ORIGIN OF LIFE

In scientific textbooks under this heading, 'Origin of Life", are found a variety of theories as to how life may have started from the random mixing of chemicals and physical forces. The assumption, according to these theories, is that life originated with a DNA type replicating molecule. This is a huge assumption, however, since no one has managed to get a DNA molecule to replicate outside of a cell, even when the DNA molecule is surrounded in a controlled laboratory setting with all the chemical ingredients that would be available to it within a cell.

But even if you believe that life began with a replicating molecule you still have to explain how a system that metabolizes energy, that manufactures proteins and that genetically replicates can form by the random actions of physical forces and chemicals. And this is a process that took place not in a controlled laboratory but on this planet at least 3.8 billion years ago when the planet was being bombarded by asteroids, spewing volcanoes, with a toxic carbon dioxide rich atmosphere and surface temperatures above the boiling point of water. It is a process that originally was thought to have taken hundreds of millions of years but is now thought, because of new discoveries concerning the age of microbial life and the environmental conditions of early earth, to have taken only tens of millions of years. And it is a process involving delicate organic molecules that in life are protected from the external environment by at least a cell wall and by the cell's own commitment to it's survival. Here we have a scenario in which exposed, unprotected organic molecules are coming together and forming proteins in unbelievably harsh environments and staying in tact for millions of years. Mind you that all the scientists who work on creating these scenarios, including Nobel laureates, cannot create with their highly evolved brains and with the most sophisticated technical apparatus available to them in their laboratories, any system starting from scratch that either replicates, metabolizes or manufactures protein. Yet in this scenario the mystery of these systems, which is still not understood by humans, has somehow been 'discovered' by lifeless molecules.

Even if all of this were possible, which it is not, can we really assume that any assemblage of chemicals will, by itself, lead to the beginning of life? Absolutely not, and that is because replication, protein manufacture and metabolism are biological processes and biological processes are categorically different than purely chemical processes. Let me explain. Biological processes have, of course a chemical and/or an electrical component, but that is hardly the whole story. Writing a novel has a physical component but describing the physical movements of the author's hand as she manipulates her pen across a piece of paper would hardly be a complete or satisfying explanation for the origin or creation of her novel.

Scientists limit themselves to what is seen, but biological processes, like human creative activities, are not completely visible. Intention cannot be seen. Purpose cannot be seen. It can be inferred but not directly observed. All biological processes have intention. All non-biological chemical processes do not have intention. The intention of ALL biological processes is to promote the survival and desires of a living being. Whether it's a single celled organism with thousands of simultaneous processes or a one hundred trillion celled organism like ourselves with quadrillions of simultaneous processes, ALL of these processes are synchronized and coordinated in the service of that being. Again, scientists are limited to the observation of the material world. They cannot see intention; they cannot see purpose; and they cannot see the beings that these processes serve. And above all, they cannot see the Being whose intention it was to create these physical bodies in the first place.

Let's look again at a simple chemical process. If I add heat to liquid water it will boil and turn to a gas. The water molecules do not want to become water vapor and they do not resist becoming water vapor. There is nothing in that molecule that could care one way or the other. The same is true with the expansion of gases or the electro-magnetic joining of atoms to become compounds or the separation of compounds to become atoms. There is no entity within the atom or the molecule that has any interest or investment in combining or separating, in contracting or expanding. There is no "it" there that cares one way or the other. These bits of matter are blindly observing chemical and physical laws. Now biological processes are completely different. Every living being is committed to its own survival. Every living being must perform a series of tasks to insure its survival. For instance, every living being functions best within a certain range of temperatures. When it gets too hot or too cold for this being, a series of processes, chemical, electrical and physical, will kick in to allow this being to either change its internal temperature or move to a warmer or cooler environment. Every living being needs nutrients and every living being has a series of processes to discern those needed nutrients in the external environment, to take them into the internal parts of their bodies and to digest, or chemically alter them so that they can be used as energy and for material for growth. All the processes of the nervous system, the reproductive system, the circulatory system, etc., etc., every one of the quadrillions of electrical and chemical biological processes that are occurring in your body at this very moment as you read these words, every single one, is coordinated and synchronized toward the goal of your survival and the satisfaction of your desires. And this is true for every living being from humans on down to single celled creatures that conduct and synchronize not quadrillions but many thousands of simultaneous biological processes.

Now this will, this desire to survive, although not acknowledged or discussed, is implicit in every writing of evolutionary biologists from Darwin to Dawkins and everyone in between. The unexamined force that drives the whole concept of evolution is the will to survive. Biologists do not discuss this force because they cannot see it. Yet what force can be seen? Physicists cannot see gravity or electromagnetism, but they deduce them from their effects on objects, on matter. No one questions the reality of gravity or electromagnetism, so why question the reality of will, which is as easily deducible from its effect on living bodies as gravity and electromagnetism are deducible from their effect on inanimate objects. No statement, no theory, no conjecture about evolution is possible without the underlying assumption that every living being is "trying" to survive.

Noted biologist Stephen Jay Gould, in an attempt to explain the supposed evolution from a simpler prokaryote type cell to a more complex eukaryote cell, writes "Surely, the mitochondrian that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world." Yes, all considerations are eliminated by these hard nosed scientists except, except, EXCEPT the desire, the commitment, the determination, the will, to survive. Whether or not there ever was a separate being that Gould refers to as a mitochondrian is not the point. The point is that if there was one, the only explanation for its incursion into the interior environment of a larger cell, is its desire to survive. If even a mitochondrian, the precursor not to more advanced species, but to an organelle, a microscopic unit within a larger eukaryote cell, has a will to survive, how can we begin to talk about the origin of life in purely chemical and physical terms, how can we ignore this central question of the origin, not of physical bodies, but the origin of will?

What is the origin of this will to survive? When we say that a human, a chimpanzee, a daffodil, an amoeba, has a desire to survive, what do we mean by that? WHO is it that has this desire? Is it the body that is trying to survive? When the human or the amoeba fails in its survival attempt and dies, what happens? Does the body disappear? Of course not. If you could find enough ice your body and the amoeba's body could survive in tact for centuries. In death the body does survive. It is not the survival of the body that we are trying to achieve. It is the continuation of the spirit within the body that we are striving for. Our physical bodies are made mainly of protein molecules. Protein molecules, just like the water molecules that we discussed above, are inert matter. They do not want anything. They have no goals. Desires and goals originate in beings not matter. Beings want things, bodies do not.

Let's interject a word here about that original survivor, you know the one I mean. The one that emerged, according to modern science, from a fortuitous assemblage of chemicals and started suddenly replicating and staying in tact and managing to assemble all the ingredients it needed to replicate again, and avoid too much heat and too much cold, too low a PH balance and too high a PH balance, avoid too much UV exposure and too little, avoid direct contact with a host of chemicals, including oxygen, that would destroy it. You remember that delicate first organic replicating molecule that would not last five minutes in any environment that we know of, even an environment without predators, if it did not have the protection of a cell. So how did that original survivor, Abby Genesis* I believe the name was, how did Abby learn to survive? I know we all have heard amazing stories of very young children and animals who, by some awful turn of fate, were separated from their parents and from any knowledgeable, caring adult and still managed to survive. We can sort of imagine how they did this. Spurred by intense hunger they managed to find food. Spurred by intense cold they managed to find warmth. Spurred by the threat of physical dangers they managed to find shelter. But that is not the problem for Abby. Abby doesn't have to learn HOW to survive. ABBY has to learn to first WANT to survive. Is Abby a he, she or an it? If Abby is just a molecule we don't even have a name for the part of Abby that would want to survive. We also don't have a name for the part of Abby that would experience hunger, thirst, cold or danger, or that would experience anything that would spur Abby to do anything else. In fact we cannot imagine Abby doing anything, since Abby is a molecule and molecules never have and never will do anything 'by themselves', much less do any of the things above, including replication, which we humans can't begin to do 'by ourselves' four billion years later.

