- Awareness of atomic reality ➶
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From the Science and Transformation chapter of Jane English’s Fingers pointing to the Moon:
The phrase “awareness of atomic reality” triggered in me an experience that lasted about a half hour and was accompanied by changes that were noticed by people around me who commented that I seemed to be in a transcendent state. The experience began with a sense of sudden dissolution, especially of visual forms. The initial experience is impossible to describe in words. After a moment, I was aware of patterns of energy, millions of pinpoints of light, and a confused rush of visual sensation. Soon the experience stabilized somewhat, and I became aware of visual forms corresponding to what I now would call the furniture in the room and the sunlight on the trees outside. But everything was somehow different; there was no in-here/out-there split in my seeing!
This experience of no-separation cannot be fully described in words since words are, in their essence, distinctions and separations. It was an experience of union in which I and the world of objects did not exist separately. In this state of awareness there was no space or sense of separation between objects and my eyes. Thus I felt no need for light to exist to connect objects to eyes. Objects, eyes, and light no longer had the objective existence they had seemed to have just before. Separate self-identity and separate objects were optional ways of structuring experience rather than absolute realities. I wandered around delighted, awed, and amazed. I was aware that I had often had moments of this kind of seeing while looking through a camera. I had described it as “becoming what I photograph,” even though that had then seemed crazy, impossible, and not quite accurate.
When experienced as two alternative ways of structuring awareness, rather than as qualities of something objectively real, the existence of light-as-waves and light-as-particles no longer seemed paradoxical. I realized that the wave/particle paradox had been my first koan, and that I had just solved it. The phrase “awareness of atomic reality” had pulled together my experiences in awareness work, in physics, and in photography to create a new state of awareness.
This new seeing gradually faded. I think that I was feeling overwhelmed and not ready to let go of my old worldview or of my separate identify. Since then, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes in meditation, I re-experience that seeing for short periods of time. I also find that I am more open to the possibility that things are not as they seem to be. I have learned to trust my experience of reality more than I trust what other people say about reality.
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Possibly Related:
- Confessions of a disillusioned scientist
- Thoughts on the Fujifilm X100 digital camera series
- Pixii Max Digital Rangefinder Camera
- HyperTextHero Lego camera holder
- Atom
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Prior entry: Confessions of a disillusioned scientist
Next entry: ♫ Kyrie