientific materialism.

7. Artificial Intelligence, Digital Infrastructure & Systems Theory

  • Alan Turing “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950, Paper in Mind) – Formulates the Turing Test and the foundations of AI philosophy.
  • Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th Edition, 2020) – The definitive textbook covering classical AI, deep learning, and probabilistic reasoning.
  • Nick Bostrom Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) – Examines the trajectory toward artificial general intelligence and collective planetary cognition.
  • Francis Heylighen “Return to the Noosphere: The Emergence of the Global Brain” (2016, Academic Monograph) – Synthesizes digital networks, AI, and systems theory with Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of planetary consciousness.

When poetry collides with physics

Posted on by
Reply

“The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled,”

The Dry Salvages T. S. Eliot


“In quantum mechanics, wave function collapse occurs when a wave function—initially in a superposition of several eigenstates—reduces to a single eigenstate due to interaction with the external world. … Significantly, the combined wave function of the system and environment continue to obey the Schrödinger equation.”

Wikipedia “Superposition collapse”

TS Eliot, after the despair of The Wasteland, came to his realisation that the only way out of the endless cycle (“when is there an end to it, the voiceless wailing”) is the intersection between now and infinity -the Incarnation. The universe does not revolve around humans. Neither are we apart from all-that-is. Rather we are here to bear witness; or as quantum physics might put – to be observers – and thus to crystallise actual from the infinity of potential. What they would call observation collapsing the wave function, is what Eliot calls The Incarnation.

Touching the Flow

Posted on by
2

I’m bumbling  bee not its sting

Flight of the gull not its wing

Not noun or thing-y at all

‘Cos I’m the bounce of a ball

Hop of a bird and its call

The verb, I am is to be

Container containing set free

Strong brown god striving to sea

For reading click here … touching the flow

All is not as it seems. Physics and Philosophy are pointing us to integration rather than differentiation. To wholeness rather than fragmentation.

The Nobel prize physicist David Bohm proposed that language is reshaped to focus on verbs, rather than nouns (subjects & objects). He calls this a “rheomode”, reflecting a reality of flow, of movement. He also picks up the insight of existential philosopher Martin Buber that we are the sum of our relationships – each to each.

And it’s relationship of waves not matter. In recent work Milo Wolff has shown that when thought of as intersecting standing waves, then reality can be described by simple equations. It is no longer necessary to invent a veritable zoo of exotic particles – and “dark” matter and energy. Wolff’s work is not new, but based on work by Maxwell, Schrodinger and Einstein.

Our watchwords, or better – watching words – and focus is shifting..

From nouns – to verbs..From quanta – to waves..From individuals – to connections..From fragmentation – to wholeness

.. or as Teilhard de Chardin would say – to the Omega Point – where humanity awakens to the reality of the whole, love.

Joy beyond angst?

Posted on by
2

It is politically correct to assume a materialistic existence built on a series of microscopic random events unfolding in intransitive time. We live in the ship of our ego, afloat on an ocean of materialism. No wonder we are full of loneliness and fear.

Sigmund Freud observed that the more you avoid a fear, or abyss, the unhealthier you become. All of the mechanisms of dealing with unconscious pain (projection, avoidance, repression etc) simply lead at best to neurosis, at worst to psychosis.

The big fear, the monster lurking in the deeps is existential angst. The terror of nothingness inside the tiny baby inside each of us. How, then, to deal with that? It’s worth tackling, since our insecurity is rooted right there. The more secure a person is, then the more listening, creative, compassionate, generous, talented and capable of joy they are. Insecurity spawns withdrawal, narcissism, unhappiness and disconnection. So that horizons contract to world as prison.

How then does security arise?  Where do we find an ability to live in confidence? (Con Fides; with trust)? Some simply have faith. Probably they were securely attached as children. What about the rest of us?

