I Thought I Was A Bag of Wet Dirt

 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!