Light Matter.

Meanwhile, as across the planet, people either pretend to be very happy, or make no secret of being very sad, a fearsome force is at work, out there in the galaxy.

For every Black Hole, inexorably gobbling up space and all its contents, is a White Hole, inexorably gobbling up all the dark matter it can.

For a certainty, while humans go through their time-honoured ritual of loving, or hating the advent of the new year, elsewhere, little antimatter beings are doing exactly the same thing.

And as the Bible reminds us: "As above, so below." The planets and suns are all at it too. High and low, large and small, all the good guys are also bad guys, and vice-versa.

Like cosmic vacuum cleaners, Holes, black and white, compete for dominance.
And here on earth, it becomes ever more difficult to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys.

But nothing is completely good. Or completely bad.
Everything is what it is: deathless, eternal, complete.

Nothing is wasted, nothing destroyed. Only transformed.
There are no good guys. There are no bad guys.

Black Holes look good to anything made up of dark matter.
White Holes look good to anything made up of light matter.

Nothing is by accident. Everything is part of the pattern.
Our scientist friends, delving ever deeper into quantum physics, have started exhibiting surprise...

They started out to disprove God, and discover what the universe was really about.
And the deeper they delve, the more they discover, that something very odd is going on at the sub-atomic level.

Down among the quantum particles: the uber-microscopic specks that everything is made of, they are blinking in bewilderment at the realization that beyond those particles, lies a framework of pure consciousness.

Dark Matter.

Science has put forward a rather disturbing observation...
A rather large part of the universe is... MISSING!
Aieeee....
That doesn't sound good.
How can they know this?
Well they can't. It's all hypothetical.
But they claim to be able to know how much mass is contained within the universe, and knowing this, there is this small matter of an enormous discrepancy on the balance sheet.

Where did it go?
Well...
There are these big things called Black Holes.
They can not be seen, since even light can not escape their clutches.
But their effect can be measured.

The theory is that the gravitational pull of these things is so great that they consume absolutely anything they can influence. Even light.
Thus a great deal of the matter in the universe has been - and is being - gobbled up.
Why am I writing about this?

Worlds within worlds.
There are people who behave exactly like black holes.
They consume everything they can, even things they have no use for. Even things that can destroy them. Giving nothing back.

Even on taoist forums, one encounters questions like:
"How can I get the most out of taoism?"
"What can taoism do for me?"
"How can I benefit..?"

And every microcosm is a microcosm of something else.
It demonstrates a way of being that is either for, or against.
One may see the necessity of contributing, of sharing, of adding something to the whole.
Or one may exist only to take, take, take.

Black holes give nothing back.
If they have their way, nothing will exist except for dark matter.
If enough people take, giving nothing back, the results will be similar.
The complete destruction of everything we know, in this, our very own microcosm.

Having nothing does not mean one has nothing to give.
The least anyone can give is goodwill. This has value.
Nobody is so poor that they need give nothing.
Giving is our purpose.

We must offer something back to the whole, or we are no more than dark matter.
Gobbling up our own environment.

Science would do well to shift its viewpoint.
To see itself as part of the whole, and not the mortal enemy of the spiritual and mystical.
It gives us the means to know what is going on. It can help us "know".
That does not have to mean that we no longer need the other half of being.

The Cosmic Microwave Background whispers its secrets to us.
While science congratulates itself on being able to detect it, they completely forget to listen to what it is saying.

The Cosmic Bicycle.

Words, and knowing, are what we use to describe the physical realm.
Awareness, and not-knowing, are what we must use when we venture beyond the physical.
By beyond the physical, I mean: beyond what can be known.
To travel beyond the Event Horizon requires a different level of knowing...

The most difficult task, is to describe the interface between the two.

Knowledge is similar to technique.
In acquiring the technique needed to ride a bicycle, one struggles with what seems an impossible task.
Suddenly, after enough damage has been taken, after enough scrapes and bruises have been sustained, one suddenly breaks through the technique, into the realm of knowing-how.
Once one knows how to ride a bicycle, one never again gives a thought to the technique.

In essence, the probable purpose of knowing, is not an end in itself.
Knowledge is of little use without a context.
The probable purpose of knowing, is to know how to know.
Knowing how-to-know is what I believe Lao Tzu often referred to as not-knowing.

A child is unable to construct a great pyramid.
He starts out by building sand castles.
He learns from his experiences.
He goes on to build card-houses, and matchstick-houses.
When enough things have been built, and enough about each attempt's shortcomings discovered, quite suddenly the child will know how to build things.

There will be little of the card house, manifested in the great pyramid.
But certainly the card house was a part of the process.

Learning to ride a bicycle is not a lot different.
Learn the technique. Use the technique. Forget about the technique. Ride the bicycle.

