And All One

Carlos Nakai: Earth Spirit

The ancient intuition
that all matter,
all “reality,”
is energy,
that all phenomena,
including time and space,
are mere
crystalizations of mind,
is an idea
with which few physicists
have quarreled since
the theory of relativity
first called into question
the separate identities
of energy and matter.
Today most scientists
would agree with
the ancient Hindus
that nothing exists
or is destroyed,
things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of the pervasive energy that animates the electron. … The cosmic radiation that is thought to come from the explosion of creation strikes the earth with equal intensity from all directions, which suggests either that the earth is at the center of the universe, as in our innocence we once supposed, or that the known universe has no center. Such an idea holds no terror for mystics; in the mystical vision, the universe, its center, and its origins are simultaneous, all around us, all within us, and all One.
--Peter Matthiessen