Nikon D600 with FX 28-300mm VR lens,160mm, 1/500 sec @ f10, ISO 400, -0.67 EV, no flash © Steven Crisp
"What If?" It's a good question, don't you think?
Or you might call it a way of questioning. Of contemplating. Of looking more deeply.
I've been doing that recently, having reinvigorated my spiritual inquiries. And I must say it's all pretty fascinating. Those who know me have heard me say "I'm spiritual, but not religious." Indeed, I have called myself a-religious, and have some issues with a personified God. I was not entirely sure why that issue was so visceral for me, but I guess that's just my karma (no, that's not irony, just some humor ;-)
During my recent investigations, I came upon a physicist named David Bohm. I had heard the name before (as a wannabe physicist myself), but really knew nothing about him. And then I stumbled upon this movie, Infinite Potential. I think it's well done, and ties together some complex physics topics, with the drama of the A-bomb development, McCarthyism, and a scientist looking deeply for the fundamental underlying mechanisms of the cosmos. Which ultimately brings him in touch spiritual insights from past millennia that help guide his thinking. Here's the movie trailer (and by all means, if any of those topics sound interesting to you, you may want to purchase the movie, like I did, even having watched it twice before):
So anyways, "What If?"
What if our scientific world view, with its remarkable progress using experimentation to prove out theories, is still not the whole story?
What if underlying all that we can detect and classify, still lies something that would be able to explain some remaining conundrums, like entanglement (non-local effects), like wave-particle duality, like Schrödinger's cat (paradox), like dark matter/energy that is vastly greater than observable matter/energy throughout the universe?
What if consciousness, which remains poorly understood, has some role in this, and/or applies beyond one's physical body?
What if it's not only possible, but repeatable, and trainable, for individuals to gain control of their own mind-bodies, and realize the truths of impermanence, not-self or egolessness, and equanimity or non-reactivity, and then enter states of non-duality.
I think the biggest take-aways from the movie and from these sample what-if questions are that we really need to keep our minds open, alert, and inquisitive. While it might temporarily "feel good" to think we have an answer, opinion, belief, or even an orthodox interpretation on these or other important questions, we should never close our minds to the possibility of new information or direct experience that might tell us otherwise.
And in the end, a recurring question we can ask is:
