Jackpot! Our own Treasure Chest

JACKPOT!!!

             This weekend, some three people or more will win big in the National Lotto Mega Power Ball Jackpot sharing over half a billion dollars. As a Latter-day Saint I do not buy lottery tickets because it is a form of gambling.

            I’ve got my own jackpot, my own treasure and so do we all.. “What?” You say.

As bees go in search of their “treasure” each day, they return to the “treasure house” or “hive” and communicate the source of the pollen to others. Now the other bees in the hive can go directly to that same treasure of pollen. That initial bee returns and reports about the treasure using their God-given gift of quantum physics and angles via its waggle dance upon the hive. We have a treasure to share with others also and it is seen in the grand design of our skies and we are in communication with the Grand Designer just as the bees are.

            As stated in the Bible Dictionary, the light of Christ fills the "immensity of space" and is the means by which Christ is able to be "in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things." It "giveth life to all things" and is "the law by which all things are governed." It is also "the light that quickeneth" man's understanding.

SCRIPTURE: “Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—the light which is in all things…even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.”

--Doctrine and Covenants 88: 6-13.

THE LIGHT VS THE DARKNESS    

This BEE now lives in the desert near the city of Tucson. When I first moved here, I thought it was really dark at night. There were few streetlights. Was this safe? I started asking around and found the answer. For years, in order to comply with requests of local astronomers and the Kitt Peak Observatory, Tucson's outdoor lighting code has called for the use of lights that are dim compared to the fluorescent bulbs that illuminate some cities. Then there are the areas that have virtually no streetlights at all.

Tucson  located in Southern Arizona is one of the best places to get up close to major observatories, where mountain ranges lift huge telescopes closer to the sky, and the arid climate offers many clear nights.

One of Arizona's best known astronomical sites, more than 60 miles west of the city is Kitt Peak National Observatory, the world's largest collection of research telescopes: 23 optical telescopes, including the world's largest solar telescope, and two radio telescopes.

[National Optical Astronomy Observatory]

Kitt Peak National Observatory, part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, hosts a diverse collection of astronomical observatories for nighttime optical and infrared astronomy and daytime sun studies. Kitt Peak is 56 miles southwest of Tucson in the Schuk Toak District on the Tohono O’odham Reservation

A part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the site was chosen in the late 1950s, when light pollution from Tucson, with a population of around 200,000, was limited. Now the city has expanded to more than a million people, but astronomers still come from all over the world for Kitt Peak's facilities. For the public, it's one of the most accessible observatories — visitors can drop in any day of the year except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.

Another nearby location features the observatories on Mount Lemmon. At 9,157 feet, it's the highest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains, which stretch across the north side of Tucson includes SkyCenter, one of several sites operated by the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The SkyCenter complex, formerly an Air Force radar base, now is home to half a dozen large telescopes.

Mount Lemmon SkyCenter

“Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together,” in Trifid Nebula, says NASA on its Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site. Mount Lemmon SkyCenter staffer Adam Block took this photo using the 24-inch telescope in the photo at bottom. 

 Two more observatories a few miles away on Mount Bigelow. (The largest, which has a 61-inch mirror, was used to survey the moon for the lunar landings.)

Mount Graham International Observatory

[Photo courtesy of University of Arizona]

Mount Graham International Observatory, northeast of Tucson, is the site of the Large Binocular Telescope, named for its two 8.4-meter mirrors, visible here with the telescope’s housing, about eight stories high, open.

MY LIFE ON KWAJALEIN - PERFECT FOR VIEWING THE STARS

          In the early 1990's my family lived on Kwajalein Island, in the Marshall Islands, where my husband was the head of department overseeing the IT portion of the non-military mission of the US Army base located there. Below is a map showing the location of this tiny island the southern most island of the world's largest atoll, Kwajalein Atoll. The atoll lies in the Ralik Chain, 2,100 nautical miles (3900 km) southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii, at 8°43′N 167°44′E.

Located midway between Japan, Los Angeles and Australia

         The island is only a 1/2 mile wide and just two and a half miles long. The ocean just one mile off the western coast is over two miles deep. It is the perfect place for star gazing because of the clear nights with no nearby light pollution. This is a photo at sunset of some missiles entering the skies north of the Kwaj Atoll where major radar tracking stations are located on many islands. No we weren't in any danger. The atoll is over 100 miles long and it really is not close to anything large just the small islands of Micronesia.