Science is uncovering deep meaning at the most fundamental level. Experiments on matter at the most microscopic levels shows that existence is an infinite series of possibilities, potential – until observed. It is the act of observation that, in effect, crystallises out this particular existence from the cloud of possibilities. What then is this act of becoming, of creation that we are engaged upon together? . Surely there must be an “observer” to create this particular reality. Sure enough, our species are the most efficient engines of observation, whether through science or the arts. We each of us spend our life in observation (or as some would call it – witness, some knowledge). Interestingly our gathering of knowledge is escalating in a geometric progression. (Are we approaching Teilhard de Chardin’s “Omega Point”?)

It appears to me our purpose as humans is to be just this – engines of observation crystallising out existence; and we do this together. That puts the onus on us collectively. It is OUR task to work for “good effect” – rather than trying to live with our eyes tight closed against the fear that we float on a sea of random meaninglessness.

…and then comfort comes; and connection and joy. Atman replaces ego, and angst evaporates. Until we forget and have to realise it all over again.

Its Wyrd, Man

Posted on by
Reply

The druids and those before them believed in Wyrd. Fate, spinning and spun eternally by the three sisters sitting at the base of the tree of life. World interwoven and changing with tides and currents rippling through it. Reality as flow, connection, relation, context, love). New facets of our connected reality constantly emerging. The same truths at the base of Hinduism – and in Quantum Mechanics ( and Buddhism and Christianity).

Metamorphosis.  Water becoming ice. Caterpillars pupating, emerging into butterflies. We journey together into wondrous new states. Society has a reality separate from the individuals that it is made from. And we as individuals in turn have emerged as something new, from the molecules that constitute us now. We are co-evolving in a phase of emergence from one state to quite another.

Yet; mostly we think of the material world as static and secure. How strange. We manage that by focussing on short time segments.  Thus we ignore the riverine flow of rocks, the evolution from raw plasma to chemicals to biology to ideas; and  we are also blind to  “now”, the window to eternity.

Why? Fear, I suspect, is to blame. The terror, the existential angst that is located in our ego – which of course is definitely an ephemera. This is just a trick of light.  Look past the surface of the pool with its (reversed) image where  we see our “self” reflected. There, within the water, is the flow of life which is our home. We let our egos rule over us, when – just here, just now (always here, now), in the flow  of the universe is our real deathless self. As Rupert Brookes  puts it “..  a pulse in the eternal mind, no less”. Like Narcissus, we are transfixed by inner absorption rather than an awareness of all-that-is.

Touching the Flow

Posted on by
3

Poetically…

No no I’m never no thing

I’m bumbling  bee not its sting

Flight of the gull not its wing

Not noun or thing-y at all

‘Cos I’m the bounce of a ball

Hop of a bird and its call

The verb, I am is to be

Container containing set free

Strong brown god striving to sea

Prosaically…

All is not as it seems. Physics and Philosophy are pointing us to integration rather than differentiation. To wholeness rather than fragmentation. This requires that we change the way we relate to each other. In the language of neural networking – to focus on edges and synapses rather than points and neutrons.

David Bohm proposes (“Wholeness and the Implicate Order”) that language is reshaped to focus on verbs, rather than nouns (subjects & objects). He calls this a “rheomode”, reflecting a reality of flow, of movement. Elsewhere, for instance in “On Dialogue” he picks up the insight of existential philosopher Martin Buber – that reality is in relation, not the thing (“Ich-Du”).

The world, as Buber says, is two-fold. Everything can be described simultaneously either as bits – quanta – or waves. We appear to have achieved mastery by conceiving reality in terms of the material. To be investigated by smashing into fragments. However consider, just for a moment, the REAL basis of a theory – the standard model – which purports to explain material reality; but depends on conjuring “dark matter” and “dark energy”. For “dark” read – “we don’t know, but we need it to make our equations work”. How much of this “dark” stuff is necessary for the equations to work? 95% of all that is… You have to say that physicists have chutzpah. Not only does this dark stuff account for 95% of everything – but these guys are really precise about what they don’t know – “Dark matter accounts for 23.3 percent of the cosmos, and dark energy fills in 72.1 percent [source: NASA]“

Meanwhile, fortunately, considering reality as a wave is much more productive. In recent work Milo Wolff has shown that when described as intersecting standing waves, then reality can be described by simple equations. It is no longer necessary to invent a veritable zoo of exotic particles – and “dark” matter and energy. Wolff’s work is not new, but based on work by Maxwell, Schrodinger and Einstein.

