This week I read a fascinating book called Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing. The book is about circadian rhythms—the processes inside all of us that sync us with the beat of our environment. Though spiritual beings, we are also clearly of the Earth: There are mechanisms in our brains that register cycles of daylight and darkness and adjust our bodies accordingly—for sleeping, eating, etc. It happens involuntarily. We’re wired into the planet.

Turns out, our primary brain clock is a bundle of cells called the suprachiasmatic nucleus—commonly abbreviated SCN. The SCN is what scientists call a ‘self-sustaining oscillator’. This means that it maintains its own internal rhythm, like a metronome in our heads that never winds down. The SCN constantly takes in information from our eyes about relative levels of light and darkness in our environment, keeping it properly synced to its surroundings. It then sends out neural (electric) and chemical impulses to various organs in our bodies at appropriate times of day: We’re signaled to feel hungry at intervals, sleepy at other intervals.

The SCN is located about two inches behind our eyes, centered directly between them. Interestingly, this spot corresponds exactly to the place in the head Buddhists refer to as the ‘third eye’. Focusing on this area in meditation is said to help a person experience a feeling of timeless unity, in which archetypal dualities such as light/dark and day/night are transcended.

I wonder… Does Buddhist meditative focus somehow affect or interrupt the functioning of the SCN, temporarily suspending circadian rhythms, leading to a mystical feeling of timelessness?

Is there a scientific basis for this spiritual experience?! Comments welcome.

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Isaac Luria was a 16th century Jewish mystic who redefined Kabbalah with sublime teachings about creation, the nature of God and the spiritual purpose of human lives.

Luria illuminated a three-stage cosmology. It began with God existing alone, as an infinite plenum of conscious energy called Ein Sof. Desiring to create the universe, Ein Sof withdrew itself from a small area to allow space for a material world. Within this space, God then eminated a ray of generative light. This light was mediated through 10 vessels called sefirot, which were supposed to manage the transition from pure unified energy to diverse physical creation, much like prisms refract white light into a rainbow of colors. But God’s light was too powerful for the sefirot, and they shattered. Sparks of the light became trapped in shards of the vessels: Divinity became lost in physicality, soul became lost in body. God became unrecognized in the world, hidden inside matter like a pearl in a shell.

The mission of all human beings, taught Luria, is to ‘raise’ these sparks: to find and recognize the Or Ein Sof—the light of the infinite—in ourselves and in everything, redeeming all creation!

Four centuries later, Albert Einstein, during a career of great genius, produced the seminal equation E=mc². Put into words, this equation says that energy (E) equals mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light squared (c²). This means that energy is equivalent to mass sped WAY up. Einstein’s correspondence between mass and energy is profound—it indicates that all matter in our universe is really made of pure energy! This idea is most clearly realized by performing a quick algebraic transformation on the equation, rewriting it:

m=E/c²

Written this way, the equation now says that mass equals energy divided by the speed of light squared: Mass can be described as energy slowed WAY down. Basically, mass is energy trapped in relative stillness! We look around ourselves and see seemingly solid, still objects, with all their limitations and boundaries. But the energy inside wants to break free—it wants to be raised! Our truest nature is energetic: fast and infinite.

Was Luria right, then—is every particle of which we’re made just a shell, within which exists an energetic pearl of pure divinity?

Did Einstein confirm Kabbalah?!

Comments welcome.

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Our greatest spiritual systems testify about interdependent opposites. Taoism has yin and yang; Hinduism has Shiva and Shakti; Kabbalah has its “Pillar of Mercy” (kav yamin) and “Pillar of Severity” (kav smol). Sufis worship God as both transcendent (as-Zahir—’Manifest’) and immanent (al-Batin—’Hidden’).

Everything we know, we know both in-and-of-itself and conditioned by its essential opposite. Duality is built into our bodies: our inhale and exhale, the systole and diastole of our heartbeats, the hemispheres of our brains. It’s built into our psyches: We love and hate, rejoice and grieve simultaneously—often confusing ourselves. Our most fundamental physics is characterized by a phenomenon called wave/particle duality—turns out, everything we’re made of behaves both ways! It’s a puzzle.

Einstein’s E=mc² says everything is energy, and what is energy? The dynamic interaction of positive and negative charges—duality.

The cliche that ‘there are two sides to every story’ holds: Our world is dual.

But our minds analyze and fragment our experience—it becomes ‘either/or’. Valuable for basic survival, for distinguishing threats from benefits to escape death and enhance life, this orientation comes with a high price. It causes restriction and suffering, because we are ‘both/and’. The universe in which we live is ‘both/and’—at least! Fragmentation keeps us safe, but it also lessens us: We miss ourselves and each other. Embracing holism can align us with our full, sacred nature; we can strive to transcend polarities and grasp Truth. But then even that truth can become polar—a broad thesis to which we can propose an antithesis, throwing everything we know into humble question. And we can try to answer that question by reconciling our thesis and antithesis, creating a synthesis—a new, even higher-level truth. And then we can do the dialectic again, and again, embarking on a journey not of infinite regression, but infinite ascension—a seeking of ever higher and deeper truths.

Am I describing the scientific method, or a striving towards God?! Comments welcome.

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