How many black holes does it take to screw in a light bulb? It doesn't matter , the light can't escape from it anyway. 3/30/99  Stephen Hawking would appreciate that joke, Albert Einstein would've insisted on reviewing the notes on this hypothesis, and Carl Jung would have said my preoccupation with black ho's screwing in things indicates a repressed attraction to Oprah. Nonetheless, these 3 contemporary 'big thinkers' have no doubt changed the way we understand outer space and inner space. In all honesty though, I must admit that very little of what I've read by Einstein made sense to me. If someone else puts it in plain English then I get it. That's why I enjoyed Hawking's book 'A brief history of time', because he doesn't belittle you with how he figured this stuff out. I'll take your word for it, and it wouldn't do any good to show me the numbers anyway. Even in layman's terms, much of what Hawking talks about is over my head. At least it gives me some parameters to formulate some ideas of my own (uh oh, what was that about "a LITTLE knowledge"?) In a minimalistic nutshell, I see all of what we call reality as a spatial illusion. If you consider the distance between molecules, the distance between atoms, the distance between electron and nucleus, and the distances between stars planets and galaxies, it seems apparent that even the most "solid" matter is actually 99% EMPTY SPACE. That remaining 1% is a very thin layer amidst endless layers of reality outside our sensory perceptions that are visible only when viewed from afar, the way a galaxy or nebula takes shape from a great distance. We can see and touch that which exists as physical structure only because we are far enough away from it. If you were to put your nose close to a very large jigsaw puzzle, even though the puzzle was fully assembled it would be just squiggly lines that appear the same no matter where you look. Only when you back away does the big picture become perceivable. Another way to look at it, this computer screen is made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny dots. By themselves, any of these dots would look exactly the same, and even clusters of these dots look the same except for variations in color. Only when you're far enough from it to see all of them together can you perceive an image or, in this case, read the crazy ideas of a hopeless analytic in a small midwestern town. Like this screen, everything is made up of "just dots". So the perception of physical reality (or at least the parts of it we can perceive within the restrictions and limitations of our 5 senses) exists to us because of MASS relative to DISTANCE. OK, then what about non-physical reality? If the physical reality can best be described as the manifested result of a given process, then non-physical reality can be described as the process itself, those collective intangible "laws" that unyieldingly require particles and forces to behave the same no matter where or when they are in the universe. This process hinges on ATTRACTION relative to VELOCITY. All particles in their free state move in straight lines near or at light speed, and are manifested into physical reality when they encounter ATTRACTION, that electro-gravitational inertial vaccuum that sucks everything towards everything else. If the force of this attraction overcomes the velocity of the particle, it will slow down and become part of a very specific process, either interacting with other particles to form atoms or be destroyed by impact. So the difference between physical and non-physical reality can be equated to STRAIGHT-LINE motion vs. CIRCULAR motion. Put another way, reality exists simply because the particles stay in one spot long enough to be observed. In another respect, where TIME is also relative to VELOCITY, reality is energy frozen in ANTI-TIME (yeah, I have a problem with that word too). I call it that only because where velocity increases the process of time decreases (works backwards don't it? Like the particles can actually OUT-RUN time). From a theoretical state at the exact maximum speed of light where time is at "relative zero" to a state of perfect rest where time is at it's "relative quickest", it appears that the process of time we experience is a REACTION or by-product generated when particles lose momentum. Personally, I can't warm up to the idea that VELOCITY actually "generates" TIME, but it does illustrate how paradoxical relativity can seem. Again, reality exists because the particles that make it perceivable stop long enough to be perceived. So back to our minimalistic nutshell, the 'reality statement' can be slightly simplified by saying physical reality is actually 99% space but is perceivable because of mass relative to distance, and that this spatial illusion occurs because particle straight-line movements become circular and come into "real-time" (I refuse to use the word "anti-time" again) upon deceleration. So does this mean that all of this is just some "temporal stereogram" with no purpose or end? Some religious fundamentalists would say this is mocking the idea that God created the universe and reducing it all to just an endless series of random events. Actually, there's nothing random about these events at all. You can spend a lifetime figuring out HOW things work, but you'll never know WHY they work. Two particles can create a hydrogen atom, but why is it always a hydrogen atom no matter where or when you are in the universe? 1 + 1 will ALWAYS equal 2, but WHY does it have to be 2? Why not 3 or 4? These intangibles of the non-physical universe are PRECISE, UNBREAKABLE and CONSISTANT even over trillions of years. Here's where a "Jungian" philosophy might help. Carl Jung argued with Freud for years that 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar' (and you thought Bill Clinton made that up), but he actually was a big proponent of symbolisms and metaphors, not just in the contemporary human psyche but on some primordial collective subconscience level. If you try not to treat the world's holy books as science textbooks (after all, the writers thought the Earth was FLAT) and think 'metaphorically', it might take some of the sting out of these so-called "conflicts". For example: ' And the Lord said, let there be light '. At the moment of the big bang, the particles that were "created" most likely shifted through various wavelengths contingent on VELOCITY, from x-rays to infra-red and yes, tons of white light. The atoms that followed were assembled from these "particles of light". God created the universe in 6 days. As mentioned, time is relative to velocity. Before any atoms were formed, these particles were running free through space at various near-light speeds. From a state of near-rest, thousands of years would pass while seeming like seconds to the "particle observer". God created man in his own image. Newsflash: God IS the universe, we are made from the same atoms that make up all the stars and planets in ALL the universe. Be interactive rather than just reactive. By our own long overdue self awareness we can be more than "God's little walking camcorders", seeing existence as not just a "temporal stereogram" but as a holographic manifestation of infinite possibilities. Okay, I know I'm stretching things here a bit on the biblical interpretations, but you're never gonna know exactly what the writers were trying to say anyway, and everyone puts their own slant on these stories besides. Entire religions are built on these "slants". My own opinion is that these ancient holy writers were not trying to be scientists and were merely using a genesis platform to set a prologue and premise for much more important stories and lessons. Bottom line, the universe IS alive in a way that cannot be defined. It is the space between electron and nucleus, which is the same space between atoms, the same space between molecules, the same space between planets, the same space between stars and galaxies. The void that is the invisible fabric holding it all together giving everything a place to exist. And as living entities we are like red blood cells that bump into each other in their daily mundane routines, living in darkness and having no way of perceiving the much larger entity that created them and which they serve. The very most we could hope for is to understand in some small way the poetry in motion that makes it work. You can call it God or Ra or Allah or Tao or Steve or anything you like. The name is for your convenience only and yours to keep and use as often as you like absolutely free. amen.

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