Feet On The Ground But Head In The Sky

Nebula - "Pillars of Creation"

Recently I saw a full video on what the hubble telescope has been watching for the past couple of decades - and it is beyond stunning what it is observing and feeding back to us - galaxy, after galaxy, after galaxy, after galaxy. And actual pictures of stars being nested as they are born.  And stars dying.  A veritable dynamic universal dance.

The recent discoveries of the accelerating expansion of the Universe and the postulates of dark matter and dark energy leads me to several thoughts.

-  Everything we know is being turned upside down. 

What we know of, or thought of as matter, upon which we based our science and knowledge, turns out to be 4-5%.  There is a 20% beyond that that is unknown matter.  And another 75% unknown energy. 

Here is a perfect joke that explains this situation.

There was a drunk, searching under a street light.  Another guy comes and asks, what are you searching for.  The drunk says, I lost my keys.  The neighbor asks, did you lose them here.  The drunk says no.  When asked why, he says, "well, I am searching here because this is where the light is"

:-)

We have been searching where the light is, when 95% of what we are looking for is where there is no light - and we are 'drunk' with worldly matters!

-  Has Eastern thought not be saying there is something out there that is not seen?  Why is this dismissed as Mumbo-Jumbo (at least by the scientists)? 

I would fairly definitively say that Eastern thought is NOT dismissed as mumbo-jumbo.  There is great respect for the Upanishads and Buddhism in the West. 

If anything, what is falling out of favor is mythology.  The stories we tell ourselves such as Sun God, Wind God, Sea God etc - which is fair,  Moreover what is also falling out of favor also is anthropomorphic descriptions - God as  He or a She or even as human.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Cash

-  A little discussion then on science, before we throw out the baby with the bath water.  What is attractive about science is that it is dispassionate and fully open minded.  We are willing to say, a century after Einstein and Hubble, "holy mackerel, we are wrong'  The reason science has credibility (with me) is that it is verifiable, repeatable and earnest.  i.e. a scientist has no axe to grind in having you believe that there are nuclear explosions happening on the sun.  It just is.  And he does not pass a collection plate after he forces you to believe it.

Whereas, the reason religion has a bad name is because it forces people to think a certain way and does not book argument (and passes the collection plate).

It is tough to argue this point, since we have what the Church has done during the Inquisition and the fate of Galileo.  Even further back, Socrates was poisoned because he was saying heretical things (and spoiling the youngsters' minds).

Put it differently, when a scientist, says let me show you something surprising (eg. double slit experiment), we might be surprised, but we will learn something, and we can repeat it ourselves.

When a religious person says something, (eg, what??), it is very tough to figure out what it is that we should be learning, less repeating it ourselves.

-  Having read the above, the automatic conclusion should not be, that I don't accept things that are not science. 

On the contrary.  Please allow me to explain.

I think as humans we are quite at sea at a loss to explain what is really happening.  At the microscopic level, for example at the level of an RNA that is carrying messages around in our cells, we are seemingly gigantic, inter-galactic creatures.  What does an RNA know about Jack or Jill?  It is just carrying messages around in its cell.  

Yet here we are, lumbering beasts carrying billions and billions of particles in us that work as a system.  We don't even know or control our body.  For example, you don't say "I am beating my heart" - you say "My heart is beating" - it happens.  (This example is used by Alan Watts).

In a similar fashion, as we have been discussing, we are more minor than microscopic from a cosmic scale perspective.

And we are stuck in between finding both directions unfathomable.

This inspires in me - wonder, humility, awe, reverence, and a quiet determination to figure out for myself who I am, and how I belong and where I fit in the scheme of things (to the degree that it is an irrelevant question for the Universe at large is obvious, but the fact that it is relevant to me is all that counts - even though a bit of tautology is involved)

-  The question then becomes what to do with this 'wonder, humility, reverence and awe'?

That is what I am working out in my own life.  The approach I take is listen to everyone who has an explanation - scientist, technologist, psychologist, artist or spiritualist. 

Watch out for Elmer Gantry!

I am mature enough (now, I hope) to think that I can discern if the explanation is real, sincere and dispassionate; and wary enough to know whether a collection plate (either for money or for time) is on its way.

Therefore my own conclusion and approach

Feet on the ground, but head in the sky!