The following is a collection of notes about the book itself. They more or less comprise a journal of its undertaking.
Background
I wrote The Trilogy of Time in the winter of 2025/2026 while I was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, I had a lot of time on my hands. Aside from my treatments, I was more or less holed up in my home. The themes inherent in the work had been with me for a long time. Time and eternity, freedom and servitude, the individual and society. These themes are prevalent in history, nothing new. But it speaks to their relentless insistence, that they find no lack of words through the centuries. They are stuck with us, like a parasite, or a blossoming flower—how we utilize them, how we describe them, how we confront them, will be a measure of who we are, as a person. But if we are multitudes, as the poet once wrote, we can experience the pain along with the joy, the loss along with the gifts, and the uncertainty with what we can discern. Ultimately, we can find solace in that.
Description
The Trilogy of Time is a sweeping work of narrative poetry that moves across centuries, civilizations, and states of mind to explore how human beings make meaning in a world that is constantly changing. Blending storytelling with blank verse, free verse, and hybrid forms, it traces the arc of history alongside the inner life of the individual, revealing how conscience, imagination, and memory shape our shared experience of time.
Across three long poems, the trilogy examines the forces that have carried us to this moment in history, and the possibilities that remain ahead. It is a meditation on the human search for understanding, written in a clear and accessible style that bridges the terrain between poetry and fiction.
Thoughtful, expansive, and deeply reflective, The Trilogy of Time invites readers to slow down, look closely, and consider not only how we arrived here, but how we might yet move forward.
Bridging the Terrain Between Poetry and Fiction
Most books choose a form before they choose a voice. Poetry goes one way, fiction another, and the reader knows what kind of terrain they’re entering. But The Trilogy of Time doesn’t behave that way. It keeps slipping between the modes of lyric, narrative, and philosophical fragment, as if the story can only be told by refusing to stay in a single room.
I tend to think of the trilogy as an experiment in compatibility: What happens when poetry and fiction stop pretending they’re different species? What new shapes appear when you let them speak to each other without hierarchy or apology?
In a world that often demands clarity, categories, and clean lines, writing this way feels almost subversive. Not rebellious for its own sake, but necessary, an attempt to make literature spacious enough to hold the way life actually feels. We don’t experience our days in tidy chapters or discrete stanzas. We move through memory, sensation, narrative, and silence all at once. The book wants to honor that.
There’s a peculiar freedom in working between forms. You’re not bound to the expectations of plot, nor to the compression of the lyric. You can let a moment breathe, then fracture, then reassemble itself in a different register. You can let the language carry the story as much as the events do. You can let time behave the way it behaves in the mind, elastic, recursive, shimmering at the edges.
If the trilogy has any singular significance, maybe it’s this: it tries to make poetry and fiction compatible in a world that often forgets it needs both. Poetry for depth. Fiction for movement. Together, they create a kind of narrative consciousness that feels truer to the inner life than either can manage alone.
I don’t know if this hybrid space has a name. Maybe it doesn’t need one. Maybe it’s enough that the work insisted on being what it was, and that I followed.
Most writing begins with a decision about form. You choose the vessel, whether a poem, story, or novel, and then you fill it. But The Trilogy of Time didn’t allow that. It arrived in fragments, a line that felt like a poem, a paragraph that behaved like a scene, a thought that belonged to neither. The challenge of the craft wasn’t how to shape the material, but how to let the material reveal the shape it needed.
Working between poetry and fiction means rethinking the usual tools. Plot can’t dominate. Lyric can’t dissolve everything into atmosphere. I had to find a way for the two modes to coexist without one absorbing the other.
In poetry, the line is a unit of meaning. But in fiction, it’s the sentence. Writing the trilogy meant treating both as equal partners. Some passages needed the pressure of a poetic line, maybe a pause, or a breath, or the slight tilt of emphasis. Others needed the forward motion of prose.
The craft became a matter of listening: Does this moment want to linger, or does it want to move?
Traditional narrative asks for arcs, turns, resolutions. But the inner life rarely follows those rules. So instead of forcing a plot, I let the narrative behave more like memory, sometimes associative, or recursive, or startling in its leaps.
