Under the Hood

Living in this physical universe, we see the world as separate objects. That car, this dog, me, you, her, him.

- Separation is imbedded in the structure of our language: subject-verb-object. You do X to me, I do x to you.
- Our five senses perceive things as separate objects – especially our visual sense, which, for most of us, is our most dominant link to the world around us.
- And our physics (aside from the quantum mavericks of the last couple of decades) has been solidly mechanistic – billiard balls bouncing endlessly off each other, cause and effect.

Let’s, for the moment, leave out quantum physics – about which I am, for the most part, unable to intelligently comment. What else in our experience can point our attention towards connection under the appearance of separation? What’s going on under the hood?

In his novel V, Thomas Pynchon laid out a fabulous metaphor for these invisible linkages. In the book, we encounter a mysterious underground mail system. This unexplained postal web would leave you messages when and where you least expect them: under a rock that you happen to kick over, on the back of a door, inside your McDonald’s burger wrapper. These messages could be an exact answer to a question you have had on your mind or a decision you need to make. Or they may simply point you in a direction, without further explanation: proceed east or go to x location – and await further instruction. Or the message might be completely indecipherable to you, with the information or awareness you currently have available to you. Like a Zen koan, this message inserts itself inside your conscious and/or unconscious mind, there to work its whammy in ways you may never understand or even be aware of.