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed an explosion in the power, capacity and sophistication of electronic equipment that is referred to as the 'Silicon Revolution.' The discovery of the great conductive power of silicon to transmit enormous numbers of electronic impulses enabled this revolution to take place. But it was not, of course, the silicon itself, but the brilliant applications of silicon and the brilliant applications of electronic code by electrical engineers and computer scientists that created this revolution. In the same way, the explosion of complex life on this planet can be looked at as a protein revolution. It is the enormous conductive power of proteins for both chemical and electrical reactions that enabled the creation of the amazingly complex life forms that inhabit this planet. But to say that nucleic acids and proteins created life, that some of these acids and proteins 'figured out' how to grow bodies, grow brains, develop consciousness, create energy from carbon dioxide (photosynthesis) or figured out anything; to say that proteins see, or think or have any awareness whatsoever, is ridiculous. Proteins, your body, is nothing more and nothing less than the conductor of your biological processes. And your biological processes are what you, consciousness, and God, or the cosmic consciousness, have created to enable you to participate in the physical universe, to maintain your body so that you can satisfy your desires through your body. To say that nucleic acids and proteins created life, rather than that nucleic acids and proteins are the material used to create life, is like saying that the element silicon, by itself, created the microprocessors and transistors and computer chips that caused the Silicon Revolution.

Has this argument gotten too 'mystical' for you? Are you scoffing at these ideas before you really consider them? To my mind it is the belief in the motive power of acids and proteins that is the really weird idea. It is the notion that a molecule could suddenly start replicating by 'itself' that is truly nutty. In this very moment if you are scoffing at these ideas, please ask yourself this question, "Who is it that is scoffing?" Is it the proteins in your tongue that are uttering those sarcastic words, or the proteins in your brain that are having those skeptical thoughts? Try to put aside for a moment the materialist mind set that we all have been indoctrinated in. How does it strike you? What is your experience? Do you feel like you are proteins that happen to talk and think and desire things? Or is the 'you' that has these thoughts, that has this sarcastic point of view, is that 'you' a thing at all? Are you meat that talks and thinks or are you really a spiritual being, a non-physical being that inhabits a physical body and that has countless electrical and chemical processes that enable you to inhabit this body and continue this existence in the physical universe?

Let's get back to that replicating molecule. Scientists attempts to replicate DNA outside of a cell are as doomed to failure as loved one's attempts to get a corpse to respond to their anguished cries, and for exactly the same reasons. Replication, like digestion, like metabolism, like circulation, like seeing and hearing and tasting and touching, is a biological process in the service of a being. Molecules, even protein molecules, are inert matter. Yes, in a living being protein molecules conduct all kinds of incredibly intricate and precise processes whose goal is your survival, but outside of the nexus of consciousness, will and intelligence of a living being, protein molecules don't do anything and they certainly don't 'want' to do anything. Proteins, just like the rest of the inanimate world, just are. The DNA molecule will not replicate outside of a cell because it doesn't want to. There is no being there that is using the DNA molecule to replicate, and the DNA molecule outside of a cell is a molecule that has no interest in replicating or in anything else.

Now a cell is a different story entirely. A single celled life form is a living being. It does want to survive, and it is committed to it's survival. Also, a cell can live for a short period without it's nucleus. So, just as you could transplant a heart from one being to another, you could, theoretically, take the nucleus (the DNA) from one cell and transplant it to another providing that you could do it quickly enough. But expecting a DNA molecule to replicate by itself would be like expecting a disconnected heart to start pumping or a disembodied brain to start conducting electrical impulses before it was inserted into another body.

Living beings, as opposed to inanimate objects, are not passive. They want their bodies to stay in tact and to survive. As opposed to water molecules that have no interest in whether or not they happen to change into water, ice or vapor form, or whether or not they randomly break down into elements or combine to form larger molecules, living beings are committed to the survival of their physical bodies in their present form. And they need certain things from their environment in order to survive. All living things, then, have a point of view. They are striving to achieve something. They need nutrients. Having enough nutrients is good. Having too little or too much is bad. They need a certain amount of warmth. Having warmth within their optimum range is good, having too much or too little is bad. They may need sunlight, water, minerals, animal proteins, etc. Whatever their needs are, they are operating in an environment in order to meet these needs. They are invested. They need to find or create what enhances their survival, which, from their point of view is good, and avoid or destroy what threatens their survival, which from their point of view is bad. Whether or not they succeed may have a certain randomness to it, but there is nothing random about their lives, their bodies, or the way in which they interact with their environment.

Now to imagine that an "assembled" DNA molecule, by whatever tortured, impossible logic you use to imagine such an assemblage taking place, would suddenly start replicating by 'itself' and not only that, but that the new, replicated molecule would have exactly the same will and determination to replicate as its progenitor, and that it would have the same commitment to survive and to stay in tact until it was able to replicate, and that it would have the same determination to accumulate the materials that it needed for that replication, in other words, that it would suddenly be a living being with consciousness, will and intelligence (and by intelligence I mean, of course, not I.Q., but the ability to read its environment and adjust its behavior to get its survival needs met), is such a myopic conclusion that it could only be arrived at by people who have been so obsessed by their observations of the physical world that they have never stopped to notice that their desires, their emotions, their entire experience, that which they call their lives, has never been observed by anyone but themselves, and that these observations have been made by a self that is at once completely unobservable and the central and most obvious fact of their existence.

Physical bodies are not life. They are the material that life uses. Evolution as is commonly understood and studied is not about the evolution of life, but about the evolution of the equipment that life uses. If the first bodies on this planet were replicating molecules or single cells, if they first appeared in warm tide pools, in thermal vents on the ocean floor, embedded in rocks or in caves; they were not the origin of life. They were a result, not a cause. They were the result of the spiritual being that wanted to create an existence of seemingly separate entities. These molecules, or cells, were not the creators of life, but the first creations of the creator of life. They were instruments that fulfilled the intention of their creator.

Life as we know it, as we experience it and relate to it, is not bodies and biological processes; it is the spirit, the consciousness, will and intelligence that inhabits these bodies and is served by these processes. What do we mourn at a death? The body? The body is still there in the coffin. What do we celebrate at birth? A new body? If that were the case we would be as joyful at the birth of a stillborn baby as a live one.

So, 'The Origin of Life,' as is written in scientific text books, is not about the origin of life at all. It is about the first material, the first pieces of equipment that life, that consciousness, will and intelligence used. Will, consciousness and intelligence preceded physical bodies and biological processes. A discussion about how humans use consciousness, will and intelligence to create the entirety of the 'man-made' world, and something about how God, or the cosmic consciousness may have used Divine will and intelligence to create the natural world, is discussed in other posts.

*abiogenesis....living organisms arising spontaneously from non-living matter.


Any comments? Please let me hear from you.

FACTS & OPINIONS

Here are a few things I know. I will be using some gargantuan numbers. While no one has actually counted these things, these are modest and best estimates based on the latest scientific research. You have one hundred trillion cells in your body. Each of these cells contains membranes that separate one chemical process from another. Very modestly, there are at least one hundred electrical or chemical processes going on at each moment in these one hundred trillion cells. That means that at this moment, as you read these words, ten quadrillion processes are going on within the individual cells of your body. A quadrillion is a billion millions. Walking the earth at the present time are a bit over six billion people. That means that you have one million six hundred thousand biological processes taking place at this very moment for each of the six billion people on this planet. And those are just the processes that happen within the cells. Another myriad of processes is happening between the cells, because all of these processes are coordinated and synchronized to bring about your moment to moment survival.