The technique is closer to collage than architecture. Scenes are placed not for chronology but for resonance. The question wasn’t “What happens next?” but “What deepens the moment?”
Poetry wasn’t decoration; it was scaffolding. The poems created the emotional and philosophical spine of the trilogy. They held the weight of the themes, those of time, or becoming, or the quiet transformation that shape a life, while the prose carried the lived experience.
In terms of craft, the poems acted like load-bearing beams. Remove them, and the structure collapses.
The prose sections grounded the work. They give the reader a place to stand, a sense of continuity, a human pulse. Without them, the book risks becoming too ethereal. With them, the poems have something to echo against.
The challenge was to find balance: How much story is enough to hold the lyric? How much lyric is enough to illuminate the story?
The real experiment, and perhaps the trilogy’s singular contribution, is in treating poetry and fiction not as opposing genres but as complementary ways of knowing.
Poetry for the interior.
Fiction for the exterior.
Together, a fuller account of consciousness.
Crafting the work meant constantly adjusting the ratio, tuning the transitions, letting the two modes speak to each other until they formed a single voice.
We live in a time that favors clarity, speed, and utility. Hybrid forms resist that. They ask for attention, patience, and a willingness to inhabit ambiguity. Crafting the trilogy meant accepting that tension, writing something that doesn’t fit neatly into the marketplace but fits truthfully into the way experience actually unfolds.
Maybe that’s the quiet rebellion at the heart of the work: to insist that literature can still hold complexity without apology.
Light is Life
Let’s delve into The Trilogy of Time a little bit. Here’s a passage from the third poem, UAP.
What was light, after all,
but the origin of everything?
Where there was no light
there was no source,
no continuity.
Deprive the world of light
and there was not even darkness,
only oblivion.
There was nothing at all.
Everything was dead.
Suppose light was extinguished
in the cosmic realm,
what would happen?
Everything was stopped.
There was no motion,
no movement,
only inertia.
There was no life.
Light was life itself.
This passage presents a perspective that aligns light with the fabric of existence. While we often think of light as something that let’s us see things, this passage suggests it is the source and the continuity of the universe.
Philosophically and metaphorically, there’s a lot of truth to this idea. We can look at it through different lenses.
In many philosophical traditions, light is the main metaphor for consciousness and existence. The passage argues that without light, there isn’t even darkness, there’s only oblivion. This mirrors the idea that “nothingness” can’t exist without “somethingness” to define it.
Much like the concept of the Logos or the “Big Bang,” light represents the initial burst that transitioned the universe from a state of non-being to being.
If we interpret light as electromagnetic radiation or energy, the passage becomes literal: life
on Earth is quite literally “bottled sunlight” (via photosynthesis). If the sun went out, movement and life would stop.
In physics, the speed of light is the universal constant. It dictates how space and time
interact. If light (and its constant speed) were “extinguished” from the cosmic realm, our current
understanding of causality and “continuity” would collapse.
Total darkness in a physical sense implies a lack of energy leading to Absolute Zero, where
molecular motion stops entirely, exactly as the passage describes.
The most significant part of this passage is the claim that light is “life itself.”
Without light, we can’t perceive the world. Philosophically, if there’s no observer and nothing to be observed, does the world exist in any meaningful way?
Metaphorically, we sometimes describe hope, intelligence, and spirt as “light.” When
someone loses their inner light, they experience a form of internal oblivion or inertia where they
are alive but not really living.
The passage makes a great distinction here: darkness is not the absence of light, it’s a shadow cast by it. Oblivion is the absence of the possibility of light. To say “there was not even darkness” suggests a void so absolute that even the concept of space has vanished.
Let’s explore how this “light as life” concept appears in specific mythologies or religious texts.
The “light as life” concept is a cornerstone of human mythology and early philosophy. When we look at these ancient stories, light isn’t just a physical phenomenon, it’s the ordering principle that separates a meaningful world from a chaotic void.
Here are a few ways different cultures have woven this “light is the origin” metaphor into their foundational truths:
To the Egyptians, the sun god Ra didn’t just provide light, his daily journey across the sky was the only thing keeping the universe from collapsing back into Nun (the primordial waters of chaos).