Our "quarters" on the island were located on the lagoon side and just a few hundred feet  from it. We would watch the most gorgeous sunsets I've ever seen. When it was the time of the full moon we could go out the front door walk about twenty feet and look to the right to see it rising and look to the left to see the sun setting. This was because of the long distances involved over the ocean with an unobstructed view. It was always a sacred experience even though I was thousands of miles from the temple.
The Cosmos and the Temple
          In Hugh Nibley's "An Intellectual Autobiography" an introductory chapter from  1978 book "Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless" he shows us the path he has taken among the ancient scrolls and texts that have recently come into our lives. He says that these writings , ancient and forgotten legends and traditions of Abraham match the Joseph Smith version very closely. Other learned divines for 60 generations have argued that the scriptures just don't seem to put it all together...the mysteries of Who we Are and What We are Doing Here. Nibley says this, This is where the Temple comes in. Without the Temple any civilization is an empty shell, a structure of custom and convenience only." ..."For thousands of years the stars have gone on sending us their hints, broadcasting unlimited information if we only knew it; now at least we are reacting to a narrow band on the informational spectrum, putting clues together in a way the Ancients never did. But also we are beginning to suspect that there were times when the Ancients reacted to another band of the spectrum which is completely  lost on us. THE TEMPLE, AS THE VERY NAME PROCLAIMS, IS A PLACE WHERE ONE TAKES ONE'S BEARINGS ON THE UNIVERSE." --page xxvii
          "There was one thing every student of the past has overlooked: here at our doorsteps among the Arizona Indians lies the world's best clue to the spiritual history of the race; nowhere else on earth will one find the old cycle of the Year Rites still observed in full force and unbroken continuity form the beginning." He was referring to the Hopi people who have kept alive a language and culture which preserved the practices and beliefs of our own ancestors from prehistoric times until the nineteenth-century industrialism severed the umbilical cord. Here the clues are both exhilarating and depressing, hopeful and sinister as nowhere else." --page xxv

     The other day on PBS I watched a special on the ancient Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon, Arizona.
The amazing conclusions were so perfectly understandable when viewed as a temple oriented experience that it took my breath away. The intimate and exact alignment to the sun at the equinox, and the various stages of the moon's path were reflected in the concrete structures and walls of many buildings over many miles.

Anasazi Pueblo Bonito ruins at Chaco Canyon

Several nights ago I watched another documentary on the observatories of the ancient Mayan people in the Yucatan. Orientation to the skies and to the stars is found in the ruins of temples in Egypt, Machu Pichu in CuscoPeru pictured below:

(The Intihuatana stone is one of many ritual stones in South America. These stones are arranged to point directly at the sun during the winter solstic) 

Stonehenge and other stone circles in England also telling the story of  the sun and moon and other planets in our universe. These remnants of temple ruins and annual year stories are found all over the world. 

Abraham learns about the sun, moon, and stars in Chapter 3 of the Book of Abraham in our Pearl of Great Price.

SCRIPTURE: "It is given unto thee to know the set time of all the stars that are set to give light, until thou come near unto the throne of God." --Abraham 3:10 

          Then God tells the story of His plan of Creation to Abraham in Chapter 4 with the explanation of man's part in it. This is such a treasure for the understanding of our place in the universe.

SCRIPTURE: "And the Gods organized the lights in the expanse of the heaven and caused them to divide the day from the night; and organized them to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years; And organized them to be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and it was so."

--Abraham 4:14-15

          We have been promised that in the latter days that all things will be restored and hidden things will be revealed. The prophets have all focused on the temple and the message that they specifically were supposed to impart as part of their earthly mission. They wrote these things down and we have them as our scriptures. They have hidden treasures of knowledge within them, but we must dig for these treasures. We must desire that God will open the understanding of our minds with the Light of Christ.

          This BEE is returning to the important book of Isaiah as a genealogist to report where you can look to find the hidden treasures in his writing that I have found. I hope you can stay with me as we wander from one pollen laden flower to another in search of the light and truth there. I will dance my heart out at the hive to communicate where the sources of this treasure are buried within the scriptures.

Cross Pollination - Bee and Quantum Physics; BEE and Isaiah

What is Cross Pollination?

          There seems to be little difference in the definitions of "pollination" and "cross pollination" defined as the transfer of pollen from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another, as by the action of the wind or insects; the genetic exchange of information in two different plants to reproduce more members of the same species, or a cross of the two.

          In my life I have seen the cross pollination that can occur to produce amazingly beautiful roses that are sensitive to the sun and change color as they open from a pale yellow bud to a brilliant fluorescent orange flower. I've seen it in life where two widely divergent specialists begin to talk and collaborate. Their talks and research help look at a subject in a new or different way. Pollinators whether people or wind or animals perform a necessary act of creativity in our lives. Fruit is the natural result and totally new concepts are another.

