of luminous matter

On this day, and in a forum like this, custom demands some form of expressive meditation on the year that passed. If not that, at least a quick ledger of days in which the god and the bad, the memorable and the drab take their place in the credit and debit side, balancing the book of life, at least in the currency of one year. And if one is a poet, rather than an accountant, one should, of course speak of the flavor of experiences that have distilled from the cluster of days crushed and marked as 2008 vintage.

These days I am no longer a poet (since I write so little – OK, no – poetry). Neither am I an accountant, just keep some books, both of numbers and words, I suppose. A bystander in my life, and also the “author,” in as much as circumstance permit, I look back at 2008 and see, well, standing here on this day, looking – simply looking a few feet back and string at the blur that is the future for nearsighted creature.

Blame the Nova program I watched on neutrinos last night. Blame my love of physics and a corresponding inability to have mastered the math required for the study of it. Above all, blame my imagination, for here I am, on the last day of the year, wondering about the interpretive connection between “ghostly” neutrinos and the “indivisible” Self of The Upanishads. Not so much searching for religion in physics (after all, these two do have a long, long history of connection), as I am searching for the physics hidden in religion.

Here is a passage from Nickolas Solomey’s “The Elusive Neutrino”:

The neutrino is one of the most perplexing of [the] elementary particles. It is a close relative of the electron, but carries no charge and has extremely little mass, if any at all. These are some of the characteristics that make the neutrino so elusive. Neutral particles of substantial mass or charged particles of any mass interact with matter when they encounter it. But the neutrino passes through even our most sophisticated detectors as if it did not recognize that matter was present.

And here is Yama, the king of Death from the Katha Upanishad teaching Nachiketa about the ways in which the Self takes shape:

As the same fire assumes different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.
As the same air assumes different shapes
When it enters objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.

Or, more to the point of the analogy:

Above the senses is the mind, above
The mind is the intellect, above that
Is the ego, and above the ego
Is the unmanifested Cause.
And beyond is Brahman, omnipresent,
Attributeless. Realizing him one is released
From the cycle f birth and death.

He is formless, and can never be seen
With these two eyes. But he reveals himself
In the heart made pure through meditation
And sense-restraint. Realizing him, one is
Released from the cycle of birth and death.

So, there you have it, I suppose: on this last day of a year marked as 2008, I am thinking of the unmeasurable, the invisible, and the indivisible, both the smallest and the grandest, since, in physics, as in religion, size really is immaterial.