May 6, 2008

• “Look! Should not the breadth of the universe astound us?”

  It is so interesting that the dome of the earth’s opaque sky retracts at night to reveal the universe.  If it didn’t, we would never even know the stars were there. 

  What is even more fascinating to me is when I am in public late at night, and all the other people are walking around on the sidewalk or sitting at tables on restaurant patios, talking.  Everyone seems to be acting quite normally, laughing in their conversations and strolling along nonchalantly.  But it is night, and all I am thinking is, “Everyone, look!  We are here!  We are humanity together, all inhabiting this planet in the remarkable and gigantic universe, and here is our story we are acting out, even every moment.”  Then together, I imagine a silent vigil of all of us strangers in the public place, gazing upon the heavens, experiencing together the deep longing humanity has always had for something infinite beyond itself.

  Every day is a slow unfolding of objective reality.  Our minds wake up in much the same state as our bodies, enclosed by four walls, thinking only of ourselves.  But then we grow a little smaller as we leave our rooms and enter the rest of the house, remembering our family as well.  As we walk outside, we shrink once more as knowledge of the world floods our minds and we remember the city where we live, and the people we work with.  Then finally comes night, when the sky dissolves to reveal our beggar’s existence in the universe, each of us being a mere stub of hair on the face of the earth, and we are now hardly the giant we woke up as.  

  But this is not normally how it works; the last stage is easily skipped.  At night the stars and the truth come out, but people go to sleep.  When they wake up, both are gone, and they live happily on with their lives, thinking that the world is what is real, because it is what is here every day, and it is very close.  One must stay up to see outside the world, and thus their minds, to see there is much more than just their small daily thoughts.

  • 3:52 am
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