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.

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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.

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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

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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.

Does Size Matter? Lesson 51

...Continued

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.

Interesting question number two.

There are, at a minimum, four propositions for the creation of the world, and life as we know it.

1. The universe always existed, and always will exist. It is eternal.

2. The universe was created in six days by the Creator, who rested on the seventh. This is a literal interpretation. The day is a 24-hour period.

3. The universe was created as in example 2 above. In addition, it all occurred several thousand years ago, as we measure time. All the fossil records, and other scientific data, which indicate that the earth and the universe are much older our human misinterpretations of the data. Fossils for example, were put there intentionally by the Creator, for some purpose we do not yet understand.

4. The universe, containing all its dimensions, including the four the we know, as well as the beginning of space and time as we perceive them, was created by the Big Bang, a massive explosion of highly compressed plasma. At the genesis of the universe, the explosion of this matter created space and time as well as all of the atoms and molecules of matter that we know today.

As you can see, there are multiple versions of the creation of the universe. Versions two and three, indeed, may be possible. However, given present human knowledge, they must be accepted on faith, and are unprovable.

Like versions two and three, version 1 and 4 are not mutually exclusive. The universe could have always existed, and at the same time gone through this cycle of explosion, matter formation, expansion, contraction, compression. In this case, the contraction is caused by gravitational attraction. Basically, the giant explosion runs out of steam and quits throwing matter outward. Like a rubber band, stretched to its limit, it starts to pull in again. Ultimately, all matter is compressed into this plasma soup, the specter of creation.

We must ask ourselves one important question at this point. Do we believe that the Creator intentionally leaves on answerable questions, mysteries. Are there supposed to be those things that we humans never understand?

Given the rate in growth of human knowledge, that proposition would seem to be rather unlikely. Many things, that we today understand, were once considered to be unknowable mysteries. The rate of growth of human knowledge has been, and will most likely continue to be, exponential.

Let’s assume for now, the versions one and/or four are accurate. This means that the universe as we know it is billions of years old. It may be the first time, or it may be that 12,000 time that the universe has gone through this process of expansion and contraction.

So this essentially leaves us with a series of questions:

1. Is the body a mechanical vessel used by the mind is a vehicle in which the mind can navigate in these four dimensions, or, is the mind an emergent property of those constantly renewing cells that we call the body?

2. Is the body and intentionally formed artifact by the mind, or, in accident of a natural process that we call evolution.

3. How did the universe, which contains our physical bodies, evolve? Was it accidental, or intentional?

4. Is the physical universe, as we know it, accidental or intentional?

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Existing in Four Dimensions. Lesson 60

Introduction

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. In reality, in science, there is nothing to prevent time from flowing like a stream, with twists and turns and eddies which disrupt its forward flow.

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, and nothing excludes the possibility that there are many more.

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, and possibly seventh or eighth, sense to perceive.

This presents up an interesting conundrum. If the dimensions themselves cannot be perceived with our existing senses, perhaps the mechanism for perceiving them cannot easily be perceived either. 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.

We may postulate that there are indeed, senses which connect to our mind and exist in those other dimensions. Perhaps they are underdeveloped, immature. Perhaps, we have allowed them to atrophy. Perhaps they are stronger in some people than others. However, it does not preclude the possibility that we do have a sense, and in existence, in those other three or more dimensions.

The newborn.

Let us, for a few moments, consider the human infant from conception to birth.

We start out with two cells, one from the father and one from the mother. The male cell literally penetrates the female cell and the two combined forming what is called a zygote. This zygote develops for a while as a bunch of undifferentiated cells. This collection of undifferentiated cells is called a blastocyst.

The blastocyst then starts to begin its transformation into a little human, the embryo. In this embryonic stage, the being is dependent upon the mother for life itself.

After about eight weeks, the embryo is recognizable as human, and becomes a fetus, where it develops from about the end of two months through the ninth month. Then the fetus is born is a human baby.

The development of the brain

What is amazing about this is that the newborn baby has almost as many neurons, or brain cells, as it will ever have. The vast majority of the brain cells are functioning at birth, with only a small percentage being created throughout the next eight years or so.

The newborn brain is a sponge soaking up information at a tremendous rate. But, let us compare the human versus the fish, or the frog, less-developed life forms. The human is helpless at birth. The fish and the frog hatch and are on their own, with no need for the parent, in most cases. They are capable, at that very early age, of getting food, recognizing danger, knowing night from day, and much more. All of this is accomplished with a comparatively tiny brain. They are pre-programmed to behave in a certain manner. They run on what we call instinct. Knowledge they are capable of learning, beyond instinctive behavior, is minimal at best.

Humans do have some instincts. They do have some automatic, or reflexive behaviors with which their preprogrammed, and which are present at birth. Some stay with us our entire lives. However, surprisingly, some of these instinctive behaviors seem to disappear if not developed.

A disappearing skill.

Many adults are afraid of the water, and cannot swim. Did you know that the human infant has no such fear?

If you take a newborn infant, just home from the hospital, filled a bathtub about halfway, and put the baby in facedown, it will instinctively hold his breath underwater, float to the surface, float on its back, and begin to breathe. It has no fear. It does not drowned. It is an instinctive behavior, regardless of the parents learned feelings towards water. Some small infants, just a couple of days of learning to be in the water, will even flip back the other way, facedown, and then flip back over just for fun! So this mental programming exists at merely hours old.

