On January 29 I asked: How Big Is The Universe? In that blog I wondered, “What are the things I currently believe to be THE TRUTH, but given more time, will discover to be false?” Today’s guest blogger, Zac Wine (Cambridge, MA), follows my questions with a few of his own —

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It’s ironic that we are still constantly looking and finding perfect guardians of health. A few hundred years ago, man was in search of the fountain of youth. You know, the actual fountain that springs up from the ground that grants eternal youth to whomever drinks from it. Little did we know that we would still be looking for it now, in this century, in this time of awakening, in different physical forms like heroine … or Prozac.

On top of the food chain of things we do not know is death. Or not so much death itself. You really only have a few choices when it comes to death itself: going quietly into the light or going out extravagantly (and maybe painfully). The great unknown really is what happens after death. There are so many ideas that man can choose from. Most men I know (yes, and women, I know some of them too) see all the ideas and pick and choose their beliefs like it was a buffet table. But what is the truth? What actually happens? Is one right? Are many right? Are any right? What would be the great unknown if we knew for certain about what did happen after death?

And somewhere during this search we forget to wonder about the glory of a short life, a short life often wasted on things we do not want or like to do. Instead of describing blue to someone that cannot see, try instead to describe it to someone that can see. Can you do it without using examples of blue? Can you do it without using science (or religion, for that matter)? Now instead of trying to unlock the great unknown, try to unlock the things you think you already know. Where do we come from? And I don’t mean from your mother.

Let’s all take risks and possibly be jailed, ostracized, forced to drink hemlock, beheaded, or maybe just be dead wrong from time to time. It’s from heavy failure but strong determination that great success comes.

Enjoying this glorious life!
Zac Wine

The human perspective of our universe is small, and until I was given the dream experiences in my book A Forever Place, I didn’t think too much about the possibility of other Universes.

Ponder these ideas…

• A few thousand years ago, conventional wisdom said the world was flat.
• A few hundred years ago, it was commonly believed that Earth was the center of the universe.
• A couple hundred years ago, air travel was considered impossible.
• About a century ago heroin was available over the counter at the corner drugstore, and was touted as a wonder drug that clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, calms the stomach, and is a perfect guardian of health.

Back when these concepts were “the truth,” a person would likely face despair, misfortune or death if they happened to be the first to suggest “the truth” might actually be false. For instance, when Galileo began promoting Copernicus’ notion that perhaps the earth DID revolve around the sun, he was convicted of heresy and ordered to house arrest.

I’ll take the risk of being tossed in the slammer and make some wild suggestions:

• The world is round,
• The earth is not the center of the universe,
• I can hop on an airplane and fly from New York to L.A. in less than 6 hours, and
• Heroin may give buoyancy to the mind but is probably not a perfect guardian of health.

(There may be an occasional exception to such definitive announcements. My old boss thinks he’s the Center of the Universe. By extrapolating I could conclude that Earth is an approximation for the center of the universe if I use the boss-is-the-center-of-the-universe theory!)

For now, my challenge is to consider this: What are the things I currently believe to be THE TRUTH, but given more time, will discover to be false? The more I ponder this question, the more I discover about our Universe and things beyond the four dimensions I commonly take for granted: length, width, height, and time.

Recently I read a story about an ant’s perspective: An ant’s knowledge includes the surface of the ground to and from its nest. It also knows about finding food and defending its home. But the ant knows nothing about human love, or…the international space station, or…the color blue. What if the ant was able to move out of its dimension into ours? Think what the ant would learn! And what if we were able to move out of our current dimension into the next? We know of the ant’s existence and can study and describe it to other humans. Who (or what) knows of our existence and can study it and describe it to others of its kind? [paraphrased from a story told by Osho]

What are the things I believe to be true, but really are not?

Oh, the things I don’t know…yet.

Inquisitively,
David Wine