The mastery of life. Lesson 0

 Synopsis.

This section examines the nature of God, the universal life force, or whatever you choose to call it. It raises the questions how did everything begin.

Physicists, cosmologists and quantum mechanics scientists have answered, or attempted to answer, many of the big questions facing humanity. Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? These are big questions that are currently being answered by great minds. But all the scientists, all of the cosmologists, and all of the quantum physicists can't answer one simple question.

How did it start?

There are those who assume that it is just a cycle that goes on forever. Matter expands, acceleration decreases to zero, everything smashes together again, all over the course of billions of years. It still does and explain how it first started.

There are those who believe that matter spontaneously generates itself. For example, Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, believes that matter is spontaneously generated at the edge of space around a black hole. Matter is always generated in pairs of two particles. One particle is drawn into the black hole, one particle is ejected into our universe. What's interesting about this concept is the spontaneous generation of matter. But, where did the black hole come from?

Wherever there are human beings, someone asks the question -- where did we come from? The answer from the physicists is usually, "I don't know." Where there is a knowledge vacuum, mankind has always filled that vacuum with an idea.

Religions

Before the more modern religious beliefs involved, there were a variety of religious systems. There was a belief that we were ruled by planets and stars. There were beliefs that omniscient beings, living in the heavens, controlled by destinies. The earth was flat. Earth was borne on the back of a giant. There were all sorts of manifestations of all sorts of gods. Men always searched for the answer to the question, where did we come from?

There is the biblical version. God always has existed, and always will exist, is all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omnicient), and everywhere at once (omnipresent) and created the universe we now live in, in six days. He rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath. Everything you see around you, according to this belief, was the work of one being, who completed it in a week, starting with nothing.

The Bible

There are also those who believe in the Bible's rendition of creation, but believe that the Bible speaks metaphorically, or there wasn't the language at the time the Bible verse was written to express the concept accurately. For example, would someone from ancient Egyptian civilization, in 1000 BC even have the words, the language, even analogies, to explain an automobile, trained, or what about a personal computer or radio or cellular telephone? Things we take for granted would be considered magical by those civilizations.

Similarly, the language of the Bible conveys messages with concepts that were known and understood by people that live 1000 to 2000 years ago. The methods of explanation were limited by human understanding of the time. Some of it is factual, some of it is allegorical (told with fables or stories). The language of the Bible, and the translations through several languages such as Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, have made it ultimately more difficult to understand the real meaning behind what people wrote -- even if inspired by God.

Sufficiently advanced technology

Arthur C. Clarke, noted scientist and science-fiction writer, and inventor of the communications satellite, tells us that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Was the Bible full of magic, advanced technologies, parables, or something else? These are difficult, if not impossible, questions for modern-day man to answer. The real question is, does it matter? Can enough of the Bible and its messages be understood by modern man?

Which brings us to the second concept. Should we assume that the Bible represents all metaphysical knowledge? Can everything that needs to be said, and all lessons that need to be learned be expressed in a single book? Was that the creator's intentions? Was all new now let's suppose to stop being formed 1500 years ago?

Assuming, for a moment, that there was a creator, it is highly unlikely that communication of knowledge from the deity, were such a deity to exist, would have abruptly ended some 1000 to 1500 years ago. Perhaps, however, people stopped listening. Perhaps, people do not understand the implications of what they have learned. Perhaps, there are some people who still believe that the deity, God, has a message and a purpose for mankind, but the vast majority of mankind does not understand the message or understand the purpose.

We are told, by the monotheistic religions (modern day religions which believe in one God), that the Bible is indeed the word of God. However, they are curiously silent on whether God continues to speak to man, and whether that communication should be written down. Yet, on the other hand, we have the Saints who perform miracles in life, and in the afterlife. It is hard to reconcile the acts of the Saints with the writing of the Bible, or, the writings of the ancient prophets. How are they different?

The nature of a higher power

This we can say with some certainty.

• It is highly unlikely that the universe and all its matter and energy always existed.
• It is unlikely that intelligence, human intelligence, is a mistake of nature -- an accident.
• With the billions of galaxies in the heavens, and billions of stars in each galaxy, and planets circling some percentage of them, it is quite likely that some small percentage of those stars contain life. If the number is one in 1 billion, the number of planets containing life is still astronomical.

Probably, mathematically, we are not alone. Did God choose to send his only begotten son to a minor planet at the edge of the mediocre galaxy, alone? Were we part of a plan to visit all sentient (capable of thinking) life?

Exercises

1. Imagine the absolute nothingness. It's difficult to do. We move about in space, but there was. Time marches forward, yet there is no time. Nothingness, absolute nothingness, is the complete absence of time and dimension.

 This

2. Before you have the following terms:

A. Monotheistic

B. Omnipotent

C. Omniscient

D. Omnipresent

E. Allegorical

3. How old is the present Bible?

A. 6000 years
B. Over 2000 years
C. 1000 to 1500 years

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Basic Principles. 0001

1. Basic science tells us that matter can be converted to energy (relatively simple) and that energy can be converted to matter (far less simple), but neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. This is a very fundamental principle that almost anyone knows, if not understands. However, something lost on most people is that if A can be converted to B and B to A, then A and B are really the same thing! That thing usually has a name, call it D. For example, we can handle liquid water. At 32°F, liquid water turns to its solid form, ice, and had 212° F (at sea level) that same liquid water boils away into steam, a gas. We know that they look and feel different, but we know that they are really the same thing. What is hard for us to accept is that the electricity, radio waves, my big toe, the family dog, and my automobile are all, fundamentally, the same thing! Unfortunately, that fundamental thing has no name. There is no simple, English language label.
2. 10.0020 Absolute Nothingness And The Edge Of The Universe. What happens when we reached the edge of the universe? Does it just go on forever? How long is forever, and how big must something be to be infinitely wide or long or high? This is a question that even physicists argue about to this day. Do we live in the finite bounded universe? That is, a universe in which we can reach the edge. Do we live in a finite unbounded universe? As soon as we approach it and, does the universe stretched, like a balloon being filled with air? What’s on the other side of the edge of the universe? Is there another universe? Are there an infinite number of other universes? Was our universe created when the black hole of another universe reach some limit and exploded?
3. 10.0030 What Is Life? As far as we know, as far as we are taught, there are three forms of stuff in the world: animals, vegetables, and minerals. Using this broad categorization rocks and soil are certainly mineral. In the broader categorization as one of the three types of things, all of the elements on the periodic table, and all compounds made from them would be considered mineral. Thus, even the bodies of animals and vegetables are composed of is minerals, albeit with something extra. On a macro level, we think it is relatively easy to distinguish among them. However, when we look more closely, it becomes difficult. A sponge is an animal, so is coral. However, sponges, coral, and even sea anemonies sit in one place, a mobile, and catch and eat food that passes by. And what about the Venus fly trap? It has chlorophyll, it turns toward the sun, and it converts minerals it receives through its roots into energy for its growth. That’s all very plantlike. However, the Venus fly trap also catches and eats insects! The fine distinctions between plant and animal can be very deceptive. In fact, one could say that the distinction was purely artificial. As far as we know, everything is composed of some form of mineral, by the above definition.

4. 10.0040 The Hierarchy Of Life. Let’s think, for a moment, about life itself. We know that life as we know it is composed of cells. A cell has a cell membrane, fluid, a nucleus, and the areas and sundry other components that have been identified by scientists. The cell, as far as we know, is the smallest object that can be defined as being alive. Cells used to be classified as animal or vegetable. Then they were semi-living things such as viruses which consume and expend energy, but have no way intrinsically to create the energy. Then there are those kooky things called prions, that appear to be almost alive, but not quite. As far as we can tell, things that are alive, such as plants and animals, are made up of elements and combinations of elements which are not alive.

Question. What is it that animates life, or more specifically, your life? And, what is the boundary between living in nonliving? Can cells be said to be alive because they can acquire and metabolize food into energy? What about viruses? Are they alive, or almost alive? Viruses are incapable of acquiring or metabolizing anything. Viruses latch onto a cell, and draw their energy directly from the cells metabolism. They are unlike any other nonliving, elemental or chemical compound in that they consume energy and multiply. Most other nonliving things do not multiply, do not process. The same can be said for prions. Is there a stage between living in nonliving – call it quasi-living? Did quasi-living exist prior to living?

5. Does Size Matter? When we look at one celled plants or animals, they are very small, and not usually visible to the naked eye. However, we know they exist and can see them with a microscope. Evolution has created multi-cellular plants and animals. Take people for example. We are living beings composed of literally billions of cells. We have skin cells and bone cells, muscle and heart, lung and kidney cells. Barring an anomaly, these cells make up a unique person. Now what’s interesting, is that I can take a few of those cells – skin or liver or kidney – remove them from the body to which they are attached, put them in a petri dish with the proper nutrients, and they will continue to grow.



While science may not be advanced enough yet to be growing a new heart, it can certainly keep heart cells alive for a long time, outside the body. Here is another fact. Over time, virtually every cell in my body will be replaced. Older skin cells will die and slough off, only to be replaced by new living cells. With the possible exception of neurons, as nerve cells are called, our entire body is replaced many times, cell by cell, over the course of our lives.

