Reflections on Mysticism and Science

When ancient people looked up into the night sky, they most often saw Gods or a home for angels and other deities. When a modern, scientifically informed person looks up, they see a vastness of space beyond imagination with galaxies and distances that make our own daily reality microscopic in comparison. The Earth, our home planet, is a tiny blue pebble continuously and silently moving in the vastness of existence.

For me, this vision evokes feelings of wonder and awe, reverence and humility, feelings that have inspired these works of Night Sky Theology.

WELCOME.

ROBERT MAGRISS0

From Night Sky Theology...

This is the place we realize now that we live—on a little planet, dependent on the onion skin thick layer of air that gives us life in an unimaginable vast universe. We now have identified billions of galaxies and uncountable stars, many likely to have their own “solar system” with planets. Whether life exists elsewhere and in what form is an unanswered question. Whether or not the cosmic forces we are learning about are a complete picture is also unknown but if there is anything we can learn from the history of the study of human knowledge, it is that big surprises await us… and we are no longer innocents.

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From The Art Collection...

“We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing books and hearing conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”

— WILLIAM JAMES

“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

— NEILS BOHR

Suddenly, Einstein lifted his head, looked upward at the clear skies and said, “We know nothing about it all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children… “Do you think we shall ever probe the secret?” “Possibly, we shall know a little more than we now know, but…”

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Essays by Robert Magrisso

1. Three Lessons

I came back to the hospital after office hours just to tell Seana the operative findings. As her general internist, I knew there was no real need for me to tell her, as she would be just coming out of general anesthesia and was, technically, on the surgery service. But I felt that I should. This would be her fourth major surgery to try and defeat the inexorably metastasizing colon cancer.

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2. Continuity

She’d been preoccupied with death for several years now; but one aspect had never before crossed her mind: dying, you don’t get to see how it all turns out. Questions you have asked will go unanswered forever. Will this one of my children settle down? Will that one learn to be happier? Will I…

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3. The God of Spinoza

“We can survive death to the extent that we have already let go of our singular solitary selves… Immortality, for Spinoza, is impersonal. I survive my necessary death to the extent that I have ceased identifying with the mere thing that I am, and identify with the whole intricate web I…

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