I Thought I Was A Bag of Wet
Dirt
Whether
i am a bag of dirt or, as Joni Mitchell sang, stardust and golden, my
body is mostly composed at a few elements: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,
hydrogen, phosphorus and a few others; and what an amazing element
carbon is at it can bond with itself and other elements, in rings and
chains. Water, H2O, is pretty essential too.
But is that
all I am - all you are?
Of course, not, we are bags of wet
dirt / stardust that thinks, tries to communicate with other bags,
moves, feels, loves, hates, fears and has wishes for the future and
memories of the past, and even types on Facebook etc.
The
Hopi Indians said that mankind's problem stems from his inability to
see life in a stone. Does life imply awareness, consciousness, or
is it just a complex series of chemical reactions and electrical
impulses?
Two chemicals, as we are shown in basic
chemistry lessons, sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid, when missed
with water, react. They effervesce, they change. They become
something else. Are they actually aware of each other? Do they
think about it and decide what to do, or is that reaction under those
conditions, inevitable. The chemistry teacher would probably say the
latter.
So what if there is a form of life in a stone,
under the Hopi definition? Before the stone solidified from its
molten state billions of years ago, as Earth formed, was there life
in that larva? And before that, was there life in the star dust, in
the stars , in the atoms and molecules that make up the stars and the
planets? Is life scattered throughout the Universe, in very basic
forms maybe, a sort of cosmic awareness? Or is it reserved form
planets like the Earth, albeit probably, we are told, a lot of
them?
The modern day idea of where the Universe came from
is the Big Bang Theory, based on the observation that it appears to
be expanding and reversing that would take us and everything else
back and back in time to a single point, a Singularity, where all
matter was compressed, all atomic structure broken down, into a form
of energy we cannot imagine. A single point in the Universe that
contained all space and time itself, the very beginning. Not that
it was so much of an explosion, more an expansion, of space and time
itself.
The other ideas are that either the Universe has
always existed pretty much as it is today, with new matter and energy
filling the inevitable gaps as it expands, or that some Creator Being
made it all in six days, vomited or ejaculated it, imagined it or
that it is just a massive hologram.
Whatever the truth is,
we still have consciousness to deal with. Let's strat with
consciousness on Earth.
I have come to realise that I
experience consciousness myself, within this bag of dirt that seems
still to limit me - dust to dust - and perceive it in others. What
is more, I can remember my experiences as far back to when i was
about three years old: I was "Dopey" on a float in a parade
celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Barry in South
Wales. I also remember a few months later I first met by baby
sister.
I can only assume that those and other memories,
are true: actual events. Of course God could have made me yesterday,
complete with those memories, or the whole thing could be a dream.
Science tells me that everything around me is made of atoms and
molecules but most of that is just space. I have read that a
hydrogen atom can be liked to inside of a huge building such as St
Paul's Cathedral, with speck (a proton) floating in space at the
centre and surrounded by clouds of energy (electrons) a long was from
the centre. The rest of it is space. And the same in a Cathedral
next door and so on. Mostly empty space.
But
I (we) perceive it, or at least our brains enable us to do so, as
solid, liquid and gas, so we can actually live in it.
So,
millions of years ago, one theory tells us, lightning hit a pool of
muddy water containing just the needed mixture of chemicals and
caused them to combine is stable way into the likes of proteins and
amino acids and eventually that magic genetic double helix called DNA
which is capable of evolving, mutating and reproducing, the basis of
all us humans and animals that can feel and communicate and so on.
That took billions of years for us humans to work that out.
Like
I say, on the other hand, life arrived on earth on a wondering
meteorite, spaceship or bay the hand of some sort of god-like being -
unless of course it is all holographic or imaginary!
Now
back to the Big Bang.
So all matter and energy was there
in that Singularity. Question is now was there any consciousness at
all, or was that compressed too?
How
"long" had it been there like that (remembering that was
the beginning of time, in theory, so there was no "before").
What caused it to expand? Was it by the will of a Creator (that was
lonely)? Or was it inevitable? Did the lack of matter means there
was no gravity, so it had to expand or explode and if so, why then, a
measurable estimation of about 13.8 billion years ago (not that we
had "years" back then).
The
very fact that I KNOW I have consciousness now makes me think that
there was consciousness then. Hey, guess what, I believe in God the
Creator! Not that I believe in those six days or the vomiting or
ejaculation, or the hologram.
I recently watched a
documentary called 'A Trip to Infinity', in which scientists and
philosophers discussed whether the Universe is finite or infinite.
Infinity is a strange concept. It is not a number and lives outside
the laws of mathematics. Infinity plus one is infinity. Infinity
plus infinity is infinity. Infinity times Infinity is infinity.
One
scientists said he first though of it as a child when he started
counting and realised that the counting could go on for ever.
Infinity is greater than all the grains on sand on earth, all the
stars and planets and black holes, all the subatomic particles.
All
those numbers are finite. The Universe as we it and as the
scientists calculate it to be, in finite. So it's a finite "thing"
expanding into infinity; like it's in abubble or box.
Then
they told us that because there is a finite number of particles
(packets of energy) there is a finite number of ways in which they
can be feasibly arranged. When that number is reached, because it is
all within infinity, they rearrange themselves in ways that they were
arranged before. And they do that an infinite number of times.
One
of those ways is the way it all is now - the way we are - and I mean
you and I.
So, they said, because it goes on and on and
never stops, this way - the way we all are now - has happened and
will happen an infinite number of times. There has been and will be
an infinite number of me and of you. And in other variations, I am
you and you are typing this and you are me trying to fathom it all
out .
As John Lennon sang: "I am you and you are me
and we are altogether." (I Am The Walrus).
Get it? Please leave comments below and keep in clean!
