Hubble Vision

So, you’ve got this technologic marvel, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), orbiting the Earth, in the optimal environment and position for astronomical observation. You decide to point it at a part of the universe that appears virtually empty—black, to every device heretofore available to man. And, except for a few foreground (i.e., our own Milky Way galaxy) stars, it sees nothing. Hmmmm, what if there is something there after all, but still too faint to see? You decide to make an extended photographic exposure of that space with the HST: a MILLION-second timed exposure requiring some 400-odd orbits of the Earth. That’s a time exposure of 277.77 hours. If there’s something yet-unseen there in that space, the light that arrives from it is so faint—a few photons a minute, say—that the only way to collect enough of it to see anything requires an extremely long exposure. So you do it—the necessary programming and other technical arrangements—to pull it off. Well, in a sort of reverse Cheshire Cat dynamic, images begin to appear and when the exposure was complete and various computer clarity enhancements done, the resultant remarkable, indeed, breathtaking photograph is dubbed the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field” (HUDF) image. [This is a simplification. For nuts-and-bolts detail, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field]

So…what to all appearances was an uninhabited tiny corner of space, turns out to have, count them: 10,000 (!)…not stars, but GALAXIES! And each galaxy contains billions of stars in its own right. That’s a LOT of ‘un-inhabitation’! To get an idea of the amount of space this is to the naked eye from Earth, it is smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm object placed 1 meter away (i.e., a poppy-seed held at arm’s length) and roughly equal to one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky. Ten thousand galaxies in a pinhead-sized pinch of the cosmos! If this doesn’t give you a feel for your mote-like, miniscule-to-the-maximum, relative position in the scale of things, I don’t know what could.

Obviously, few people are apprised of this information. If everybody were, however, and appropriately impressed with it, do you suppose they would act any differently? I submit that whatever impact such cosmological data engendered would, in a New-York-minute, be swallowed up by the ten thousand exigencies and mundane worries of the careworn, work-a-day world that the brain was evolved to deal with. Human consciousness is simply not designed to harbor, other than temporarily, an appreciation (which in itself is only an inkling given by our modern technologies) of human size vs. galaxy size, to say nothing of cosmic size, nor any extended contemplation of it. This is not to say there are not people who have it in their DNA to attempt such ongoing contemplation and wield its realization in their moment-to-moment doings. One of the techniques given by, let’s say, extraordinary humans of yore, to interested hangers-on, was the task of “Remembering the face (or name) of God with every breath.” Do you think there’s a connection? William Blake said it this way:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wildflower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

This kind of insight-praxis is attempted, normally, only by those of a monastic bent and with best effect in a monastery or other retreat-type setting. Why are so few smitten with such a need, and why is it that human consciousness is apparently not built for, nor has capacity for the extraordinary insight that William Blake so eloquently describes? Elementary my dear Watson: it’s counterproductive. It is contrary to what Life needs for humans to be doing—which is the making of culture and through it the evermore sophisticated investigation and control of “nature” for their continued flowering. And, just as in a jet engine there is a lot of pressure, heat, explosion and noise to propel the jet on its course through the sky, so too must there be in human endeavor to propel the Rocket-of-Life on its course from emptiness into fullness, from void into form. Life even gave us a catchphrase for it: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Still, there are humans with the proclivity and drive for extraordinary attention; those with an enhanced appetite for insight and application of a non-dual understanding of what’s going on around them. What is their function in the larger scheme of Life’s program and agenda? Elementary my dear Watson: they comprise a kind of DNA background memory—like memory foam conforms to the form of whatever presses into it, then returns to its original shape when released; they are like shock absorbers on a car chassis or the yellow light in a traffic signal or the catalyst in a chemical reaction, promoting it but not changed by it; they are the mirrors in a clothing store changing room…they watch the audience watching the movie…they are the ones with Hubble Vision.