(It is the year 2026. Science has shed its nerdy garb and become mainstream. Spirituality has come out of the shadows and become cool. The Bar is in Copenhagen where in 1941, two Physicists met and their conversation altered the course of history. This one, well, read on…)
Press enter or click to view image in full size Bartender (B): Hey guys! Never thought in a million years that they two of you would walk into a bar together! So, what can I getchya?
Science (Sci): I’ll have ProbablyStrings please. Thanks.
Spirituality (Spi): SoulFocus for me buddy.
B: So what gives, that the two of you are hanging out in bars now?
Sci: You know, it has taken me all these years to drop my nerdy vibe. I was stuck in dusty old buildings in dimly lit offices under mountains of paper thinking, “I don’t need these materialistic jokers to understand what I do! I’m doing great work and these thankless idiots should be, well, thankful!!” But not anymore! I’m cool now. People actually walk up to me and say IfuckingloveScience!
Spi: Dude, I am so relieved to hear you say that! I was really worried that people thought you were cooler than I was. But we just had different challenges, you know! Over the years I totally got cloaked by Religion. People hated me, because all they saw was Religion. Kind of like a banana skin, you know what I’m saying? Religion was like a banana skin that was covering my essence all this time! Then came some cool Masters who peeled off my banana skin so people could see me for the cool guy I really am. We’re now doing worldwide guided meditations on Facebook, worldwide hangouts on Google and people are going, “What??? Really? You guys? You’re finally cool!”
B: Hey Sci, I got one for ya. It was really hard to wrap my head around protons, electrons and neutrons. And now you blow all that away with these string like things?
Sci: Really I was just curious to know what is the substance that makes everything around us. You know what I mean? I was searching for the building blocks of matter. After a lot of experiments and calculations, I figured out that matter is essentially atoms. Atoms have their own structure: Negatively charged Electrons spin on the outside. At the center is a positively charged nucleus that is made of Protons and Neutrons. This is the part you already got, right? Then, I went looking deeper. Is there anything that is even more fundamental (or smaller) than Electrons, Protons and Neutrons. I searched and found some stuff (Quarks and such). Now I was even more curious. If I found this Quark stuff, is there something even smaller? Even more fundamental? So I searched again… But I found nothing but empty space for a long time, and then Strings appeared! I don’t know yet fully what to make of this yet, but these Strings seem to be the fundamental building blocks of everything that we see around us.
Spi: Dude, that’s quite a journey! I went on a similar search. I wanted to find out what makes me, Me. What building blocks am I made up of? So I sat and I observed. Am I this physical body? Am I just a collection of flesh, bones, skin, blood etc.? For a moment I thought sure, this could be me. But then, just like you, I looked deeper. I realized that I couldn’t be “just” this body. I noticed over the years that my body kept changing, but I still was. So how could I be just the body? Again I looked deeper. Was I my thoughts? My thoughts keep changing too but I still have this feeling that something in me is always the same. You know what I mean? Its like there’s a reference point inside me that’s not changing! I looked further and further, could I be my feelings, my emotions? They change too!?! As I kept looking, just like you, for a long time I found nothing! It was just empty. Hollow and Empty! And then, I finally found Myself. My unchanging Self! And I realized this Self is exactly the same for every person on the planet. It’s all One! There’s no two. I finally found Myself!
B: Dudes, that’s wild! Sci, you looked outward and went deep into matter. Spi, you looked inward and went deep into yourself. And you both found empty space!! That is so cool!!
Spi: You have no idea, it gets even better. I’ve come to realize that all our negative emotions, like Anger, Frustration, Irritability etc. are just superficial. Like Sci’s structure of the atom, all these negative emotions spin on the outside like the Electrons. And deep inside, we’re all made up of a positive substance called Love just like Sci’s positively charged Nucleus. Deep inside we have this massive capacity of Love!!
Just like that Beatles song, “All You Need Is Love… do do dododo…”
The Beatles totally nailed it! Not a lot of people really got the deeper message they were putting out there back then. Now people are starting to think about these mysterious universal Love kind of things.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how this Universe came to be. I mean, how did all this begin? It turns out, …
TO BE CONTINUED…
(Disclaimer: I am by not an expert Physicist or a Spiritual Master. I am just a guy who has seen both sides of this coin. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and I teach Meditation under the expert guidance of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I am simply connecting the dots between what I’ve read in books on Theoretical Physics and what I’ve heard Sri Sri say in his talks.)