Replies

Thank you both so much for your posts!

Reality is the fruit of love’s embrace.

The statement is not easily understood, much like the admonition to never seethe a baby goat in its mother's milk. (Exd 23:19, Exd 34:26, Deu 14:21), a warning which cannot be reasoned, but instead must be received in the spirit. Likewise, in the above meditation, reason fails but the spirit comprehends.

In the same way, not everyone has the ability to hear Truth:

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault [at all]. - John 18:37-38

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27

Why do ye not understand my speech? [even] because ye cannot hear my word. – John 8:43

The talk about zero point energy has gotten me interested in various related theories. I’m currently reading Robert Kirshner’s The Extravagant Universe which explores dark energy, the proposed explanation for why the universe is accelerating. The next book on my list is Physics of Consciousness (it hasn’t arrived yet, one of the disappointments of living in rural U.S.A.)

Meanwhile, I’m reading what I can on M-theory on the web, it is an alternative to the inflationary model suggesting an extra-dimensional shockwave as the inception of our universe. This one is appealing since it views particles as a collection of membranes, and my “sense” is that the physical realm is an ocean of wave phenomenon with particles as placemarkers and messengers.

All of this brings me to the link I’d like for you and betty boop to scan when you have a chance, since it looks at all of them. The excerpt is from the conclusions:

The Cosmological Constant – Carroll, Enrico Fermi Institute (pdf)

…the majority of the matter content must be in an unknown non-baryonic form.

Nobody would have guessed that we live in such a universe… We happen to live in that brief era, cosmologically speaking, when both matter and vacuum are of comparable magnitude. Within the matter component, there are apparently contributions from baryons and from a non-baryonic source, both of which are also comparable (although at least their ratio is independent of time.) This scenario staggers under the burden of its unnaturalness, but nevertheless crosses the finish line well ahead of any competitors by agreeing so well with the data.

Apart from confirming (or disproving) this picture, a major challenge to cosmologists and physicists in the years to come will be to understand whether these apparently distasteful aspects of our universe are simply surprising coincidences, or actually reflect a beautiful underlying structure we do not as yet comprehend. If we are fortunate, what appears unnatural at present will serve as a clue to a deeper understanding of fundamental physics.