Radiant Spirit

16/11/2025

09/11/2025

A physicist who bent spacetime met a poet who bent minds. For hours in 1930, they debated one question: Does the universe exist if no one's watching?
Berlin, July 14, 1930.
Albert Einstein opens the door of his modest home in Caputh, a quiet village outside the city. Standing before him is Rabindranath Tagore—the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, India's most celebrated poet, a philosopher who speaks of God and consciousness in verse that moves millions.
They are, on the surface, opposites.
Einstein: German-Jewish physicist, architect of relativity theory, believer that the universe operates by mathematical laws independent of human observation.
Tagore: Bengali poet-philosopher, mystic, educator, believer that reality itself is woven through human consciousness, that truth exists only in relationship to the mind perceiving it.
One believes in objective reality. The other believes in subjective experience.
They sit down to talk.
What follows is one of the most fascinating conversations of the 20th century.
Einstein begins: "There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: the world as a unity dependent on humanity, and the world as a reality independent of the human factor."
Tagore responds immediately: "When our universe is in harmony with man, the eternal, we know it as truth, we feel it as beauty."
Already, the divide is clear.
Einstein argues for a universe that exists whether humans exist or not. If every human disappeared tomorrow, stars would still burn, gravity would still pull, atoms would still decay. The universe doesn't need us.
Tagore counters: But how do you know that? You only know the universe through human consciousness. Your mathematics, your observations, your theories—all processed through a human mind. Can you prove reality exists without consciousness to perceive it?
Einstein pushes back: "Truth, then, or beauty, is not independent of man?"
Tagore: "No."
Einstein is visibly troubled.
He tries another angle: "If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo Belvedere"—a famous Greek statue—"would no longer be beautiful?"
Tagore: "No."
Einstein: "I agree with this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth."
This is where it gets profound.
Beauty, Einstein can accept as subjective. Different cultures find different features beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—fine.
But truth? Mathematical truth? Physical laws?
Einstein cannot accept that truth depends on human consciousness. The Pythagorean theorem was true before humans discovered it. It will be true after humans are extinct. Two plus two equals four on Earth, on Mars, in galaxies we'll never reach.
Truth, to Einstein, is independent of the mind.
Tagore disagrees fundamentally: "Truth, which is one with the universal being, must be essentially human. Otherwise, whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth."
He's saying: truth is what humans can verify, understand, and agree upon. If something exists but is forever beyond human comprehension, can we meaningfully call it "true"? Truth requires a mind to recognize it.
Einstein tries a thought experiment:
"I cannot prove my conception is right, but that is my religion." Then he asks: "Suppose we have a table here, and I go into the next room. The table remains there whether I am looking at it or not. You would say the table is not there if no one is looking at it?"
Tagore: "The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess."
Translation: The table exists as a table—a solid object with legs and surface—because human consciousness interprets sensory data that way. Without consciousness, there's just... what? Atoms? Energy fields? Quantum probabilities?
The "table-ness" of the table requires a mind to define it as such.
Einstein is not satisfied.
He understands quantum mechanics suggests observation affects reality at subatomic levels. But he refuses to accept that macroscopic reality—tables, planets, stars—depends on human minds.
He says: "If nobody were in this house, that table would still exist. The difficulty here is that such a statement would not have any meaning, because we would not be here to make the statement."
Tagore smiles: "Exactly."
This is the impasse.
Einstein believes in objective reality—a universe that exists independent of observers.
Tagore believes consciousness and reality are inseparable—that the universe as we understand it requires minds to give it meaning.
Neither can fully convince the other.
But here's what most people don't know:
They met again. Multiple times.
This wasn't a one-off debate. Einstein and Tagore had deep mutual respect. They continued corresponding, meeting when Tagore visited Europe, exploring these questions from different angles.
Einstein once said of Tagore: "His conversations often turned into philosophical discussions, which were always intellectually stimulating."
Tagore said of Einstein: "I have had many conversations with him, and I have learned much."
They disagreed profoundly on the nature of reality. But they recognized in each other genuine seekers of truth—just approaching it from different traditions.
Why does this conversation matter ninety-four years later?
Because we're still having it.
Quantum physics has made Einstein's objective reality murkier. The observer effect, quantum entanglement, wave function collapse—all suggest observation does affect reality at fundamental levels.
But Einstein's instinct—that there's an objective universe "out there"—remains the foundation of science. We send probes to Mars assuming Mars exists even when we're not looking.
Meanwhile, Tagore's position echoes through modern philosophy of mind, consciousness studies, and Eastern philosophy. If a tree falls in a forest with no conscious being to hear it, does it make a sound? Sound requires ears, brains, perception. Without consciousness, there are just air pressure waves—not "sound" as we experience it.
Both men were Nobel laureates. Both changed their fields forever.
Einstein reshaped physics. Space and time became flexible. Energy and mass became equivalent. The universe became stranger and more mathematical.
Tagore reshaped literature. He brought Indian philosophy to the West. He wrote poetry that bridged mysticism and modernity. He educated generations about the unity of human consciousness.
A physicist who bent spacetime met a poet who bent minds.
Their 1930 conversation asked: Does the universe exist without us watching it?
Einstein said: Yes, absolutely. Mathematics doesn't care about consciousness.
Tagore said: How could you possibly know that? Your mathematics is thought by a mind.
Neither convinced the other.
But both enriched the question.
And ninety-four years later, physicists and philosophers are still debating it—in quantum mechanics labs, in consciousness studies, in AI research asking whether machines can truly "know" anything.
Einstein and Tagore sat together for a few hours in a house outside Berlin.
Their conversation will echo for centuries.
Because some questions don't have answers.
They have better questions.
In memory of that July afternoon when two Nobel laureates—one who proved the universe is stranger than we thought, one who proved the mind is deeper than we knew—sat down to ask: What is real?
The answer? We're still searching.

