A colleague, Mary Ann E., sent me a link to a NY Times June third article, “Dark, Perhaps Forever.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/science/03dark.html)

One quote from the article says, “Having been impelled apart by the force of the Big Bang, the galaxies, in defiance of cosmic gravity, are picking up speed on a dash toward eternity.” They talk about the 13.7 billion years since the bang. Science has discovered lots of stuff about dark matter and dark energy and has postulated, as did Einstein, a great deal about what’s going on in this expansion. NASA’s going to drop $600 million on a “J-dem for Joint Dark Energy Mission” to find out why this is going on. Scientists say the six hundred mil is less than half what is needed. Indeed!

Perhaps when I consider from my very limited understanding of or interest in science that the following may be as true as all that other stuff, I can again put Toby away and go back home to Pure Awareness.

Everything in the universe oscillates. The expansion of the unmanifested into the manifested 13.7 billion years ago has continued. Science says that, for whatever reason, the expansion is accelerating and the manifested energy continues to differentiate. Ultimately, this expansion must cease. It is the never-ending expansion and contraction of all manifested energy (breath, heartbeat, sound, all vibrational energy). The expansion will probably then reverse and the manifested perhaps billions of years later will return to the unmanifested from which it came, only to begin again (some mystery, no?). We may now be involved in the fifteen billionth such expansion and contraction, with billions more to follow.

Who knows (science doesn’t) and who cares (not I)? It does not have much ultimate importance NOW. Now I do not have to think, just remember to breathe just like the universe.

Hey, check out http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Jill Taylor, PhD gives us all a new spin on Toby.