Journeys and Star Gazing

Before me sits an apple, ordinary yet radiant, its waxy surface catching a sharp glint of light from a lamp above. It is tangible, immediate—its crispness confirmed as I lift it to my lips, its flavour vibrant and undeniably real. Beside it rests a protractor, leaning against a globe, and an astrological chart sprawled across my desk. These objects—tools of measurement and mapping—whisper of realities far removed from the apple’s tangible presence. The apple anchors me in the here and now while the instruments gesture toward the distant, the abstract, the infinite.

The apple is a feast for the senses. I can touch it, taste it, smell it, and see it. Though its atoms appear tightly packed, they are, in truth, vast spaces of energy and vibration. Magnify one of its atoms, and its solidity dissolves into a void where particles exist only as probabilities, dancing in fields of energy. Yet, this solid illusion sustains my bite, my taste, and my knowing.

The horoscope beside it lacks the apple’s tangibility. It cannot be bitten or held, but it represents something equally profound: a symbolic map of the cosmos. Where the apple’s reality is immediate, the horoscope projects patterns of meaning across time and space, binding celestial rhythms to the human story. These two things—apple and horoscope, immediate and archetypal—remind me that reality is both seen and imagined, both concrete and infinite.

This paradox of perception defines our existence. The apple, so close I can taste it, is not as solid as it seems. And the stars, so distant their light has travelled for millennia to reach me, are not as unreachable as they seem. Between the apple and Alpha Centauri lies an unfathomable gulf, yet they are part of the same web of existence, bound by the laws of physics and the rhythms of the cosmos.

Newton, watching the fall of an apple, saw the invisible thread connecting Earth and sky. Einstein deepened this insight, showing that space and time are inseparable and that matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. Quantum physics has unravelled the idea of separateness, revealing that particles are not isolated entities but relationships—waves of possibility collapsing into form through interaction.

David Bohm’s theory of implicate order expands this vision further, suggesting that the universe is a seamless whole where every fragment reflects the entirety, like a hologram. In a hologram, each fragment contains the whole image, even when divided into pieces. Similarly, the universe is encoded in every part of itself. The apple before me is not merely an apple; it is a microcosm of the cosmos, its atoms vibrating with the same energies that fuel the stars.

The horoscope, too, speaks to this interconnectedness. It is not about planets and rocks but about relationships, patterns, and cycles. The zodiac mirrors the rhythms of life, like the apple tree that blossoms, bears fruit, and eventually returns to the Earth. The horoscope encodes the rhythms of the cosmos in symbols, reminding us that the patterns above are reflected in the patterns within.

This interconnectedness challenges the illusion of separation. The apple and the stars, the immediate and the eternal, are not opposites but facets of the same reality. Our senses, while invaluable, reveal only a sliver of the whole. Light, for instance, is just one octave in a vast electromagnetic spectrum, and beyond the visible lies a universe of energies—X-rays, gamma rays, cosmic rays—that remain unseen but ever-present.

Similarly, the frameworks of language and culture limit how we perceive and interpret the world. But within these limits lies a profound truth: we are not separate observers of the universe; we are participants in its creation. As physicist John Wheeler suggested, the act of observation itself shapes reality, collapsing waves of probability into patterns of existence. Our consciousness, like a hologram, reflects the universe within it.

The apple before me, the stars above, and the chart on my desk are all threads in this web of unity. The apple speaks of immediacy, the stars of eternity, the chart of the connections that bridge the two. At this moment, I recall a walk in an orchard with my father years ago. He handed me an apple, freshly picked, and told me to hold it carefully as though it contained the world. I didn’t understand him then, but now I see his wisdom. The apple was the world, the stars, and myself—all woven together.

So, as I bite into the apple now, tasting its crispness and feeling its tang, I know it is real. But I also know that in this simple act, I am connected to the stars, to the atoms that form both fruit and flesh, to the patterns that govern the universe.

In the apple, I taste the infinite, and in the infinite, I find myself.