I am physically not the same person as I was yesterday, last month, or last year. Aside from being me, the personality that we all know, I am a product of the food I eat, water I drink and air that I breathe. The person who went to bed last night is physically not the same person that woke up this morning! This raises a number of very interesting questions such as who or what am I… or anyone else for that matter. I am literally a colony of independent cellular level organisms that live together, have their own goals, and have the shared goal of staying alive. They start out like a new colony, grow and prosper as a mature city or country, and eventually, and inevitably, die like the ghost towns of the wild West, with only our skeletons surviving the ravages of time to prove that we once walked here on the earth. Understanding this points out an interesting conundrum. Who am I? Is that essence which is me – my personality, separate from that colony of living cells which represents my body? Or, is my essence, me, simply a product of this colony of cells living, growing and sharing themselves? It would certainly seem that the unique thing, that unique living organisms that I identify as myself, is separate from some biological processes that make up my body.

If I call the self aware entity a spirit or a soul, then it is certainly something different from the collection or colonies of differentiated cells that make up my body. In scientific terminology, something that we have to Discover is whether that thing we call the soul is an emergent property of the elements and compounds that manifest themselves as cells, or, whether it is something different entirely which a particular batch of cells provide access to these four dimensions! Is the body of machine, like an automobile or a telephone which transports matter or information that is used by some spirit – some type of organized energy? Or, is what we define as intelligence and the ability to communicate something that is inherent in the particular combination of elements and compounds can higher-level structures that make up a person?

6. Existing in Four Dimensions. We are told that we live in a four dimensional universe. Length, width, height the three dimensions that exist in space. That which exists in those three dimensions also passes through the dimension we call time. Time, the fourth dimension, by our perception, always marches forward. The arrow of time, as the physicists call it, always points to the future. However, as explained by noted physicist Stephen Hawking, there is nothing in physics which tells us that the arrow of time always points to the future. It may be our senses, our built-in, hardwired psyche which can only perceive the forward movement of time.

But even more astonishingly, he tells us that the laws of physics, as we understand them, tell us that there must be more than four dimensions! Hawking states that for the equations of physics to work, there must be at least seven dimensions. These new dimensions (or at least new to us mere mortals) are not perceptible with sight, sound, taste, touch or smell – the classical human senses. These extra dimensions would require a sixth sense to perceive. This brings up an interesting point. If the dimensions themselves cannot be perceived, perhaps the mechanism for perceiving them cannot easily be perceived either. However, it does not preclude the possibility that we do have a sense, and in existence, and those other three or more dimensions. If the dimensions exist, perhaps there is a portion of ourselves that also exists in some or all of those dimensions. And, perhaps there is some sort of interface between our mind, brain and the extra dimensional existence.

7. Atomic Stuff. I will digress for a moment to talk about atoms which make up elements which make up all other matter – living and not living. Let’s use lead as an example. We see a block of lead. It is grayish in color. It’s heavy. Lead is just about the heaviest nonradioactive element. If one were to taste it (not advisable, since it is toxic to life) it would even taste slightly sweet. Lead as an element is composed of only one type of atom – the lead atom, whose symbol is PB (for its Latin name, plumbum). We think of lead as a metal, albeit a relatively soft one. We can and make it led into a bar, and bend it with our bare hands. We can hit someone over the head with a lead pipe and knock them out as they used to do in the old-time movies. We think of it as rigid.

There are two things that give lead these physical properties. One thing is the number of protons in the nucleus of the lead atom. It is In the case of lead, there are 82 protons, and correspondingly, 82 electrons. It is this nucleus which gives it its weight, color, hardness and flavor. The other thing is the number of electrons which float around the atoms nucleus. In order for an element to be stable, it should have as many electrons as it has protons.

Now here’s what’s interesting. The proton is like a ball of marbles. Each smashed up next to the other. Each ball or bundle has a certain weight which makes it what it is, for example lead. Now stripped of its electrons, the little balls of lead just bounce around. They would never come together to form a solid block without electrons. It is when two or more atoms sharing electron that the nuclei become stuck together! We see a lead pipe because the electrons in the lead have caused it to stick together! Now if we were to be able to photograph that leadpipe down to the microscopic level we would find something wondrous, and perhaps, to some, a little disturbing!

Each atom from the central nucleus to the outermost electron is mostly empty space. If we were to blow up and atom to the size of a basketball, the nucleus which contains the protons and neutrons (which we did not discuss here) would be perhaps the size of a marble. Then there is empty space. In relationship to the size of the entire atom, there is in fact quite a bit of nothingness between the nucleus and the first ringe of electrons. Then we take about an inch of space from the outer cover in, and put approximately 8 electrons in an orbit and we make several shells or orbits. This means that an added, that fundamental element of everything solid liquid or gas, is mostly empty space!

What makes the atoms stick together are the electrons! Without explaining in detail suffice it to say that the universe wants the outer shell of most atoms to have a specific number of electrons. What makes something solid is when two of these atoms come next to each other and share one or more electrons! We perceive the lead as solid but really it is 90% nothingness filled with atomic nuclei held together only by the electrons in their orbits. This is true for the most vaporous gas to diamond hard solids! An atom of carbon in a person is the same as in atom of carbon in your charcoal grill or in the wood you burned in your fireplace!

We are made up mostly of empty space punctuated by protons glud together by orbiting electrons with mostly empty space in between!

continued on r-4



The Classification Of Things

Animal
Vegetable
One cells – nucleus
One cells – no nucleus
Virus
Prion

Non-metabolic (mineral)
element

Project Outline

1. Matter and energy
2. Absolute nothingness in the edge of the universe
3. What is life?
4. The hierarchy of life
5. Does size matter?
6. Existing in four dimensions
7. Atomic Stuff
8. How big is life?
9. Immortality
10. Beyond life as we know it

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Introduction to Theta. Lesson 1A

You are about to embark on a fascinating journey of body, mind and spirit. You are about to experience the personal magic, personal enrichment and empowerment of Theta.

What Is Theta?

Theta is a latent or hidden ability within each and every one of us to influence, alter or even occasionally to control the world in which we live. Everyone is born with Theta. However, in most people that personal ability or power lies unused, dormant. We have to consciously, if you will, intentionally, reactivate this power which we all possess

Instinctive Skills.

We are conceived in an aquatic world in our mother's womb, suspended in water re-amniotic fluid. Every child is born with the ability to swim. However, at birth we are thrust from this sheltered, liquid world into the airy world we see around us.

At conception, infants are natural swimmers. At birth, we rapidly lose that skill. However, within the first few days of birth, a baby, who cannot yet even roll over or hold of her head, will swim, naturally, in a tub of warm water, if given the opportunity. If exposed to submersion shortly after birth, the child will instinctively hold his breath, roll on his back, and float -- a skill that will remain for a lifetime. However, wait a few weeks to expose the child and that instinctive skill is gone and the child must be taught from scratch to swim. Or even worse, the child may learn to become afraid of the water, of fear that is learned, and not natural.

How many God-given, natural skills and abilities, like the natural instinct to swim, are we born with, but lose overtime due to disuse? Surprisingly, as you will learn, the list is rather long. We, from a very early age, are actually trained to ignore our natural skills and abilities, skills and abilities that would be of great benefit to us as adults.

Why Did We Lose these Instinctive Skills?

There are two reasons that a skill can atrophy or become dormant:

1. The skill is no longer required for survival, and becomes inactive over generations through disuse.
2. Older skills may be replaced by newer, learn the skills.

In addition to these skills which atrophy, there are a myriad of skills which we possess, but of which we are unaware. These skills may come apparent during times of great stress, during times of calm meditation, or occasionally, for no apparent reason. Sometimes these skills are so bizarre or unusual that we dismiss them as coincidence or a fluke of nature, and dust, never develop the hidden or latent skill.

How Do We Reactivate Dormant Skills?

First, we must be aware that we possess a skill to begin with! Second, we must be alert to signs of new skills. We must not be too quick to dismiss certain events as accidental or coincidental. To do this, we can be told or shown, but rarely does being told or shown, alone, result in being able to apply the skill.

We can be aware. We can search for skills, search for abilities, and cultivate those that we find. These skills are in some ways like our muscles. They require exercise, repetition, attention to develop to their full potential.

Collectively, we call this set of little-known, and generally misunderstood or ignored skills and abilities the power of Theta, a God-given power that lies within each of us -- but is dormant in most. Most new students, or neophytes, are amazed at just what we are capable of doing.

Subjects We Will Cover.

In our journey, our quest four knowledge and personal development, we must understand at least small pieces of many disciplines. To understand how our body works we must understand a little biology. To understand some basic concepts and ideas we must study a little philosophy. To understand why the world we live in behaves and reacts as it does we must understand a little physics. What is important is to understand not only that an event happens, but why and how. We must become critics and skeptics. We must become students of life. And, we must know and understand the hidden and the unusual when it occurs so as not to dismiss it as either coincidence or childish thoughts.