Now who is coordinating and supervising all this activity? I asked this question of a friend of mine of a materialist, scientific bent. These startling numbers barely aroused her. She said, "the genes" and promptly returned to sleep. Now before you doze off and return to that perpetual slumber that we in modern society call wakeful consciousness, let me share with you a few facts about 'the genes'. In each of the one hundred trillion cells of your body lie three billion base pairs of nucleotides that make up all your coded gene sequences. That means that you have a total of three sextillion nucleotides. Here is something to help you wrap your mind around that number. An individual nucleotide is a tiny piece of a kind of nucleic acid. How tiny? Well, they are too tiny to be seen no matter what instrumentation one uses. You can imagine their size if you realize that over three billion are encased in the nucleus of each microscopic cell in our bodies. Now if you were able to disentangle each of these three billion nucleotides from the nucleus of every one of your one hundred trillion cells and arrange them in one impossibly thin strand; that strand would stretch from here to the sun (93,000,000 miles) and back!


So, are these three sextillion sequenced nucleotides coordinating and synchronizing the ten quadrillion biological processes happening within the one hundred trillion cells in our bodies? Absolutely not! These nucleotides sit passively (not that surprising when you consider that they are matter) encased in the nucear membrane of each cell. When a certain sequence of nucleotides, of genetic information, is needed, a protein molecule miraculously finds its way through a tiny passage way in the nuclear membrane and then, even more miraculously, finds the exact spot among the three billion tiny nucleotides where the exact sequence is located. Then, that molecule is, amazingly, joined by several other molecules which also find this exact location and they combine to make an RNA molecule which presses up against the needed sequence and copies it. Then the RNA molecule with the copied sequence miraculously finds its way out of the nuclear membrane and arrives, miraculously, at the exact spot in the cytoplasm where the protein is manufactured from the code. (How this manufacturing takes place is even more amazing and mysterious). But all that the gene sequence does is it allows itself to be copied. That's it! That is all the genes do! They allow themselves to be copied. They are not coordinating. They are not supervising. They are not thinking about your welfare. They are microscopic pieces of nucleic acid. They are sitting enfolded in the nucleus of your cells and the only thing they do is allow themselves to be copied, and they don't even willfully do that. That is done merely in response to an enzyme. So, not meaning to disturb your slumber, I must ask again, if we eliminate the genes, who or what is coordinating all this activity? Of your three sextillion nucleotides, forming thirty thousand genetic sequences, who decides which precise ones are needed at each moment and causes those precise parts of the code to be revealed and copied? I'll give you one hint. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, evolutionary biologists and the whole cadre of 'clear eyed realists' don't have the foggiest idea.

I attempt to answer that question, as best I can, in a number of the other posts. For now, let's consider a few more facts. At the current measure, ninety-four per cent of the universe is invisible. This is not my nutty observation. This is astrophysicists' nutty observation. Oh, and by the way, they measured it. Because even though it cannot be seen, this invisible universe has an effect on gravity. Now if you are not part of the universe don't pay any attention to the following. But if you are a part of the universe, please listen carefully! The visible part of you, in other words, everything that you can see and everything that you learn in biology, and everything that Richard Dawkins is talking about, is only a small part of you. The rest is invisible.

Why is that strange? The self can't be seen; consciousness can't be seen; your entire experience of your life can't be seen by anyone other than yourself. Love can't be seen; ambition can't be seen; passion can't be seen; and intelligence can't be seen. They can, of course, be experienced, but they can not be observed directly by others, only inferred from the way they effect your body and your behavior. So at the same time that evolutionary biologists and organic chemists are merrily eliminating the notion of a soul, a self and a consciousness from our vocabulary, based on the evidence that they have never seen these things, astrophysicists are announcing to the world that ninety four per cent of it is invisible.

The tragedy of September 11 was greatly exacerbated because the police department was not communicating with the fire department. In fact, the whole episode might have been averted if the FBI had communicated with the CIA. Could the spiritual tragedy now being wrought by these insular evolutionists likewise be averted if they would lift their eyes from their microscopes and listen to, or even consider, the information that is being discovered by their colleagues, the astrophysicists? Because of their scientific training, we cannot reasonably expect biologists to give any credence to the spiritual experiences that people have been relating since the beginning of language, and writing since the beginning of writing. But how can they ignore, not the conjectures, but the measurements of their scientific brethren?

What evolutionists and biologists have discovered is a small part, and the least subtle, least causal part, of the tip of creation. They have discovered a tip of the tip. Based on these few crumbs of knowledge, they have pretended to have unraveled the mysteries of life. They have replaced awe with a feigned omniscience and gratitude with a mocking arrogance toward any one that still has a shred of reverence and humility as they contemplate creation; in fact toward anyone who would contemplate their existence at all, since contemplation itself has become obsolete because everything has now been seemingly discovered. What has actually been discovered is simply how some of this amazing equipment works. What has not even begun to be discovered is who or what is operating this equipment and who or what put it here. If this distinction is clearly understood, then the more levels of complexity that are revealed through our research, the more our awe and wonder at the Creator is enhanced, not diminished, by these discoveries.


Thanks for reading. Your comments are most welcome.

THROUGH THE MICROSCOPE

"When I was about fourteen, my biology master at school had convinced me that religion was a thing of the past, and science was the thing of the future. Religion shackled humans to superstition, priests, and dogma; but science liberated humans and enabled them to march forward to a new era of prosperity and brotherhood. Technological progress would bring about this kind of heaven on earth, through human reason, not through blind faith and mumbo jumbo.

It was nice to think that I was in the vanguard of a heroic, liberating movement. I took an optimistic atheistic and humanistic attitude, which lasted a long time. It’s a very firmly embedded mind-set once you get into it."

"I knew from quite an early age that I wanted to do biology, and I specialized in science at school. Then I went to Cambridge where I studied biology and biochemistry. However, as I proceeded in my studies, a great gulf opened between my original inspiration, namely an interest in life, actual living organisms and the kind of biology I was taught: orthodox, mechanistic biology which essentially denies the life of organisms but instead treats them as machines. I had to learn that you can’t respond emotionally to animals and plants. You can’t connect with them in any way except by detached objective reason. There seemed to be very little connection between the direct experience of animals and plants and the way I was learning about them, manipulating them, dissecting them into smaller and smaller bits, getting down to the molecular level and seeing them as evolving by blind chance and blind forces of natural selection"

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.


I am not a scientist and I am going to make some observations about life. This in itself seems an arrogant statement in our society. Knowledge of life has become the sole province of biologists and biochemists and anyone who has not spent years looking through microscopes, scanners and x-ray machines, laboring to understand the complex chemical and electrical processes that are revealed with the help of this equipment, is seen to lack the authority to make statements about them. I do, however, have nothing but appreciation for all the dedicated hard work that has been invested in the study of biological processes and I applaud the accomplishments of Western medicine and science. I have no qualm with any of the actual observations that are made; how can you argue with an observation? What is disturbing to me, and, I think, of great damage to the society as a whole, are not the observations themselves, but many of the assumptions and inferences based on these observations.

What you see when you observe the world is a function of the instrument that you are using to make your observations, and this, of course, includes the human eye. When you look at a part of your body with the naked eye, you see one thing. When you look through a microscope you see something very different, and when you look through an electron microscope at the same body part, you see a third, and completely different thing than either of the other two. One of the assumptions that I think is dangerous, is the assumption that when you see this new vista, thanks to the microscope, that somehow you are seeing a greater, or deeper truth than you were seeing with the naked eye; that with the naked eye you were seeing a result, but with the microscope you are seeing cause. Another possibility is that you are simply seeing another view, which is neither more causal, nor more fundamental than the first view. Another way of saying that would be that smaller biological things are not necessarily the cause of larger biological things, but that they simply coexist on different planes. A second assumption is that with the naked eye you are seeing some things, but now, with the microscope, you are seeing everything. This view was, of course, disproved by the arrival of the electron microscope which revealed whole new worlds within the microscopic world. This is not necessarily, however, the end of the line. New worlds and new discoveries could be there awaiting the arrival of new instrumentation. And there may be whole planes of existence that are simply not visible, but that affect, very profoundly, the processes that you are looking at. Even if, hypothetically, we could see everything within a human body, would we be seeing cause? Is cause something that can be seen? Is cause a thing?

