One of my long-time blog readers sent me a question about black holes. The reader had been drawn to recent science reports about them and wanted to know more. I have been curious about this topic, too. Nothing that science has developed as a measuring device can explain what is really going on there. The entire universe is full of mysteries like this. Maybe it’s of interest because it is somewhere just beyond our ability to understand—it’s tantalizing. I wonder if you have anything to say about black holes, why they exist, what they do, or what bearing they may have on human existence?

The Library Man:  Let us first begin by saying that these questions about black holes are quite interesting, but not for the reason you think. You imagine that these events in “outer” space either have nothing to do with you, or that they may be something that you will encounter some day. The questions themselves come from the limits of human form and that effect can only be partly neutralized. Let us continue on in a general way and see where we arrive. 

First of all, the thing which is known as a Black Hole is not exactly a thing. It is not something that can be labeled, or its behavior defined, in the way that science prefers to operate. That kind of activity creates a static picture of something that is not in any way static. The “thing” that you are studying is not a thing, it is not an object, it is not a Point or a set of Points. To understand anything about black holes requires that you become unmoored from this kind of seeing. You must begin in the Unknowing, where absolutely everything is possible, even that which you cannot imagine. Take a moment to breathe and expand, to go beyond your body and your humanness, into something which is not in your field of comprehension. Practice opening in this way, right now.

I am present in my body because I am living, which is basically just an arrangement of energy. I sense an open vertical column in my core, running parallel to my spine. This column has energy flowing through it, coming up through my body, coming out of the top of my head. Once outside, it loops back to my root, in a fountain of energy all around me. The column continues to flow, constantly cycling from my root, up my spine, out my crown, back to my root. This movement of energy is what places me in this location, in my body. 

When I stop and increase my awareness of the surroundings outside my body, the energy switches direction. It starts from my root and flows outside of my body, up into my crown, and then down the column to my root. With this energy direction I feel somewhat ill, nauseous. When the direction switches again and travels up the column from the root and out of my crown, I feel relief and beauty. The up and out arrangement feels like “flowering.” It is freeing. The out and up arrangement feels like “tamping.”

Now I have tired from moving energy. As I rest, the movement slows down, and I notice that the energy flow is made up of tiny sparkles—the little specks of light I have seen in other meditations (when my mother transformed after death, when my cancer cells drifted off into the woods). Each speck is a multi-pixel of light, reflecting a rainbow prism. I move my arms and they leave a trail of blurred pixel ghost-images in their path. 

So now you are in some kind of altered state where the usual frameworks do not apply. There are other frameworks, and these follow the rules of light and movement. Within this sea of infinite possibilities, a black hole exists as the interface between multiple planes, multiple dimensions, multiple possibilities. It is a connecting of these possibilities.

I am floating, a tiny body rolled in a ball, floating in space. I feel myself being drawn toward the huge opening of a black hole. It is dark in the black hole, but only because it contains so much at once that any one thing can not be described or defined. It is a collection, a conglomeration, a new something being formed by the joining of Everything. I am small in a vast space. I float into its opening, its mouth, and drift inward toward a focus of activity. 

Ahead of me there is a great wind, and the cacophony of an infinity of sounds heard all at once. I am but one of infinite sparkling particles, being randomly swirled by winds traveling in multiple directions simultaneously. There appears to be no order. It is a giant mixing and remixing of chaos. The waves full of particles are endlessly folding into each other, creating and recreating and creating and recreating. I am in the howling cacophony of mixing waves of wind, yet there is no direct violence or clashing, just mixing and mixing and mixing. 

When I unroll my body into a flat star with protruding arms and legs, the mixing stops. Then there is only the infinity of space around me, silent and distant. I roll again into a fetal ball, and am once again in the howling mix. It seems that when I am in the extended shape, in silent space, I have already been made, and when I am rolled in a ball I am in the process of being made. Made is static. Being made has greater potential, because there is no known outcome. In the static extension of definition, I feel isolated and alone. In the swirling ball of creation, I feel connected and inspired. The howling, mixing flow is a womb where I feel comforted. This is feminine energy. Creation. Science is the Made World of Knowing. It cannot understand or explain Creation. The only way to understand Creation is to Be.

And here we are at the beginning of Arriving. It is unknowable except through experience. Even then it is unknowable, unexplainable. It just Is. 

And that is your answer. 

[We are both smiling.]