Last night was autumn-cool. The relentless heat of the Texas summer (which is about 9 months out of the year) makes Fall a welcome guest - even if temporary. It was a particularly starry night; the waning crescent moon was barely a scratch of light and the outdoor fluorescent that usually illuminates the place where I stood was mercifully silent. Staring up at the visible stars (the constellation of Orion looms large above my patch of earth this time of year), I settled into a ready pensiveness.
In this familiar posture, I am prepared to mediate great questions - or at least as great as I can conceive. A philosopher in the sandbox. Wrecking castles.
Thousands of years separating each point of light, species born and extinguished - from Brachiosaurus to Barack, from scrolls to smart phones, Stonehenge to the Golden Gate bridge. Amoeba to me.
This night, I could only fathom the surface. Distance and dimension eluded me the way that complex math always does. The calculus phantoms of my limitations.
I experienced a feeling much like the kind that you get when you wake from a dream. I felt the unreality of reality. In a flash it was gone and I was back to staring at the stars of the primal hunter -- signifier of seasons -- pyramids at Giza. As above, so below.
Reality snapped back into place. As did I. Or because.
*****
The seemingly bizarre notion that reality exists as unified quantum field of probability has been advanced by theoretical Physics and the sorcerers of their profession since the unification of electricity and magnetism in the 19th century.
Given the mysteries of quantum entanglement and the so-called "observer effect", it seems hard to deny the role of individual consciousness (or even the Jungian collective unconscious) in actually creating the tangible world -- along with equally tangible Physicists to explain how it happens.
But the nature of scientific pursuit, as dogmatic as it may be (witness the global warming fraud), implies that today's reality becomes tomorrow's flat earth witchcraft.
This perpetual state of development and understanding -- if we are to gleam any principle from its trajectory -- is that there is no end. No final point. No touch down. Everything unfolds and unfolds.
Truth is ever-expanding. Because we are.
Without us, the universe is merely a field of superpositions and probabilities. Reality is always moving with us... Because we make it.
When I was little kid, I can remember thinking for a time that whenever we would drive, the moon would follow -- keeping pace with my dad's old V.W. Even when I realized this was not the case, I used to pretend it nonetheless.
Philosophers, scientists, thinkers throughout the ages have speculated as to the nature of reality. What is this thing called life? What is the material world? What is the metaphysical world? What is man?
But these questions imply an answer. And an answer implies an end.
There is no end. That is the answer.