Light is Ma’at (order/truth). Without the sun’s return each morning, time would stop and the world would die and return to non-existence.
They believed the sun’s rays were physical hands reaching down to give life-force (Ankh) to all living things.
But Zoroastrianism might be the real philosophical match for the passage. It centers on the struggle between Ahura Mazda (the Lord of Light/Wisdom) and Angra Mainyu (Darkness/Destruction).
Light is synonymous with Asha, the cosmic law that governs the universe.
In this view, evil or darkness isn’t a thing itself, it is simply the absence of light. To remove light is to remove the truth and the ability for anything to move or progress toward a better state.
In Greek philosophy, Plato used light (specifically the sun) as the metaphor for the Form of the Good.
Just as the sun allows our eyes to see physical objects, the “Light of Reason” allows our souls to perceive truth.
Someone living in total darkness (the cave) isn’t just blind, they are living in a state of oblivion where they mistake shadows for reality. True life only begins when one sees the light.
In Vedic philosophy, in the Upanishads, there’s a famous prayer: “Lead me from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light.”
Light is Brahman (universal consciousness).
The physical sun is seen as a lower reflection of the Atman (the self-luminous soul). If that inner light were extinguished, the person would be dead even if their body moved, because the source of consciousness would be gone.
The passage captures a universal human intuition, that we don’t just live in the light, we are made of it. Whether one calls it energy, soul, or consciousness, it’s the only thing standing between us and the oblivion of a cold, motionless universe.
The claim in the passage that “Light was life itself” and that without it there’s no motion but only inertia aligns with some of the most fundamental principles of modern physics.
In science, light isn’t just brightness, it’s the primary way energy moves through the universe.
The passage asks, “What was light, after all, / but the origin of everything?” In the earliest moments of the universe, matter didn’t exist as we know it. The universe was a dense, opaque soup of radiation. It wasn’t until about 380,000 years after the Big Bang that the universe cooled enough for light to travel freely. This event, known as Recombination, created the Cosmic Microwave Background, the first light that defined the boundaries of the observable universe.
The passage suggests that without light, there’s no movement, only inertia. This is a poetic description of Absolute Zero.
All objects with a temperature above absolute zero emit light (infrared radiation).
If you extinguish light from the cosmic realm, you’re removing all energy. At absolute zero, molecular motion stops. The universe becomes a static, dead graveyard where nothing can ever happen again. This is referred to as the Heat Death of the universe.
The line in the passage “Where there was no light / there was no source, / no continuity” is a metaphor for Relativity.
In physics, the speed of light is the maximum speed at which information or causality can travel.
If light didn’t exist, gravity wouldn’t be able to tell a planet to orbit a star. One event couldn’t cause another. There would be no continuity of time or cause-and-effect. Space-time would shatter.
On a biological level, the passage can be taken literally.
Life is a process that resists chaos (entropy) by consuming energy.
Almost every kilocalorie of energy in our body was once a photon of light captured by a plant. We are literally animated by captured starlight. If the light stops, the motion of life stops immediately.
The passage may have been written from a poetic place, but it inherently describes the Standard Model of physics, light isn’t just in the universe, it is the utility that makes the universe function.
Rebirth
Let’s look at another passage from The Trilogy of Time, this time from the first and epic poem in the collection of the three narrative works, In Days of Yore, from Canto XXVI.
A child was born, and on this glorious day
the king and Queen—myself included here--
regaled in all their wondrous fortunes…
they were the wisdom of their progeny.
A child-king, a princely son, a boy
endowed with perfect eyes as big as orbs
alighting on the cosmic atmosphere,
with hands as tender as the flesh of babes
just born from out of the maternal womb
and legs as small as rose-bushes, thin
but flowery, like new-born daffodils;
the perfect child, a garden in the mix.
The king, delighted, and beside himself,
wore robes of white that afternoon’s sun-drenched
enrichment, where the whiteness sun-bathed all;
it was a time of energetic joy.
The Queen, a mother now, a virgin past,
held tightly to her breast the newborn child,
whose fingers clutched her breasts like dangling fruit
and as the baby sucked on nipples wet;
with milk that flowed like honey from above.