The power of Theta Lesson 1

.
Introduction.

Theta is a power that lies within each of us. We use the power of Theta, also known as the power of Intention daily, without even understanding it, or its ramifications. Theta is perhaps the most powerful tool that a human being has. Yet, to most of us, it lies dormant, or leads to unintended consequences which we do not understand and rarely observe or study. in most cases, conflicting intentions cancel each other out.

What is Theta?

Theta is the power within all of us to mold reality to our wishes. Theta is the conscious effort to change the sea of reality in which we are all immersed. Theta could be viewed as a wish, a dream, a want, or perhaps a need.

The problem is, most individuals do not understand the law of Theta. They do not understand how to direct Theta, or what universal forces affect Theta.

Theta is the ability to want something to happen, and through sheer force of will, make it happen. Generally speaking, in broad terms, every thinking human possesses this power. Some understand it and employee it better than others, and have done so for centuries, perhaps millennia. Many people have internalized the power of Theta. These people understand how to use Theta, even if they do not understand the mechanism by which it works.

Theta may seem like many to be magic. However, we must remember what Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Theta is the science, or the magic, of redirecting the energies of the universe to accomplish that which we want.

Note, that Theta has limitations. No one professes to know all the laws of the universe. But one thing we do know is that Theta will not violate a universal law. Theta is capable of doing anything that can be done within the scope of the universal laws, although it may occasionally look like magic. If we define magic as cause-and-effect relationships outside our frame of reference, but within the frame of possibility, then it exists. If we take the definition of magic as performing the impossible, then there is no such thing. That is only illusion. Pulling rabbits from hats is illusion while two people creating a third persons is magic.

Theta has a cost.

Theta is not free. Like all expenditure or manipulation of matter and energy, the use of Theta effectively requires the banking, or storage, of energy, and the release of that energy at a particular time and place. The reason that we rarely see Theta used powerfully and noticeably is because most Thetas are very weak.

Picture Theta as a battery in a car. A strong battery has a lot of pent-up electricity, also known as potential energy, that it releases at the turn of the key. It turns the starter of the engines rapidly and efficiently, and starts the car engine in less than 2 seconds, usually. With the engine off, a battery with lots of potential energy makes the cars light shine brightly, and the radio play loudly. However, get into a car with a weak battery and the car lights are dim, the radio volume is very low, and the car crank several times before starting -- if these things work at all.

We all have a Theta battery. Most go through life with a weak or dead battery! Like the car battery, the Theta battery must be recharged after use. Most of us know neither how to use it, nor how to recharge it.

A car battery is capable of starting a car for four or five times before it becomes completely discharged. We avoid a dead battery by building an alternator into the car. The car's engine is so powerful that driving the alternator to charge the battery and the car's electrical system takes no noticeable power away from the wheels. But a miniscule drain is still there.

Theta behaves like the electricity in a battery. There is potential Theta -- that is, personal energy that has been stored up to be expended on Theta, and kinetic Theta -- Theta that is being used, that is powering some event. For Theta to be useful, we must bank, or store potential Theta energy, and once bank, we must then unleash that potential Theta as kinetic Theta. We use the pent up Theta energy to achieve a week desire. Theta has a cost. The cost is what we as people must do to create that store, that bank of potential intent, the intent battery.

Storing potential Theta.

As we said, most people go through life without understanding the concept of Theta. They blithlley travel through life with a dead, or nearly dead, Theta battery. Their Thetas get lost in the sea of all other Thetas. When one of their Thetas makes it to the surface, some call it a miracle, some call it coincidence.

Continued...

The power of THETA Continued Lesson 2

Multiplying Theta through numbers.

If enough people intend for exactly the same thing, possibly in the same language, with exactly the same ideas, and at the same time, purposely pooling their energy, even people with weak Theta batteries, when massed together, may still achieve a result.

Prayer is one such example. One person's prayer may or may not be answered because of the power of Theta within that one person. A congregation of 500 praying for the same thing is at least 500 times more powerful than one person. The power of all churchgoers worldwide praying at the same time is enormous.

Note: In the example above, it is assumed that all churchgoers have the same level of power in their Theta battery. This is not necessarily true, and can skew our results. However, the concept is clear.

We purposely use prayer is an example. Most people who pray, pray to God, Allah, or a saint. It is true, God, Allah, the Saints, the universal life force, the mind, what ever you want to call it, does answer prayers! The tradition of praying is as old as sentient (thinking) humanity itself. It is no coincidence, no accident of humanity, that prayer has been with us for thousands of years, perhaps as long as man has been intelligent.

Resolution of Theta conflict.

If I consciously intend for a bright sunny day so that my family and I can go to the beach, and my next-door neighbor consciously intends for rain so his plans will be watered, assuming we both had the same charge in our Theta batteries, those two prayers will cancel each other out. That does not mean nothing will happen! That means human influence will not play a part in what happens next. Nature will decide in the absence of channeled Theta.

Intentioned example: war and peace.

We all claim to intend for peace, a cessation of worldwide hostilities, a common brotherhood of humanity. In reality, we most often intend for victory. We want peace, but we want it on our terms. Intending peace and intending victory are not the same thing. It is interesting in human history to watch the unfolding of events and intentions.

Northern Ireland was, for nearly a century, a Place of strife, conflict, and war. Each side wanted victory. Children were brought up on conflict and his hostility. It was the only way of life some of them knew. Generations have been brought up fighting each other. There were three camps -- the militant Protestants, the militant Catholics, and Protestants and Catholics who just wished that the hostilities would end.

The hostilities in Northern Ireland ended rather abruptly. There was conflict one-day, and peace happened the next. You can make claims that other countries intervened, the people got tired of war, that somehow, families which each other for generations suddenly quit fighting. Is that what happened? Or, did those praying for victory start praying for peace? Did the third camp, the Irish Protestants and Catholics who only cared for peace, grow in numbers sufficient that they are Theta for peace was prevalent? Even a small nucleus of people can prolong any event, such as the conflict in Northern Ireland. It takes a concerted effort of will, an outpouring of fervor, to have the mainstream over power militant extremists, even when they are the minority. We have seen that time and time again worldwide. North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, all have been subject to the hostile and combative minority that wished control.

The message from history is clear. Intend peace , not victory. You may be quite happy with the peaceful resolution. Often, peace breaks out in unintended fashions. And Theta for peace, as we have seen, is not necessarily an intention for victory. What makes us happy, satisfied, and fulfilled may be other than what we expect!

Basic Principles. Lesson 2

Continue...


8. How Big Is Life? We have already established that there was life existing at the level of a single cell, and the possibility of life, or quasi – life below the cellular level. We have established that dogs, cats, people, trees and rose bushes are all alive, and all composed of groups of cells that work together in concert to produce a living thing. We have also established that those living things are composed of differentiated cells, which when combined in a particular format, give us that life. It is interesting that the hundreds of different cell types -- bone, muscle, brain, heart -- all differentiate themselves from two simple original cells, the sperm and the egg. Two cells combine into one, only to later differentiate into thousands! Life it self, at the cellular level, in some respects is similar to the atom! All atoms are composed of protons and electrons. It is only the number of protons that distinguishes hydrogen gas from liquid mercury to solid aluminum!

What is it that causes something to be a live? What separates the healthy baby from the cluster of tissue which represents an early miscarriage? The baby is alive. It reacts to its environment, one learns and grows. It is a wondrous thing. However, occasionally something goes wrong in the division of the cells. What we are left with is tissue that has not formed into a human. It may have no brain. It has no thought. It may have none of the systems that we normally associate with a living being. It certainly is not human, by our definition. However, it's cellular structure may resemble any of several types of human tissue. Certainly, the individual cells may be alive at the time of birth! They have no way to sustain life after birth, so in that sense they are something like a virus. However, put into the right culture, many of these cells can multiply.

So what is it that separates living from nonliving? Sentient from non-sentient? A very interesting question.

There are two things that we should observe about living things.

First, they all come from a source. They are, if you will, born. They may be borne by cell division, they may be borne by budding, they may be borne by sexual reproduction, but a new living thing comes into being from the existence of one or more prior living things.

Second, living things metabolize. They produce energy, usually from some sort of matter. People eat food and drink water and produce energy to work and play. Withholds the food and water and the cells of the human eventually die. This is true of virtually every living thing. Now viruses and prions have no way to produce this fuel on their own. That is, perhaps, what separates them from truly living things. However, they absorb the energy of living things capable of producing it, and metabolize that energy that they receive from others.

9. Immortality. Think about it. Certain living things seem to be immortal. It also seems as though the simple learn the life for, the longer it can live. Think about the amoeba or the euglena (another one celled creature). They multiply through cell division -- mitosis. A cell reaches a certain point in size or age, and then splits into two cells. Those two cells reach a certain point in age or time, and split into two more cells each. This process continues indefinitely. When you see an amoeba under a microscope in a drop of pond water, that amoeba is the product of countless cell divisions over the course of millennia. When you see a sponge on the seafloor, it is the product of budding, a sexual reproduction. It is an extension of some animal which has lived for centuries, even millennia. It is as though the human could cut off an arm and growing a new person from that arm, while at the same time we growing the arm on the original person! Is the second person who grew from a cut off arm a new to person, or an extension of the same person?

