“The Great Invisible”

10 May 2005

My best friend, Murray Almstead, died last week and unfortunately I could not immediately join his family due to a road trip I could neither delay nor put off.  And so I am thinking of my friend as I drive along and then become tangled in a road traffic jam and looking out about at the scenery, I notice a hedge which is a mass of solid green leaves but there in one small place in this solid presentation of green is a hole, a dark hole.  Suddenly, I know that inside that hole, where there are no leaves present, is my friend Murray.  Inside that hole, there are all sorts of limbs and roots of the shrubs but they are invisible to me.  That all this stuff which supports all those leaves, is there, hidden from view or is invisible and that Murray is like that now.  Not gone really, just no longer visible.

Now you have to understand that one aspect of my friendship with Murray was that we often traded questions or ideas to ponder and so I find it 100 percent natural that as he departed he would leave me contemplating what I now want to call the “Great Invisible”. 

Years ago I become aware of shadows as a part of this reality. I mean I actually see the shadow of a thing as a part of the thing itself.  I am not sure, but I suspect most people do not see the shadows of things: that shadows do not register with them, in their vision processing of reality.

From Murray, I now understand that I, like shadows and most people, have never paid enough attention to or even been aware of “The Great Invisible”, yet it has been here, all around me, all the time I have been alive.

The example I provided above of a shrub and all its hidden limbs and roots is a good example and I know you are saying, “Well of course! No big epiphany there.” And you are right but with Murray’s death, I have become aware of a bigger aspect to all that is invisible to us.  Actually, there may be more “stuff” invisible to us than visible, which is a strange concept to grasp.

Now the big brains all say that there is not enough matter in the universe. I am not sure how they have come up with this conclusion but they all say that the only explanation for the universe working at all is that based on what they see and calculate when looking out at the cosmos is that there is this matter or stuff which we cannot detect yet or see.  They call this “stuff”, dark matter.  They, I think, could easily call it, “The Great Invisible” and according to the great minds, there is more dark matter in the universe than the stuff we call stars and planets. Weird!

“The Great Invisible”. My memories are a part of the “Great Invisible”. Was thinking how great it would be to have some device which hooked around my head and which would create a hologram of a memory I thought up to show someone else.  I can talk about a memory with someone else but it is always invisible. 

Faith is part of the “Great Invisible”. Faith that the bridge you are riding over with a car will not suddenly collapse and all the engineering associated with the design and development of the bridge is part of the “Great Invisible”.

Oh, I am loosing my way and not making the point strong enough.

“The Great Invisible” is a concept, a view, awareness, just like awareness of dark and light. Visible and invisible. Obvious and not. Like a lot of things the more obvious, the more we overlook them, take them for granted and accept them without question or wonder.

I ponder “The Great Invisible”.  Murray is now part of the “Great Invisible” but just because he is part of that does not make him “gone”. Like I said, they more I think about it, the more convinced that more “stuff” is in the “Great Invisible” than not.

Electricity is invisible. Air is invisible although we can see its effects in the form of wind. Dreams are invisible. My whole backside is invisible to me and yet I know it exists. 

Existence and visibility. Existence can be in the form of visible or invisible. 

“The Great Invisible”. Cannot seem to completely wrap the arms of my mind around it and perhaps that is one of its most important properties. It is not confined, defined, like all visible. It is everywhere all the time, in and around and behind. It is not the absence of but rather the completion of the whole. Visible and invisible.

Ok, so if I accept the concept of “The Great Invisible” and how it is probably bigger in scale than all we consider to be reality, how does it impact me or anyone else? Can acceptance of the concept make me more aware of this reality?  ill I “see” Murray in all the spaces, which are invisible to me? Invisible meaning hidden from view? Yes, I guess. 

God is invisible, well sort of.  Can see him sort of like seeing air in that you can see his present but not him directly.

Perhaps the visible is so seductive that is why we have all ignored the “Great Invisible”, do not look for it, and see it all about us. Is imagination required to “see” or “feel” the “Great Invisible”? Perhaps? Perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps not.

“Face value.”  “What you see is what you get.” Maybe not.

I think the “Great Invisible” is probably part of the great unknown, part of what is thought about the after life or heaven and hell, yet, if I use the definition that the “Great Invisible” is that which is blocked from our view just because something is in front to block or we can not “see” in the spectrum required, then heaven and hell and the afterlife are a part of the “Great Invisible”.

Blocked from view. Cannot see because not in the right spectrum. You do know that we see with our eyes only a very narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and that most of the spectrum is invisible to us. Like heat. We usually cannot see heat and yet we can feel it. Radiation is like that too. We cannot see it and yet it exists. Sound cannot be seen most of the time and yet it exists.

“The Great Invisible”. Much more to ponder before I will accept that I actually know it and have integrated it into my vision, thoughts, awareness.

For more Ron Stultz writings, click here.