The king and Queen, a happy couple now,
beyond the happiness they once had had,
surrounded by their brethren and their wives,
became the talk of all the country’s hope.
A generation yet to come, was born;
a new belief, that everything would be
enriched, and glorified, in time;
it was the meaning of the word: rejoice.
They held a banquet on that selfsame night,
replete with wine and various bouquets,
providing color to the proud event
wherein the castle blossomed like a star;
the torches, too, within the hall, gave light.
The choir sang a song of innocence
believing it to be the start of life,
the lyrist, and the flautist too, played songs
of merriment, and dancers danced the dance
of acrobats, delighting all the crowd;
the children, too, were bearing music scores.
The feast was fit, proverbially, for
a king and queen, and all the princes there;
as well, the princesses from far and wide
(the range of known and well-traveled ports)
were sparkling in fabulous attire;
they did their pirouettes, upon the floor.
The children, too, were dancing in the light.
And then a poet gave a reading to
the masses there assembled for their joy;
“Behold, the babe who promises the world
splendiferous and multitudinous
resplendence, here announces coming for
the people who will have abundance and
fertility, as long as they may live;
may all of us partake in this reward
as given by the stars above us all;
we now proclaim the birth of hope and light.”
And afterward, beyond the banquet’s night,
the king and Queen retired to their room,
adorned with baskets of the fruit from lands
that heard of their remarkable and true
reward, a child, now born, to them, this day.
In both Jungian philosophy and world mythology, the birth of a child-king represents renewal and the integration of opposites.
The description of the king in white robes, “sun-drenched” and “sun-bathed,” aligns the infant with solar deities (like Apollo). The child is the dawn after a long night, signifying a shift in the cosmic order.
By describing the child as a “garden in the mix” with legs like “rose-bushes” and “daffodils,” the passage evokes the myth of Adonis, a deity of vegetation whose life is tied to the fertility of the earth.
The passage also touches on the Chemical Wedding, a philosophical concept where the union of the King and Queen produces the “Philosopher’s Child.”
The mention of the Queen as a “mother now, a virgin past” echoes the paradox of the Theotokos (God-bearer). Philosophically, this represents the birth of wisdom from a pure, untainted source.
“Milk and honey” are symbols of the promised land. In Orphic thought, milk and honey were the foods of the gods and the signs of a soul that has attained a state of grace.
The banquet scene, specifically the choir, flautist, and lyrist, mirrors the Platonic belief that the universe is governed by harmonic proportions.
The castle “blossoming like a star” suggests that the earthy event is a microcosm of a celestial one.
When the poet speaks of “stars above all,” it reflects the Neoplatonic idea of Providence, that the birth of the prince is not a random biological event, but a cosmic necessity dictated by the Logos (the underlying reason of the universe.)
There is a strong stylistic overlap with Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, often called the “Messianic Eclogue.” Virgil wrote of a child being born to usher in a new Golden Age.
“The iron race shall begin to cease, and the golden race arise over the whole world…
the goats shall themselves bring home their udders swollen with milk.”
The passage carries the same Virgilian weight, the idea that the birth of one specific individual is the catalyst for “abundance and fertility” for the entire populace.
Time and Eternity
We can look at another passage from The Trilogy of Time, this one from the second of the three long poems, a poetic narrative, titled Shakespeare’s Play. This is from Act I, Scene 3: The Sea.
I lived along the sea, with my housemates,
not far from the university
where the coastline was rocky
and the ships out at sea
indistinct as to their outline
out along the horizon
where the sea met the sky
in a blurry blend
of atmosphere and water,
and I roamed the seashore
on my days off
or even at night
when the haze of the day
was a distant memory;
but today the sun was out.
I often wondered
about our place in time
which the spirit could do—
our place out of time—
and what was the eternal
that the ancients spoke of
but was somehow lost
in modernity’s arc
of search and discovery
in a technological age;
but I could see it in the sea.