As we said before, if

10. 21st Century scientific mysteries. In this sense, a mystery is any result which our current level of knowledge cannot explain -- the cause of the result is unknown, but performing certain actions can scientifically determine that certain proscribed result will occur.

Thus far we have established that there are atoms made up of subatomic particles, elements which consist of a single type of atoms, and compounds (molecules) such as water that exist because we "glued together" certain types of atoms by sharing their electrons. These molecules combine in certain ways to form, simply described, animals, vegetables and minerals as well as things that are perhaps less than alive such as viruses and prions. This leaves several unanswered questions.

First, what is life? Is it an emergent property of a certain combination of elements or matter? Or, is life something separate from matter which can manifest itself in our four dimensional space by using matter, which is inherently inert? In other words, is my personality, my thought process, my mind, separate and distinct from my body? Is my body merely a biological mechanism that my mind is capable of inhabiting?

Second, we know that there is something which we have classified as quasi-life, incapable of supporting itself without another living being his presence. We know there was life which exists, consumes matter and energy and produces matter and energy. What we don't know is whether there is a form of life beyond what we have described, of which the highest form we can envision, is human life.

Let us conduct some thought experiments, as Albert Einstein called them. Let us expand our thought process to consider some older alternatives.

Thought experiment number 1. Body and mind unified. In this first experiment, we envision a living entity, let's say a person. That person is a living organism. It has a brain. All thought, all emotions, all feeling, occurs within the brain through its neural connections. Unless a thought is written on paper, told to another person, recorded on video, or saved for posterity by some other extra biological means, the thought exists only in the brain. An unrecorded thoughts ceases to exist when the engine, the person, ceases to be alive. The notion of passing knowledge from one person to another, across time and space, where the timeframe is longer than a human life span, is implausible. For example, if someone in ancient Egypt had a thought, it would be impossible, unless that thought were recorded somewhere, to transmit the install to another, modern day person, or to handle that modern day person perceive that thought that was in the mind of the ancient Egyptian. When the Egyptian dies, his thoughts, his knowledge, dies with him. In this model, unless an idea is transmitted to another person through the senses of sight, sound, taste, touch or smell, either directly (from person to person) or indirectly (a diary, let's say) the knowledge is lost.

Some things in this model of existence are clearly impossible. For example, speaking in tongues by a person never exposed to the language/tongue is clearly impossible. To sit in New York, and, in the mind, perceive a scene or action in, let's say for argument's sake, London, is clearly impossible. Those who think they experience such things are either delusional or misguided.

Thought experiment number 2. Body and mind separate. This situation presents us with some interesting opportunities and explanations of things which may have, and I stress the word may because we are unable to test them at this time, occur in the real world.

Test case A. There is anecdotal evidence that people have been known to speak in foreign languages to which, according to anyone's knowledge or recollection, they have never been exposed. The speaker, in such situations, may or may not understand the message. This is most typically associated with a religious experience, where it is called speaking in tongues. However, in rare circumstances, this phenomenon has been observed in secular settings. In many cases, this has been attributed to a reincarnations experience. The scientific explanation is still a mystery.

Test case B. A person, sitting in a laboratory in Houston, accurately describes a number of cards dealt by an astronaut in space, whizzing around the globe. The number of correct "guesses" by the person locked up in Houston far exceeds the number of correct guesses that would be due to statistical probability. Other people are asked at the same time, to randomly select the same number of cards in the same period of time and end up with a far lower number of correct answers, well within the range of statistical probability.

These two anecdotes are merely a couple of stories culled from countless stories of events that cannot, by today's technological standards, be explained. However, as scientist and science-fiction writer, Arthur C. Clark once wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Are these stories examples of sufficiently advanced technology or sufficiently advanced biological and physical processes which we cannot currently explain, such that they appear to be magical? We, as a Western society, are highly reluctant to accept things that defy logical and rational explanation, within our defined boundaries of logical and rational.

Test case C. Many insurance companies, which operate within stringent mathematical, actuarial data, now routinely pay for hypnosis and acupuncture to solve a variety of behavioral problems, most notably, smoking cessation, for which it has been observed to be quite successful. There is more scientific study of the processes related to hypnosis than the processes related to acupuncture. But there is no doubt that when Anton Mesmer first began hypnotizing people, and the biological and neurological processes were not at all understood, hypnosis, as recently as the early to mid 20th century, appeared to be magical. Today, more of the processes of hypnosis are better, if not completely, understood. It is an accepted scientific fact in the medical, and other scientific communities, that hypnosis for smoking cessation and a variety of other mental and physical conditions is an accepted therapy.

Acupuncture is today, where hypnosis was in the prior century. Acupuncturists believe that the insertion of needles at certain points on the human body, with or without electrical stimulation, redirects the body's internal energy fields, resulting in a change in mental and/or physical processes. Current allopathic (M.D.) and osteopathic (D. O.) Medicine currently have no explanation whatsoever for why acupuncture works. There are no observable biological processes that emits energies that can be routinely measured in any meaningful way. What makes acupuncture work? Are there energies and processes which we as humans have not learned to observe? Is it really our own belief in the process that causes us to heal or influence ourselves?



11. The difference between science, theology and philosophy. We digress, momentarily, from our inquiries to recognize some definitional differences.

In science, one formulate a hypothesis and then evaluates the data to refine, modify or disapprove that hypothesis based on observable mathematical or scientific data. Science seeks to document provable facts.

Theology is the study of one or more organized religions. A theology represents the belief systems of one religion. One of the basic tenants of most, if not all theologies is that at some point, humanity reaches a point where we must believe on faith. We must believe because God, or the gods, command us to believe without understanding. Theology/religion is often at odds with scientific inquiry and loath to modify its belief system based on science.

There is a difference between pure theology and religion. Theology is a study of the nature of God, and usually his (or, if multiple, there) interaction with humanity. Religion is a temporal/man made construct. A religion as a person or Council at its head followed by serious casts of preachers/teachers. A religion is evidenced by an organization of people who believed in a theology. Theology can be thought of as one fairly narrow branch of philosophy.

Philosophy is the inquiry into the thought processes and ideas. One can think of it as the search for truth on many levels. Philosophy is the study of that which occurs largely in ideas and processes of the human mind.

Our objective is to delve into science and philosophy, and maybe theology, but to avoid purely religious systems because they rely upon accepting something on faith.

12. An interesting philosophy. Most of us have some understanding of one or more organized belief systems. Often, we referred to these belief systems as religions. There are the large organized religions of the Protestant faiths, Roman and Orthodox Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, etc. They all have in common a belief in a single deity or creator. They also have in common the belief that we as mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend the motivations of the divinity.

I digress however, into this religious discussion, because of the belief system of one, uniquely American religion -- the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints also know to its members as the LDS church and to the rest of us as the Mormons. I do not espouse any particular religious belief, for a lot of reasons. And, I am certainly not a Mormon. They do however have one believe that is particularly interesting.

The Mormons are best known for their missionary pursuits, young men and women in white shirts and dark pants and knocking on doors. They are also known for their belief that Jesus Christ visited the New World after visiting the Middle East. Those beliefs, however, are not nearly the most academically interesting portion of their belief system.

They believe in one God that we must worship and pray to, as do most of today's monotheistic religions. They believe in the Christian Trinity -- God the father, God the son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, they also have the belief that God, our God, the God worshiped by earthly humans, may be but one of many number of gods! God, by their definition, is at the top of the human pyramid! If there is life on a planet circling the sun Alpha Centauri, and that planet is populated by living beings, the Mormons could absolutely believe that those beings have their own God who created and nurtured them! They believe that every population of living, intelligent beings has its own Creator/God! This is definitely not classical Eastern or Western belief.

Historically, we categorize religions as monotheistic -- believing in one God, polytheistic -- believing in many gods, or adiestic -- believing in some force, or some transcendence of death, which may not necessarily have the name of God. I think the Mormons represent a new category which we shall call multi-theistic which means that any given population worships or believes in one God, but does not discount the possibility that other beings and other gods may exist. The Mormon belief system holds that God is inherently good.

I raised the point because it is a consideration not often evaluated in the study of either Eastern or Western philosophy. As we shall see, this one particular belief may influence our philosophical inquiry just as much as the classical Eastern and Western belief systems.

13. Growth and entropy. There seem to be to force his work in the universe. The first force is entropy. As far as we know, or can observe, everything in the universe eventually succumbs to entropy. Without some intervention, everything will become cold, lifeless, dark and still. However, living things seem to disobey the law of entropy. If we look at the evolution from one celled being to human, there certainly appears to be a force that is counter to entropy. Sure, individuals seem to die away, but a species seems to grow and multiply as long as there are resources for it to do so. Also as we have seen, living things eat. Plants need sunlight and nutrients from the soil. Or before his eat plants. Carnivores eat other animals. Omnivores eat other plants and animals. Life seems to be counter entropic.

