Outside Space and Time

"But the solution to the riddle of life and space and time lies outside space and time. For, as it should be abundantly clear by now, nothing inside a frame can state, or even ask, anything about that frame. The solution, then, is not the finding of an answer to the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle. This is the essence of the beautiful, almost Zen Buddhist closing sentences of the Tracticus: 'For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist.'"

- Paul Watzlawick (1921 - 2007)

Ocean of Being

"We should not for a moment

consider even our best-established

knowledge of existence as true.

It is awareness only of the

colors that our own vision paints

on the film of one bubble

in one strand of foam

on the ocean of being."

- Olaf Stapledon (1886 - 1950)

Beautiful Numinosity

"You enter a profound state of non-manifestation, which is experienced like, say, an autumn night with a full moon. There is an eerie and beautiful numinosity to it all, but it’s a "silent” or “black” numinosity. You can’t really see anything except a kind of silvery full­ness, filling all space. But because you’re not actually seeing any particular object, it is also a type of Radical Emptiness. As Zen says, “stop the sound of that stream.” This is variously known as shunyata, as the Cloud of Unknowing, Divine Ignorance, Radical Mystery, nirguna (“unqualifiable”) Brahman, and so on. Brilliant, silvery radiance, with no objects detracting from it.

This has an overwhelming spiritual feel. It becomes perfectly obvious that you are abso­lutely one with this Fullness, which transcends all worlds and all planes and all time and all history. You are perfectly full, and therefore you are perfectly empty. “It is all things, and it is no things,” said the Christian mystic Benmen.

Awe gives way to certainty. Of course, that’s who you are, prior to all manifestation, prior to all worlds. It is called “seeing your Original Face,” the “face you had even before your parents were born.” In other words, it is seeing who or what you are eternally."

- Ken Wilber (1949 - )

Stillness of Air

"The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga."

- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

(1910 - 1995)

Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science

Sense of Aesthetics

"Why is there so much beauty in nature?' We do not believe that beauty is only in the eye of the beholder. There are objective features underlying at least some experiences of beauty, such as the frequency ratios of the notes of a major chord, the symmetry of geometric forms, or the aesthetic appeal of juxtaposed complementary colors. None of these have survival value, but all are prevalent in nature in a measure hardly compatible with chance. We marvel at the songs of birds, the color scheme of flowers (do insects have a sense of aesthetics?), of birds' feathers, and at the incomparable beauty of a fallen maple leaf, its deep red coloring, its blue veins, and its golden edges. Are these qualities useful for survival when the leaf is about to decay?"

- Henry Margenau (1901 - 1997)

The Miracle of Existence

Deep and Boundless

"You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless."

- Chuang Tzu

(4th Century B.C.)

Geological Time

"The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation]."

- Kurt Godel (1906 - 1978)