DISCOVERY: I have reached the limits of my intelligence

September 1, 2025

Way back in graduate school, 1967, I told my teacher that I wanted to write a paper on “the concept of Time.”

“Time?” He scoffed. “Too difficult.”

My teacher was correct.

 

Let’s “go back in time,” shall we, and see how pre-20th century European philosophers viewed space and time.

The philosopher Immanual Kant told us that space and time are subjective, the innate framework within which we organize our sensory experience of what’s outside our own skins. I remember reading him for the first time, assiduously, over winter break, as a sophomore at Catholic University. And, this scared me: I didn’t understand a word he said!

Then, when I got back into class, and a fellow student presented on Kant, suddenly, I got it, or as we say now, I grokked it, (that is, until grok ai came along), and it blew me wide open.

What? Something inside my mind decides how to interpret what I see, hear, smell, touch, taste? Huh?

Pre-Kant, the Newtonian concept of space/time had prevailed, in which both space and time were outside the mind.

Likely you are familiar with Descartes, whose theory preceded Newton’s specification, and dovetails with it:

Then, as we all know, Einstein came along, and frankly, I’m still at a loss as to how to grok his relativity theory, as well as whether or not, and if so how, Kant’s point of view was thereby cancelled.

But one thing became fairly clear: what had formerly been a fixed conceptual framework (whether inside or outside), it had now become somewhat fluid.

 

Meanwhile, since 1973 had been studying the symbolic language of astrology, and realized, very early on, that the actual “meaning” we assign to a planet (an energy) depends on its cycle, in fact IS ITS CYCLE. In other words, each planet carves out its own space through time, and the first time it returns to the point it occupied at birth, one can then actually pick up on what that cycle was all about. Not consciously, necessarily; for example, the volatile Mars cycle: two years, the “terrible twos,” when the child for a time, turns selfish and obstreperous.

Earlier cycles, e.g. the emotional Moon (ca. one month, when the child’s cries and behavior begin to make sense to the parents), and the essential Sun (one year, when the child obviously transforms from baby into toddler, with a unique personality).

Further out cycles repeat the pattern: philosophical Jupiter (12 years, when we begin to identify more with our peers values than our family values); stern, karmic Saturn (29-30 years, when we begin to acknowledge that what we thought was a wide open field in our 20s was not; we realize that lately we have been traveling around the inside of a fenced field!

Uranus (84 years), Neptune (165 years) and Pluto (248 years) are energies which I won’t specify here: just know that they work powerfully on us throughout our lives, mostly on an unconscious level; until 84, when the Uranus cycle, completes, the most we can do with any of these three planets is attune to them. There is no way that we can understand or control them.

One might say that the grid, or matrix, or space/time framework as Newton defined it, is the realm of strict, rule-bound Saturn; and as soon as we open to what lies beyond it we have entered the realm of what feels like infinity, a mysteriously forever opening space.

In any case, think of all these cycles as nested, one within another, concentric, shorter within longer, with each person as the center of his or her own nested cyclical set.

And here’s where it gets weird: ultimately we begin to see this entire planetary dance as spiraling, from the Moon out to Pluto and beyond. Space is not “empty;” space is the plenum, always in motion.

 

Okay, now introduce the “ether,” as that which fills space . .  .

Descartes and Newton, supposedly, both believed in the ether!

Now we’re getting wonky. Now things are becoming very difficult to comprehend.

 

Enter Quantum Tumbler, who seems to have been able to absorb the fluidic plenum of all in all and notice how it resonates, loops back on itself (cf. planetary cycles), mirrors or mimics, through “recursion,” (etymology: “to reoccur”): this last, frankly, is a concept which still tends to elude my grasp.

In any case, I invite you to check out Quantum Tumbler on twitter/X. Here’s an example of what he is capable of. He seems to have absorbed what is likely to be the new paradigm of how to conceptualize, resonate with, move inside and outside of, “space and time.”

His latest:

More from that same post:

Yep, way “over my head.”

And thus, endlessly fascinating.

Thank you, Quantum Tumbler.

WORDS OF WISDOM, Part 3: Yugen, Meraki

August 28, 2025

Yugen: Etymology: Made up of two Japanese characters. The first, “yu,” means dim or difficult to see. The second, “gen,” originally described the dark, tranquil color of the universe—something calm and deep.

What’s most interesting to me about this word, is that it has no known analogue in English.

Here’s a list of untranslatable Japanese words:

https://avo-translations.co.uk/23-untranslatable-japanese-words-with-beautiful-meanings

In this list, “yugen” is #14.

Too big to comprehend. Yes. There are such “things.” Though (material) things are not included!

What comes to mind for me is the day I was standing by our beautiful pond (no longer a pond, alas, but a wetlands, having been taken over by some kind of bamboo, thanks probably, to birds.)

Standing there, eyes unfocused, drinking in the beauty of the pond, all of a sudden a mysterious, powerful force rose up from below and nearly knocked me off my feet. Not yugen, but something. What?

That our pond no longer is one, I’m reminded of yugen, which itself signifies the temporary, what is passing. . .

Or as Alan Watts put it: yugen means “digging change”! Also: “Openness. Something your spirit goes out into, and has nowhere to land. The trick is, to evoke the mood of yugen, a sort of mysterious suggestiveness.” Wonderful video.

 

Yugen welcomes me when I gaze at the night sky. Or when I gaze at sun-dappled leaves waving in the breeze, or passing clouds playing peek-a-boo with the Moon. Or when I simply stop, filled with gratitude, at the continuous, ever-changing aliveness within which my evanescent embodied being is immersed.

That there is no English equivalent to this word saddens me.

BTW: It may be that this word was originally Chinese!

 

Meraki: etymology: Here’s a post that says it literally means “essence of ourselves.”

Looking at the “ki” part of the word, I’m reminded of tai chi (tai ki, or tai qi), as described here:

Vital energy flowing through the “essence of the self.”

Meraki is what I cannot help but utilize when I write, and when I view other people’s writings. To me, the essence of the person’s life force usually shows up in the beginning of a published work. If its first sentence doesn’t contain that subtle personal dynamic, that unique, vibrant identifier, then likely, for me, that document is not worth my time.