Our watchwords, or better – watching words – and focus is shifting..

From nouns – to verbs..From quanta – to waves..From individuals – to connections..From fragmentation – to wholeness

.. or as Teilhard de Chardin would say – to the Omega Point – where humanity awakens to the reality of the whole.

“Teilhard calls the contributing universal energy that generates the Omega Point “forces of compression”. Unlike the scientific definition, which incorporates gravity and mass, Teilhard’s forces of compression sources from communication and contact between human beings. This value is limitless and directly correlated with entropy. It suggests that as humans continue to interact, consciousness evolves and grows.‘

..from infinity, and beyond

Posted on by
Reply

As we enter the world we are infinite. We have no boundary. We are also zero. At three months, or so, we begin to distinguish that there is an “other” – the breast as part object. By 6 months old the boundary between us and the other (usually mother) is clear; and often frightening. Warmth, food, security and affection can be withdrawn as well as present. Our world is strait, though we do not know it. As we age and explore we push the boundary back; and back. If we are fortunate, and conquer our fear, we realise once more that there is no boundary. We are existence and all of existence is us. Death is an illusion. When we leave the world we can then fade to white and lose the loneliness and fear that haunts life, to experience all that is directly once more.

We are inexplicably dual

Posted on by
Reply

“We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do”  Einstein (in relation to wave-particle duality)

Quantum mechanics has repeatedly proved that energy and matter is contradictory – it is both a wave and a particle at the same time. In addition, it is observation that crystallises out our particular reality from the infinity of possibilities.

“When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove” John Donne

There is almost incontrivertible evidence that there is meaning within the universe. The physical constants are incredibly finely tuned to allow even atoms to form, never mind reflective consciousness. There are those who fervently wish to deny this meaning. (Why?). Their only defence is what is called the multiple universe proposition – that there are infinity universes and we happen to live in the one that has these constants aligned. Their problems are these. Firstly, there is not a shred of evidence for the proposition. Secondly it fails the test of simplicity (this is certainly not the simplest solution).  Thirdly, even were it true – what then is the origin of the multiverses? Indeed, by definition Universe is all that is, and so multiverses are subsets of that. I personally dismiss this concept for what it is, materialist desperation. The Universe is significant and not simply material.

Material is but one aspect of reality, there is another a dual aspect. John Donne would call that “soul” as distinct from “body”…

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
.. and the great Jesuit scientist Teilhard de Chardin distinguished a Within from a Without, of all things. He posited consciousness within all matter, evolving through physical, chemical and biological realms through waves of emergent realities. Man represents a new dimension with the arrival of reflective consciousness – self awareness. It was Teilhard de Chardin who proposed that evolution has now moved from biological into the realm of ideas – what he called the noosphere. *

“The attitude of the “I” towards an “It”, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience. The attitude of the “I” towards “Thou”, in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds…human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships”  Ich und Du, Martin Buber

Martin Buber expresses this duality in his wonderful verse-philosophy “Ich und Du”. Not only is there duality in all-that-is, but it is in the dance – the relationships between the Within-Without, the wave-particle, the Ich-Du – that meaning exists.

People have called that meaning by all sorts of names. Who cares about semantics – a rose is still a rose by any name. If you’ve felt the connectedness of the Universe, then you’ve known joy in all its emphemerality, within the life of this body at least.

Dual, we certainly are, and inexplicably so. Although maybe…

“And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one” TS Elliot

*   There is a tradition of theft within evolutionary science. Dawkins stole the concept of evolution in the noosphere and clothed in the language of the “meme”. He did not credit Teilhard de Chardin. Charles Darwin stole the concept of evolution by natural selection from James Hutton, who in 1794 wrote “in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while on the other hand, those organized bodies, which most approach to the best consitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race”.