We have already established, for example, that the large dinosaurs were far from the largest living things. We have also established that the giant redwood trees of California are far from the oldest living things. What we have discovered is that there are fungi in at least three places on the West Coast of the United States that are massive. These fungi cover literally hundreds or thousands of square miles! They are not only the largest living things, but also perhaps, the oldest. While pieces, or areas of the fungi may die off, the organism itself remains connected and continues to grow. They are truly amazing things.

14. Beyond Life as We Know It. Thus far, we have examined non-living, semi-living and living things from subatomic particles through elements and their compounds, to prions and viruses, to very complex living organisms. We have essentially established a hierarchy of complexity and organization, of which living things appeared to be of the highest order. The question is, however, is there a state of living things greater than that which we identify today is the individual?

One thing that we must clarify, since the issue has been raised, is, what is living? A simplistic way to look at it would be to say that living things grow. However, crystals grow too. Stalagtites and stalagmites also grow. So growth alone cannot be the sole definition that separates living from nonliving. Radioactive elements decay into stable elements. They give off energy, but eventually stop. Iron rusts, in the presence of oxygen, converting iron to ferrous oxide, and giving off heat. So what exactly separates living, semi-living, and nonliving?

First, living things consume matter and/or energy and transform that matter and/or energy through some process, into energy which sustains life and replicates itself.

Second, as far as we know, all living things have a cellular structure. They use their metabolic processes to create progeny. Semi-living things use the metabolic processes of living things to manufacture more semi-living things. So clearly, we production is part of a living thing. Iron can beget rust, however, iron cannot beget more iron nor can rust beget more iron. Iron, rust, and crystal growth are terminal processes.

Third, complex living things, above the level of the cell, seem to have their cellular structures constructed in such a fashion that they naturally are in close proximity to another piece of the living entity. For example, in humans everything is in close proximity, at some point, to the flow of blood. When living things multiply, the new entity physically separates itself from the parent. However, the new entity has all the equipment necessary for its two we produce. A begets B begts C. Generally, eventually A dies and B and C continue to have progeny which survive until they die. This, as we have seen, is not true of purely chemical processes, such as rusting.

Now, we are poised to ask ourselves a question. If a living thing represents the highest known order of the complexity of things, and, living things are defined by a cellular structure, is there some order of entity, living entity, which exists beyond the level of single living creature? Is there some order of meta-life that exists? We know that humans form families, individuals and families form communities, communities form cities and states which form nations. We know that the ecology of living things plays an immense role in the formation, sustenance, and even death of human communities.

Much as a skin cell on our big toe is not conscious of the humans cellular community of which is a part, much as the community of cells which form the human heart are not cognizant of the human, is it possible that we humans are part of a meta-life or higher order being that we do not (notice that I did not say cannot) perceive? Is is it possible that we humans are we early meta- cellular constructions in what passes for the massive body of a gigantic being? Is it possible that stars and galaxies, enormous to us, are not even visible to this meta- being?

This raises another interesting question. If the mind is separate from brains, does the mind survive? Is memory stored in the fifth or sixth or seventh or Nth dimension of our existing reality? We can really make two assumptions here.

Assumption number one. What we term the soul is an energy and possibly mass that peeks into our four dimensional space but lives largely in N dimensional space. It may survive the death and decay of the body. And, it may be that the process of producing a body means that the body cannot know, understand or even begin to process the fact that the energy or life force which animates the body is potentially immortal, peeking into our four dimensional world occasionally. In this assumption, the soul is a unique living entity.

Assumption number two. We are recording engines which, for some undefined purpose, to us, collectively collect and store data in N dimensional space, a byproduct of which, for example, could be EEGs which can be measured. In this scenario, reliving past lives, speaking in tongues, and similar experiences means that our brain is, at that point in time, to get to the frequency of those stored memories. It may be quite possible, in this scenario, four to living people to experience the same past memory. Although, to our knowledge, this has never occurred, but cannot be ruled out. We do know however, that two people apparently can share knowledge of a contemporary event. One person sees the events live, and another person, separated by vast distances, can experience the same visual and auditory experience. We term this clairvoyance.

Added:

15. Discuss the effects of various things we put into our body such as water, food, drink, drugs, alcohol. Discuss how these various substances affect the mind's ability to communicate with the body. There are three candidates substances: affect the body away, affect the mind away, affect the body and the mind.



16. Discuss the process of aging. Birth, growth, stasis, regression, death. Why do they happen? What can we do?



17. The power of ritual and talismans. Use the Catholic Mass example. Rituals and talismans evoke a response.

Thought Experiment: The Christian Trinity. Lesson 10T

One concept which has persisted for more than 2000 years is that the deity, God if you will, is one person with three manifestations: God the father, God the son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit. The Christian religions tell us that the Trinity is a mystery that cannot be explained in human terms.

We agree that human language and human ideas were limited enough 2000 years ago or more, such that there were not human words to describe how something could be a Trinity as described. However, let us revisit some of our earlier examples and see if it is indeed possible to explain this phenomenon, if it is true, in terms of 21st century ideas and knowledge. Perhaps, for those who believe, it no longer has to be a matter of faith rather than logic.

First, we make the assumption that space has N dimensions where N is more than the traditional four, height, width, length, and time. Let us say, in fact, that there are at least seven, and possibly many more, as we are told by Stephen Hawking, physicist.

Second, let us for a moment hypothesize that spirit, mind (as opposed to brain), or soul exist independently from the body, but manifest themselves through the physical body. Let us say that the sole is the seat of self. At the time of death, the physical body no longer is inhabited or animated by the sole. However, the soul, as defined, may survive the body, and indeed, may be nearly immortal.

Third, let us say that the soul communicates with its physical manifestation, the body, through some energetic means. The side effect of these means of communication may in fact be the EEGs we witnessed during a medical examination, or the auras some people can see, and which can be photographed using a tool called Kirilan photography, which can photographed the auras of living things.

Fourth, let us assume for a moment, that some people, whether they could explain it or not, were cognizant of this dual nature of the human. Some people may, in fact, be able to exercise some form of control over the energetic part of there being -- that which we previously called the soul. There have, perhaps, been people who have had some sort of control over their energetic being all throughout history.

Fifth, for the sake of argument, and for this thought experiment to be successful, let us assume that there are not many souls, but rather one mega-souls, one super being if you will, and adverse can only inject a small portion of itself, a spark of life simply large enough to animate a being capable of learning, and, passing that knowledge on to the mega-souls.

Sixth, this implies that there is a hierarchy of life had which we are not at the top, but in the middle! Just as our big toe cell is unaware of the toe, or even the body to which it is attached, may be mere humans are like the big toe cell!

Now let us go back to Jesus Christ. He was clearly a man. In our model of reality above, he clearly had a dual existence of body and soul. Through means not yet familiar to us, perhaps he understood that the mega-soul, that being which provides the spark of life to other beings, was in fact determined by Him, God the father. If Jesus knew that he contain a spark of God the father, He then would have clearly realized that He was God the son. That leaves us with God the Holy Spirit. Envisioned as tongues of fire by the Christians. Perhaps rather than fire, this was a large spark! Maybe it was a particularly bright aura around the head. In any event, it would have been a manifestation of the mega-souls (God the father) who exists in N dimensional space, and projected, or perhaps still projects occasionally, into four dimensional space time.

It is interesting to note that in the Bible to Jesus Christ never claims that he is God! He claims his father is God the father. He performs feats, that at that day and time were considered to be miracles. He even praised. In fact, he even tells Pontius Pilate, "It is you, not I, who claim that I am God." or words to that effect, after dozens of translations and hundreds of tellings.

Now we have explained this mystery in terms of the simplest explanation, which is a single mega-souls. This mega-soul is at least a component of that which we call God. The above explanations is simple, and has a certain logical symmetry, which is appealing. However, to appease those who don't think that we as beings can be energized by a single thing which we call a mega-soul, lettuce and assume that the being we call God does have a non-corporeal, energetic soul. It is quite possible that that life force inhabited a person, Jesus Christ. Just as it is possible that such a soul could have animated bodies before and after.

The second explanations lacks a certain symmetry that we see in the first explanation. It is much easier to believe that there is a universal energy, a universal life force, then maybe one force, or one soul, which projects itself into living beings and grows therein. As knowledge grows, the being who wrote!

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A physics lesson: Absolute Nothingness And ...: Lesson 20

Preamble


Why teach a basic introduction to physics in a philosophy course?

People have a natural tendency to make order out of disorder, to organize things in the midst of chaos. People seem to instinctually fight the natural law of entropy, the universes pensioned from moving from organized to disorganized. The universe will eventually cause a cup and saucer to fall on the floor, and fly apart in a thousand pieces. However, nothing in nature will naturally cause those thousand pieces to automatically reform into a coffee cup! Except humans!

What is the present day process of recycling? We recycle paper, aluminum, plastics and more. When we recycle something, we take it from its natural elements to a manufactured product, the opposite of entropy. We use the product -- read the newspaper, drink the drink from the bottle, use the shampoo in the plastic container -- and then discard the leftover remnants of the product. Those remnants are then picked up, sorted, and sent off to factories where they are remanufactured into pristine new products.