And one final assumption of biologists that I would like to mention is that if something cannot be seen it does not exist. Now this is not the assumption of other scientists, including physicists and psychologists. No one would argue that gravity does not exist, but no one can see it either. Forces, which are the province of physicists, cannot be seen directly. They are measured by their effects on matter. And psychologists study feelings: love, hate, ambition, jealousy; all of which can be deduced from the statements and behaviors of others, but not observed directly. The study and measurement of intelligence has also become part of the province of psychologists, and this too, like gravity, electro-magnetism and emotions, cannot be seen, but must be deduced from a person's conversation, written responses and creations.

Let's look at some of the conclusions drawn from these assumptions. Now, the latest brain research is grabbing headlines in major newspapers and magazines. Steve Pinker, writing in Time Magazine offers this, "Scientists have exorcised the ghost from the machine, not because they are materialistic killjoys, but because they have discovered that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain." Does that mean that consciousness is the brain? I can be tied to a pole. Does that mean that I am the pole? In fact, just by saying that something is tied to something else, implies the existence of two separate things. So, yes, consciousness is tied to the brain; but, no, consciousness is not the brain. What they, the brain researchers, have actually observed, is that during whatever mental activity there is: thinking, dreaming, seeing, remembering, hearing, etc., some part of the brain is activated; there is some heightened chemical and electrical activity in a specific part of the brain, depending on the particular activity involved. So as you focus on the beauty of a sunset, a certain part of the brain, as recorded by certain kinds of scanners, will light up. When you try to remember something, another part lights up. If you are worried about that stain on your shirt, from where you spilled your coffee this morning, yet another part is lit. When scientists study the location of all these different processes that shift every time you change your focus, do they ever wonder where you are, who is not the processes, but whose shifting focus is creating all these processes?But even though you are the primary and most obvious truth of your existence, in terms of these scientific observers, you do not exist, because you cannot be observed. They have eliminated you from their investigations, theories and conclusions.

THE BRAIN

Now, according to the most advanced research, we know that the brain remembers, the brain sees, the brain hears, the brain protects us, the brain repairs itself, etc., etc. Each day, it seems we are discovering yet another wonderful thing that our friend, the brain, does. But, hold on! The brain doesn't do any of those things. The brain is three pounds of protein. The brain is no more than the passive conductor of these processes. Let's look at memory. When you try to remember something, it is you, not your brain, that is remembering. Your brain's contribution is that of a filing cabinet. A filing cabinet has no memory. It simply stores information, in the form of letters, numbers and pictures. You look through that cabinet and locate the desired information that you decode from those letters, numbers and pictures to help you get in touch with the experience that you were trying to remember. The brain doesn't remember, doesn't try to remember, doesn't care whether you remember or not. The brain doesn't even know you. The brain doesn't even know it's a brain. It stores and conducts chemical and electrical charges that we interpret as information, but it doesn't know that it is storing or conducting information. The only differences between a brain and a filing cabinet in the area of memory, is that a filing cabinet stores information in codes that we are consciously familiar with, i.e. letters, numbers and pictures. The brain stores information in codes that we do not yet understand intellectually, but that we, our self, automatically translates into various memories, in the same way that we translate other patterns of electrical and chemical responses into the experience of sights, sounds, smells, emotions, etc. Also, while we use our physical body to access our filing cabinet, we use part of our non-physical self to access the memory codes stored in our brain. This non-physical part is called our focus, or our attention. Focus, or attention, is so much an integral part of our experience, has so much more reality for us than any biological information gotten from a scanning machine, and yet, according to brain researchers, it, too, does not exist. Why? Again, because it cannot be observed, although the results of it can easily be seen by the shifting patterns of excitation as you watch any brain scan unfold.

When people say it cannot be observed, therefore it has no reality, what they really mean is that it cannot be observed by anyone other than yourself. In other words, if you experience something it has no reality unless it can be observed by others. That's a bit of a shame really, when you consider that your self, your focus, your feelings and everything that you experience, in fact the entirety of your life, cannot be observed by anyone outside of yourself. You can tell them about. You can write books about it. But since no one else can directly observe it, you and the entire experience of your life does not exist for modern research scientists. This, too, would be okay if these researchers confined themselves to talking about the chemical and electrical processes that they observe, but they do not. They equate these with life, as if these processes are life itself, and anything else, like the self, like focus, etc., are quaint, superstitious myths.

Then, since they cannot see the self, or consciousness, and they cannot see God, or the Cosmic Consciousness, they confer intelligence, will, desire, ambition and creativity on the things they can see, especially brains and genes. With all the articles written about what "Your Brain" wants and what "Your Genes" compel you to do, there seems to be no room for you, for the actual existence of the individual. We have become little bewildered specks being tossed about at the confluence of two mighty rivers, "Our Brain" and "Our Genes". Yet I have news for you. There is no such entity as "Your Brain". Talk about a quaint, superstitious myth, a being called "Your Brain" does not exist. Of course there are three pounds of protein that are sitting in your skull, and those proteins are the passive conductors of countless electrical and chemical processes that keep you alive and conscious, but they do not act as an entity. They do not form one living being. They do not have their own will, their own desires or their own agenda. You have those things. You decide, by where you place your focus, which part of the brain is being used at any time. You remember. You see. You desire things. The brain is the place where those processes, that assist you in doing those things that you want to do, are arranged in such a way that you, not the brain, can translate them into the actual experience of your life.

What, I think, has happened, is that as researchers have figured out the purpose of many of these complex electrical and chemical processes that take place in your brain, they have instinctively realized that there must be an entity, a being, that has those purposes. If the goal of these processes is to assist you in remembering, or hearing or preventing sensory overload, it is not the actual electrons or the chemical traces of these processes that has that goal. They, the researchers, have unwittingly, I think, ascribed these purposes to your brain, because they can see the brain. But it is not the proteins of the brain that are the ground of being, the seat of these purposes. It is not any easier to imagine proteins wanting to accomplish anything, or having an agenda, than to imagine a stream of electrons having an agenda. We instinctively know, if we consciously attend to it, that desires, ambitions and purpose begin in the non-material, not the material. Beings have desire and purpose, proteins do not. When scientists say "your brain wants..." they have unintentionally created a being called "Your Brain" that is not the proteins in your skull, but a non-physical entity that lives alongside these proteins. It is the point of view of this post, that the two entities, "Your Brain" and "Your Genes", that have been unwittingly created by research scientists, have no reality, and the two entities that they have replaced from the modern perspective, your Self, or consciousness, and God, or the cosmic consciousness, not only have reality, but, between the two, they are the source of, they create, your entire reality. The being whose purposes are served by the brain and its processes is not the brain itself, but you, your Self. And the being whose purposes are served by the genes and the genetic code is not the genes themselves, but is God or the cosmic consciousness.