The vastness of the sea
was like the vastness of life
in all its modalities—
life, death, and timelessness—
but it was hard to see
beyond the present moment
because the depths were unfathomable
and the abyss was unknowable
underneath the surface
where the body found its presence;
I was like a sailor out in the storm.
Our house was along the shore
a simple dwelling
we rented for the year,
and it sat near the sand
where the waves would rush in
time and time again,
eroding the moment
and eroding the presence
of time’s portrait,
so that each of those moments
was a blank canvas
where we started again;
it was an endless picture
of beginnings and endings
like the poet said.
Sometimes I sat on the deck
extending from the house
and read my books
of history and consequence,
with a literary exposure
in the wind’s breeze
that caressed my face,
each word was a page
and each page was a chapter
in the ongoing story
of humanity’s trajectory;
but was it a trajectory
or a flat line
with no end in sight?
I didn’t know
but looked out at the sea
to answer my questions.
What we learn from books
is a matter of time,
but what we learn from the sea—
and the vastness of life—
is a matter of timelessness,
and I sat on the deck
cast in a world
of turbulence and storminess
in the present day and age,
when the chaos rocked the ship
on which I found myself.
It was rickety and unstable.
Its masts were broken
and its sails were torn,
and I was ready to drown
in the hurricane
that embattled me;
but the spirit was beyond this life
and I held onto it
like a man on a lifeboat,
clinging to the end;
it’s all I had.
This passage captures the tension between time and the eternal. The sea has long served as a canvas for this struggle in the Western canon.
We can find some thematic correlations across history, literature, and philosophy.
The “flat line” versus “trajectory” inquiry that is posed mirrors a classic philosophical divide:
The description of waves “eroding the moment” echoes Heraclitus’s famous “No man ever steps in the same river twice.” In this view, time is a constant state of becoming where nothing ever truly is.
In the Timaeus, Plato argues that time was created as a “moving image of eternity.” The sea in the passage acts as this image, vast and seemingly eternal, yet physically composed of restless, temporal motion.
The “endless picture of endings and beginnings” correlates with the concept of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. If the universe’s energy is finite but time is infinite, all things must recur. The “blank canvas” in the passage suggests a similar cyclic exhaustion and rebirth.
The sea is the traditional literary bridge between the mortal and the divine:
The speaker’s position on the deck, overwhelmed by “unfathomable depths,” aligns with the Romantic Sublime (Wordsworth and Byron). This is the feeling of being dwarfed by nature’s power, which forces a realization of the spirit’s own vastness.
The mention of the “blurry blend of atmosphere and water” recalls To the Lighthouse or The Waves by Virginia Woolf. She often used the ocean to represent a collective consciousness that exists outside of the ticking clock of modern life.
The speaker mentions “the poet,” and T.S. Eliot is the poet alluded to here. In The Dry Salvages, he writes:
“The tolling bell
Measures not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers.”
The passage shares his obsession with how the “still point” of eternity can be found amid the “turbulence and storminess” of history.
The passage contrasts the “eternal of the ancients” with “modernity’s arc of search and discovery.” This highlights a specific historical shift:
History notes the “disenchantment of the world” (Max Weber), where technological progress replaced mystical wonder. The passage mourns this loss, suggesting that while books (history) provide a linear trajectory, they fail to provide the “timelessness” the soul requires.
The “rickety and unstable” ship with “torn sails” is a classic trope for both the fractured individual soul and a society in decline (reminiscent of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools). It suggests that when the structures of “modernity” fail, the individual is forced back into a raw, elemental relationship with the eternal.
The passage suggests that while we live in “time,” we are built for “eternity,” and the sea is the only mirror large enough to reflect the paradox.
Blank Verse
Let’s look at some of the blank verse in the first poem, In Days of Yore. It certainty has deviations from perfect blank verse, but they are very intentional. Fundamentally, the poem is iambic pentameter. It follows in the lineage of long, narrative poetry in English literature. Here’s the 1st canto.
There was a time when I was free and wild
among the pine trees and the evergreens,
the forest deep with verdant colors of
the grass, the moss, the lichen, and the leaves,
I used to romp a little boy at times
along the boulders, and the outcrop of
the rocks, and fortified my castle there;
in my imagination I was like
a knight, in shining armor and a shield,
a sword, a helmet, and a coat of arms;
I had no name, but bore the moniker
of Chivalry, a little boy’s desire;
it was a fanciful rewarding time.