The creation of things originally, seems to be against the law of entropy.

The notion of recycling materials after use of the created product is most certainly counter to entropy.

A contrary perspective


George Carlin was a famous philosopher/comedian in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. George once had a comedy skit about a living earth. He postulated that the earth wanted plastic, so the earth, through its evolutionary processes, created man, which created plastic. Eventually, the earth had enough plastic to suit its needs, so it decided that it no longer needed people.

However, humans didn’t just die off after the invention of plastic! So the Earth said, “How can I get rid of these people that I no longer need?”

The Earth decided that one way for sure to eradicate these pesky people was to invent the disease that is universally fatal to people and passed along in the process of reproduction, which people seem to love to do. The perfect solution.

Introduction

What happens when we reached the edge of the universe? Does it just go on forever? How long is forever, and how big must something be to be infinitely wide or long or high? This is a question that even physicists argue about to this day. Do we live in the finite bounded universe? That is, a spherical universe in which we can reach the edge, but if we reached the edge, we just doubled back on ourselves like rolling around the inside of the ball. Do we live in a finite unbounded universe? As soon as we approach the edge, does the universe stretched, like a balloon being filled with air? Do we live in an infinite universe? Does the universe have no end, no wage in any direction? What’s on the other side of the edge of the universe? Is there another universe? Are there an infinite number of other universes? Was our universe created when the black hole of another universe reach some limit and exploded?

Hypothesis.

Let us take a look at the first moments of the universe. According to scientist today, everything we know started as a compact mass of plasma, in this sense, plasma means a degenerate form of matter/energy which is both incredibly small, physically, and incredibly dense. That small, dense cluster of plasma viably exploded, creating heat, light, and the progenitors of all that we see in the universe today.

As this hot, gaseous plasma expanded, it began the process of cooling. Over billions of years it began to condense around pieces of itself, ultimately forming gas clouds, galaxies, solar systems, etc. The elements we know today began to form in that first, colossal explosion. The subatomic particles such as neutrons, protons and electrons probably formed first. Hydrogen, the first element in the periodic table having only one electron and one proton was probably the first elements that form. Compressed into great gaseous clouds, it ignited the massive stars. In their churning heat and gravity, the stars would have been the initial creators, the ovens, the makers, of most other physical matter.

In the hearts of stars, hydrogen fusing into helium, crushed together by the enormous gravitation and energy of these massive firestorms in the sky. Hydrogen and helium smashed together to form heavier elements. All the matter we know today -- rocks, plants, animals, were born in the hearts of stars. Without these massive engines of creation, nothing else would exist. We, and everything we see, everything we know, are the stuff of stars.

And, the stuff of stars, as the physicists tell us, all started from that first explosion, that first expansion of them massively dense, almost infinitely small pinpoint of plasma at the beginning of the universe.

Big questions.

What no one has ever told us, what no one knows, and what few we speculate regarding, is the source of that pinpoint of plasma that started it all. There are several possibilities:

1. The hot, dense plasma was at the center of a black hole in a parallel universe. Black holes in this universe might create enough pressure and gravity to create even more universes. Of course, this begs the question, how did the first universe start.

2. Our universe is formed over and over again. The universe, instead of expanding forever, collapses back on itself. Gravitation is strong enough that the hot dense plasma, the size of a pinpoint, explodes again, going to the cycle of expansion, gravitational attraction, compression, explosion, over and over. Of course, this does not answer the question of where the initial pinpoint of super dense matter came from.

3. The universe was created by the spontaneous generation of matter, much as walking speculate below, at the event arising a black hole. Presumably, all the was needed was the space for the additional plasma to form.

Breaking the law.

According to physicist Stephen Hawking, energy and matter are created, out of appearance nothingness at the event horizon of a black hole. One can think of the event horizon as a boundary around the black hole. Up to the boundary, you can exert enough energy to escape. Cross that boundary and nothing, not even light, which travels at roughly 186,000 mi./s, can get away. Gravity is so strong that it is inescapable by anything in the known universe.

By spontaneously generating matter or energy at the event horizon, the universe apparently violates one of Einstein's most famous equations, E=mc2. This tells us that energy can be converted to matter, matter can be converted to energy, but matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Apparently, there is at least one place where that law does not holes true, and that is the boundary of the event horizon of a black hole.


Continued...

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What Is Life? Lesson 30

Introduction

As far as we know, as far as we are taught, there are three forms of stuff in the world: animals, vegetables, and minerals. Using this broad categorization rocks and soil are certainly mineral. In the broader categorization as one of the three types of things, all of the elements on the periodic table, and all compounds made from them would be considered mineral. Thus, even the bodies of animals and vegetables are composed of is minerals, albeit with something extra. On a macro level, we think it is relatively easy to distinguish among them. However, when we look more closely, it becomes difficult. A sponge is an animal, so is coral. However, sponges, coral, and even sea anemonies sit in one place, a mobile, and catch and eat food that passes by. And what about the Venus fly trap? It has chlorophyll, it turns toward the sun, and it converts minerals it receives through its roots into energy for its growth. That’s all very plantlike. However, the Venus fly trap also catches and eats insects! The fine distinctions between plant and animal can be very deceptive. In fact, one could say that the distinction was purely artificial. As far as we know, everything is composed of some form of mineral, by the above definition.

Modern taxonomy.

A taxonomy is a method of organizing objects or ideas. For example if we have a bag of cubes and balls, we could organize the stuff in the bag by putting the bags content on the table and segregating it into two groups by shape, a taxonomy of shapes. We could also have a bag of cubes and balls in several different materials such as Styrofoam, leather, wood and plastic. Both the cubes and the balls could come in all of those materials. We can organize them by material of manufacture, a materials taxonomy. It is much the same with living in nonliving things. Scientists over the years have attempted to categorize living in nonliving things.

Historically, we learned in school that there were plants animals and minerals, a taxonomy with three categories. Scientists today have decided that the original three categories were insufficient. The new categories are:

• Minerals -- nonliving things which compose all matter, including living matter. One distinguishing feature between living things and minerals is that all living things that we know of are made up of a structure containing minerals. Living things are characterized by cellular structures. Minerals do not form cellular structures. Also, one mineral does not take into fuel in the form of light and organic compounds in order to produce exact replicas of itself.

• Viruses and prions -- things that reproduce by taking over or forcing the other living things to construct copies of themselves, often at the distructions of the original host. These objects are literally bundles of DNA with few structures. Since they do not conduct any of their own metabolic processes, scientists are reluctant to classify them as living things. However, unlike a chemical process, they do reproduce through other organisms and use the energy and other byproducts of the host organism's metabolic processes.

• Prokaryots -- primitive, living things that do not have a cell nucleus, and exist as simple, one celled creatures, or as an organization of several cells that are not differentiated. This is a very primitive form of life, possibly from which modern life sprang. Their physiology necessarily limits their size.

• Eukaryots -- living things that have a cell nucleus and may exist as single celled or multicelled organisms.

o Protists -- simple organisms that may have only one celled, or may exist as multicellular creatures that have no cellular differentiation.

o Fungi -- a class of living things such as mushrooms which does not photosynthesize. Like plants, fungi cell have a cell wall, however, the cell wall is composed of chitin, a substance used by animals to produce shells, rather than cellulose, which is unique to plants. According to modern taxonomists, structurally, fungi are closer to animals than plants!

o Plans -- multi-celled organisms with both the cellular membrane and a cell wall.

o Animals -- multicellular organisms without a cell wall.

As we have previously observed, it can be very difficult to tell a floral still filled animals such as a sponge from a carnivorous plant such as the Venus fly trap.

Again, we reiterate, originally, things could be divided between living in nonliving. Then they were divided into living plants versus animals, and nonliving. Now, as we can see, living things consist of more than plants and animals, realizing that some previously known entities such as viruses, prions, protests and fungi are clearly members of neither class.

How to tell living from nonliving.

This may seem like a silly question, however it is not so simple. One might say living things grow and nonliving things do not grow. But don't crystals grow? Can I not grow as salt crystals in water? Do we natural world is in other minerals as the crystals used in lasers? Do not stalagtites and stalagmites grow in caves, getting larger as the centuries pass? So growth, as in going from smaller to larger, is obviously not the determining factor.

We could say that all living things are composed of cells. However, what would that do to viruses and prions? They use the functions of living cells to reproduce copies of themselves. Of course, we have the question, are viruses and prions a stage between living in nonliving.

It would appear that all living things make use of the cellular structure. All in nonliving things, in the sense that they would never living, do not. So it could be said that all living things contained in, or make use of, a cellular structure, we produce things that have the same lifecycle, and multiply.

Living things.

How do we tell if something is a plant or an animal? We could say all plants have chlorophyll and conduct photosynthesis. But there's a problem. Sponges are animals. Some sponges have chlorophyll, or structures known as chloroplasts, in their makeup. If we classify sponges as animals, that means that all things containing chlorophyll cannot be plants. I could say plants are immobile, and draw nutrients through their roots and usually also perform photosynthesize. But what about the Western Tumbleweed? It just blows around with the wind! It's not fixed anywhere.

