…MATTER…

Stage 72 / Tuesday 6 juillet / From Hospital de Órbigo to Murias de Rechivaldo / 21 km

 

Arriving yesterday at the end of a long stage, I was in seventh heaven! For the old Roman bridge restored in the 13th century over the rio Órbigo and which permits entry to the village is truly one of the most picturesque I have seen up to now. It has 19 arches, and at 204 meters it is the longest bridge on the camino. What a beautiful use of matter! I was very hungry, and with a companion on the route I treated myself to a local specialty, a soup of tomatoes and pieces of bread … with a trout on top: ideal to renew the calories lost en route.

 

We then discovered a hostel outside the village, in the middle of a poplar grove. The evening was punctuated by the loud and melodious whistling of the orioles nesting in the poplars around us. It sounded like flutes vibrating all around the hostel, and the graceful sounds exchanged between these beautiful golden volatiles lifted my spirit! I was wakened again this morning by these vibrant calls. Thus I set out again, dreaming about the vibratory encounter between matter and spirit, mysterious encounter that I’m going to attempt to deepen again at the subatomic level.

 

Ancient wisdom saw in matter and spirit a single identical source. And now science is approaching the confirmation of that. Matter and energy merge together when one speaks of vibration and corpuscular radiation. Matter is observed when an energy field, not localizable and momentarily immobile in space becomes excited. This field seems filled with elementary “bricks” of matter that a “cement” of elementary interactions renders structurally solid. At this level, as I said yesterday, one no longer speaks of waves and corpuscles, but rather of vibrating cords determining the state of the field, excited or not!

 

Among these elementary bricks, we know better and better those called electrons: they have interesting practical properties. They can somehow travel easily at the surface of certain atoms (in particular those we call metals), and then place themselves with the help of the cement of interaction as if they were the molecular epidermis. It is by the electrons that information which structures matter, forming what one calls molecules, with properties clearly distinct from each other. Very stable, nearly indestructible and indivisible, the electrons defy good sense, because if one projects a single electron across two clearly distinct openings, it gives the impression that it can cross both simultaneously!

 

The electrons act like clouds which envelop the nucleus of an atom. They occupy successive orbital zones, or levels of energy. If one imagined an atom like a cloudy sphere 100 meters in diameter, the nucleus would the size of a pea. Inside the cloud, the electron behaves randomly; one doesn’t know exactly where to find it. Invisible, elusive electrons seem to swirl. It seems to change zone of trajectory under the effect of an excitation, and each leap requires a quantum of energy. But in returning to its original orbit zone, it restitutes this energy in emitting a grain of light, a photon!

 

The electron is at the same time wave or group of waves, and it is also a field which can manifest itself even if the particle has not materialized. It’s a sort of thing that impregnates the environment where it seems to exist. Most of all, it gives it an intrinsic global property: each atom of distinct matter has a number called atomic number which represents the number of electrons which show up in the nearby orbital zones. Hydrogen has only 1, helium has 2, lithium 3, beryllium 4, boron 5, carbon 6, etc. This is the growing classification of elements seen in Stage 36 (Mendeleev’s classification)!

 

The electrons are therefore the possible information conserved definitively in memory. And like an oriole, I begin whistling in cadence “One, two, buckle my shoe, hydrogen, helium! Three, four, shut the door, lithium, beryllium! Five, six, pick up sticks, boron and then carbon!” My brave electrons contribute to structuring matter and spirit. The information that they pass on becomes more and more elaborate, until becoming an elementary level of consciousness, capable of accelerating the process of its own structuring. Is there a combustible original to the motor of such a structuring?

 

I have neglected speaking about the apparent speed of rotation of the electrons around the atom, and which depends on its degree of excitation. For the hydrogen atom in its fundamental state, the speed seems rather grandfatherly: a little more than 2000 km/second. But for the bigger atoms, the speed increases rapidly for the electrons in the orbiting layers closest to the nucleus. Typically it can then be around 30’000 km/second.

But the photon liberated during a change of orbital zone is intact, and goes at the speed of light, 300’000 km/second. Would it therefore be the light that is the ultimate carrier of information? Would it be the dynamic cause of superior information? If so, then “Fiat lux !” Let there be light!

 

Ancient Chinese thought was not hampered by so much science in affirming, in its approach of Ying Yang that the spirit is material, and matter is spiritual. Now science permits discovering that the electron is at the same time a support of information (atomic number) and of electricity (electric current is general due to the displacement of electrons at the surface of a conducting material). Thus, information and electric displacement are at the base of brain functioning: matter and spirit are here also linked in a format which associates itself with that of the Ying Yang symbol! Astonishing premonition of the Ancients!