streaming consciousness…

Philosophy and Physics: Conundrums and Continuums…

The conundrum of existence is that consciousness inhabits flesh, some how some way, or that flesh possesses consciousness, if viewed from the opposite perspective, inside out upside down, impossible to say which came first, or whether they came simultaneously like all the best sex, though the material paradigm always takes precedence in the material world…

If I told you that the obvious answer to the conundrum of existence is to blow your brains out—immediately—then you’d naturally assume I’m suicidal or worse, manic depressive or maniac oppressive, some schizo or combo, all of the above, and I’d say I’m the same as you, just not your installment plan, one drink one smoke at the time, until death do us part…

But the Great Conundrum of Life is best answered by the Great Continuum, in which The Great Unspoken Unadorned Undifferentiated is best represented by silence and pure white light. So instead of ‘kill yourself–immediately’, the obvious answer should be ‘do nothing–immediately’, i.e. meditate, but turns out that is not so obvious, after all, so we do everything in between, to the ends of the earth, and build terrific but terrifying cities, wretched fantabulous alternatives to the simple solution of emptiness…

Thus the interplay of consciousness and flesh, spirituality and sex, is the dialectic that drives our lives, to oblivion or fruition, like Hegel’s ideas or Marx’s forces of production, thus the ancient question of self or no-self, as the Buddha advised, anticipating Occam’s clean-shaving razor, that if you don’t need it to explain anything, then leave it to others to fight over…

William of Occam could be wrong in advising that, of course, given that classic Newton can explain things almost as well as any quantum mechanic, but still not quite, and anyway somebody needed to say it, just for the record, just like someone needed to say, like Einstein did, way back when, anno mirabilis, that the laws of physics are the same anywhere in the universe, so obvious so basic so necessary if all our logic and science is to mean anything…

…and so wrong, maybe, or at least unprovable, for the laws of physics would be the same anywhere and everywhere in the universe, only if the universe were the same anywhere and everywhere, necessary to assume for the purposes of science, but not necessarily true for the actuality of reality, the difference between narratives and truth both obvious and apparent so often that is doesn’t need repeating…

Thus the great and simple possibility that maybe the universe is NOT the same everywhere, which could easily be true if we allow, as we do for ourselves and our Nature and our planet, that it is in fact a living breathing organism, “a conscious molecule in evolution” if I may quote that preeminent philosopher Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead…

I see it as given that our own lives are analogous to the life of the planet, and the life of species, that they are born, nurtured, mature and then die, in some certain order. Then why do we insist that the Universe need be something static, in a ‘steady state’ given so much evidence to the contrary, last if not least the revelation that not only is the universe expanding, BUT…

…that it is expanding is is exxppanndding is is is exxxpppannnddding “at an ever-increasing rate,” quote unquote, which not only defies common sense, but much more, all logic and all math, too, including science, the simple expansion enough to do that, the exponential expansion beyond all comprehension, UNLESS the laws of the universe are not the same everywhere, and that we’re guilty of trying to universalize something that is simply not capable of such ‘universalization’…

Could not our own little corner of the universe be in a state of expansion that is not typical of the universe as a whole? Couldn’t the universe be in a shape or situation that makes such general measurements of it nearly impossible? Could it not be possible that there are flows and eddies that defy measurement, if not description? Could this not be an early phase of expansion, yet to calm down? Just a thought, or two…

…and many other explanations could certainly be possible, since mine is really only a non-explanation, really, a simple reminder that things are not always what they seem and that any and all efforts to make a science out of something living and breathing and reacting to changing conditions is not necessarily reduce-able to rules and regulations and the prejudices and preconceptions that govern them. Welcome to Buddhism…