Common Threads – Part 4

The Ground of Being
Part 4

So, if you are still reading, then the line of logic I am proposing is not flying in the face of your picture of “the way things are”.

To continue, if we are DNA coated “somethings”, living in a universe with physical properties where we can see our bodies, but apart from knowing that we came from our mother and father, we are “kinda at a loss” for what the point of the whole thing is…… well, welcome to the human race…….

It seems to be an attribute we all have in common…. a common thread….

And, as we have noted in the last section, our human sensing system seems to be pointed outside our bodies: sight, sound, smell, taste, and skin sensations all reach to the outside …. and this outward direction has us trapped in the sense that if we are looking for something to fill our needs, it is going to be found outside ourselves…..

But we find ourselves feeling empty, and maybe even lonely, after we are physically satisfied….. so what other part of ourselves is there that is feeling empty? What is this other part of us, other than the physical part?????

This question has been asked from the earliest writings and ruminations of humankind, and concepts like “soul” and “spirit” have been suggested as answers….. we seem to all feel that there is something… other than the physical part of us….. our psychic part??? (i dunno..)

On the other hand, in our modern age, this sense of an extra-physical part of us can be dispelled simply with the concept that “if I can’t prove it scientifically, then it is a superstitious myth of some sort or another”,

But it seems modern day humans are just as convinced by our inner experience… just as the ancients, that there is something more than just the “physical” human body and its sensing devices…… it seems to be just beyond us…. maybe on the tip of our tongue, to know what the heck this “unseen” part of us is……

And no, I am not trying to sell something…. as a friend of mine said yesterday “I don’t know why I post this stuff.. I guess I see no reason to keep it private”…… so we are considering these thoughts to be “public domain”…… 🙂

Quantum Physics tells us that “deep inside” the workings of the physical universe, there are forces at work, and that these forces do not follow the same “laws of nature” that the visible universe follows.

So is it possible that humans somehow “participate” in this deeper workings? Actually, why would we NOT be participants? If our bodies are made of the “deep essence” of everything we see, why would we not be participants? This is not holding some sort of religious belief, this is just what science is telling us. Why would humans be non-participants in the quantum workings of the universe, when everything else is? Seems only common sense that we are participants in one form or another.

Again, there are many names for this “thing” we seem to be participating in….. in ancient times, humans couldn’t fathom that this “bigger than us” thing could be a part of the universe they lived in, so they imagined something outside of the universe…. a god… or a group of gods…. and then along with this line of thinking, they started to think that the universe was some sort of “physical manifestation of the unseen world”…… humans love symbols… 🙂

But in fact, we do see signs of a deeper awareness in our visible universe, and just the simple fact that anything sticks together, tells us that there is some sort of system. Human thinking on these subjects easily gets stuck in a vicious circle, where we end up thinking everything has happened by pure chance. This type of thinking is truly a self-defensive reaction against “the opponents of science”.

One other thing we find, is that the ancients developed “methods” to pull themselves closer to the “participating” mode, and further away from the “separateness” mode…. and in fact, modern neuro-science is showing us that we have parts of our brains which do both…… so it is really not like some sort of ancient fantasy or human made mythology, these are scientific facts which a person can choose to work with, or not…..

I for one, have chosen to treat my life as a research project into this whole question  of interconnectedness and participation of humans in the larger quantum system.

Now, being as this quantum system seems to be “omnipresent” or ubiquitous…. and as it seems like every time this quantum system gets a chance to become aware… building sensing systems whenever the development of its environment permits, it seems like calling it “the ground of being” as at least a temporary name, would make sense. It seems all things are built from it, and it seems that the systems and processes “grow out of it”….. therefore it seems that it could be called the ground of “beingness” ……

So, if this line of thought is still sufficiently sensible, I propose we…. at least for the time being, call this “the ground of being”… essentially including the unseen quantum forces, and possibly the forces behind it……. (again, the potential titles or names are almost endless, but keeping away from names which would lead to assumptions about this ground of being’s “character”, words would seem to be preferable to names) This has also been the preference of a number of modern thinkers, and even some modern religionists and theologians.

As I had mentioned, neuro-science seems to be uncovering parts of the brain which “accentuate” oneness, in the human experience, while other parts accentuate separateness.

I would like to propose that these areas of the brain tell us that we are both “separate” in our physical bodies, as well as “one” or unified in terms of our “integrated system” Perhaps this quantum system might be a super sophisticated electro-magnetic system…?? but the system seems to give rise to the most curious part of nature to date… which is “awareness”. And in fact it is human awareness which wakes up one day and asks “who am I and what the frig am I doing here!?” So looking at this question from a purely scientific point of view, there are many interesting questions arise.