Contemplation on No Coming, No Going

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This body is not me.

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,

manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,

sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye,

to meet again soon.

We meet today.

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

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naming the stars

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This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.


—Joyce Sutphen

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given (excerpt)

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III.

As timely as a river
God's timeless life passes
Into this world. It passes
Through bodies, giving life,
And past them, giving death.

The secret fish leaps up
Into the light and is
Again darkened. The sun
Comes from the dark, it lights
The always passing river,
Shines on the great-branched tree,
And goes. Longing and dark,
We are completely filled
With breath of love, in us
Forever incomplete.


—Wendell Berry

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dear world

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One regret, dear world

That I am determined not to have
When I am lying on my deathbed

Is that
I did not kiss you enough.


—Hafiz

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only in waking

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The first thing you should realize is that there will never be a time when you disappear or die, because there never was a time when you were born. You have always existed as Consciousness, and you will always exist as Consciousness.


—Robert Adams
Silence of the Heart

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Is there death for you? For whom is death? The body which dies, were you aware of it, did you have it, during sleep? The body was not, when you slept, but you existed even then. When you awoke, you got the body and even in the waking state you exist. You existed both in sleep and waking. But the body did not exist in sleep and exists only in waking. That which does not exist always, but exists at one time and not at another, cannot be real. You exist always and you alone are therefore real.

... We are so engrossed with the objects or appearances revealed by the light, that we pay no attention to the light. In the waking or dream state in which things appear, and in the sleep state in which we see nothing, there is always the light of Consciousness or Self, like the hall lamp which is always burning. The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

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know this

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Know that the outward form passes away,
but the world of reality remains forever.

How long will you play at loving the shape of the jug?
Leave the jug; go, seek the water!


—Rumi

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across space and time

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Everyone knows that quantum physics is weird—but it just got weirder. 
Because a team of scientists from the University of Jerusalem have used quantum entanglement to allow two photons that never existed at the same time to communicate with each other.

Quantum entanglement is a weird old phenomena that means some particles, like photons and electrons, can interact with each other physically once, and yet still go on to share states—like spin or polarization—even when they're separated. That's what led Einstein to refer to the idea as "spooky action at a distance", because changes at one point are instantly mirrored in another physical location.

But the University of Jerusalem researchers have gone further, creating a pair of photons that were entangled not across space—but across time. In reality, the process didn't just use two photons to achieve the feat, but rather four.

First, the team used a laser to entangle two photons, call 'em P1 and P2. Then they measured the polarization of P1—in turn destroying it. Then they created a second pair of entangled photons, P3 and P4, and then entangled P2 and P3.

Following all this, the researchers claim that P4 demonstrated entanglement with P1—despite the fact that P1 was destroyed before P4 was even created. The researchers explain:

“In the scenario we present here, measuring the last photon affects the physical description of the first photon in the past, before it has even been measured. Thus, the 'spooky action' is steering the system’s past. 

Another point of view that one can take is that the measurement of the first photon is immediately steering the future physical description of the last photon. In this case, the action is on the future of a part of the system that has not yet been created."

It's the first time researchers have experimentally shown action at a distance can work not just across space but time, too. Of course, it's not really clear what the hell this finding can be used for—but sometimes science for science's sake is cool. And photons communicating from beyond the grave? That's cool.


—jamie condliffe 

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