It is interesting, that if one waits too long after birth to develop this natural tendency to survive and flourish in an aquatic environment, the instinct virtually disappears. The toddler who has never been exposed to submersion and water will become afraid. The child who was exposed from birth, will not.

This points out nearly 1 of potentially many abilities, capabilities, and natural tendencies with which people are born. Many of these natural tendencies, like swimming, atrophy if not developed early in life. It is much easier, much less work, to develop an early instinct in a baby than to retrain the child on an instinctine skill that was lost shortly after birth through non-use.

Relearning lost instinctive skills.

Fortunately, as we have seen with swimming, just because an instinctive skill has been lost, or repressed, does not mean that the skill is gone forever. Some people may naturally recover these lost skills over time. Some people may, through training and coaching, reignite their ability to use those skills.

One frequently seen variation is the development of an instinctive skill when one of the normal, humans faculties has been lost. Brain damage, loss of sight or hearing, partial paralysis, and a variety of other physical limitations may bring about the presentation of one of these capabilities. This would seem to imply, while dormant, these capabilities, nonetheless, still exists within us.

Continued ...

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Existing in Four Dimensions.Lesson 61

... Continued

Skills, talents, and dimensions.

The human infant is born with a natural tendency, and instinctive behavior, to swim. He or she is also born with a natural instinct to role play, to imitate him play the behaviors he or she sees her in older children and adults around him. We have, in the last 10 years or so, seen a dramatic increase in what we can teach children, and what they can let. This is due more to the fact that the attitude of the children's teachers have changed, not that there has been any evolution in the human brain. One side effect of this learning, however, may be that by teaching children more, earlier, we diminish the instinctive behaviors that would normally develop during that time.

In the years before preschool, daycare, kindergarten, etc. human children may have in fact, use that time to develop skills which today's society has caused to atrophy. In our haste to develop brighter, smarter children, have we stunted some formerly instinctive behaviors that used to develop in that time? Does taking time to fill the brain with knowledge of our choosing diminish the ability of the brain, distracted if you will, from developing skills that we don't recognize that we need any more?

Extra sensory perception: ESP

There are a variety of talents which those interested, in what is commonly called, the paranormal or extra sensory perception (ESP), claime to possess, or have observed. There are potentially thousands of skills and claims. Undoubtedly, summer parlor tricks. Others, often use mysterious (to the uninitiated) technology, and as we all know, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But out of the hundreds, and maybe thousands, of skills claimed -- those which we are to be concerned with; those which have some science behind them, amount to no more than a handful. There are six, in particular, that we shall discuss:


1. Claraudience / Clairvoyance. These abilities are the ability to hear, see, and/or no something that is happening in a distant place, with no temporal tools or technologies for gathering the information.

2. Telepathy. The ability to know what someone else is thinking, without any physical clues.

3. "Out of body experience" (OBE). The ability to use what appears to be the senses, site, hearing, touch, taste, smell, in a location which is remote from the physical body, without electronic or mechanical assistance.

4. "Past Life Regression" (PLR). The ability, usually but not always under hypnosis, to experience memories accumulated by another, now deceased, person.

In addition to these four relatively well-documented capabilities, there are also the following which may be less well scientifically explored, but merit consideration:


1. Déjà vu. There are many forms of déjà vu, including the commonly felt "I'd been here before" or "I've done this before" feeling that people occasionally get or experience. Closely related to this is the experience many military personnel feel in a combat situation -- the feeling or knowing from which direction the threat is coming, and how far away it is.

2. Precognition. Knowing or experiencing an event before it happens. It manifests itself similarly to Claraudience and Clairvoyance, however, those para-sciences are at the same time he has, or shortly after the event, whereas precognition happens before the event occurs.

We shall examine each of these capabilities in the following mini lessons.

Continued...

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Existing in Four Dimensions .Lesson 62

... continued

Clairvoyance / Clairaudience

Clairvoyance means, literally, seeing at a distance, while clairaudience means hearing at a distance. In the mainstream, the term clairvoyance is used to mean either. Generally, the experience manifests itself in the visual, audible and sometimes either other senses.

The concept of "at a distance" is what is generally meant to mean far beyond the normal human capacity for hearing and seeing. The phenomenon may manifest itself in the next city, or halfway around the world.

The clock.

In our first case study, the subject, or the person handing the experience, was tearing up old wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, when suddenly, the clock in the kitchen literally fell off the wall and made quite a racket. Instantly, when that happened, the subjects said that his uncle, over 1000 miles away had just passed away. The people with him chastised him for such negative thinking. They replaced the clock on the kitchen wall and completed tearing up the carpet and padding.

Less than an hour later, the subjects aunt called, explaining that her brother had passed away less than an hour before.

The bird.

In our second case study, the subject had just arrived at home, and was getting something to eat. A bird hit the front window of the house. Fortunately, the bird was not injured, and although dazed, got up and blow away. At that instant, the subject realized that his grandmother, about 400 miles away, had passed away.

About five minutes after the bird struck the window, the telephone rang. It was the subjects uncle. His uncle often called. There was nothing unusual in that. However, this time, he said to his uncle "grandmother just passed away. " The uncle was astonished. He hadn't yet been able to reach his sister to tell her, and was calling his nephew with the news.

Strong emotion.

Births, deaths and other traumatic personal conditions often evoke a similar reaction in people. Usually, this skill manifests itself in young children or teenagers who are less inhibited about speaking what is on their mind than our adults. Adults sometimes have the same feelings -- but are conditioned by society to ignore them.

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