“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.”
I am feeling playful today. My husband, Peter, is on the mend, and yesterday our second grandson was born.
I was watching something of a more serious nature the other day. A friend knows my interests and sent me a link to a lecture given by Anne Baring in May 2015. The lecture was headed, Unified Field Physics and a New Vision of Reality, and the link is as follows for anyone interested in listening to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQf2iPbCq8U
The reason for bringing it up is that she mentioned a philosopher, Thales, of Miletus, apparently now a town called Milet in Turkey, and he is equally described as being Phoenician. People have always journeyed, and at some point he ended up travelling to Greece. He lived mostly likely between 624-546BC, and is described by my friendly encyclopedia, Wikipedia, as the first of the Greek philosopher types.
Not a great confidence builder I know but a welcome shortcut to give you an idea of who he is:
“Thales is recognized for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, and instead, explaining natural objects and phenomena by theories and hypotheses, i.e. science. Almost all the other Pre-Socratic philosophers followed him in explaining nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance, instead of using mythological explanations. Aristotle reported Thales’ hypothesis that the originating principle of nature and the nature of matter was a single material substance: water.”
It really is his explanation of ‘nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance’ that I want to talk about, but the reference to the ‘single material substance’ being water brought a smile to my face for a number of reasons. So, why water? Perhaps he may have intuitively chosen water for the following reasons (although I am sure not): it is true that it is cohesive in nature, and enough of it will take everything else in its flow, it is transparent therefore light passes through it with ease, and without a doubt, it is vital for life.
Also interesting is that Thales’ primary occupation was that of engineering, while also being a great mathematician. He is credited with being the first to be connected with the lodestone and its properties. This is a form of magnetite, not normally magnetised, but occasionally rocks of magnetite are found that act as magnets. It is believed that this happens when bolts of lightning strike the rocks. Makes sense. Thales thought these rocks had souls because of their ability to attract iron to them. Not quite sure how he arrived at this but he did. Perhaps he was confusing souls with consciousness, which is what a number of scientists are beginning to believe today – that everything in the universe is conscious. They were used in early navigation as magnetic compasses, which is how they got their name. The earliest meaning of the word ‘lode’ is ‘way or journey’. In the Bible, John 14:6, Jesus answers, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I prefer, or rather it is my way, to not take this literally. Many, like me, would say that in order to find the key to the purpose of one’s life we need to navigate inwards, or take ourselves on an inner journey, and there we will find the Logos.
So my gaming has unearthed: a lecture on Unified Field Physics, Thales, water – vital for life, first ‘scientist’, unity of everything, lodestone, lightning bolt, first compass – helping us to ‘journey’ on our ‘way’ though life, and ultimately reach our goal – knowledge of who we are, Einstein’s question he longed to find an answer to, and why we are. That is a massive leap but where would we be without a little creativity to add charge to our batteries. It could make for a very confusing still life painting. I can imagine aliens in the distant future trying to work out the meaning of all the objects, and hopefully ending up flummoxed.
I was having so much fun playing around, or else rushing too much, that I nearly forgot the point of my Reach for the Stars game. But what I have concluded is that we have, since the earliest of times, since Thales at least, not been moving forward on our timeline but actually moving backwards, not an original thought I know. The Greek philosophers seemed to know more about life than anyone ever since, and without needing the constant scientific proof. Sometimes it doesn’t seem as if we know much more today than they did – it is just our technology that has improved greatly. Perhaps there has really been a paradigm shift. Perhaps we only think time moves in a linear fashion.
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