          The United States Post Office honored Pollinators with a beautiful series of stamps that show four different important pollinators. The wind and man were not included here, mind you. 

Butterflies, bats, birds and bees are featured here. All "B"s. 

The Story of Bees and Quantum Physics Parallel my Studies of Art during College

          In the November 1997 issue of "Discover Magazine" Adam Frank tells a story of the amazing story of Barbara Shipman, a mathematician at the University of Rochester. She tells of how her father, a bee researcher for the Department of Agriculture, used to keep his books on honeybees on a shelf in her room. "It may have just been a convenient space. I remember looking at a lot of these books, especially the one by Karl von Frisch." She and her brothers learned all about the honeybee's dance when she was about nine years old.

          Although Von Frisch's Dance Language and Orientation of Bees took over 40 years before being publishing in 1965, beekeepers and entomologists all over the world had been intrigued and frustrated by his findings. Adam Frank goes on to describe the dance saying "It is easy to see why this beautiful and mysterious phenomenon captured Shipman's young and mathematically inclined imagination." He describes the way this choreography coveys the direction of a food source by varying the angle the waggling run makes with an imaginary line running straight up and down. This line connecting the beehive to the food source, and another line connecting the hive and the spot on the horizon just beneath the sun turns out to be the same as the angle of the waggling run to the imaginary vertical line. Frank says, "The bees, it appears, are able to triangulate as well as a civil engineer.

        It turns out, however, that even when the shape or geometry of the dance changes as the distance to the food source changes, it gets very weird if the food source is closer than a particular critical distance! The bee stops doing the waggle dance and switches into the round dance, running in a small circle, reversing and going in the opposite directions after one or two turns or sometimes after only half a turn. Surprisingly, there are a number of variations between species. Wow, dialects in bee communications. I wonder what happens when a European honeybee mates with the aggressive Africanized bee. 

Quantum Bees

          Barbara Shipman entered college as a biochemistry major and studied the blood (hemolymph) of honeybee larvae, but became much more attracted to the beauty of mathematics and switched majors. She began working on a set of geometric problems associated with an esoteric mathematical concept known as a flag manifold (manifold means space) in graduate school while working on her doctoral thesis." This obscure type of mathematics is known only to a small coterie of researchers well-versed in the minutiae of geometry," Frank explains., "she stumbled across what just might be the key to the secrets of the bee's dance."

          The article by Frank is absolutely fascinating...to a mathematician. He does write so that a lay person can understand a very, very complex subject matter. It turns out that Shipman saw by viewing a three dimensional experience using up to ten or a hundred dimensions, how mathematicians can see "shadows" of a different reality. Shipman was busy projecting the six-dimensional residents of the flag manifold onto two dimensions and it made a hexagon, the shape of a bee's honeycomb. Then she found a group of objects in the flag manifold that when projected onto a two-dimensional hexagon, formed curves that reminded her of the bee's dance. The more she explored the manifold the more she found it precisely matched the bee's dance. "I wasn't looking for a connection between bees and the flag manifold," she says, "I was just doing my research. The curves were nothing special in themselves, except that the dance patterns kept emerging."

     Shipman's research captures both the waggle and circle dance characteristics and shows the relationship that includes those really close distances to a food source. "When you have a physical phenomenon like the honeybee dance, and it follows a mathematical structure, you have to ask what are the physical laws that are causing it to happen." Frank says, "She doesn't believe the manifold's presence both in the mathematics of quarks and in the dance of honeybees is a coincidence. She suspects that the bees are somehow sensitive to what's going on in the quantum world of quarks, that quantum mechanics is as important to their perception of the world as sight, sound, and smell."     

SCRIPTURE: "And it came to pass, as the voice was still speaking, Moses cast his eyes and beheld the earth, yea, even all of it; and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold discerning it by the spirit of God." --Moses 1:27

SCRIPTURE: "...but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all." --Moses 1:6

          Moses saw the earth as God saw the earth, every particle of it; he saw as God sees everything present all at once, from the beginning to the eternities. Obviously this is how revelation can take place as God allows his prophets to see as He sees.

          Hugh Nibley (from my notes many years ago thus source not correctly annotated that said, p154 only) "Moses cast his eyes and beheld the earth, yea even all of it." That he could see, all of it, every particle. Notice we are dealing with particles, particle physics is is very important today...He saw quarks; he saw protons; he saw neutrons. If he knew all the particles, then he knew of what the earth was composed. "And there was not a particle of it which he did not behold, discerning it by the spirit of God."  