The most reliable definition is one that tells us that both plants and animals have a cell membrane, that which holds in their fluids and other structures that make up the cell. However, only plans have a cell wall, made of cellulose, outside of the cell membrane, and only fungi have a cell wall made of chitin, which allows them to have a rigid form without a skeleton.

So we can have plants that eat meat and animals that use sunlight to create energy. But we can always tell a plant from an animal by its cellular structure.

Continued ...

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What Is Life?Lesson 31

...Continued


So why does life exist?

The earth is teeming with life. Every millimeter of its surface, even under and in the oceans, and atmosphere is saturated with life. It would be statistically unlikely that of all the planets and their moons surrounding the sun, all the sons in our galaxy, and all the galaxies in the universe, as we know it, only earth contains life!

The notion that we are alone in the universe is not statistically probable. So why does life exist? There are several possibilities:

1. Cosmic accident theory. Life on earth is a cosmic accident; something that a confluence of events, unique to our planet, caused to happen. Life exists nowhere else in the universe.
2. Occasional happenstance theory. Like number 1, above, life is accidental, however it has occurred accidentally in some small number of worlds in the universe. Here we must recognize that small, in terms of the universe, is large in human terms. If 100, or 1000, or 10,000 planets harbor life, that would be very small indeed, in terms of the universe, however large as humans measure. However, if life is accidental, and the number of bodies harboring life is small, we may be the only life that exists in our galaxy. That would be unfortunate indeed, because it could take as many years as there has been life on earth to contact life in another galaxy. We may not be alone, but we may be isolated.
3. Common process theory. Life is common and ordinary in situations where the environment is suitable. It may be that celestial habitats capable of evolving life may be the minority of celestial bodies. But, out of the billions of stars that make up a galaxy, and billions of galaxies that we know of, even if life exists on only 1%, that's a lot by human standards! The odds of bumping into life in this galaxy rise dramatically.
4. The inverted theory. Our understanding is inverted, backwards. Intelligence, minds, predated this universe as we know it. Our universe is in fact existent solely for the purpose of creating a physical, corporeal existence for the mind. In essence, minds existed first and the physical universe came later. In essence, the universe as we know it was created by minds which preceded it. It really doesn't matter, in terms of this theory, whether there is one mind which manifests itself in many bodies and many units of consciousness, or whether each mind is unique.
5. The emergent mind theory. This theory states that mind is a byproduct, also known as an emergent property, of bodies. With this theory, body existed first, brains second and mind cotempers were brave, or third. In this theory, we have to separate the concept of mind and memory. Much is a computer stores memory on a flash drive or a disk, and coded in ones and zeros, and the storage medium can be transported from computer to computer, memory is an artifact resulting from thinking thoughts in the brain. As animals, humans included, may have a rudimentary capability to reach peace thoughts. There is some evidence that, if this is true, humans radiate thoughts at a particular frequency, like a radio station, and may have the ability, under the right circumstances, to retrieve other, typically previous thoughts, on that same frequency.
6. The dualistic theory. Mind and matter, mind and body, existed independently prior to the creation of the universe, or matter, as we know it. Mind, whether singuler with lots of tentacled, or whether independent, may have adapted to the presence of matter. It is even possible that mind uses matter much as humans and chimps use tools. In this sense, the tool, the body, may have come into existence long after the dawn of the mind.
7. The multiverse theory. This theory states that our universe popped into existence with the Big Bang, which at its beginning, was a tiny, hot, dense spot of plasma/energy that exploded, expanding into the known universe. The multiverse theory states that the Big Bang actually happened millions or billions of times. Our universe is but one of these. In each of these universes, the physical laws and mathematical constants may vary. A universe in which we live happens to have the right configuration of natural laws acend mathematical constants to permit life, therefore it evolved here on Earth, and perhaps other planets, where as other universes did not. Perhaps still other universes develop the modes of life or intelligence totally foreign to hours.

Analysis of the six theories.
Here, we take for a moment, a leap of faith. Occam's Razer told us that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Life emerging on earth as an accident, given that so many things in the universe follow predictable laws, even laws we don't yet understand, the sudden appearance of life as an accident on earth is highly unlikely. Not impossible, just improbable. This, of course, makes option number two even more unlikely. If it's unlikely that life was a mistake and one planet, the probability that the same mistake was made on many planets is very remote.

Option three which states that, in the right environment, life is likely to appear, and that in the billions and billions of stars, the relatively ordinary sun means that, undoubtedly, life is rather common in the universe. Even in our own solar system, life may exist on other worlds. Jupiter, various moons, and other unexplored territories are possible candidates for life. We also must remember that life here on earth is carbon-based. That may or may not be true on other worlds. Silicon is another element with properties very close to those of carbon.

Options four through six take a different approach to looking at mind versus body. Advanced cellular structures, what we call eukariotic cells, for example, which make up our human body are actually believe to be cells that, millions of years ago, captured other organelles, found them useful, and made them permanent residence or parts of the cell structure. This same process could have happened between mind and body. The two developed independently, possibly even indifferent conventional space. The line found that substance we call matter, and began experimenting with it, injecting pieces of itself into the physical existence.

Take a look at life on earth. It began as very simple one celled creatures, e-mail is the multicellular creatures in the seas, crawled out of the sea is to explore the land, and once for some very specific cycles. So these experiments were unsuccessful, and died off -- became extinct. Some of them were successful as life, but insufficient for the needs of the mind. They stayed. We experimented with very small lifeforms, very large lifeforms like a dinosaur, and ended up with humans, somewhere in the middle. Humanity is the mind's results in experimentation with the vessels capable of being illuminated by the spark of mind.

If you read six, the dualistic theory, is very similar. However, it assumes the mind and matter URL found two separate paths. Presumably, even mind is older, or capable of evolution much more quickly. Matter was observed by mind, and basically put use. Mind you discovered that it can accomplish more and experience more by using matter is a tool. That is, our bodies are essentially tools of that thing we call mine, which is still in the process of experimenting with matter.

Finally, we have the emergent property concept. Matter formed into cells, cells and life, and life became increasingly more complex. The mind is something that emerges from life, as a result of life. Much like if we throw a bunch of parts that ultimately formidable bicycle, into a box, without proper assembly, they just remain a bunch of parts in a box. The mind is a centrally the bicycle in a box. When life becomes complex enough, the body organizes the parts of the box into a bicycle -- into a mind.

There's only one problem with this. If we look at physics, there is a concept called entropy. Entropy says that everything moves from order and structure to disorder. I start with a tree, the tree dies, the tree decays into its component parts. Two people beget a third, the two original people essentially returned to dust, and over time, the third does also. Entropy exists. The concept of putting a bunch of parts in a box, and magically assembling those parts into a bicycle is contrary to the law of entropy. Mind is an emergent property of the body is contrary to the laws of entropy.

So what happened?

Entropy is the natural tendency for things to go from a state of organization to a state of disorganization over time. Entropy is a law of physics, and a law of nature. According to the law of entropy, everything decays. Rocks become sand. Living things die. Organic things decompose. Things that are hot become cold. Things that are bright become dim and eventually, dark. According to the laws of entropy, the universe is moving from that enormous expenditure of energy called the Big Bang to, if nothing else intervenes, a state of coal darkness. This may happen over many billions and billions of years, but, physics, the physics of our four dimensions, tells us, it will happen.

Now, if the law of entropy, which governs matter, also governs the behavior of non-material things, then there are two possibilities.

First, there is the possibility that life, as we know it, is actually a more disorganized state then the explosion which occurred at the Big Bang. That is possible, but does not, following contemporary human logic, seem likely.

Second, entropy is a condition of matter. Entropy is a law governing things from rocks, to our bodies, to planet Earth itself. However, while the world of subatomic particles, atoms, and more complex matter may be subject to the laws of entropy, there may be other laws that work. The N dimensions that exists (where N is greater than four) may follow totally different laws.

Since matter spontaneously generating a more complex form of life is counter to the law of entropy, it is logical, then, to assume that some force, some energy, was expended for the purpose of organizing matter. Given the laws of entropy, that force had to be outside the frame of reference, outside the frame of existence of matter. Otherwise, we would violate a basic law of physics, the physics that we understand as the physics of matter and energy.

End state.
This logic inevitably leads us to the conclusion that what we know is mind, in its broader definition meaning both the ability to think, and the ability to animate otherwise inanimate matter must be a force not subject to the laws of entropy, or, at least not subject to the laws of physical entropy as it exists in the material world. Mind, soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it, must exist separate from physical matter that exists in our four dimensions.

This raises another interesting question! If time, as we measure it, always progressing in a forward direction, as we perceive it, how it is time a fact other dimensions? Are they eternal? Do they exist independently of time? Can something that exists in those other dimensions moved back and forth through time, since nothing in our known physics tells us that the arrow of time must always point from now to future with existing consciousness being stuck in the present.

