time and space are modes by which we think, not conditions in which we live —D. Marianoff

  

.

Throughout his life, (John) Wheeler aspired to understand the most fundamental components of the cosmos. He changed his mind on that issue several times in his career, starting with particles, venturing into fields and geometry, and finally delving into information. 

He also wanted to comprehend the organizing principles steering those components into recognizable patterns. Sum over histories, based on the principle of least action applied to quantum physics, was one such idea, but he also considered others. 

In the end, he became convinced that the answer had to do with a “self-excited circuit”: a symbiosis between conscious observers and what they were observing, namely, the cosmic past. Somehow, through our looks back in time, we organized our own universe, from among the frothy possibilities of the quantum foam. 

Therefore, in Wheeler’s mind, the questions of “How come existence?” and “How come the quantum?” became inextricably linked. 


—Paul Halpern
The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality

.

I, like other searchers, attempt formulation after formulation of the central issues and here present a wider overview, taking for working hypothesis the most effective one that has survived this winnowing: It from Bit. Otherwise put, every it — every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely — even if in some contexts indirectly — from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.

It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.


—John Archibald Wheeler

.

I think it’s a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead.

That there isn’t their life and our life. Nor your life and my life. That it’s just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes.


—Kate Forster
wait - what ?

.

manifesto

  

.

 

When day comes, all things emerge from the depths of unmanifest nature;

when night comes, all things dissolve into the unmanifest again.

—Bhagavad Gita

 

.

Moment by moment you wait for understanding, spiritual perception, peace and good to arrive from nonexistence. Nonexistence, then, is God's factory from which He continually produces goods.

He has caused what is nonexistent to appear magnificently existent, while the truly existent He has caused to appear as nonexistent.

He has hidden the Sea, yet made the foam visible;
He has concealed the Wind, but displayed the dust.

The dust whirls in the air higher than a minaret: does it rise by itself? 
You see the dust borne high, but the Wind you don't see, although you can surmise it.

You see the white-capped waves tumbling in every direction, but without the Sea the foam has no way to move.

You see the foam by sense perception and the Sea by induction: just as speech is manifest and thought is hidden.


—Rumi

.

 

People think that the world itself is overflowing with beauty, 

but they forget that they are its cause.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

 

.

 

 

Everything that lives, lives not alone, nor for itself. —William Blake

  

.

"The things we see,” Pistorius said softly, “are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority’s path is an easy one, ours is difficult."


—Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf

 

.

 

 

a question of courage

.

 

In the firmament that we observe at night, the stars shine brightly, surrounded by a thick darkness. Since the number of galaxies and luminous bodies in the universe is almost infinite, the darkness that we see in the sky is something that, according to scientists, demands an explanation. It is precisely the explanation that contemporary astrophysics gives for this darkness that I would now like to discuss. 

In an expanding universe, the most remote galaxies move away from us at a speed so great that their light is never able to reach us. What we perceive as the darkness of the heavens is this light that, though traveling toward us, cannot reach us, since the galaxies from which the light originates move away from us at a velocity greater than the speed of light. To perceive, in the darkness of the present, this light that strives to reach us but cannot - this is what it means to be contemporary. As such, contemporaries are rare. 

And for this reason, to be contemporary is, first and foremost, a question of courage, because it means being able not only to firmly fix your gaze on the darkness of the epoch, but also to perceive in this darkness a light that, while directed toward us, infinitely distances itself from us. In other words, it is like being on time for an appointment that one cannot but miss.

—Giorgio Agamben
What is Contemporary
onetwofeb

 

.

 

 

 

inner life

.

There is the inner life, which is the world of final reality, the world of memory, emotion, imagination, intelligence, and natural common sense, and which goes on all the time, consciously or unconsciously like the heartbeat. 

There is also the thinking process by which we break into the inner life and capture answers and evidence to support the answers out of it. That process of raid, or persuasion or ambush, or dogged hunting, or surrender, is the kind of thinking we have to learn, and if we do not somehow learn it, then our minds lie in us like the fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish.


—Ted Hughes

.

Dzogchen views karma in terms of ‘perception and response’ rather than ‘cause and effect.’ 

The essential meaning is the same but this approach opens our understanding of karma so that we cannot mistake it for fatalism. If the cause — which is our perception — perceived a focus of attraction, aversion, or indifference, the effect will be our response to that cause. There is no sense in which the actual circumstances of our lives are preordained according to a system of rewards and punishments based on our previous actions.