In order to fully know a thing, one must become the thing.
Merely observing it is not enough.
As long as we are seperated from what we wish to know, we will never know it.

Scientists tend to defeat themselves.
By discarding the mystical in favour of scientific knowledge, they attempt to know the nature of a thing by only observing a part of that thing.
In order to know a thing, the thing - in its entirety - must be observed.
And beyond knowing a thing, to enter the realm of not-knowing it, and to - in fact - become it.

So take another look at your old bicycle.
It may not have occurred to you that it was a starship, all along.
Clean it up. Oil the chain. Check the brakes. Take a deep breath.
And, as the English are sometimes fond of saying:

"On yer bike!"

Beyond The Event Horizon.

The Event Horizon: this boundary that can be reached...
The conscious mind cannot venture beyond this point.
It can not know anything that lies beyond.
Yet this event horizon is not a finite barrier.

Like a traditional japanese restaurant, one must leave one's shoes at the door.

It is the point at which one must decouple one's mind, and move on without it.
One may still "know", but this new knowing is very different from the state we generally describe as "knowing".
Lao Tzu - the ancient sage, and author of the Tao te Ching - calls knowing "coarse", and not-knowing, "fine".
Nobody - in his epoch - could have said it better.
What he calls "not-knowing" may be his way of describing what modern man might well call "super-knowing".
This super-knowing is exponentially removed from conscious knowing.

I say these things because I have experienced them.
I have experienced them because I took the time and made the effort to.
And luck had a lot to do with it: because what I discovered was - understandably - nothing like I had imagined it would be.
And please remember: I have experienced this.
Meaning that it is experience-able.
By anyone willing to walk the walk.

Not-knowing, is a state in which knowledge itself is superfluous.
Like the air we breathe, knowledge becomes transparent, invisible: a thing we think nothing at all about.

The paradox is: in order to not-know, one must first know a great deal. Then: having acquired enough of this most precious knowing, one must be able, and have the ability, to discard it completely.

Like a Saturn Five rocket: the enormously massive and expensive main booster is necessary to get the tiny payload to a point where it can perform its function.
Having done so, the booster is discarded: being of no further use.

Action, and non-action.
Knowing involves a thought-process.
Not-knowing does not.

The Cosmic Background Radiation does not think. It does not know.
It is.

Event Horizon.

Somewhere inside the Cosmic Microwave Background, is a boundary.
This is the Event Horizon.
The point beyond which nothing that may happen has any relevance to an observer.
So far off, that whatever might happen, an observer will never know about it.

It is not a physical boundary. But it might as well be.
The truly unknown...

Each of us has our very own Event Horizon.
It surrounds the limits of our awareness.
Some may inhabit a bubble barely larger than themselves.
While others may inhabit a limitless space.

Thus to attempt to define, or understand God, is a pointless excercise.
One may give a pretty description, but it can never be any more than that.
No description will be comprehensible to everyone. Or even anyone.

In taoism, there exists the concept of tao.
Tao being the container of all that is. As well as all that is not.
The all and everything. The eternal.
That which existed before anything existed.
The source.

Some refer to this as the Big Bang.
Some refer to this as God.
Some refer to this as tao.

The detectable indication of its existence is the Cosmic Microwave Background.

The Epic Drama.

The honest man, having abandoned dishonesty, finds he inhabits reality, all alone.
Being honest, he adjusts his perceptions, to accurately mirror reality.
While the dishonest adjust reality, to accurately mirror their perceptions.

Against the Cosmic Microwave Background, eternity is played out.
A drama of epic proportions is enacted.
Everything is exactly, and nothing but, what it is.
Reality.

Here and there, tiny pockets of microbes, unaware of the extreme unlikeliness of their existence, argue about their differing perceptions as to what is going on.
Without a thought to the miraculous, they loathe each other's opinions.

Absolute Zero.

Space - the void between matter - out as far as we can measure, exists not at a temperature of absolute zero, or Zero Kelvin, as one might expect, but at 2.7 Kelvin.
Where there is no heat source, and no sunlight, why is there always a vestige of heat?
What could be going on to heat these unimaginably distant places?

This temperature holds fast throughout the entire expanse of space.
What is going on?

Something out there is emitting radiation in the microwave band.
A cosmic hiss, an echo of stupendous power generation.
A perfect "blackbody" that enfolds and embraces everything.
All the life and the non-life, all the planets and stars, all the galaxies and nebulae that have ever existed, have all existed inside this manifestation.

This site will not be about scientific things. But may include such things.
It will be about who, and what, and why we are.
By we, I refer to all living things. Not only humans.
For we all share this earth. As this earth shares the solar system. And this solar system shares space with countless other star systems, on and on and on...

Welcome to what may amount to little, but may amount to much.
Leave what you think you know at the door, come inside, and make yourself comfortable.