Saturday, April 13, 2013

MORE THAN YOU THINK IS POSSIBLE....


Want to be humbled? 

Think about these questions:

How much knowledge is out there? Of the billions of light years wide and billions of years old this universe is, of all the dimensions that we are not even aware of, additional universes and different ways of perceiving things we are not even aware of, from the galaxies to the eleven dimensions of particles smaller than the string theory... Of all that is there and of all that is possible to be there --- how much is perceivable and knowable? (Assuming you are an entity that is as big as the universe and old as the universe and can know all.) How much of the all is there?


It is infinite. The possibilities of what is knowable to an infinite entity is infinite. So basically, a lot of knowledge is out there.

Let’s bring it down:
Think about this, humankind is limited in time and space and perception, so human ability is wildly constrained compared to the things that might be out there in different dimensions and perceived with different senses. If all humankind of all ages could catalog everything humanly knowable, of the things knowable within our senses and timeframes and spacial dimensions--every book ever written, every history ever lived, every thought ever thought, every feeling ever felt, every experience ever experienced in every place at every time in humankind history what percentage of all knowledge would it be? Compared with the knowledge of an infinite entity?


All human knowledge is infinitesimal.

Let’s bring it down further:
How much do you know? Of all that is humanly possible to know about everything, how much do you personally know? What percentage of all books and manuscripts and letters and emails have you read? What part of every conversation and experience were you part of? 
What percentage of ALL things humanly possible to know, do you know? 


An infinitesimal amount.

So you personally know an infinitesimal amount of what is humanly knowable which is an infinitesimal amount of all that is knowable. So if what is knowable is infinite, compared to that, what we know is a quark size... probably a whole lot less... we don’t know...

Let’s bring it down again even further:
So of the things that you do know, that totality of what you have learned and know, how much of it are you certain is right? What percentage have you gotten wrong?
Can you please list the things you think you know but in actuality are wrong?

You can’t... We have a blind spot inside us that hides from us where we are wrong about what we know. We are, by ourselves, incapable of seeing clearly where our seeing is distorted.

So actually we know less than an infinitesimal amount of the infinitesimal. And of the things you do think you know, some of it is wrong. And of the things you are wrong about, you are not certain what they are and cannot discover where you are wrong without using something outside ourselves.

Kinda humbling.

Why shatter someone’s confidence in what he knows? What’s the point in that? Why create such an eternally deep space between our perceptions and what is knowable?

Because we live in a culture that demands that we judge everything by our own perceptions. And our perceptions cannot be trusted to make big decisions. We have been given the gift of enough perception capability to make immediate decisions and assessments such as, “Have I gotten enough exercise today? Do I need to check on my elderly neighbor who told me she was sick? Where are my car keys?

Those are things we can judge. We have that capability.

We can of course ponder universal thoughts that are vast, but we cannot judge them. We should indeed ponder things bigger than we can think and know... like the string or M theory, how quantum physics has created a dilemma that something is and isn’t all at the same time, or what is infinite or if language is proof of God. Ponder and study and grow in knowledge and wisdom. But be careful to judge the things we cannot know. Like God.

When we hardly can judge our own spectrum of knowledge, how can we possibly think we can judge God? How can anyone possibly think that with their perceptions they can decide whether or not there is a God? We cannot know what goes on in that vast cosmology of unknowns. To try and judge what goes on in unknown dimensions and with unknown senses is like sending a blind astronaut into space.  


More than you think is possible.  

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