—Ngakma Nor’dzin

.

the way is in the heart

.

All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. 

It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. 

It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.


—Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry

.

You are far from the end of your journey.
The way is not in the sky.
The way is in the heart.
See how you love

There is no fire like passion,
No crime like hatred,
No sorrow like separation,
No sickness like hunger,
And no joy like the joy of freedom

All that we are arises with our thoughts. 
With our thoughts we make the world. 
Speak or act with a pure mind 
And happiness will follow you 
As your shadow, unshakable.


—shakyamuni buddha

.

the nature of th1ngs

.

.


Quantum mechanics teaches us not to think about the world in terms of “things” that are in this or that state but in terms of “processes” instead. A process is the passage from one interaction to another.

The properties of “things” manifest themselves in a granular manner only in the moment of interaction—that is to say, at the edges of the processes—and are such only in relation to other things. They cannot be predicted in an unequivocal way, but only in a probabilistic one.

This is the vertiginous dive taken by Bohr, Heisenberg, and Dirac—into the depth of the nature of things.


—Carlo Rovelli
Reality Is Not What It Seems

.

The only things we can ever perceive … are our perceptions. —George Berkeley

  

.

In reality, time and space exist in you; you do not exist in them. They are modes of perception, but they are not the only ones. Time and space are like words written on paper; the paper is real, the words merely a convention. Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. 

Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water ... so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. 

You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. 

You are not even a human being.

You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. 

If you ask me “Who are you?”, my answer would be: “Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.”


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


 

.

listen

  

.

If you want what visible reality
can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

.

listen

hiding in this cage
of visible matter

is the invisible
lifebird

pay attention
to her

she is singing
your song


—Kabir
Sushil Rao version

.

questions

 

.

Now, of course, reality—from a philosopher’s point of view—is a dangerous word. A philosopher will ask me: what do I mean by reality? Am I talking about the physical world of nature, or am I talking about a spiritual world, or what? And to that, I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept. So, in the same way, if I say that reality is spiritual, that’s also a philosophical concept. And reality itself is not a concept. Reality is, and we won’t give it a name.

Now, it’s amazing what doesn’t exist in the real world. For example, in the real world there aren’t any things, nor are there any events. That doesn’t mean to say that the real world is a perfectly featureless blank. It means that it is a marvelous system of wiggles in which we describe things and events in the same way as we would project images on a Rorschach blot, or pick out particular groups of stars in the sky and call them constellations as if they were separate groups of stars. Well, they’re groups of stars in the mind’s eye, in our system of concepts. They are not—out there, as constellations—already grouped in the sky.

So, in the same way, the difference between myself and all the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea. It is not a real difference. And meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up. That is to say, that we become interiorally silent and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls. Because you see, most of us think compulsively all the time, that is to say, we talk to ourselves.


—Alan Watts (1915 - 1973)
Essential Lectures, Meditation 

.

Real courage is possible only through seeing. It’s not possible through belief in the divine self, which we all share in common, as if that were something you could believe in. This is only to be discovered through not hanging on to anything, not having any armour, not having any beliefs, not having any kind of gimmick with which you try to hold the weaving smoke in position. You don’t need it. If you really are the basis of the world, you don’t need a belief that that is so.

... The gift of remembering and binding time creates the illusion that the past stands to the present as agent to act, mover to moved. Living thus from the past, with echoes taking the lead, we are not truly here, and are always a bit late to the feast.


—Alan Watts

.

If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, I break down into three parts: 

the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing. 

the human soul, living forever within you. 

the celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird.


—Carl Jung
liber novus/ the red book
(black book 6- 1916)

.

remember(ship

.

We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors


—Jorge Luis Borges
from Cambridge

.

When misfortune confounds us
in an instant we are saved
by the humblest actions
of memory or attention:
the taste of fruit, the taste of water,
that face returned to us in dream,
the first jasmine flowers of November,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we thought forever lost,
the pulsing of a hexameter,
the little key that opens a house,
the smell of sandalwood or library,
the ancient name of a street,
the colourations of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date that we were searching for,
counting the twelve dark bell-strokes,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million the deities of Shinto
who travel the earth, secretly.
Those modest divinities touch us,
touch us, and pass on by.


—Jorge Luis Borges
this is Borges

.

You don’t remember what happened. 

What you remember becomes what happened. 

—John Green

.

Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places. —Flann O'Brien

  

.

How, indeed, could it be possible for a man, who is limited on six sides—by east, west, south, north, deep, and sky—to understand a matter which is above the skies, which is beneath the deep, which stretches beyond north and south, and which is present in every place, and fills all vacuity?

—St. Gregory the Wonderworker (c. 213-268)

.

Your thinking that you have to make an effort to get rid of this dream of the waking state, and your making efforts to attain jnana (realization of Self) or real awakening, are all parts of the dream.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

Crimson gleams of Matter, gliding imperceptibly into the gold of Spirit, ultimately to become transformed into the incandescence of a universe that is person - and through all of this there blows, animating it and spreading over it a fragrant balm, a zephyr of union - and of the Feminine.

The diaphany of the Divine is at the heart of a glowing universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the earth - the divine radiating from depths of blazing matter.

The world will open the arms of God to us. It is for us to throw ourselves into these arms so that the divine milieu should close around our lives like a circle.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The Divine Milieu, excerpts

.

If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won’t see anything. —Ruth Bernhard

  

.

 

We are bees of the invisible. 

Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
from a letter to Witold Hulewicz
November 13, 1925 

.

Even though the senses are not able to detect most of the universe, the invisible nevertheless exists.

—Massimo Citro and Ervin Laszlo 

The Basic Code of the Universe

. 

No person doubts that he exists, though he may doubt the existence of God. If he finds out the truth about himself and discovers his own source, this is all that is required.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

note to self

 

. 

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always 

be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

—Alan Wilson Watts

. 

no thoughts, no world

  

.

A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and after many years of weary and strenuous travel, returns to this country, reaches Tiruvannamalai, enters the ashram and walks into the hall.

Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch but was sleeping where he lay down.

He has not returned after great effort to this hall, but is and always has been in the hall.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi


 

.

What is called ‘mind’ is a wondrous power residing in the Self. 
It causes all thoughts to arise. 
Apart from thoughts, there is no such thing as mind. 
Therefore, thought is the nature of mind. 

Apart from thoughts, there is no independent entity called the world.
In deep sleep there are no thoughts, and there is no world.
In the states of waking and dream, there are thoughts,
and there is a world also. 

Just as the spider emits the thread (of the web) out of itself and again withdraws it into itself, likewise the mind projects the world out of itself and again resolves it into itself.

When the mind comes out of the Self, the world appears.
Therefore, when the world appears (to be real), the Self does not appear; and when the Self appears (shines) the world does not appear. 

When one persistently inquires into the nature of the mind, the mind will end, leaving the Self (as the residue).
What is referred to as the Self is the Atman. 

The mind always exists only in dependence on something gross;
it cannot stay alone. 

It is the mind that is called the subtle body or the soul (jiva). 


—Sri Ramana Maharshi 

.

consciousness is a totality

  

.

What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience? 

They cover simply our actual experience, our human knowledge of facts or events. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things.

This darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the gods. They alone see the connections, the total relevance of everything that happens; that which now comes to us in bits and pieces, the “accidents” which exist only in our heads, in our limited perceptions.


—Idris Parry

.

Why do you insist the universe is not a conscious intelligence,

when it gives birth to conscious intelligence?

—Cicero

c. 44 BCE

.

It must be obvious...that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

To Taoism that which is absolutely still or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead, for without the possibility of growth and change there can be no Tao. In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.

We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible. 


—Alan Watts

.

you are that

 

.

AUM describes Reality.
It is a symbol for what was, what is,
And what shall be. AUM points also at
What lies beyond past, present, and future.

Brahman is all, and the Self is Brahman.
This Self has four states of consciousness.

The first is the one in which 
One lives with the senses turned outward,
Aware only of the external world.

The second is the dreaming state in which, with the senses
Turned inward, one enacts the impressions 
Of past deeds and present desires.

Deep sleep is the third state,
In which one neither dreams nor desires.
There is no mind in the third state, there is no
Separateness; but the sleeper is not 
Conscious of this. Let him become conscious.

In the third state a door will open
To the state of abiding joy.

The third state, all-powerful and all-knowing,
Dwells in the hearts of all.
The third state is the source and the end of all.

The fourth state is the superconscious state,
neither inward nor outward,
Beyond the senses and the intellect,
In which there is none other than 
Infinite peace and love. 

The fourth state is represented by AUM.
Though indivisible, it has three sounds.

