An Axiom

We cannot combine mind (science), body (art) and spirit (religion), they are combined already. All we can do is separate them.

from wallpapersbuzz.com

Back in 1999, I sat with a friend of mine, “Captain” Jeff Sollars, for a conversation about the universe. We had come to understand that our educations were lacking in this field. At the time I was in graduate school and he was in the throes of exploration. We’re both well read and had come across plenty of literature – east and west – on these subjects, from material to spiritual to all things in between. Our problem wasn’t meaning or purpose, it was more a question of structure. Of understanding how it’s put together.

I guess it’s worth mentioning what we felt were some of the shortcomings of our modern look at the universe. First, our universal models are all based on logic. Always remember that logic is in the philosophy department of university. And, while our universal models seem to go a long way to express and predict things that happen, much of what happens in life is simply not logical. There are no if-then statements that are going to get you there. More, logical systems are flawed [Godel], so we had that going for us, which was nice.

Second, we felt that, as a whole, we just weren’t wholistic enough. There are times we could look at a tree with a leaf disease and study the branches for 10 years never realizing that the problem is in the soil. It took us a long time to see things like the effects of emotion, or the air we breathe, on health, because when someone is sick we focus so hard on the place that “it hurts”. How many of our treatments for one disease cause another problem somewhere else? And this attitude tends to run throughout our exploration. For us, it seemed like we were lacking a context. And this turned a lot of what we knew into what we termed unprocessed knowledge. The kinds of things that we know how to do, but still don’t appreciate their effects even on our selves.

So this is what we tried to do. Understand the context. And our conversation turned into days. And eventually over a week. And throughout, we tried to come up with our starting point. What I later came to call our axiom. Many things dawned on us during this conversation and, just through the sheer force of openness, we came to many understandings. Yet, each starting point eventually came to a place that caused us to go back to the beginning. Which is what we did each time we hit a wall.

The first transformative understanding I experienced – it must have been several days into our conversation – was the foundation of the connectedness of things. The one thing all life must do, I realized, was to share. Water must flow. Man must breathe. But more, water must evaporate and rain, man must inhale and exhale. It’s less a sharing and more a relationship. Our bodies don’t simply decrease in energy, get refilled and move on. They are not only constantly being refilled, but they are constantly transforming and returning their intake. To put it bluntly, we must eat, but then we also must shit. And while our excrement may have no energy value to us, it certainly has one to nature. In other words, just because we don’t use it doesn’t mean the dung beetle wouldn’t be happy to have it. At least until it’s soil. Which would mean plants and trees. And so our conversation began to move into these relationships.

We began to consider the relationship between the plant and animal kingdoms and something very interesting came out. First, as we all tend to know, plants and trees provide us with oxygen while we provide them with carbon dioxide. That is, while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, they do the opposite. But let’s consider our relationship on another level. Chlorophyll – the stuff cruising around plants – is green. This means that when light energy (like sunlight) hits a tree, it reflects the blue and yellow frequencies, but absorbs the red frequencies. Well, again, we are the opposite. The hemoglobin being carried around in our blood is red, which means that it absorbs the blue and yellow spectrums and reflects the red. So, again, in light energy, our relationship remains consistent. So how about the physical? Well, as stated above, doesn’t our waste become plant fodder? And aren’t fruits, nuts and vegetables the released products of their intake? No wonder we wash it before we eat it!

Looking at this system, we began to see the complete relationship between plant and animal. One in which energy – air, light, physical – is shared. And that’s just the parts of it that we’re aware of! It dawned on us that this is the measuring stick we were looking for. That our starting point, our axiom if you will, would be summed up by the statement: All things are mirrored on all levels.

google image illustrations of phi, the golden mean

First, truth is repetitious. For, if something is true it must be true everywhere. As if the truth is the relationship itself and the rest of it is the reflection of that truth. As if!

Second, repetitive patterns have a context. They are a reflection – a mirror – of a relationship. They are, perhaps, also the relationships themselves. As breathing next to a tree is both the illustration and the reflection of the relationship.

And thirdly, there is no such thing as a truth anomaly. If a pattern can be shown to be false in one instance of a relationship then that can not be the truth, on any level, of that relationship. Which I think is a little bit like saying that if the laws of gravity fail even once then physicists will have a lot of revamping to do.

These ideas began to guide our exploration and open our understanding of the world around us. It is not math but, then again, math is not perfect. And while we can perhaps experience something as contradictory, to the universe itself there is no contradiction.

More, this gave us the ability to really get a picture of a universal structure. One built upon relationship, repetition and growth. As structures become more complex, relationships evolve and patterns increase in complexity, but always follow the guideline of the relationship. So the context is always there. Patterns lead us to relationships and relationships identify patterns. Isolated patterns become vehicles of self growth when considering that your experience is somehow not in line with a relationship.

And since, as I’ve stated before, the questions are somehow more significant than the answers. And in the interest of allowing your journey to be your own, here are some of the places we were led by these ideas. Maybe I’ll tackle some of our thoughts about them in future blogs. Maybe you’ll take some on in the comments. Or maybe introduce some of your own. 

What do the evolution of governments and social structures have to do with evolution of galaxies and star formations? What patterns exist throughout nature and, if they reflect a truth, where do we see them reflected? If everything is a mirror of something else then what are our mirrors? And what are we mirroring?

When we talk about “levels” what do we mean? If – referring to plants and animals – air, light and physical energy are shared in the same way, then are we sharing three different things or are we sharing one thing and experiencing it three different ways? Can we also talk about, say, microscopic, man-size, galactic as levels that follow the same patterns? What about planetary and universal? How would these physical levels themselves be defined?

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After the End part 1 by Jeff Sollars aka rainydaysaint

For more of Jeff’s work visit his deviantart site here.

Peace.