In part one of this series, the self was described in immunological terms. It was the self as a state of defense, an action against what invades, what is not self. Indeed, so dedicated are white bloods cells to the war of the self that, if needed, they will literally walk into battle.

In this post, part two of three, I want to turn to the stars, to rays of light, to planets, satellites that slide across the night sky, to distant and near things (trees, leaves, bodies, tables) and see the self as a point not of emanation but its opposite, arrival. To do this properly we have to understand that everything takes some time to reach a person. The further something is, the greater the time it takes to be seen (to arrive). In fact, the distance of some things is so great (galactic events and entities) that a real relationship does not exist between the entity/event and their just arriving image. The image of a star is it times all that remains of a long-dead star. Sense of this ghostly present is made by the idea of look-back time.

The time in the past at which the light we now receive from a distant object was emitted is called the look-back time. When astronomers discuss events in distant objects, they take for granted that the actual event occurred earlier because of light travel time. It is similar to finding a series of photographs of a child in a 300 year-old time capsule. We could see how the child was developing 300 years ago, even though he/she would no longer be alive.
The self is that which makes the folds and layers of time into one. The illusion of the all-at-once is the self. The point at which starlight, streetlights, a person seen in a window of a lit room, the swaying of a branch, the bat above the house—what collapses these near and distant happenings into the one moment is the self.


As there is arrival of light, there is emanation of light. And so there's a spot in deep space, a point somewhere far beyond the limits of our solar system—there in the vacuum or the surface of an asteroid, the image of Jesus on the cross has just now arrived. He is looking up at the sky. He is worried that God has abandoned him. We do not so much live and die but make an etch on eternity.