From the perspective that all life is observable, it seems that those patterns on the surface of the brain are the culmination of life, the end of the process. What is not seen is the invisible process that translates those patterns into actual experience. If I am scanning your brain while you watch a sunset, I am not seeing that sunset, am I? When you are listening to Beethoven, I don't hear Beethoven when I look at your scan, do I? The culmination of life is not a brain process, for the satisfaction of the brain. The culmination of life is the conscious experience that you have when you translate those processes into actual experience. Sense organs in conjunction with nerves translate incoming light waves, sound waves, tastes and touches into electric and chemical brain patterns. The organ that translates these brain patterns into actual experience is not seen. It is not part of the physical universe. We call that organ 'you'.

INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLECT

And I should interject here a few words about the eye. Darwin describes at some length, and in a way that has become perfectly acceptable to most scientists, the manner in which the eye could develop, step by step, from the seemingly simple light sensitive membrane found in single celled beings to the exquisitely complex organ found in humans. But, hold on! The eye does not see. The eye separated from a living being is a lens with some gelatinous proteins attached to it. The eye in a living being, and in conjunction with the optic nerve, is the passive conductor of light waves and electrical impulses which form a pattern in the brain. The eye does not see. You see. You translate those brain patterns into trees and sunsets and friends and enemies, the actual experience of seeing. And you were the one that began the whole process of receiving certain light waves in the first place, because you, not your eye, wanted to look at something. What Darwin was talking about was not the evolution of life, but the evolution of the equipment that life uses. By what manner did this equipment evolve? According to Darwin it evolved step by step because at each step it gave a survival advantage. But a survival advantage to whom? To the eye itself? Of course not. It gave a survival advantage to the intelligent being who was looking through this equipment. How can you explain the evolution of an eye if you exclude the intelligent beings without whom the eye would have absolutely no use. Now you may object to the word "intelligent" since Darwin's whole point was to devise a scenario in which life could evolve without intelligence. But the ability to discern enemies from friends, food from poison, and safe environments from threatening ones, and to adjust one's behavior accordingly is, precisely, intelligence. If intelligence is not the reading of one's environment and the making of appropriate adjustments to it, then what else could it be?

Humans, using language and writing, have been able to extend this intelligence to the contemplation of other environments besides the one that is immediately at hand, including our attempts to understand past environments, to anticipate future environments and to understand environments other than our own. We also live in an environment of ideas and concepts that we try to understand, to 'read', and then to make our own adjustments, our "intellectual adaptations" based on this new learning. So humans may be the only species that has intellect, which is a form of conceptual intelligence, but all species, including plants and animals have intelligence. The being whose entire sensory equipment consists of the light sensitive membrane of one cell, may have a much more limited use of intelligence than a being who is blessed with the one hundred trillion celled human body with its dazzling array of sense organs, but they are both using intelligence. How can you try to describe this exquisite system of adaptation that you call evolution and then say that there is no intelligence involved, when adaptation is the entire point of intelligence.

Let me interject something to try to clarify the difference and similarity between intelligence and intellect. If you live near the seashore or have visited there, I hope you have had the pleasure of throwing bread crumbs into the air and watching the seagulls dive and swoop to catch these crumbs in their beaks. Sometimes they misjudge the texture and density of these morsels and they clamp their beaks down too hard and the crumb disintegrates, but they never miss. If there is a breeze blowing from the sea to the shore, they never miss. If there is a breeze blowing from the shore to the sea, they never miss. If there is no breeze blowing, they never miss.

To catch a crumb in the air when you are already flying in the air, requires a calculation of the velocity and the arc at which the crumb is thrown, a calculation of the wind and barometric pressure as it effects your current velocity and inertia and as it effects the amount of energy you have to exert on all the muscles of your wings and torso to change direction and velocity and the precise moment to open and close your beak. Now the fact that a seagull is doing this instantaneously without any conscious calculation does not mean that these calculations are not being made; they are just not being made in time. That is intelligence. Now a really skilled physicist with instruments to measure the weight of the crumb, the force and angle of the throw, the barometric pressure of the air, the velocity of the wind, the weight of the bird, and the anatomical understanding of which of those many muscles does what, and how much energy is required for each, could, theoretically, figure out what that bird has to do in order to catch that crumb. But by the time our beleaguered physicist arrives at his conclusions, the seagull will have already caught the crumb, digested the crumb and pooped it out all over his calculations. That is intellect! With the exception of the weird bubble that some of our intellectuals have been in for the past century or so, it has been commonly understood that the whole thrust of human intellect has been to slowly, slowly, baby step by baby step, come to an ever deepening understanding of the intelligence of the universe which surrounds us, pervades us and has been with us since the beginning of time. But to think that humans are in sole possession of the only intelligence in the universe, when the only measure of that intelligence is the extent to which we are able to understand the very universe that is supposed to be devoid of intelligence, is a feat of arrogance compared to which Aristotle's placement of the earth at the center of the solar system seems a minor faux pas.

GENES

From the same perspective, that all life is observable, in the same way that it seems that life culminates with the brain, it appears that life begins with the genes. The assumption is that genes are not only the starting point of individual life, but that genes began the entire evolutionary process of life. The theory is that genes, microscopic bits of nucleic acids called nucleotides, randomly came together by a kind of freak accident, in such a way that they formed a code, that no one ever invented, but which allowed them to start replicating themselves. I should mention that nucleotides and proteins are always made by a living being. All proteins are either animal or vegetable. There is no such thing as laboratory protein. There is no protein found on the side of the road or floating around in a pond, that was not part of a living body that was born, that grew and died and that was manufactured by the miraculous processes of metabolism and digestion. (If you don't think that these processes are miraculous, that they are 'understood', then please prove me wrong and create something that metabolizes and digests; and, of course, I know Miller/Urey type experiments where a few carbon compounds and amino acids were produced, all of which had to be immediately removed from the very atmosphere that created them or they would quickly break down. I am not talking about a carbon compound or an isolated amino acid. I am talking about a protein.) Yet, by this theory, nucleic acids and proteins created life, rather than life creating proteins and nucleic acids. Not only did these infintesimally tiny dots of acid create life, but everything that was created in the entire kingdom of plants and animals on this planet is attributed to 'discoveries' (always written in quotes) made by these acid particles, or genes. Genes 'discovered' how to build cells. Genes 'discovered' digestion. Genes 'discovered' consciousness. Genes 'discovered' photosynthesis. Genes 'discovered' how to build brains, etc., etc. Based solely on this assumption, we have nullified the concept of God, of a cosmic consciousness, because we cannot see it, and freighted our poor little genes, these microscopic bits of nucleic acid, with all the intelligence, will and creativity of a deity because we can see them. Yes, we know that certain combinations of genes will lead to certain traits and characteristics. We even have some sense of how the genes are involved in the manufacture of proteins. But the body is not just a puddle of proteins. It has a unique and incredibly precise and complex shape. We know that different gene formations result in different shapes, but what that process is, what hand the genes have in the creation of shape, is not known by Western science. Also, it is not just a body that is reproduced, is it? Are we as joyful at the birth of a still born baby as a live one? What we celebrate at birth is not just a new body, but a new being. That new baby is as alive, as conscious, as intelligent, and as willful as we are. A new combination of genes attracts a particular consciousness, will and intelligence along with a particular shape and a particular sequencing of protein manufacture. How is it done? This is not known, but the assumption is that the genes, themselves, are doing it.

Suppose we didn't deify these bits of nucleic acid that we call genes. Suppose we accept them for what they are, nucleotides. Then, first of all, we wouldn't have to create these tortured, impossible scenarios of how genes started replicating, by themselves, and how they discovered every miraculous aspect of life, by themselves. Richard Dawkins, in his book, "River Out of Eden" likens the genetic code to computer code as a way of demystifying it. If you think about it, it is a good analogy, to a point, but not the way Dawkins intended. Computer code is made from arrangements of high and low frequency electric charges, 1 or 0. Genetic code is made from arrangements of four nucleotides, A, T, C and G. The brilliance and creativity of computers, what caused the computer revolution, was not, of course, the high and low frequencies, by themselves. It was the brilliance and creativity of computer scientists and soft ware engineers that created arrangements of these codes to serve human purposes. Dawkins would like us to think that it is the microscopic pieces of adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine, by themselves, that create a human body, never mind consciousness, will and intelligence. That makes exactly as much sense as saying that the high frequency and the low frequency of computer code got together, by themselves, and without the intervention of any intelligence, human or otherwise, created Microsoft, Dell and Apple Computers!

