Mont St Michelle

Energy and Interdependency

From the film "MIND WALK" – directed by Bernt Capra, 1991; from the book "Turning Point" by Fritjof Capra: Setting:  Mt. Saint Michele.  Characters:  SONYA, the physicist; THOMAS, the poet; JACK, the politician.  (Liv Ullmann, John Heard, Sam Waterston)

SCENE – Chancellery; Thomas seated at organ playing a Bach fugue.

THOMAS – So, Sonya, life is a bunch of probability patterns running around.  Probability patterns of what?

SONYA – of interconnection.  I'm trying to say that these probabilities are not probabilities of things, but probabilities of interconnection . . . for physicists the particle has no independent existence.  A particle is essentially a set of relations that reach out to interconnect with other things.

JACK – What are those other things?

SONYA – They are interconnections of yet other things which also turn out to be interconnections, and so on and so on.  You see, in atomic physics we never end up with any thing at all.  The essential nature of matter lies not in objects but in interconnect­ions.

THOMAS – Ah! (Strikes a chord on the organ)   Everybody knows this chord, it's the third, and the most basic of harmonies.  It carries with it a very distinctive feeling, no?  And yet its individual notes carry none of it.  Therefore, the essence of the chord lies in its—

SONYA – In its relationships.

THOMAS – And the relationships between time and pitch (he plays a few notes of the fugue) make melody.  Relationships make music.

SONYA – Relationships make matter.

THOMAS – Music of the spheres.

SONYA – As Kepler said.

THOMAS – And Shakespeare before him.

SONYA – And Pythagoras before him.  Now this vision of a universe arranged in harmonies and sounds and relations is no new discovery.  Today physicists are simply proving that what we call an object, an atom, a molecule, a particle, is only an approximation, a metaphor.  At the subatomic level, it dissolves into a series of interconnections like chords of music. . . That's beautiful.

JACK questions, There are boundaries, yes?  We are two separate bodies . . .  (No reply from Sonya)  Are you saying that there is actually a physical connection between you and me?  And between you and the wall, between you and this bench?

SONYA – Yes.  At the subatomic level there is a continual exchange of matter and energy between my hand, the wood, the wood and the air, and even between you and me.  I mean a real exchange of photons and electrons.  Whether we like it on not we are all part of one inseparable web of relationships.   ♦  ♦  ♦ ♦

Energy – the Desire to Live

A Humanistic-Transpersonal Astrologer’s Point-of-View – Notes from 2005:

One force (energy) – the desire to live – causes or creates matter and its evolution; energy coexisting and becoming (causing) matter – phenomena appearing through breaking up of the symmetry of the one force into apparent multi-dimensional forces creating time – Light through a prism – the One Force – Energy “uses” particles (matter) as media for these apparent multi-media for all life in the universe.

Ultimately through this process (energy = matter) E=MC² – all phenom­ena (matter), energy-particles, continue as life because they are all interdependent and inter­connected – but their real aspect is 

primal energy, non-form.

When we remember clearly that we are caused to live by the great life force/energy of the universe, we are in the arms of that force, our perception is clear and pure, and we have perceived the real aspect of things.

THOMAS (the poet) quoting William Blake:  If the doors of perception are cleansed, everything appears as it is – infinite.

Paraphrasing Ken Wilbur in his dialogue with Shambhala Sun – Buddhist contempla­tion is sufficient for this ultimate truth.  It will directly show you the radical suchness of all phenomena, the Emptiness in the heart of the cosmos itself, the primordial, pure energy that is your own intrinsic awareness in this moment, and this moment, and this.