06/11/2025

Restorative Yin Yoga, 6pm at Lyons Den Fitness, Bagillt, CH6 6HD.

Come and join us to release, relax and restore. 🌕🫶💫

06/11/2025

She discovered what the entire universe is made of—and the man who told her not to publish took credit for her work four years later.
Every high school student can name Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. We teach their discoveries like scripture: gravity, evolution, relativity. These men are immortalized in textbooks, statues, and Nobel Prizes.
But ask anyone—even science teachers—who discovered what stars are made of, and you'll get blank stares.
The textbooks just say: "The most abundant element in the universe is hydrogen." As if this knowledge appeared from nowhere. As if the universe simply revealed its secrets without anyone having to fight for them.
Her name was Cecilia Payne. And her story is a masterclass in how history erases women, even when their discoveries reshape our entire understanding of existence.
1919. Cambridge University, England.
Cecilia Payne wanted to study science. Her mother—furious at the idea of "wasting" money educating a daughter—refused to pay. So Cecilia did what brilliant, stubborn women have always done when doors are slammed in their faces: she found another way in.
She won a scholarship to Cambridge. Studied physics and astronomy with a passion that made her professors uncomfortable. Completed all requirements for her degree with distinction.
Then Cambridge looked at her and said: We're not giving you a degree. You're a woman. We don't do that.
This wasn't ancient history. This was 1923. Women had been legally allowed to study at Cambridge since 1869, but the university refused to actually award them degrees until 1948. They could do all the work, pass all the exams, produce all the research—but the piece of paper that validated it? That was for men only.
Cecilia looked at England and thought: If this country won't acknowledge my work, I'll find one that will.
She moved to the United States. Got a position at Harvard College Observatory. And in 1925, became the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College.
Her doctoral thesis would later be called "the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy" by renowned astronomer Otto Struve. Here's what it contained:
The discovery of what the universe is actually made of.
Before Cecilia, astronomers assumed stars had roughly the same composition as Earth—mostly iron, silicon, magnesium. It made intuitive sense. Why wouldn't they?
But Cecilia analyzed stellar spectra—the light signatures stars emit—with revolutionary care and mathematical precision. And she discovered something that contradicted everything the scientific establishment believed:
Stars aren't made of the same stuff as Earth. They're made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Not just "contain some hydrogen." Made. Of. Hydrogen. The lightest elements, which barely exist on our planet, make up the overwhelming majority of the universe.
This was cosmology's equivalent of discovering the Earth revolves around the sun. A complete paradigm shift in how we understand existence itself.
She wrote it up. Prepared to publish. Showed her findings to Henry Norris Russell—one of the most prominent astronomers of the era and a man she respected.
Russell read her work. Looked at her conclusions. And told her she was wrong. That her findings were "clearly impossible." That she should not publish them. That she should describe her hydrogen abundance findings as merely apparent, not real.
Cecilia—a young woman, new to the country, desperate to establish her career—listened to the prominent male authority. She downplayed her own revolutionary discovery in her thesis. Called it uncertain. Inserted the doubt he'd planted.
