We are fortunate to have had, throughout our history, extraordinarily insightful people who have gifted us with many profound insights into the nature of Truth. Unfortunately, most of us have not taken advantage of these opportunities to understand Where we are, Who we are and Why we are here. Perhaps this is due to the nature of our inability to deal with the paradoxical nature of these insights. A paradox is a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory insight or proposition that when explained or understood proves to be true. If such a paradox seems to contradict the beliefs, attitudes and values of Paradigm-B it will often be rejected or not understood.
To further complicate our challenge vis-à-vis paradox, our intellects were not intended to deal with the deeper insights into reality. For example, take the highly respected realm of science which too many of us believe will play the role of the 7th cavalry and ride up at the last minute to save us from self-destruction. “Ptolemaic astronomy reflects a species that sees itself as the center of the Universe; Newtonian physics reflects a species that is confident in its ability to grasp the dynamics of the physical world through the intellect; relativity reflects a species that understands the limiting relationship between the absolute and personalized perception of it; and quantum physics reflects a species that is becoming aware of the relationship of its consciousness to the physical world.”[i] But alas, most of us are not there yet.
Our species needs to resolve the paradox that we are “in the world but not of it.” “Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world as we know it is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is indeed amazing. Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it sees at all. But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself … Thus the world wherever it appears as a physical universe, must always seem to us, its representatives, to be playing a kind of hide-and-seek with itself … the universe must expand to escape the telescopes through which we, who are it, are trying to capture it, which is us. The snake eats itself, the dog chases its tail.”[ii] Such is the absurdity and paradox of science.
________________
Supplemental Reading: Paradox, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
#63 Our Mutilated Condition
[i] Zukav, Gary. The Seat of the Soul. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989, p. 67.
[ii] Adam, Michael. Wandering in Eden: Three Ways to the East Within Us. New York: Knopf, 1976, p. 52.
