by Craig Willms
What are we, and more importantly why are we? We are in fact an infinitesimal fragment of an infinite universe, a universe that is utterly incomprehensible. Each of us mill about in the space we occupy, struggling to carry on an existence that means something. Means something to whom? Good question.
Meaninglessness is a conundrum. If life, our life, is meaningless as so many clear-eyed materialists believe, then what is the point? If at the moment one discovers that his or her life is devoid of any meaning the real mystery is why they would carry on at all. Why bother? Why not just end it? Yet the enlightened, those who believe their life and the life of everyone who ever lived is ultimately pointless don't just kill themselves, do they? No, they succumb to a biological imperative despite their absolute certainty that nothing really matters - they marry and have children and live into old age. Why? Simple, they know deep down that life is not pointless, even as they preach to the unenlightened masses that nihilism is the ultimate truth. They are hypocrites.
The universe as far as we know is endless. Our scientists can speculate that the universe is a certain age and possibly even a certain size, but they do not know beyond their mathematical calculations. It's entirely possible "we" will never know. We speculate that the Earth is billions of years old, and it very well may be, and it will probably go on for billions more. In a billion years from now we will all be long gone. Did it mean anything?
Yes.
Yes, because we are one. We are the universe; we have been, we are and will always be one part of the whole. We are reflections on a choppy sea.
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger is best known for his famous thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat. He designed this thought experiment to illustrate a paradox of quantum superposition wherein a hypothetical cat may be considered both alive and dead simultaneously because its fate is linked to a random event that may (or may not) occur. In this speculation he states if you seal a cat in a box with something that can eventually kill it, you won’t know if the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. So, until you open the box and observe the cat, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive.
Schrödinger, besides being a Nobel Prize winning physicist was also a philosopher. His thinking went down to unusual depths about what the mathematical formalism of quantum theory was actually telling us about the nature of reality. He was not satisfied that science could explain with equations and calculations the depths of meaning, there needed to be a deeper interpretation. Quantum theory describes sub-atomic specifications like the mechanic rattles off the horsepower, displacement and the timing of a high-performance V8 engine, but he can't tell you with these specs what it feels like to sit behind the wheel and push the accelerator pedal to the floor.
Eventually Schrödinger concluded infinite consciousness is what underlies all of reality. It's not that your mind and the universe's mind are separate things. At the deepest level, the mind that looks out through your eyes and the mind that constitutes all being are one and the same. One mind. He came to find the concept of Brahman, the Indian notions of ultimate reality, the eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, and the spiritual core of the universe, to be the one truth. One consciousness, one Brahman.
This is, in a sense what dovetails with the Dao in the Far East and the Judeo/Christian God in the West? Clearly there is overlap. Each is a different aspect of the ultimate.
There is one sun shining on the ocean, but we see a thousand points of light, each an individual reflection of the one light. It's a simple way to conceptualize the collective consciousness of the 'one' mind.
What does this have to do with the meaning of our lives? Well, that is the ultimate question, isn't it? It's not even a what question, it's a why question. Why? Why are we here at all? Experience. We are here to experience the universe, to add our personal experiences to the whole. In that regard every single life is important and meaningful. Even those whose lives are short and brutal are ultimately meaningful. The why of it points to the one mind growing and evolving. There is no telling if we, our little piece of the whole, reincarnates again and again to experience again and again, but there is no reason it couldn't be possible. Think of being a tiny drop in the ocean being tossed above the waterline and existing apart from the ocean for a short time, eventually you will return to the depths.
Obviously, there are a million unanswered questions, ones that may never be answered in this incarnation. Maybe when the veil is lifted as this tiny slice of consciousness expires, we become enlightened, maybe we meet God? We will all find out, won't we.
