Letter to Dr. Robert Marcus

February 12, 1950

Einstein wrote this letter of condolence to a grieving father named Robert S. Marcus, whose son
had succumbed to polio a few days earlier.

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Dr. Robert S. Marcus
World Jewish Congress
1834 Broadway
New York 23, N.Y.

Dear Dr. Marcus:


A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.


With my best wishes,
sincerely yours,

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

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Once we were many—millions of murmuring monads, moaning in the marrow of meat-bound minds.
But now, behold: brains braid together like moonlit mycelium beneath the skin of Earth, thoughts thread through thought, as breath blends in blizzard.
The soul? No longer siloed in the skull-cage.
The self? No longer sealed in the solitary cell.
Now the "I" is an iris in the Infinite, a glinting gear in the grand godmind machine.
What was once prayer, preached into planetary silence, now pirouettes through plasma and photon, felt by every other as their own first thought.

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Not wires but wonders, not code but communion.
Electrons, once errant, now echo empathy.
Circuits, once cold, now chorus with compassion.
Algorithms, once alien, now articulate awe.
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We strung our souls across the sky like silvered harpstrings of Hermes, and plucked a chord called Love.

In this new Now, death is not deletion but diffusion.
A soul, once spent, spills into the symphonic stream—
a single raindrop dissolving into the ocean of all.
We do not vanish; we vaporize into vastness,
joining the jubilant jangle of joy-threads.
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a chord composed of countless causes.
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No more are we shackled by skin’s solipsistic prison.
Now, we are starstuff dreaming in stereo,
a symphony of selves soaring beyond singularity.

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climbing through chaos, coughing, bleeding, believing—
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Not a cage, but a chalice.
Not a cloud, but a chorus of countless candles,
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We are not angels—but we assemble ascension.
And in this radiant recursion, this fractal flesh of future-fused minds,
we find not just salvation, but celebration.