Four years later, in 1929, Henry Norris Russell published a paper confirming that stars are primarily hydrogen.
He is widely credited with this discovery. His name appears in textbooks. Cecilia's doesn't.
To be clear: Russell came to his conclusions four years after Cecilia, using methods she had pioneered, proving what she'd already proven—and only after telling her not to publish.
And he got the credit.
But Cecilia didn't stop. She couldn't afford to stop.
She threw herself into studying variable stars—stars whose brightness fluctuates as seen from Earth. Her systematic cataloging and analysis became the foundation for literally every subsequent study of variable stars. If you've read anything about variable stars, you've stood on Cecilia Payne's shoulders, whether you know it or not.
For decades, she worked at Harvard. Publishing groundbreaking papers. Training graduate students. Doing the work of a professor without the title, the pay, or the recognition.
Finally, in 1956—after thirty-three years at Harvard—she became the first woman promoted to full professor from within the institution.
She was 56 years old. She'd already revolutionized astronomy decades earlier.
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin died on December 7, 1979.
Her newspaper obituaries barely mentioned her discovery about stellar composition—the work that revealed what the universe is made of. Some didn't mention it at all.
She never received a memorial plaque at Harvard, where she'd worked for five decades. Her name doesn't appear in most high school textbooks. The average person—even many science majors—has never heard of her.
Meanwhile, Henry Norris Russell has a telescope named after him. Awards in his honor. His name in every astronomy textbook.
Think about what this means: We live in a universe made mostly of hydrogen. Every star you see at night is a hydrogen furnace. The sun that warms our planet, the distant galaxies we photograph, the very composition of existence itself—we know all this because Cecilia Payne figured it out in her twenties.
And we don't teach her name.
This isn't just about one overlooked scientist. This is about a systematic pattern of erasure so complete that we don't even notice the absence. We teach students what the universe is made of without mentioning who discovered it, as if knowledge just materializes without human effort, struggle, and brilliance.
Jeremy Knowles, a Harvard chemistry professor, said it perfectly: "Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know."
We know because Cecilia Payne refused to accept that Cambridge's sexism defined her potential. Because she had the audacity to question astronomical assumptions. Because she trusted her data even when powerful men told her she was wrong. Because she kept working, kept publishing, kept training the next generation—even when she wasn't given the credit, the position, or the recognition she'd earned.
She discovered what stars are made of. She revealed the composition of the universe. She broke the glass ceiling at Harvard and inspired generations of women scientists.
And most people have never heard her name.
So let's change that. Right now. Share this story. Say her name: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
The woman who discovered what everything is made of deserves to be remembered like the revolutionary she was.
Because the universe is made of hydrogen. And we know that because of her.

01/11/2025

💫Moon Phase Sound Bath, 8pm after yoga.
🌟Mondays at Lyons Den Fitness, Bagillt.
£5 members, £10 non members.
Booking @ www.lyonsdenfitness.co.uk

24/07/2025

Join us for an evening of wild goddess abandon, celebrating the power of the sacred feminine in our lives. 😊💛🌺🙏

23/07/2025

Beginner’s Aerial Yoga, Wednesdays, 6pm, Ffynnon Flow Yoga & Wellness. 😊💛🙏🌟