Eclipsing Belief: Life as Science

If there's a worse place to see a lunar eclipse than here in New York City, then I'd like to hear about it. This picture couldn't even be salvaged by Photoshop; it's from after the eclipse had passed totality. Perhaps the most remarkable picture was the one I didn't take: of the sky with no moon in it, just as darkness was falling here and I would have expected to see her in her familiar place, hovering over Ocean Parkway at the south end of Prospect Park.

The astronomers have smilingly encouraged us to enjoy the lunar eclipses this year (there's another one in August), though they add that there is no scientific value in viewing them.

I would beg to suggest to these folks that they may be betraying a rather narrow view of what science is. Perhaps there is no astronomical value in viewing the eclipse, but astronomy is not the end of science.

One of the reasons why we Americans are so estranged in our experience and awareness of such things as math and science is that specialists like those astronomers make them such distant and parochial affairs, only accessible by the elite who have degrees and posts at prestigious observatories or universities. This attitude is, of course, a refutation of what science is all about, of everything that made the work of everyone from Pythagoras to Brian Greene possible.

Science, properly appreciated (and, I think, understood), is about lived experience—the ongoing encounter with life and the testing of knowledge in the crucible of wonder. A scientific approach to life proceeds from the suspension of belief (and its opposite), so as to allow experience to become the teacher. If Einstein had worked from the firm ground of a belief system—be it Newtonian mechanics or intelligent design—then he would not have had the inner freedom to start the revolution in perception and understanding that he in fact began. Any scientist with a mind closed to possibility and a heart drained of feeling is no longer a scientist, but rather something on the level of a corporate clerk or a government spokesman. Click the graphic at right and watch the story of Wally Wallington, who didn't seem to understand that he's not supposed to be a scientist.


Therefore, I would encourage you not to let anyone tell you that there is no scientific value in watching a lunar eclipse, or anything else, for that matter. If you are testing your own encounter with it, then every experience has scientific value. Predict how you will respond, how you will feel; test your objective knowledge of the facts and their meaning. It wouldn't hurt to apply a similar approach to your work, your relationships, your politics—even your spiritual practice.

When we do, we tend to discover that the poet's perception of Nature is just as valid as the scientist's: they are different lyrics to the same song. As we mentioned on Friday, there is really no need to worry about who will be the ruler or leader—the brain or the heart; intuition or reason. When you are in accord with yourself, without the muddy screen of belief between you and your lived experience, then the correct leader will step forward from within to meet each encounter. The light always finds its way through, even amid a seeming and temporary darkness.
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Site Notes: February was another record-breaking month for DR for visitor traffic. Thanks as always to you all for showing an interest in us. This week, we'll begin with the return of Terry McKenna for some unusual reflections on the season of Lent (!); then we'll be attempting to find some clarity on what's really going on in Iraq and the Mideast. And for Geek Wednesday, we'll be offering some help for writers and other artists. So spend some time with us if you can, and always remember—have fun at work; make everyone wonder what you're up to.

Sleepers, Awake! Wakers, Sleep!

Ours may be an indolent culture, but let it not be said we do not love our action figures. True, we're raising increasingly obese kids with x-box eyes and cheetoh lips; perhaps it is also true that heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure comprise the silent tsunami of our era here in the land of plenty, where exercise is clambering into the Hummer to go get a Big Mac and a double Slurpee.

But we adore action, and we are repelled by the merest suggestion that reflection, rest, or—God forgive—meditation may provide more for our lives than our bombs or our armies of occupation or our extreme sports.

This is one reason why science has been given such short shrift in Busherica: science has a troubling way of undermining all our most cherished assumptions about the inherent value of incessant action. It has demonstrated, time and again, that people who meditate are healthier, saner, and ironically, more active, than folks who cry for action from the couch in the living room or the television studio.

Now science is showing us something that our ancestors knew well: that sleep at midday is one of the greatest boons to health known to humankind:

A six-year Greek study found that those who took a 30-minute siesta at least three times a week had a 37% lower risk of heart-related death.

The researchers took into account ill health, age, and whether people were physically active.

Experts said napping might help people to relax, reducing their stress levels.

Now, go and tell your boss that you are nearly 40% less likely to fall ill, and that you can be far more productive if you're allowed to take a nap during the middle of the workday. Once he stops laughing, he'll tell you to go back to your desk and "get something done" (the most common phrase for action in corporate America—note the passive voice).

After all, how can you be "proactive" when you're sleeping? Where's the value proposition in that? Face it, nothing happens when you're asleep—let's go do a power lunch instead. What'll it be, cheesesteaks or burgers?

Joining Dumbledore's Army

Before we return to another week of deconstructing fundamentalism as it appears in government, religion, politics, corporate affairs, the media, and the culture at large, how about a few moments of fun on a Sunday?

Harry Potter: The Turning Point. For me, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the turning-point story of the Potteriad. It may also be the best written tale of the lot, but that's very much a matter of personal preference, so I won't insist on it. But clearly, the themes of OOTP make it a transformative tale, which is why it is featured so prominently in my own Tao of Hogwarts. If you have a glance at the pdf download of the entire text (in the banner above), you will find that OOTP is featured in Chapters 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10. OOTP is loaded with political, psychological, and transformative metaphor: the death veil, the Department of Mysteries, the Ministry of Magic, the character of Dolores Umbridge, Grimmauld Place, the Room of Requirement...it goes on and on.

That's why the next film, to be released in July, 2007, is of such interest to a fellow like me. There's an extended trailer/preview over at Google Video which is worth a look. And the kids at Mugglenet have a load of material about the film, including ever-increasing sets of still photos.

Dark Energy: Of equal importance to my mind are the recently-published findings regarding dark energy. I don't exactly agree with the term, which probably raises the wrong sorts of associations. I'd prefer to see it called something like "expulsive energy," meaning that it's responsible for the cleansing, expansive, outward movement of the universe--the negative pole in Einstein's original vision:

The findings are consistent with the idea of dark energy behaving like Albert Einstein's cosmological constant. The cosmological constant describes the idea that there is a density and pressure associated with "empty" space.

In this scenario, dark energy never changes; it has the same properties across the age of the Universe.

That this phenomenon comprises roughly three-quarters of the universe's activity (I feel that the universe, like god, is best conceived as a verb rather than as a physical entity), while so-called light matter, or the stuff that you and I are made of, makes up a mere 4% of the total, shows us something about how important we really are in the context of the totality of the cosmos. Once it's more thoroughly understood, this expulsive energy will, I suspect, have a lot to tell us about our own energies, which are not, after all, separate from our cosmic environment. It may also help to solve one of the more intractable disputes in philosophy, about what place death has in the flow of matter and energy.

In other words, it may help us to understand where exactly Sirius Black "went" when he was shot into that veil on the ancient pedestal in the Department of Mysteries...

Finally, there will be another film to watch for in 2007: Michael Moore's examination of the American pharmaceutical industry should be appearing next year. I was reminded of Moore's film when I found this Pfizer ad in the Washington Post: well, does it fill you with confidence in the future? It made me wonder, "hey, isn't it time that some energetic filmmaker had another go at Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?"