Of Cosmic Mysteries and Mysticism (2)

This is the conclusion of the blog Of Cosmic Mysteries and Mysticism (1)

The discovery of the Black Hole in space means mystery is reborn in science and something beyond the empirical universe is admitted even by those who deride those who believe in a Creator.  And this mystery beyond our empirical universe is acknowledged as perhaps being not only the source of the empirical universe – the Big Bang – but also of somehow influencing (controlling?) our universe.

Brian Greene, “The Hidden Reality,” in June 2011 DISCOVER MAGAZINE continues by indicating work that has continued in theoretical physics:

“The work culminated in the last decade, and it suggests, remarkably, that all we experience is nothing but a holographic projection of the processes taking place on some distant surface that surrounds us.  You can pinch yourself, and what you feel will be real, but it mirrors a parallel process taking place in a different, distant reality. …  reality—not its mere shadow—may take place on a distant boundary surface, while everything we witness in the three common spatial dimensions is a projection of that faraway unfolding.  Reality, that is, may be akin to a hologram.”

Maybe the ancient pre-scientific Byzantine Christians understood reality a whole lot more that we credit them for.  They didn’t use words like hologram or holographic images or metaverse or event horizons, but they spoke about heavens, shadows, bodiless powers.  And they certainly understood our universe as somehow reflecting a greater reality – our world being real, but when compared to this heavenly Liturgy, this reality is still a shadow because it doesn’t contain, limit or reveal the entirety of the universe.

As Nikolai Velimirovich expresses it in THE UNIVERSE AS SYMBOLS AND SIGNS:

“That is to say, the earth or the universe generally, is nothing but a symbolic picture of heaven.  …  Thus we Christians understand the earth, the sun and the stars as the symbols of spiritual reality and in no way as the reality itself.”

And the mirror (the Black Hole’s reverse), which was known from ancient times, continues on its surface to reflect what information comes its way.  And scientists now think the information inescapably sucked into the Black Hole is stored on its surface, the event horizon.  These scientific and mathematical theorists now imagine that perhaps:

“Our familiar three-dimensional reality… would then be likened to a holographic projection of those distant two-dimensional physical processes.    … then there are physical processes taking place on some distant surface that… are fully linked to the processes taking place in my fingers, arms and brain… Our experiences here and that distant reality there would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds.”

How very similar is such thinking to the Byzantine notion of the Liturgy.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

As Qoheleth marveled three centuries before the time of Christ  (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10):

What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said,

‘See, this is new’?

It has already been,

in the ages before us.”

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