Dark is the symbolic color of mystery; its realm is the shadowed ramparts and recesses that wonder inhabits as it awaits the light of discovery that has yet to shine into it. This is no less true in cosmology, where unknown forces and factors often attract the adjective “dark.”
“Dark matter,” for example, comprises the super-majority of matter in the known universe. Its name is due in part to the simple characteristic that it does not shine with any detectable radiation; yet it is dark with mystery as well because the known varieties of non-luminous and non-reflective matter nowhere near account for grand total of dark matter that, by virtue of dark matter’s detectable effects upon visible matter, the laws of physics say must exist.
Even more mysterious is “Dark Energy.” Unlike dark matter, which is at least partially accounted for in forms familiar to scientists, Dark Energy is a little more than a placeholder for pending knowledge; nothing more is known about it than that it is a name given to whatever is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate rather than coast by its own momentum, as a simple “Big Bang” progenitor explosion would lead one to expect.
Dark Energy is what appears to be continuing to push the universe apart. Officially, we know nothing more than this.
I believe I know what Dark Energy is. If I am correct, it is not energy at all, but a manifestation of a slow, steady change in the frame of reference by which we measure dimensions and velocities.
Einstein’s theories of relativity are built upon the relativity of frames of reference and upon the relationship of gravity with the hyper-geometry of space; Einstein and Hawking went even further to predict that the staggering gravitational forces near rotating black holes (and presumably all black holes are rotating) exert bizarre effects upon both the nature of space-time in their vicinity, and even more bizarre effects on the frames of spatial reference near the event horizons of black holes.
The concept of frames of reference are foundational to Einstein’s theories of relativity.
But to write about the Lense-Thirring effect would be a diversion down a tangent of cosmic proportions, so I will jump ahead to my conclusion about Dark Energy so that I can get on with the show:
I believe that Dark Energy is nothing more than the shrinkage of the frames of reference relative to any particle in space. The universe might not be expanding faster under its own power; we (and our frames of reference) might be getting smaller, shrinking our measuring sticks like an accidental trip through C.G. Spacely’s Minivac Machine. If we and our frames of reference are getting smaller, then the universe would appear to be getting bigger under the power of some unknown source of energy.
And this, finally, brings me to consciousness.
Consciousness is another enigma. How can it be that matter arranged in the form of Homo Sapiens and other higher animals can be said to possess consciousness, while other highly ordered structures of matter capable of making decisions (such as the computer chip) is just a lump of matter without consciousness?
Yet consciousness is one of the few realities that survived the stringent standards of provability that philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes demanded of justified true knowledge. Consciousness is both a enigma at the edge of purely physical verifiability, and one of the few absolutely certain facts that exist – a contrast that is almost, but not quite, a logical impossibility.
We know that consciousness exists. Yet we tend to identify consciousness only in its familiar guise of organic life.
There is no reason whatsoever to confine the logical possibility of consciousness to that which resides in organic life.
In the television series Space 1999, the early episode The Black Sun introduced Commander Koenig to God, however briefly, where she said “I think a thought in perhaps a thousand of your years.”
When you free yourself from preconceived notions that consciousness can only exist within organic bodies, and can only operate at familiar speeds, then cosmic intelligence, including Ultimate Cosmic Intelligence, becomes conceivable: indeed, very possible. With a possible eternity spanning countless births of universes, the self-organization of consciousness on a vastly different temporal and chronological scale begins to seem extremely probable indeed.
If cosmic intelligence can be so vast as to be universal, then St. Thomas Aquinas could have a point in that Goddess is both transcendent and immanent. I’d hasten to question Aquinas’ claim that God is immaterial, however; if consciousness is the products of physical interactions of energies, then Goddess is very physical, though obviously not of a human form or anything resembling a familiar carbon-based biological entity.
“If,” “could.” Speculation, undoubtedly. But I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself if the edge of unknowability is enough for you to doubt the existence of the Divine in any form, or embrace the existence of the Divine in some form.
But if I have proven anything, it is that no one human being can claim, beyond reasonable doubt, to possess the definitive truth as to the details of the Divine.
If you believe in Him or Her, then trust. If not, then don’t. It’s all that you or I can do.