          "In the books of Enoch and the books of Abraham (not just ours, but the newly discovered ones also) the special knowledge was passed to Seth and from him to Noah; hence from Abraham to the Egyptians, it was the secret of mathematics and astronomy, according to Jewish tradition accepted by the doctors of the Middle Ages right down to Thomas Hood in modern times."

          Nibley goes on to say "In particle physics a professor told about how to account for the action of certain particles, it must be assumed that there is a force that moves with eight times the speed of light. Until now C, the constant, has always been 186,300 miles a second. That sets the boundaries, the limits beyond which we can't go. Now it seems there must be forces to account for reverses especially in certain mirror effects and the "arrow of time" and the like, that must go much faster than light. We see things in terms of the earth." We don't see things from above or with the eye of God that embraces all things at once."

QUOTATION:  by Hugh Nibley from my notes many years ago (source not correctly annotated that said, p39, Treasures in Heavens, pp 82-83) ""Reduced to its simplest form, creation is the action of light upon matter. Matter itself has no power, being burnt out energy, but light reactivates it. Matter is incapable of changing itself--it has no desire to, and so light forces it into the recycling process where it can again work upon it--for light is an organizing principle.

BEE and an Electromagnetic Theory of Viewing Nature

        I have always had a fascination with light and science. My original course of study during my Junior year was to become a scientific illustrator, combing my two interests. However, my inability to memorize was my downfall. Actually learning to draw scientifically correct came in a special studies class with my biology professor. It was also here that I learned that the stress of meeting the deadlines and that most of the work was graphs and calligraphy or printing in scientific illustration. I I didn't like this so I switched completely to a painting and drawing emphasis in fine art for my Bachelor's degree. My love of science didn't go away. When I began my M.A. project and thesis it started something like this: To produce a series of paintings using a newly emerging electromagnetic theory of viewing nature. My professor's didn't quite understand what I meant so I used the words "vibrational" motif and talked about the halo in ancient religious art. It turned out to be a bit prophetic because within the following year, vibrations were all around everything in the psychedelic art of the late 60's and early 70's.

          My fascination with light and art has continued through the years, especially as it relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the light of the world."--John 8:12.  In the Bible Dictionary it says that the Light of Christ comes upon mankind because of Jesus Christ. For instance, Christ is "the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (D & C 93:2; John 1:9). The light of Christ fills the "immensity of space" and is the means by which Christ is able to be "in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things." It "giveth life to all things" and is "the law by which all things are governed." It is also "the light that quickeneth" man's understanding. (This is not to be confused with the Holy Ghost.)

SCRIPTURE: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall hiss (signal, call for) the ...bee that is in the land of Assyria." --Isaiah 7:18

          I've never been particularly interested in the fly so that's left out of the verse above (maybe a study for another day) and I'll just ponder all that I've learned about the bee. Shipman concluded back in 2007 that "I think the physics of the bees' bodies, their physiology, must be constructed such that they're sensitive to quantum fields--that is, the bee perceives these fields through quantum mechanical interactions between the fields and the atoms in the membranes of certain cells."  

          Shipman's ideas and my own college experience converge as Frank tries to explain that bees have a sensitivity to an effect known as nuclear magnetic resonance, or nmr, when an electromagnetic wave impinges on the nuclei of atoms and flips their orientation. nmr is considered a quantum mechanical effect because it takes place only if each atom absorbs a particular size packet, or quantum, of electromagnetic energy. My thesis was to show the "life force" or light that all living things emit. We can communicate subtly with each other as one spirit to another. When this spirit is removed, our body dies. I suspect that a bee has this same type of light or spirit within their bodies. If this is how God communicates with the bee or a rock or a fly and it obeys, maybe we should also. 

          I think we as humans also have the ability to "see as God sees" because of the "light which is in all things, and through all things and around all things." If we desire for this ability, pray for this gift, live worthy of this gift, and it's God's will and desire for our lives to be enhanced as well as for the benefit of the world and help build His kingdom upon the earth, then we will receive it. 

          The bee is in communication with the same "light" and "quantum mechanics" that we are, so that if the Lord hisses or signals for them to come, they will. Shouldn't we be found in that same position? If God asks us to do something, shouldn't we DO IT? Isaiah warns us over and over again, not to become too involved in our idols, but to do what God asks us to do. Are we busy searching and understanding Isaiah, then applying our own backgrounds, interests, hobbies and experiences to understand our part in building the kingdom of God upon the earth. That is why I am blogging about "A Genealogist Looks at Isaiah."