Tesseracts & Aunt Beasts, Oh My!
Upon reading Madeleine L’Engle’s, A Wrinkle in Time,
it has yet again made me ponder the principles and connections of spirituality
and science; two seemingly very key tools in description of this miracle we
call Life. In her book, L’Engle allows
the meaning of life of the Murry family and other protagonists to tangle in
love for one another and passion for their framework of talent and unique gifts
among the realms of quantum physics. A
repeating message throughout her writing questions the English language upon the
constriction that it provides to the yoke of meaning that we so passionately
crave to explain, and that the characters in her story had to exercise in order
to save one another. The beings
throughout the cosmos that the Murrys meet along their journey who communicate
through existential (as you will) means as well as a hands and toes count (to
the second power) of other surreal senses, are able to convey a certain wise-ness
about the workings of the universe that the human beings, although still able
to consciously attempt to tap into, do so in such a “babe-like” manner.
Journey with me on L’Engle’s idea…what if meaning takes a few more “senses” than simply touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight to fully appreciate…and I am not talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological 6th sense (although please feel free to wonder what battle is being fought here). What if Love truly is perhaps this supernatural/spiritual sense that enables meaning to be created and sustained? In the story, is was Love that saved Charles Wallace from the dark force, whose only nemesis was that which it did not know, the light of this Love. What if love, as described previously, is able to take on an entirely different form than we thought possible? We must wonder the mystery that enchants us so...we must wonder why this concept embedded in so many stories and legends of the past and present of the hero saving the heroine against evil, of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, light versus dark, love-hate, hot-cold, opposites that we feel inside of us and have a natural tendency to strive for each and every day….what is this tendency toward good and how do we know it? Why do we find it repeating over and over and over again in so many places that we look? Must we also learn and listen to this sense, to the Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”? As we do so, May the World Spin Madly On (The Weepies, great song)…as we continue to explore.
Journey with me on L’Engle’s idea…what if meaning takes a few more “senses” than simply touch, taste, sound, smell, and sight to fully appreciate…and I am not talking about M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological 6th sense (although please feel free to wonder what battle is being fought here). What if Love truly is perhaps this supernatural/spiritual sense that enables meaning to be created and sustained? In the story, is was Love that saved Charles Wallace from the dark force, whose only nemesis was that which it did not know, the light of this Love. What if love, as described previously, is able to take on an entirely different form than we thought possible? We must wonder the mystery that enchants us so...we must wonder why this concept embedded in so many stories and legends of the past and present of the hero saving the heroine against evil, of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, light versus dark, love-hate, hot-cold, opposites that we feel inside of us and have a natural tendency to strive for each and every day….what is this tendency toward good and how do we know it? Why do we find it repeating over and over and over again in so many places that we look? Must we also learn and listen to this sense, to the Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”? As we do so, May the World Spin Madly On (The Weepies, great song)…as we continue to explore.
It is strange to think of how little we know about our existence, and how much we think we do know. Is there a quantum level to life? Absolutley. Because the quantum nature of existence defines existence. Are you familiar with Schrodinger's Cat? Schrodinger, a physicist, noted that electrons or other particles could be in two places at once. For instance, a single-file beam of electrons fired at two narrow openings results in a strange phenomena... the electron is found to go through both openings! How you wonder? Who knows. The electron cannot split, it does not multiply, and yet it is in both places at one time. Curiously, if one is looking for the electron in one opening, the electron goes to that opening. That brings up a whole new approach to macro understanding... is human perception only what we want it to be? Do you we only see, touch, and smell the things we expect to?
ReplyDeleteBack to the cat. Schrodinger created a thought experiment (he never did it) proposing a laser fired at two narrow openings. Over one opening was a detector that, when detecting photons, would emit a poison to kill a cat in a box. The other opening would be free and open. So... if the laser photons are going through both openings, one is detected and one is not, is the cat dead or alive? The truth is that it is both! How can we begin to apply this idea to massive systems, such as human life? What reality are we living if there are so many possibilities? And what of this Love? Is this feeling something greater than the Quantum Laws, or is it a product of them? The simple answer: we don't know, but our curiosity loves to wonder.
Suggesting that the "choice we never chose", or this free and open/also poisened feline can both exist, thus have a memory and a future? (The Road Not Taken suddenly takes on a whole new meaning...) It makes me curious as to the fact of whether or not this Reality we speak of is indeed simply a human creation, as is Time? As beings, this seemingly never ending question and curiosity of the cosmos (or in my case Cosmo) impedes our minds, yet the answer, if one does exist, can never be proven. Is Reality the Matrix we were born to question? Are WE both dead and alive as well? I would bet my marbles that the world beyond human consciousness is a wild and remarkable Creation that we will one day know in all infetesmal (of being infinite, or Timeless as I like to say) meanings. When will it begin for us you ask? I say it possibly already has...
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