Note. So far, through these lessons, we have agreed that there are four dimensions: height, width, length, and time. We have also stated, that according to physicists, there must be some more dimensions beyond those that we can perceive. We have been describing, counting, these dimensions as "N, where N is greater than or equal to three." In the rest of this document, we shall refer to the four dimensions we can perceive, and we shall refer to the rest of the dimensions as the Q dimensions.

Focusing Intention. Lesson 40

"Anything you believe, you can achieve."
          -- Anthony (Tony) Robbins




Definition.

Mind.

Mind is the characteristic of higher developed, multicellular, biological organisms -- such as people -- which manifests itself as thought, memory, and other attributes which are not limited to the products of cellular functions. Some of the names, in this context, for mind are: Spirit, soul, living essence, etc.

Intention.

Intention is the power of the mind, within each person, to achieve, through a variety of means, virtually anything that can be conceived.


Two terms that we shall bandy about in our studies are intention and mind. As you see, from the above written definitions, they contain the essence of what these words mean in plain English. However, we will use them in a very specific context.



Introduction to mind



Mind is a thing. It is a known, quantifiable property of a human. We measured IQ of the mind, and can identify a genius from their IQ. We say that a smart person has a power for mind. Clearly in our every day speaking, we subconsciously differentiate the mind from the brain. The brain is an organ of our bodies. It is a collection of cells. It sits in our heads. It is connected by a cable like mass of cells called spinal cord. The brain is a cellular mechanism that one, theoretically, can touch. The mind, on the other hand, is much more etherial.

We may casually save the brain thinks. However, when we ask someone what they used to think, the answer will be the mind. If I go into surgery, and I asked the doctor to show me the mind, he may show me the brain. Of course I would respond, that is the brain, a human organ -- not the mind, the collection of thoughts, memories, worlds, hates and such. Or, they may say the mind set in the brain. If I ask the same question over coroner, he may say, "Sir, I do autopsies on dead people. I can show you their brain, but I don't think there's any mind present."

In that respect, doesn't the mind more closely resembles the fact is e call spirits or soul?



Introduction to Intention.



People often say that it is their "intention to ..." Substitute any word you like. In common parlance, and intention, or intending to do something, is used synonymously with plan or planning to do something. To intend to do something is seen as a stronger assertion than to plan to do something. Generally it is used as, I intend or they intend, it is my plan to do something or your plan to do something.

We use intention in much the same way. However, is something we plan to do with our mind, as opposed to our brain or our body.

Intention, for our purposes, is a focused, mental exercise meant to achieve a particular purpose or action. One could view intention as one would view the magical powers of a genie let out of the bottle. The genie in the bottle grants you three wishes, and makes them come true. Generally, the drama arises because the genie takes the utterings, of the person who released him from captivity, quite literally -- often with comic or tragic results.

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ1nweotz-8MZGNiNHB6YzhfNDJnbXF2cGhkcg&hl=en

Focusing Intention Lesson 41

continued....


In real life, intention operates much the same way as the Genie's magic, and quite often not as intended by the person who wielded it.

As Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Focused intention, to the uninitiated, may seem like magic. However, like Clark's magic or advanced technology, focused intention behaves according to specified laws, with certain predictable results.

The path of truth.

Throughout these my graphs we will attempt to separate



"Anything you believe you can achieve." Anthony (Tony) Robbins

...https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ1nweotz-8MZGNiNHB6YzhfNzZjcW56d3ZmOQ&hl=en

Does Size Matter? Lesson 50

Introduction.

When we look at one celled plants or animals, they are very small, and not usually visible to the naked eye. However, we know they exist and can see them with a microscope. Over time, evolution has created multi-cellular plants and animals. Unless of course, you take the fundamentalist Christian view that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and, what we today see as fossils are merely artifacts, left for some noble reason, by our Creator.

Before considering the latter conjecture, first let us explore the idea of evolution, and what that may mean for humanity.

You and I are human, scientifically known as Homo sapiens. We belong to the animal kingdom, as opposed to plans, fungi (like mushrooms) or the various other scientific categorizations of living things.

Take people for example. We are living beings composed of literally billions of cells. We have skin cells and bone cells, muscle and heart, lung and kidney cells. Barring an anomaly, these cells make up a unique person. Now what’s interesting, is that I can take a few of those cells – skin or liver or kidney – remove them from the body to which they are attached, put them in a petri dish with the proper nutrients, and they will continue to grow, at least for a while. Some types of cells do not last very long. Other types of cells in our bodies are much longer lived. Thus far, the only cell in our bodies that science has not proven replaces it's self is the brain cell, the nerve cell, also called the neuron.

While science may not be advanced enough yet to be growing a new heart, it can certainly keep heart cells alive for a long time, outside the body.

Here is another fact. Over time, virtually every cell in our bodies will be replaced. Older skin cells will die and slough off, only to be replaced by new living cells. With the possible exception of neurons, as nerve cells are called, our entire body is replaced many times, cell by cell, over the course of our lives.

What makes me, me.

I am physically not the same person as I was yesterday, last month, or last year. Aside from being me, the personality that we all know, I am a product of the food I eat, water I drink and air that I breathe. The person who went to bed last night is physically not the same person that woke up this morning! Therefore, we can be said to live in a state of constant physical change. This colony of siblings cells renews itself regularly, with cells reproducing, growing, dying, all the regular rate. The body is constantly renewing and changing. However, the mind is another story. The mind has a continuity that the physical body does not.

This raises a number of very interesting questions such as, who or what am I… or anyone else for that matter. On the one hand, I am literally a colony of independent sibling cellular level organisms that live together in a highly structured colony, have their own goals, and have the shared goal of staying alive. They start out like a new colony, grow and prosper as a mature city or country, and eventually, and inevitably, die like the ghost towns of the wild West, with only our skeletons surviving the ravages of time to prove that we once walked here on the earth.

Life begets life.

One of the distinctions between living in nonliving is that the living give birth to replicas of themselves. They go through a process of combining old forms of matter, in new ways, into new forms of matter. There are several different methods of reproduction. At the single cell level, we have the ability for a cell to split in half and create two new creatures, called mitosis. There is the ability for two single cells to share nuclear material also called DNA , then divide, which is called conjugation. With higher life forms, there is the very common sexual reproduction. The results will that process called parthenogenesis which is the fertilization of an egg without the need for male.

The possibilities for reproduction of the species are many.

The process of reproduction however, is limited to ordinary living things such as plants, animals, fungi and the like. Minerals do not reproduce. They may chemically change form in a chemical reaction, combines or split apart. But they do not reproduce or cause reproduction to happen. There is no way to have two lumps of iron give rise to a child called iron.

Non-me flora and fauna.

it is interesting to note that most of the cells in our body share the same genetic the two real; that is, they are what I define as many. However, there are numerous microscopic plants and animals that live on us and in us. These microbes may be symbiotic, meaning it may do us some good and we do them some good, and some may be parasitic, that is, they draw sustenance from us but give nothing in return -- such as a tape worm. This symbiotic microorganisms are the most interesting. We do know that microbes in our gut help us to digest food. they are symbiotic. When we take some antibiotics, they not only kill the pathogens, or bad microbes, but also kill off some of the symbiotic micro-organisms that help us digest food. Eating yogurt, for example, is known to replenish the use of microorganisms that are healthy for us. So even we, as humans, are actually colony creatures! Human life could not be sustained without the helpful microorganisms that live within us.

Interesting question number one.

We are conceived in her mother’s womb, a new living creature, physically dependent upon, and attached to, the parent. We are born as infants, totally helpless, operating on pre-programmed, instinctual actions alone, which seem to be hardwired to conception. We go through several phases of life, and perhaps, have children of our own. We then grow old, and die, leaving our children as, arguably, our greatest legacy.

Understanding this points out an interesting conundrum. Who am I, really?

Is that essence which is me – my personality, separate from that colony of living cells which represents my body in the independent living creatures that inhabit it? Or, is my essence, me, simply a byproduct, or in more scientific terms, an emergent property of this colony of cells living, growing and sharing themselves? It would certainly seem that the unique thing, that unique living organism that I identify as myself, is separate from some biological processes that make up my body.

If I call the self aware entity a mind, essence, spirit or a soul, then it is certainly something different from the collection or, colonies of differentiated cells that make up my body. In scientific terminology, something that we have to discover is whether that thing we call the mind is:

a). an emergent property of the elements and compounds that manifest themselves as tissues made up of cells, naking our body, or,

b). something different entirely, a processin which a particular batch of cells provides access to the reality which we perceive as these four dimensions! Is the body of machine, like an automobile or a telephone which transports matter or information that is used by some type of organized energy we call mind, spirit or soul?

In other words, is the body a vehicle which allows its passenger, the independent mind, to operate in this plane of existence, these four dimensions. Is the mind separate and distinct from the body which it uses?

Option b) presents us with some very satisfying solutions as we will see.

Basically, we are asking ourselves is the essence of self, the mind, separate from, and using, the body. There are many arguments, which we shall explore in more detail, which support the hypothesis that this is in fact the case.