A is the sound of the outward, waking state of an individual being.
U is the sound of the inward, dreaming state of a subtle being.
M is the sound of the wisdom state of a universal being.
AUM is the sound of the pure bliss of unified consciousness

Those who know AUM as the self know all beings as the Self;

Truly there is only the One.

on shanti shanti shanti


—lessons from The Mandukya Upanishad,
Eknath Easwaran version

.

wherever you are on the way

Stephane Granzotto

. 

They set out with him inside the dream,
while he is actually sleeping beside a river of pure water.

Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way.
Maybe some traveler will wake you.

Give up subtle thinking, the twofold, threefold
multiplication of mistakes.

Listen to the sound of waves within you.


—Rumi

. 

You are sitting in a wagon being
drawn by a horse whose
reins you 
hold.

There are two inside of you
who can steer.

Most never hand the reins to Me
so they go from place to place the
best they can, though
rarely happy.

And rarely does their whole body laugh
feeling God's poke 
in the 
ribs.

If you feel tired, dear,
my shoulder is soft,
I'd be glad to
steer a
while.


—Kabir

.

When whales need a nap, they take a deep breath, dive around 15 meters, and position themselves in a perfectly vertical pattern. They sleep peacefully for between 10 and 15 minutes, in groups of 5 or 6 whales, possibly for protection.

Nobody knew that whales slept vertically until a 2020 study documented the behavior. And nobody captured such stunning photos in the wild until 2023. French photographer Stephane Granzotto was documenting whales in the Mediterranean for his book on the creatures when he stumbled upon these sleeping whales.
ian sanders

.

you are that which has the infinite potential to love, yet, you cling to your imagined personality

  

whale breath

.

There is no such thing as a person. 
There are only restrictions and limitations. 
The sum total of these defines the person. 

You think you know yourself when you know what you are. 
But you never know who you are. The person merely appears to be, like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot. 

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. 
Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. 

You are not. 

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.
There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. 

Suffering is a call for enquiry, all pain needs investigation. 


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

You cannot fight pain and pleasure on the level of consciousness.  

To go beyond them you must go beyond consciousness, which is possible only when you look at consciousness as something that happens to you and not in you, as something external, alien, superimposed. Then, suddenly you are free of consciousness, really alone, with nothing to intrude. 

And that is your true state.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.


—Billy Collins
Directions (excerpt)
The Art of Drowning

.

Is it the body that is thinking, or is it thought that is bodying? —Ahmed Salman

  

.

You see what the eye does teach; and yet it would never of itself have afforded this insight, without something that looks through the eyes and uses the data of the senses as mere guides to penetrate from the apparent to the unseen. 

It is needless to add the methods of geometry that lead us step by step through visible delineations to truths that lie out of sight, and countless other instances which all prove that apprehension is the work of an intellectual essence deeply seated in our nature, acting through the operation of our bodily senses.


—St. Gregory of Nyssa (335 – 395)

.

close your eyes. 

fall in love. 

stay there. 

—Rumi

.

questions

  

David Sanger

.

I have been thinking of the difference between
water and the waves on it.

Rising, water's still water, falling back, it is water.
Will you give me a hint how to tell them apart? 

Because someone has made up the word "wave,"
do I have to distinguish it from water? 
There is a Secret One inside us; the planets in all the galaxies pass through his hands like beads. 

That is a string of beads one should look at 
with luminous eyes.


—Kabir

.

The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart. —Rumi

.

To the ignorant, the “I” is the self limited to the body; to the wise, the “I” is the Infinite Self. One who turns inward with an untroubled mind to search where the consciousness “I” arises, realizes the Self, and rests in “That” like a river when it joins the ocean.

Call it by any name, God, Self, Source, the Heart or the seat of Consciousness, it is all the same. The point to be grasped is this, that Heart means the very core of one’s being, the centre without which there is nothing whatsoever… Take no notice of the ego and its activities, but see only the light behind.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

In intuition, the single pulsates with the life of the whole, and the whole is in the life of the single. Every genuine artistic representation is itself and is the universe, the universe in that individual form, and that individual form as the universe. 

In every utterance, every fanciful [imaginative] creation, of the poet, there lies the whole of human destiny, all human hope, illusions, griefs, joys, human grandeurs and miseries, the whole drama of reality perpetually evolving and growing out of itself in suffering and joy.


—Benedetto Croce
The Totality of Artistic Expression (1917)

.