Parts of the Universe

"A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!"

- Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

Wandering through Outer Worlds

"The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long. 

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet. 

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune. 

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. 

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!'

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'"

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)

Gitanjali: Song Offerings

A Parable, whose Subject is Time

"'In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only word that must not be used?' I thought for a moment. 'The word chess,' I replied. 'Exactly,' Albert said. 'The Garden of Forking Paths' is a huge riddle, or parable, whose subject is time; that secret purpose forbids Ts'ui Pen the merest mention of its name. To always omit one word, to employ awkward metaphors and obvious circumlocutions, is perhaps the most emphatic way of calling attention to that word. It is. at any rate, the tortuous path chosen by the solutions—all devious Ts'ui Pen at each and every one of the turnings of his inexhaustible novel. I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, I have corrected the errors introduced through the negligence of copyists, I have reached a hypothesis for the plan of that chaos, I have reestablished, or believe I've reestablished, its fundamental order—I have translated the entire work; and I know that not once does the word 'time' appear. The explanation is obvious: 'The Garden of Forking Paths' is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as conceived by Ts'ui Pen. Unlike Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform and absolute time; he believed in an infinite series of times, a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. That fabric of times that approach one another, fork, are snipped off, or are simply unknown for centuries, contains all possibilities. In most of those times, we do not exist; in some, you exist but I do not; in others, I do and you do not; in others still, we both do. In this one, which the favouring hand of chance has dealt me, you have come to my home; in another, when you come through my garden you find me dead; in another, I say these same words, but I am an error, a ghost."

- Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)

"The Garden of Forking Paths" in Ficciones 

Force of Creation

"The basic recurring theme in Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God—"sacrifice" in the original sense of "making sacred"—whereby God becomes the world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu mythology, the myth of lila has a strong magical flavour. Brahman is the great magician who transforms himself into the world and then performs this feat with his "magic creative power", which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we are under the spell of maya. (...) In the Hindu view of nature, then, all forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya, conjured up by the great magician of the divine play. The world of maya changes continuously, because the divine lila is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, important concept of Indian thought. Karma means "action". It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their life."

- Fritjof Capra (1939 - )

The Tao of Physics

Phenomenology of Enjoyment

"The phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.

- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934 - )

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Island of Knowledge

"We live on an island

surrounded by a sea of ignorance.

As our island of knowledge grows,

so does the shore of our ignorance."

- John Archibald Wheeler

(1911 - 2008)

Ego and Truth

"... we have not perceived the whole truth unless we have also perceived that the truth must operate.  If we think it is the "Ego" or the "I" that operates, we are confused.  (For example, that we follow truth because we are "honest," so that the Ego makes a "choice" ---as if the Ego could with meaning and sense choose to be "dishonest" and thus follow a falsehood.)  In reality, it is the truth that operates, outside of the preferences of the Ego.  And indeed, the truth can even operate on the Ego, by perceiving and understanding its motivations deeply.  So what happens is that the basic principle of the individual ceases to be the Ego and is truth instead.

Now, at present, this happens in a restricted domain, such as science or art.  But to see the basic principle of truth itself, it would be necessary for the individual to allow truth to operate unhindered in every field.  A basic part of the whole truth is to perceive the falsity of every operative idea that is really false.  This is extraordinarily difficult, as our motivations are confused and twisted in a very complicated way.  Many of our false ideas operate subliminally, or even subconsciously.  The problem is far more difficult to understand, than for example the theory of relativity, so that it requires a sustained and serious effort. "

- David Bohm

(1917 - 1992)