We actually have a pretty good understanding at this point of what genes actually do. Most of the time, in terms of observable activity, they do nothing. They sit encased with, in the case of human beings, three billion of their brethren, within the nucleosome of each cell in our bodies. Occasionally, when a particular enzyme is needed by the body, another enzyme opens a tiny hole in the nucleosome at the exact spot among the three billion genes, that will reveal the needed strand of code. Another enzyme, again, from the cell and not the genes, separates the needed strand of genes from its partnered strand (all genes are arranged in double strands) and presses it against the opening in the nucleosome. At that point an RNA molecule copies the exposed code. Another enzyme returns the strand to its partner and another enzyme closes the hole. That's it! That is the entire involvement of genes in protein manufacture. They are moved by an enzyme to an opening where they get copied, and then they are moved back. The genes are not initiating any of this. The genes are not manufacturing anything. They are not planning anything. They are not coordinating their activities with other genes. They are not figuring out what the body needs. They are doing exactly what you would expect microscopic pieces of matter to be doing, which is absolutely nothing. They passively participate in a process that they neither initiate, energize or control. And the same is true for replication. When genes replicate they do it in conjunction with the whole cell's replication. Replication begins in the outer cell and the genes start replicating at a certain point in that process after a signal has been received from the outer cell. The DNA molecule, containing the genes, does go through some complex gymnastics during replication, but that, again, is at the behest of signals and enzymes that it receives. Once again, it is neither initiating, energizing or controlling this process. It is simply, totally and completely passive.

WITHIN AND WITHOUT

Yet, obviously, the genes are connected in some way to all the biological functions of our body, to its specific shape and to the abilities and the emotional make up of the being that inhabits this body. How can the genes determine all this if they are not creating it? Because the genes, even when they are not doing anything, which is the great majority of the time, are receivers. They are attracting to our bodies the particular consciousness, will and intelligence that makes the whole thing work. This is a bit hard to grasp because even though we cannot see consciousness, will, and intelligence, we associate them with physical bodies, especially human bodies. From the spiritual perspective, consciousness,will and intelligence are not created by bodies, or by matter (genes, of course, are tiny bits of matter). Instead, bodies, including genes, are created by consciousness, will and intelligence. This may strike many as odd (though no more odd than the other way, from material to spiritual) because, normally, consciousness, will and intelligence are experienced as coming from within, and in our twenty-first century society with its materialist bent, "within" is considered to be deep within the body, and not deep within the spirit.

Yet, many of us have had unusual or abnormal experiences of consciousness, will and intelligence. These 'supernormal' experiences of consciousness, will and intelligence, are usually experienced as coming from without; as something received. Soldiers on the battlefield, fire fighters and police officers in critical situations, have had the sudden experience of an extra rush of energy, clarity and determination. No one is more surprised at their heroism than they are, and they describe that moment when that extra energy and determination overtook them with a kind of awe. They consider it something that came into them, something received. These are examples of being touched by the cosmic will that sustains us all at every moment, but usually works separately from our conscious will. Great writers, artists and scientists, as they labor at a problem, as they obsess on the same information, or the same scenario to no avail, pray for an inspiration (atheism does not diminish the artist's enthusiasm for prayer at this juncture). Inspiration literally means the intake of breath. They pray for a gift to be taken in, to be received. They certainly don't pray for an expiration, which means breathing out and is associated with death. Einstein wrote a fascinating account of how the idea, the insight, of the theory of relativity entered his body; how he could feel it coming up through his legs and into his brain, and then getting it. Archimedes, having received a thunderbolt of inspiration, lept from his tub shouting 'Eureka' as he ran wet and naked through the streets of ancient Syracuse. Horowitz, the great concert pianist, when asked what he did in the moments before an important performance, said that he just tries to relax and hope that the winds of inspiration blow through him that night. Moments of great insight, great heroism, great performing, are considered by the people that experience them to be, not their own, but gifts from without, some thing unseen, yet extremely tangible, in fact always among the most vivid experiences of their lives. And, of course, spiritual seekers, people in deep prayer, fasting, chanting and/or meditation, report being transported to a new level of consciousness, which led to a new sense of themselves. Not so much that something was received, but that a boundary, a sense of separation between their limited consciousness and the unlimited cosmic consciousness, was momentarily dissolved. They were still themselves, of course, but they had a much greater, more expanded sense of who they were; of being an inextricable part of something infinitely greater than their individual bodies and brains.

All this is to say that consciousness, will and intelligence are the foundation out of which physical life comes, not vice versa. This consciousness, will and intelligence that is not bound by a particular body, not even bound by space and time, is far beyond our power to understand or even conceive. We call it God, Infinity, the Tao, the Atman, Allah, Buddha, Christ, the Cosmic Consciousness, etc. Every culture has its own name, but the name is irrelevant. As Lao Tzu said, "The name that can be named is not the Nameless Name ". The spiritual perspective, and the only one that really makes sense, is that consciousness existed before physical bodies, that physical bodies grew out of the desire of cosmic consciousness, or God, to have a presence in, to participate and interact with, the physical universe. This cosmic will, or God's will, is the energy that drives the ten quadrillion biological processes occurring simultaneously in each of our bodies, and every biological process in every physical body of every being on this planet, toward survival and replication. Cosmic intelligence, or God's intelligence, is the amazing way that this energy responds, adapts and reconfigures itself at every moment, in response to it's changing surroundings. The genes, then, from this perspective, are receivers, God's channel changers if you will. They don't create life, but they attract, depending on their configuration, the particular cosmic will and cosmic intelligence to grow and maintain your body. They also attract a particular nexus of consciousness, will and intelligence. I have been referring to this nexus as you, or your self. It is also referred to in many religions as your soul.

If there are hierarchies of spiritual beings, of souls, and how, and the degree to which, they are separated from God, from the ultimate consciousness; whether or not these souls choose this new combination of genes, or whether it is thrust upon them; if this takes place at the moment of conception or thereafter; what the purpose is of this action, which results in a new birth and a new life; these are all valid questions, but they do not concern us here. The important thing for now is that out of the cosmic will, consciousness and intelligence comes three things that can and should be separated. There is life, which is experienced but not directly observed and which contains its own limited and seemingly separate consciousness, will and intelligence. There are biological processes, mainly electric and chemical, that support that life, and there is a body, mainly proteins, that conducts and transmits these processes.

If you have a different opinion, for instance if you believe that biological processes are life itself, that life was created by nucleic acids, that the highest intelligence in the universe is human intelligence, and that the ten quadrillion (not a hyperbolic but an actual and very conservative estimate) biological processes, that are going on at this very moment in your body as you read these words, are all conducted and synchronized with no intelligence, what so ever; all that is fine. But if you are a research scientist who studies these biological processes, then, in your professional capacity, make statements about biological processes. Don't make statements with the mantle of authority and science that are really conjectures, or unexamined assumptions about the nature of these processes, who is doing them and what their ultimate purpose is. Don't make statements, for instance, that imply that because you see a process taking place in some tissues in my skull that we call the brain, that, therefore, "My Brain" is doing these processes. There is a lot of cooking done in my kitchen, but a mythical being called "My Kitchen" is not doing them. And, please avoid condescending statements, such as, "I have been looking through a microscope for thirty years and I can assure you there is no such thing as a soul, a self or consciousness, based on the fact that I have never seen any of them". No, you will never see any of them, but did you ever wonder who it is that is doing the looking? As to that final observation, at the cessation of biological processes, please do not say, "She's dead." Much better would be "she's passed on," or "she's no longer with us." And if your beliefs in the supernatural powers of nucleotides and proteins are so rigid that you cannot bring yourself to say either of these, then, perhaps, you should just say, "I'm sorry."

