Quantum mechanics explains (largely by the right brain) that everything we do has an effect on the world and this process is called the “butterfly effect’…we generally are disappointed (largely by the left brain ) with how helpless we are in changing anything let alone having an effect on everything… the butterfly effect is not intentional but rather occurs in ways beyond our awareness…it is the best example I have heard of how we are interrelated and interdependent with everything in the world…it is the biggest picture that one can imagine and helps describe the creative intelligence of the universe in which we are active players.
If I sneeze – will that affect the future? Yes it will. The fact that you are reading this blog right now instead of doing anything else is affecting the future in profound ways. Because of your decision – everyone in the future will be different people than they would have been had you made a different choice.
Let us look at the example of the moment of conception when you have hundreds of millions of sperm heading for a single egg and only one of those sperm gets to be the one who carries half the DNA for the new person. What would happen if a different sperm fertilized that egg when you were conceived? Would you still be born? Nope! The person who would be born would no more be you than your brother or sister.You wouldn’t exist and someone else would be born in your place – assuming your mother even got pregnant at all.
For you to have been conceived – trillions of events had to occur exactly the way it did. Otherwise – you wouldn’t be here.
For you to have been conceived – everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – had to happen exactly the way it did. If your father had started 1/4 second earlier or later, had the temperature been 1/2 degree warmer, had any random noise occurred other than the random noises that did happen – even change of what your parents were thinking about – and you cease to exist. In fact – what your parent had to eat and drink a week before and what they watched on TV was enough to change events just enough that a different sperm would have been the one to make you exist. The moment of conception is extremely sensitive to initial condition.
And – of course this doesn’t apply to just you – it applies to everybody. For any of us to have been born, everything at the moment of conception had to happen exactly the way it did or we wouldn’t be here. And it also applies to all our ancestors. My parents, their parents, all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth. If any event happened differently than it did – no one who is alive today would exist. If you went back far enough – the human race might cease to exist but for the air passing over the wings of some prehistoric butterfly.
Related Pages:
Deep Ecology
Taoism and Oneness
Filed under: perception | Tagged: "butterfly effect, nature, oneness, perception, science, universe
“FLOW WITH WHATEVER MAY HAPPEN AND LET YOUR MIND BE FREE." ~CHUANG TZU
Ron,
I like your reference to“enlightenment” is a word – with different meanings for different people.
However I would question your reference to”we pursue an ever-distant horizon”
Above all I feel enlightenment would be in the “present” and questionable if pursued or in the distant horizon…I am not enlightened or living in the “present”so make my comment as a theoretical issue.
I would like to suggest if your interested in ongoing dialogues to begin them on pages listed on the sidebar where most of my visitors read…this topic can be found under the science category… dated posts are rarely visited and we lose their involvement in the discussion…also note your name on a comment is linked to your website and if you place the cursor on your name a pop up window will display your site.
Sid
Sid, My epigrammatic answer to your question is that “enlightenment” is a word – with different meanings for different people; a mental concept resulting from thought referring to a transcendent state of being beyond conceptual consciousness. So, the meaning of “enlightenment” is what we think it to be.
I’ve written various apt sutras. Here’s one of them I’ll be posting:
Ron
Ron,
I love your 2 quotes side by side in a timeless perception…I appreciate your reference to my deep insights,but I wonder if isn’t simply another form of self consciousness and at best a superficial and childlike awareness…natural intelligence is beyond our comprehension and wonder if fully surrendering to this realization is the meaning of awakening and enlightenment ?
Sid
Sid …I agree that ancient sages saw “what science is now only beginning to understand.” But perhaps what the ancient seers ‘miraculously’ saw was beyond understanding – beyond thought – even beyond the brain. And I wonder whether the ancients’ subjective insights can ever be comprehended by our current science of “double-blind” purported objective observations?
Here are a couple of apt quotes which will be posted on SillySutras.com :
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature.
And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature
and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.” ~ Max Planck
Consciousness is always Self-Consciousness.
If you are conscious of anything, you are
essentially conscious of yourself.
~ Ramana Maharshi
Thanks again, for your great blog with its deep insights.
…Ron
Ron…It continues to amaze me how the ancient sages saw and understood what science is only now beginning to understand…the sages could not only explain it but felt concretely what they were describing while scientist now do it in an intellectual concept…Sid
Sid, I found this excellent entry today after receiving a favorable feedback comment about it from another visitor. You eloquently comment on the miraculous nature of our world of space/time and causality. I have epigrammatically encapsulated some of these ideas with this sutra: “Everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way.”
And here is an apt passage from an ancient Vedic scripture about INDRA’S NET:
“There is an endless net of threads throughout the Universe. The horizontal threads are in space. The vertical threads in time. At every crossing of threads there is an individual. And every individual is a crystal bead. The great light of absolute being illuminates and penetrates every crystal being. And every crystal being reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, But also every reflection of every reflection throughout the Universe.”
~ from the Vedas of ancient India, 7000 years old