“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
Bertrand Russell
British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 – 1970)
Within me are all worlds, all that has been or will be–all time is compressed into this present moment. My intuition alerts me to particular and relevant dynamic energies, connected in space-time, existing simultaneously with my thoughts about them. Without thought, there is no access to or acknowledgement of space or time, but before space and time came into existence, the existence of thoughts could only be described as a potential–enjoying only a possible, tentative, and uncertain existence at best. All life is also in this same category. In the vastness of the known universe, hidden amongst the innumerable potential worlds that MIGHT exist, we find life on Earth. Our world is known to US, and may be the only world we will ever know as humans.
Our only hope for keeping our world intact is to take care of each other. Together, we can make our future a hopeful one. Connecting to those who come across our paths, and to those whose paths WE cross, is the challenge we face. Our connections run deeper than many of us imagine, spanning all time and sometimes found on planes of existence which cannot be reached with conventional transportation. It is often only within ourselves that we can find the source of these connections, although we are occasionally alerted to their presence intuitively or experientially, while our focus is on the world. By focusing through deliberate effort, on the deepest recesses of our inner worlds, we can, with practice, encounter indications of the universal energies supporting all life. If we are willing to concentrate our efforts there, we can begin to uncover these connections and slowly begin to see them.
Our intuitive senses, first acquired through our close association with the natural world and through the evolutionary process, once ruled our daily lives, but have been weakened by our lack of attention to them. The tremendous surge of reliance on advancing technologies has dulled our awareness of our natural abilities and capacities by making them less urgent in the immediate sense. Intrigued by the material sciences, the subsequent receding of attention to our inherent spiritual inclinations has not served us particularly well in every case. By dispelling the mythology of superstition, science and technology have served a good purpose, eliminating ignorance and revealing many important truths, but it seems to me that they fail us utterly, once we arrive at the thresholds where science cannot go. While tremendous benefits have been derived from our advancement, we have, in some cases, been fooled into thinking that there is nothing else at work in the phenomenal universe that holds any real meaning or that will be of much ultimate use. The true nature of all life, however beautifully complex and wondrous as science sometimes reveals it, must be supported by elements that are beyond the scope of science. Paradoxically, within the complex processes of scientific inquiry, the natural beauty and spiritually enriching scope of life can show through. By expressing and demonstrating the astonishing complexity of life through science, we often get glimpses of the spirit of life.
What ancient astronomer, philosopher, scientist, or ordinary person could have imagined orbiting the Earth at unimaginable speeds, floating beyond the significant reach of Earth’s gravity and turning to see the awe-inspiring sight of the Earth from space? How different our view of life on Earth is today! Virtually every nook and cranny of the livable globe has either been occupied or visited by humanity. News from the most remote places are now available at a moment’s notice, bringing us closer to the most obscure peoples and events, opening our eyes to both the variety and similarity of all the occupants of our world.
Look through the eyepiece of the world’s most powerful electron microscope and marvel at the wonders and beauty of the very small! Through the use of such technologies, we can eventually arrive at a place where we can formulate theories of even smaller proportions of our existence. Subatomic particles floating in a field between other particles so unimaginably small, create the structures and facilitate the functions which result in every “solid” object we see, and in every living entity that exists. As wondrous as these ideas seem, science eventually ends up at horizons, past which we are unable to penetrate.
No matter how far we can go on our wits, the world within us is the seat of the forces and energies which truly animate us, takes us further, and endures when science ends.
John's Consciousness 
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