M.J. Rose

Does reality conform to the explanations we impose upon it? What about the universe and creation itself? Imagine so…

Science Needs to Ask: ‘What Is Consciousness?’

by Deepak Chopra (HuffPost)

“Anyone who equates myth with superstition would claim that we live in a world that has gone beyond mythology. Science is proud of vanquishing superstition, and a certain vocal contingent of atheists use science to bolster their belief that God is pure superstition. However, mythology is harder to vanquish that that. It crops up in new guises, because myths aren’t superstitions. They are mental templates, operating assumptions, the beliefs that bolster a world view and, above all, a way to explain nature. In any infinite universe, the human mind finds ways to tell a story that will bring the infinite within reach, and myths serve that function.

Sometimes myths are so strong that they pen reality in, building a fence around it and forcing every natural event to stay inside the fence. When God or the gods were the cause of earthly events, the fence was tight and inescapable. But the rise of quantum theory a century ago revealed that even stronger fences were hemming in our sense of reality. We explained the universe through matter and energy governed by physical laws. In the pre-quantum world this scheme wasn’t theory; it was reality, pure and simple. Everything inside this fence acted the same way. It operated by cause and effect. It never went faster than the speed of light. It conformed to mathematical formulations. It excluded the mushy emotions and shifting moods of subjectivity. Science claimed to have found a model for nature that was based on reason alone. How strange, then, that reason was actually the seed of a new mythology, and even stranger, that this rock-solid system is crumbling all around us…”

For the complete article click here to go to HuffPost.

For some reason nothing gives me the shivers more than ghost ships. Imagine suddenly finding yourself wandering alone on a ghost ship in the middle of sea…

The Unsolved Mystery Of ‘Ghost Ships’

(CNN) — It’s been described as one of the greatest Victorian gothic horror stories of all time. Two ships with 129 men on board and fitted with the latest technology, vanish with barely a trace left behind. One hundred and sixty years of searching — one attempt as recent as last month — have failed to find “HMS Erebus” and her sister ship, the somewhat appropriately named “HMS Terror” — the two vessels lost in the Arctic.

In 1845 British Royal Navy captain Sir John Franklin set out with some of the finest sailors of the time on a mission to map the Northwest Passage. Franklin’s expedition wasn’t the first to the region, but it is the most infamous.

“Why did this fail when all the others didn’t,” asks author William Battersby. “There was something jinxed about the expedition.” Battersby is one of many to be transfixed by the mystery of Franklin’s last voyage. “We love adventure stories, of daring do, win against all odds, but in this story they don’t and we still don’t know why.”…

For the complete story click here.

Another ghost ship story, here.

An idea! If You Blog:  Why not write a post about the mysteries you have encountered recently?  Send a trackback to this blog and leave a comment below so we can share the mystery!

From Parabola Magazine, a deeply though-provoking article about the nature of reality as seen by Zen Master Dogen…

“Seeing” by Zen Master Dogen

Commentary on, and original translation of, the great Zen icon

by Kazuaki Tanahashi

The view on “seeing” by Dogen, a thirteenth century Japanese Zen monk, is rather unique. He uses the word “dream” to describe the enlightenment of the Buddha, and the meditative experience of all practitioners. Counter to the common notion that dreams are unreal and actual phenomena are real, he asserts that the awakened ones’ profound wisdom is concrete, the source of all teaching, while actual phenomena are transient and unreliable.

Dogen presented this short essay titled “Within a Dream Expressing the Dream” to the assembly of the Kannondori Kosho Horin Monastery in Uji County, south of Kyoto, on the twenty-first day, the ninth month, the third year of the Ninji Era [1242]. The following text is translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and myself. (Excerpted from Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, Shambhala Publications, 2010, with permission by the publisher.)

Every dewdrop manifested

in every realm

is a dream.

The path of all buddhas and ancestors arises before the first forms emerge; it cannot be spoken of using conventional views…

For the complete piece please click here to go to Parabola.