If your statements about what you observed are actually that, statements about what you actually observed, then we will believe you, we will respect you, and we will accept your findings in good faith. If you start, intentionally, or not, to make inferences about the nature of biological processes, about why they are there, about who or what is doing them, and about who or what they are for, in other words, statements about life rather than biological processes, then you are conjecturing about that which you have no expertise and you are unnecessarily alienating people of a spiritual persuasion. In fact, you may be sorely lacking in expertise in this area, because you have accepted all the materialist assumptions of your society without questioning them. And it is entirely possible that there may be more to learn about actual life, as opposed to biological processes, by experiencing it rather than trying to look at it through a microscope.


Any comments? Please let me hear from you.

THE G WORD

It's not the F word, the N word, the L word, or even the C word. The most politically incorrect word in the English language that you can utter, at least in most of the social situations that I find myself in, is the G word. There are a few exceptions. As the first half of a curse it's okay. So, "Where are my goddamn shoes?" would be perfectly acceptable. "God Almighty, you're not doing that again!" is a little quaint, but tolerable. Using the G word at the end of a curse rather than the beginning, is even more old fashioned but still forgivable, as in "Holy Mary, Mother of God, who left the kitchen like this?" But a simple, sincere expression of the G word, especially if it implies that you not only believe in God but that you believe that God is alive and is having an impact on your life, is enough to provoke a stunned silence in most social gatherings. And this is not a momentary silence. Once the awful word has been uttered, there is no more comfortable communication to be had with anyone who had been in earshot of the offense.


Not that God is the perfect word, I just don't know of a better one. For one thing, it carries the implication that God is a man; a tremendously powerful, brilliant, kindly, and when He loses his temper, which is not that rare, a tremendously scary man; but a man never the less. God is certainly not a woman. You cannot even correctly say "Goddess loves me", it would have to be "A goddess loves me". So, the word God has the implication that it's a man, and a man who may have many underlings, but no partners. God is calling all the shots, and He is doing that alone. On the contrary, there maybe goddesses, but there is never Goddess. There is only a goddess, one of many. God works alone, but the best a poor goddess can hope for is to be a member of His support team.

I have stated in other posts what I think God does and if you think of God as a man, no matter what His talents are, it is just flat out impossible for Him to accomplish all that. If you think of God as a woman, it would actually make it a bit more feasible, given women's supposed talent for multi-tasking, but only marginally. No, the God that I am thinking of could not possibly be confined to a body.

Eastern religions revere the Tao, the Atman, and the Infinite. These words imply a kind of spiritual substrate that supports and creates our lives at every moment. So that rather than having a God who has a specific location, this God is omnipresent; there is no where that this God is not. No matter what we do or don't do, and whatever we believe or don't believe, whether we recognize it or not, God is there, because God is everywhere. Our experience of closeness to God or distance from God is a matter of our perception rather than actual distance. This is much closer to my thinking, but it has a connotation of being simply a kind of energy. It's hard for us to grasp the idea that intelligence, creativity, will and caring could exist in an unbounded form, separate from any physical body. But that is pretty much my conception of it. An endless ocean of energy, intelligence, and love, that, whether we realize it or not, is supporting us, and energizing and directing all the ten quadrillion biological processes occurring in each human body at every moment, to say nothing of all the biological processes of every living being on this planet.


If you think of God as a man who is around when He's happy with you, and disappears when He's not, you won't arrive at a conception that is possibly big enough to accomplish everything that I think God is accomplishing. I go back to the Old Testament. God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent. Now, that's my guy!, if He just weren't a guy. Let me try to replace this Western image of a sort of helpless human supplicant and an all powerful divine companion who may be very close to you, but still a separate being, with a different image. Hindus speak a lot about the ocean of the Divine. Where is that ocean? Everywhere. We are swimming in it. And just like fish who have spent their entire lives in water, and do not know what it is because they have never experienced 'no water', we do not know God because God is the context of our entire existence. We are swimming in God, but we don't realize it, because we have never experienced 'no God'. We may think we have, but just the fact that we are thinking, that we have consciousness, that our hearts are beating and our blood is flowing, means that we are still part of that context. In the same way, a fish, no matter how despairing her mood, is still in the ocean. Now you can pull a fish out of water, and put her back. From the moment that fish returns, she has an understanding and an appreciation of water, because she has experienced 'no water'. She suddenly realizes the reality of it. But we can't be pulled out of the Divine ocean, because that is our entire existence. There is nothing outside of it.


If I were a wave on that Divine ocean, a wave that has a separate consciousness, I might think, during my short life, that I was separate from the rest of the ocean, but I would be wrong. I started out, was formed by, this ocean, and after my very brief existence as a wave, I return to being an inextricable part of this ocean. My sense of separation, including all the feelings that result from that sense of separation; my initial intimidation at the size of the other waves, my increasing confidence as I continued to grow, my feeling of invincibility as I reached the peak of my power, and my feeling of vulnerability and fear of death, as my power diminished, would all be illusory, because they would all stem from the same false premise, that I am a separate entity, separate from the entire ocean.


Our whole existence here, on this physical plane, is based on our experience of separation, of having an individual consciousness tied to a particular body, a particular brain and a particular history, but if, or when, we go back to God, we no longer have that separation. It's not as if an individual is traveling back home, it is as if we are melting, as if the walls of separation are dissolving and we expand into a bigger and bigger space. So it's not as if we lose our sense of self, it's as if our sense of self expands infinitely, yours joins with mine, until there is only one consciousness, until we realize that all these separate beings that we have encountered during our existence are actually all aspects of the same Being.

Anyway, if I were trying to convince you of the validity of all these beliefs, what could I do? I could talk about my experience and the experience of many others, and share that with you. I could talk about the difficulty of imagining, which I have done in several other posts, that our spiritual life, including consciousness, will and intelligence, originates from matter, from nucleotides and proteins. That it makes much more sense to envision it the other way; that living bodies and biological processes come out of, originate from, consciousness, intelligence and will. But in doing so, I seem to be embarking in a direction opposite from modern science. Evolutionists, biologists and biochemists are espousing the view that genes are the foundation of life, that our existence is, at base, a way of serving these genes, and that consciousness, the soul, even life itself and 'you' are quaint concepts that have no bases in reality (because they cannot be seen). No matter how cogently I argue, I cannot keep pace with these increasingly materialist views that seem to be supported by the latest research.


But hold on! Those are evolutionists, biologists and biochemists. They're not the only game in town! What about those other mystical, gullible, self-deluded nuts, the astrophysicists? (Cut to the sound of the cavalry bugle call, as five hundred mounted astrophysicists appear over the crest of a distant hill and start galloping toward us.) Those uneducated flakes are now telling us that there is a lot more to the universe than meets the eye. These weirdos are saying that not only is there an invisible world, but that they have measured it, because, although it cannot be seen, it does have an effect on gravity. Not only that, but the visible world is only a small portion of the universe; that fully ninety-four per cent of it, at the current measure, is invisible. That's very interesting, isn't it? Here we have a community of evolutionary biologists and biochemists who snicker at the possible existence of anything that cannot be seen, and, at exactly the same time in our history, we have another community of scientists who are telling us that the great majority of the universe around us is invisible. Do Richard Dawkins and the evolutionary biologists deny the carefully measured results of the astrophysicists? Would Darwin deny Einstein? If they, Dawkins and the biologists, are contending that all of the astrophysical stuff is happening 'in space' and they are talking about life, which happens here, then they would be wrong. The last time I looked, we were in space. Everything that is in time is also in space. The earth is a planet, which is in a solar system, which is in a galaxy, which is 'in space'. If you have been wondering what being 'in space' would be like, wonder no more. You are in it.