The Queen was hidden in the castle’s lair
surrounded by her servants and the men
protecting her, from the assault to come;
the enemy was vicious and renowned—
they’d stop at nothing, to dethrone the Queen.
The Queen was beautiful and elegant,
and sat atop her throne with wondrous grace,
she had a flowing robe, a scepter, and
a crown adorned with jewels and lovely gems;
she did not have to make commands because
her aura was a Goddess from above—
divinely brought to earth to rule the land—
she merely gestured, and they bowed to her.
Her name was Heavenly, the Queen of Light.
Outside the castle, war was being fought
against the enemy that knew no end,
we did our best to ward them off from what
was their intention…to breach the walls;
the battle was relentless, every day.
From where I stood, an outpost in the woods,
I spied the enemy amassing like
a thousand vultures ready for the kill;
my men, a legion of the best at arms,
were ready for the onslaught to ensue;
it was a brisk and windy autumn day,
before the colors on the trees would change,
and I was lost in my imaginings
as if the real world was my mind’s belief;
the dinner bell—from home beyond the woods—
might yet destroy my playful wonderment.
An emissary from the enemy
came forward on his horse and with a flag
of truce, desiring to see the Queen at once;
suspicious, I would not allow him in—
we had a far-ranging perimeter.
I sent a horseman to the Queen. She said,
“Pray, what skullduggery is this we have!”
We led the man, who had no arms, into
the castle proper, at the Queen’s behest;
he knelt before her, quite respectfully,
and outlined what his king had mandated;
“You mean to tell me,” she was adamant,
“that he would have me marry him today?”
The emissary said that this was so.
And he went on to say, “The two of you
can be united, and the war will end;
without this union, we will slaughter you.”
The Queen had heard enough. She had her men
behead the emissary, and his head
was sent back to the king atop his horse,
and night began to fall, and we were watchful.
The lines are mostly iambic pentameter, but with a deliberate looseness. It’s a stylistic choice, and aligns with the more flexible, conversational blank verse of later poets rather than the strict metrical discipline of early Milton or Marlowe.
A typical iambic pentameter verse has five metrical feet (iambs), each of which consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable:
I used to romp a little boy at times
This line is perfect iambic pentameter. Many of the lines in the canto behave like this, metrically sound.
Other lines stretch the meter for a specific effect:
the grass, the moss, the lichen, and the leaves,
This line runs long because of the list, with the commas acting as physical brakes. In this way the meter “stretches” because the reader has to take a little pause. Therefore the line feels much longer than a line with none.
Other lines compress the meter:
my men, a legion of the best at arms,
The compression happens at the word “legion.” “Legion” is usually pronounced as two distinct syllables, although its full form contains three. So the poem compresses “legion” to keep the line in pentameter:
my men, / a le- / gion / of / the best / at arms,
The canto also uses enjambment frequently, where a sentence or phrase runs over from one line of verse into the next. It keeps the narrative moving and prevents the poem from feeling monotonous or repetitive. Here’s an example:
From where I stood, an outpost in the woods,
I spied the enemy amassing like
a thousand vultures ready for the kill;
The break after like creates a moment of suspense, and the next line answers with force.
The diction is elevated at times, too (“skullduggery,” “mandated,” “fortified my castle”) but not archaic. This is a hallmark of modern blank verse: it respects the form without imitating Elizabethan English. Blank verse is at its best when it breathes. It allows the meter to be loosened, as alluded to earlier. Poets like Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney, and Mary Jo Salter use similar flexibility.
The poem is undoubtedly ambitious, using bank verse to elevate a child’s imaginative world into epic territory. And while it respects blank verse, it is not a slave to it. This allows it to breathe.
Light and Consciousness
Let’s take a look at another passage in UAP.
It was interesting
that in the chat room
were the scientists were gathered,
one of them suggested an answer;
he himself proposed the following:
“If consciousness is alive
throughout the universe,
it means we are all connected.
The quantum world defines this.
