More science and meta bull

[Joseph T]

Thanks Monte, Daniel, Robin et al. Especially for the weight of  
fundamental physics, that keeps this grounded. I love a good piece of  
ground from which to toss myself over the abyss.

This is one of the better semi-off topic vectors so far. I have had  
moments thinking about these things in which I became intensely aware  
of carrying or abiding in a consciousness that holds more than the  
instant it lives in and the seeming impossibility of that. It is a  
feeling of a body of light rather than a particle of light.

Does light really slow down or just take circuitous routes in water?  
I understand they have slowed it  in a super low temp, low pressure  
condensates , and with cesium gas .

One thing I find interesting about consciousness is its  
immeasurability. I t is like another word I like. Desire. A word  
which seems to encapsulate the reality that all life forms exist out  
of an "urge" to transcend death. We call it reproduction but it is  
really more like experimental renewal. Why resist dissolution? How  
does an arrangement  of chemicals come to imagine death, let alone  
scheme for survival? Where the fuck does that come from? B. Fuller  
thought intelligence might be anti-entropic,that it's like a union ,  
it's the one thing organizing while the system falls apart. but there  
is no way to experimentally measure this. Entropy is a weird thing  
anyway. If everything is moving to a state of disorder , what the  
hell ordered it to begin with. If the universe is a dissolving dream  
it seems likely there is a dreamer .

In the end I am unconvinced that consciousness is limited to biology,  
and question the limits of every language and religion including  
science. It is interesting that humans have almost universally  
equated spirituality with light and a kind of timeless  
consciousness , enlightenment. Goodbye and thanks for all the Zen Koans.