Now Einstein postulated that there were ten or eleven planes of existence that were not visible. So far, physicists have discovered one, the neutrino plane. There are two reasons, according to these fanatic, cultist physicists, that it is impossible to see and so hard to detect this 'other' universe. One is that neutrinos are unfathomably small. The largest is a fraction of an electron and the smallest is thousands of times smaller than that. Also, they do not have a charge; while all of the physical, visible, universe is charged either positively or negatively, or some combination of the two; this invisible world is neutral, has neither a positive nor a negative charge. So there is nothing in the physical universe that attracts or repels neutrinos. They flow through every nook and cranny of the universe without anything impeding their movement. This is important to note. It's not as if they only fill the huge gaps between stars, they flow right through the stars themselves. So, it's not as if there is a visible neighborhood and an invisible neighborhood. The two are inextricably entwined. And this is not happening somewhere 'in space'. This is happening right here, on this planet. And it is not happening just in the atmosphere. It is happening within and through physical matter and within and through our own bodies!

Hmmmm! Is any of this sounding familiar? I have been talking, probably too much, in all the other posts about how life can be experienced, but not seen; how God, or the cosmic consciousness is a substrate, a plane of existence that supports and creates our physical existence, how genes and the genetic code are the bridge between the invisible world of consciousness, will and intelligence, and the physical world of matter. I have also mentioned that God is beyond opposition, neither this nor that. Taoism and many ancient religions are forms of monistic dualism. Out of One comes two, and from two comes all diversity. Different ways of saying this same thing are: Infinity bifurcates into yin and yang; God created the heaven and the earth; out of perfect balance, comes two seemingly antagonistic but really complementary forces. The interaction of these two forces creates the physical universe. Will the discovery of this neutrino invisible universe that transcends and permeates our visible universe of positive and negative particles eventually become the scientific proof of Taoism? Is our life an intersection of the visible and the invisible universe? Is our physical body and its biological processes part of the physical universe, and our consciousness, will and intelligence, in other words, our soul, part of the invisible universe? Do we come from the invisible universe of perfect balance to participate briefly in the charged physical universe of attraction and repulsion and then go home again to the perfect balance and peace of the invisible universe? Will the post-Einstein astrophysicists finally provide the proof for that which the mystics and saints have been experiencing for thousands of years? And will Dawkins, Hutchinson and the 'no nonsense realists' who stubbornly refuse to give any credence to anything that cannot be seen, become the 'flat-earthers' of the 21st century?


I remind you that the astrophysicists, thus far, have only detected one invisible plane of the ten or eleven that Einstein postulated. We can assume that if there are other planes, that they would be even harder to detect. The particles would get smaller and smaller, their mass would be less and less, and their effect or pull on anything in the rest of the universe would get weaker and weaker. Even the neutrino plane was considered, originally, to be without mass. Then it was discovered that even though neutrinos are so tiny that they are barely measurable, when you consider that they fill the entire universe, including interstellar space, their total mass has a very significant effect on gravity and the rate of expansion of the universe.


Let me borrow one more page from the world of physics and add one more conjecture. Einstein determined the speed of light, and that is referred to as a constant. It is the C of E=MC2. It is the highest speed at which any form of matter or particle can move. But what if we looked at it not as a kind of cosmic speed limit, but as a threshold? What if light waves don't know there is any such speed limit and continue accelerating past it? What if, at that point, they stop being a wave or even a thing, and this 'no thing' continued accelerating until it reached infinite speed, and it could reach infinite speed because it would have no mass to impede its momentum? 'No thing' traveling at infinite speed would be everywhere at the same time, because it would take it no time to travel the entire universe and come back to the same point. 'No thing' vibrating at infinite speed would be infinitely fast and absolutely still at the same time. 'No thing' would have no parts, because there would be no 'thingness' to separate one portion of it from another. So 'no thing' would occupy all space and no space simultaneously. Within 'no thing' there would be perfect union, since there would be no thing to separate one part from the other.
Now, you may ask, "If this 'no thing' has no mass and no charge, what possible effect could it have on us? And if this 'no thing' has no effect on us, why worry about it, or even try to think about it? The answer is that although it, this ultimate plane that lies beyond space and time, is not effected by the material world, the material world is effected by it, but not by simple collisions, attractions or repulsions. Let me explain. A few years ago I was standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. From that vantage it looks like every inch of the island of Manhattan is covered with elaborate buildings. The amount of effort and imagination and history that that panorama represents is breathtaking. How did it all get there? Yes, you could say that the steel came from iron deposits in Minnesota and was processed in mills in Ohio, and that the stone came from quarries in Vermont. That's not really what I am getting at. All of that construction began with desires in different human beings. No building was built unless someone wanted it built. No material was transported unless someone wanted it transported. Now they may have been built for a variety of desires and various combinations of desires, i.e. to make more money, to beautify a certain neighborhood, to provide shelter, to bring glory to the owner, etc. Yet they all started with a desire. And if we look at it from the perspective of an individual being, they all began with a certain restlessness; the desire created a stirring, a certain polarity, a charge, which created a biological process, which created a body sensation (a 'fire in the belly' or a 'swelling' in the chest') and the firing of some thought processes in the brain which resulted in a more solidified, more materialized plan. Desire automatically creates the energy and commitment to see this desire fulfilled, which we call will. With will, fueled by desire, the builder now uses his or her muscles and sinews and brains to do all the planning, the activity and organization necessary to get the building built. Everything that has been constructed, composed,written, sculpted or drawn by our species, not just in Manhattan, but in the entire world, began with a desire; and every desire comes automatically with the energy, which we call will, and the ability to focus that energy in the most effective way, which we call intelligence, to realize that desire. But where is the seat of desire; from what or from where does desire spring? Your desires spring from you, and you is not a thing. It is consciousness. In exactly the same way, the desire to create a physical universe springs from God, from the cosmic consciousness, which is also not a thing. In fact, it is 'no thing', it is the very 'no thing' that we have been talking about. So, does this plane,that is on the other side of light, that is not a thing, that is beyond space and time, beyond this or that, that is perfect union, does this plane effect us? No, this plane does not effect us. This plane IS us! This plane is the birthplace of desire and from this plane comes everything you see around you; all the human things that come from our desires and all the natural things that come from (and here is that G word again) God's desires.

Now this ultimate plane, since it has no mass, can neither be seen nor detected by any instrument. When we try to detect it we are looking in the wrong direction. It is not something out there to be detected, it is the one who is doing the detecting. It is the detector not the detectee, if you will. If we are waiting for physicists to discover it, we are waiting in vain. Rather than going to people whose expertise is in looking out at the world, we should be consulting with people whose expertise is in looking in at the Self; meditators and spiritual teachers. And we, of course, can do this ourselves. When we meditate, when we turn our focus away from the material world; we look at ourselves, not at what we are attached to, but at what is being attached. When we do that, when we remove ourselves from all the things that we desire and are entangled with, then the walls of separation break down. We begin to experience ourselves as an inextricable part of the consciousness of the world. We are of the same fabric, the same plane, as the Divine, and as such, not as our bodies and our biological processes, but as ourselves, we are boundless, immutable and eternal. And I would have told you all this a long time ago if you hadn't shunned me the moment I mentioned the G word!


Thanks for reading. I sincerely welcome your feedback.