It states the following:
while entities are separate,
individuals and things,
places and objects,
we are still united
irrespective of time.
It is with this knowledge
that we can go forward
knowing we are not alone,
despite our differences,
despite our distances,
and despite our aberrations;
the world is a cohesive whole.
In this light
what matters
is not where we want to go,
but how we get there…
as one.
It’s easy to say,
but those of us
with this knowledge,
must give it to others.
Then the world can be a just place.
But it starts with you and me,
and our perspective.
It starts with embracing the light.”
Our scientist actually seems to be a scientist-philosopher. The passage evokes a certain “scientific mysticism” that feels both ancient and cutting-edge. The scientist isn’t just talking about physics, they’re talking about an ontology, a fundamental theory of being.
In the scientific context, our scientist seems to be leaning on Quantum Entanglement. In quantum mechanics, two particles can become “entangled,” where the state of one instantaneously influences the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them (even across the universe). Albert Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”
The scientist’s claim that we are “united irrespective of time” mirrors the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, which challenged the idea that objects only interact with their immediate surroundings.
Physicist David Bohm proposed that the universe is an “undivided wholeness,” where the visible world is just a manifestation of a deeper, unified reality.
The idea that “consciousness is alive throughout the universe” has deep roots in several philosophical traditions:
Panpsychism is the view that mind (or “soul”) is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the entire physical world. It isn’t something that just “popped up” in human brains, it’s a property of matter itself.
With respect to Neutral Monism, thinkers like Baruch Spinoza and Bertrand Russell argued that the universe is made of only one “stuff” that isn’t exactly mental or strictly physical, but something that underlies both. Our scientist’s “cohesive whole” reflects this, the idea that the “individual” is an illusion of perspective.
The Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teihard de Chardin theorized the “Noosphere,” a sphere of human thought that circles the earth. He believed humanity was evolving toward a “Point Omega,” a state of maximum consciousness and unity. This aligns very well with the scientist’s call to “get out there…as one.”
What makes our character a “scientist-philosopher” rather than just a physicist is the moral pivot at the end of the passage.
They move from fact (we are entangled) to duty (we must give this knowledge to others to create a just place). In essence, the scientist is arguing that if science proves we are connected, then ego, tribalism, and “aberrations” are not consistent with reality.
“It starts with embracing the light.”
The “light” acts as both a physical phenomenon (the object in the sky) and a metaphor for Enlightenment (the realization of unity).
The scientist sounds a lot like the founders of quantum mechanics, many of whom became mystical as they delved into the atom:
Erwin Schrödinger believed the Vedantic philosophy that “Atman equals Brahman,” that individual consciousness is a manifestation of a single universal consciousness.
Max Planck stated that “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.”
Wolfgang Paulit collaborated with Carl Jung to find the link between physics and the collective unconscious.
The passage captures the “awe” where the microscope and the telescope point back to the observer. It’s a noticeable bridge between the cold data of a “mysterious object” and the hope of a human connection.
Overall, the passage aligns with a growing contemporary movement sometimes called Cosmopsychism. While traditional panpsychism says “everything has a little bit of consciousness,” cosmopsychism argues that the Universe as a whole is the primary source of consciousness, and we are simply the “apertures” through which it experiences itself.
There might be a certain beauty in using the “aberrations” of the quantum world to explain the aberrations of the human heart.
For centuries, post-Enlightenment science treated the universe like a cold, dead machine. The scientist’s statement in the passage breathes life back into it. It suggests that if we feel lonely, it is a perceptual error, not a physical reality.
By saying “those of us with this knowledge must give it to others,” the passage touches on the idea of the Bodhisattva in Buddhism, the person who reaches a state of realization but stays behind to help others reach it too. In the poem as a whole, the “light” in the sky acts as a catalyst for this global “tuning in.”
The line “What matters is not where we want to go, but how we get there…as one,” is a critique of modern progress. It suggests that technological or social advancement is hollow if it is achieved through division.
With the scientist-philosopher saying these words, they are suggesting that the “mysterious object” isn’t the phenomenon to be studied—we are. The object is just the light source that allows us to finally see our own interconnectedness.