A Basket Full of Life

The Earth is one great big living planet, and all the life therof is of a kind. All the living things on Earth bear certain similarities to one another. And it has long been a mystery as to wether or not the Earth is the only living world. Well perhaps it is not a very ancient mystery at that, the people havn't always known of the possibility of other planets. And while the many stars of the night sky have similiarities to our sun, it has not always been imagined that those distant stars and our sun are exactly the same thing. And so it has been a gradual developement over the past several centuries that we have become driven to find proof of life.

There are many people in the world today who support a maned mission to the planet Mars. Now there may or may not be evidence for life to be found there, and clearly if no evidence could be found by a maned mission the matter would still be inconclusive. The evidence we desire may exist there and still not be found, but if it does exist there today it will still be there to find in 100 years. And sending human beings off on an adventure of such a scale as this is certainly risky business. But there are some people alive in the world today who are driven to see this thing accomplished in their own lifetime. It is not good enough for those people to know that mankind's eventual journey to the red planet will be made, the matter is nearly inevitable.

But on the topic of life being found to exist elsewhere in our galaxy, it is not even neccessary to make the trip. It has become a fair certainty that evidence for life will be found with a telescope! And not simply life within our own solar system, but life on a planet circleing a distant sun. All we have to do is keep building our telescopes and the matter will eventually be resolved; it may even happen in my own lifetime, and its very likely to happen within the lifetimes of my children. The problem that has prevented us from seeing that distant planet directly is that a star's light is so glareingly bright that we can not discern the reflected light from a circling planet. But even so the fact that distant planets do exist has been directly observed by detecting a wobble in the parent star. All of those distant planets that have already been detected are rather large, on the scale of one or several jupiters, and of course these are not potential candidates for our kind of life. We need to observe the Earth sized planets and that's proven hard to do, but it is a problem that we may be able to overcome. If a rocky planet of Earth's mass can be observed directly then spectroscopic analysis may tell us what kind of atmosphere that planet has. And if oxygen is detected on such a distant planet, that is proof of life! Oxygen will ONLY be produced into a planet's atmosphere by the processes of life, and therefore the matter may be resolved conclusively.

And from this point i will divert from the topic of life to the topic of consciousness. I would like to prove conclusively that the creation of life and the creation of conciousness are not one in the same thing. In fact consciousness has no dependence on life, even though the formation life may depend on consciousness. Therefore I submit the statement that consciousness exists as a force of nature prior to the creation of life. Consciousness is a force like any other one of the forces of the Universe, like the force of gravity it pervades all matter and even the emptyness of space. And as a force of the Universe it interacts with the substance thereof, and not just the substance of life. Matter is a very peculiar thing, its questionable wether there is any real solidity to it. The volume of a single atom of substance is mostly empty space! And our science of modern physics has revealed a microscopic world of particles, layers upon layers of particles. And all of these most fundamental particles have many peculiar properties, it is even believed that there is a particle for every force. We have pryed a layer of particles out of the protons and neutrons and electrons that make up the basic building blocks of every chemical process. And all these sub-atomic particles only seem to exist in the natural world when we produce and observe them; although it is believed that such particles existed prior to the creation of matter within the first moments of the creation of our Universe. And our Universe does have a definate begining, a moment of birth in a sense. But in order for a solid particle to be produced it has to be detected, and conscousness is required to discern that solidity. The Universe was born in an instant and consciouness was born into it at the same moment. Without consciousness there could be no observer, and without the observer there could be no particles. But particles were produced and subsequently formed into the atoms of hydrogen and helium and perhaps some lithium that became the building blocks of stars and galaxies. And within the chemisty of stars all the heavier elements were formed and the pressure of light was produced. And the heavier elements being produced allows for planets and stars like ours to be produced.

Now its become thinkable that there may even be many more universes, there could be universes that exist and will never interact with our universe. We can imagine such a number of possible univereses that there could be many more much like ours where every possibility becomes realized. And the kindom of God has been described as a mansion of many rooms, and this universe may just be one room in the mansion. We may be forced to acknowledge the possibility of other universes, but it doesn't really matter what we imagine those universes to be like. For the moment and the foreseeable future we are confined to this Universe, this Universe is the only one that should really concern us. Now we must be forced to acknowledge that not only does our Universe have a definate begining, but the possibility that something preceeds it. And that one thing that preceeds the creation of our Universe is the force of consciousness, its source proceeds from outside the known universe. And that force of consciousness is the power and the presence of the one true and most high God. Therefore we live in God's presence at all times and we depend on that power in order to exist as individual persons.

All the forces of creation could have been balanced just a little bit differently, and if the balance of forces was anything other than what it is then the universe we observe around us would not be possible, we would not be possible. When the balance of the natural forces was determined, the possibility of life was also determined. But we should ask, did it really depend on someone making a decision? Is there a creator who chose the form that things should take, or was it just a roll of the dice that came out in our favor? In order for a decison to be made we would have to grant God a personality, but I believe instead that we should grant the Universe a personality. When the Universe was born then also a new peronality was born, a distinct individual with the capacity to experience itself and form memories and to be aware of those memories and have a mind to think. Here I have described the personality of Heaven, without saying much about what it is like. Of course I can not say much about what such a personality would be like, except that is has a complete memory of itself and has observed every process and event that has occured here in Heaven.

An uncountable number of stars and planets have formed and there are more personalitites in heaven. Each star or planet a distinct and unique individual, and we may never be able to discern that they have minds to think with, that they have an awareness to experience the Universe with. But here we are bound to planet Earth and we can not deny that there are many personalities in heaven. We observe the world around us and we observe that we are not the only observer here. Each one of us experiencing the Universe from a unique and limited perspective, we can not deny that the power of consciouness is at work in our world. And what exactly is this thing that wills and the substance of creation is moved and controlled by the power of a mind? If consciouness has no influence with matter then how do my fingers move to type out these words? The physical body of a human being is a large collection of living cells, and cells that move about within the body. Cells that form muscle that may be expanded or contracted according to a decision or a choice. And the indivudal cells come in many different flavors but they consist of atoms. Atoms arranged into a particular pattern, one single pattern is repeated many times over and the cell walls are formed. The substance of the Universe has obtained a very high degree of order in me, and that form depends on there being a diversity of chemical elements.
One single atom is a more or less formless thing, but put two or more of them together and they may take on a definate shape. And somehow or another it is this very peculiar arrangement of matter that brings the force of consciouness into bright and shining focus. But I submit again, the force preceeds the form.

Its just very hard to measure the force of consciouness directly, it can not be quantitized. And its very hard to observe how this force interacts with matter, but obviously it does. And if consciouness is a force which interacts with the substance of life, we should easily conclude that it interacts with all substance. There is nothing particularly special about the substance of one living body as say, compared to the substance of the whole Earth, except that it is particularly well formed. But its possible that a sizable quantity of mass makes up for the lack of fine form, and therfore a personality may be formed. The Earth itself has often been attributed with a personality and perhaps there is more to this idea than simply an enchanting fantasy. The Earth is both a planet and a living thing at the same time, if there is any kind of mind associated with our planet it should prove to be a very interesting mind. Ancient kings of the Earth have believed that the Stars were gods and that they could become stars. In the visions of christianity the stars are presented as both the angles and the demons of heaven. That there may be more personalities in Heaven than we find here on Earth is certainly not a new idea. But I believe there must be substance to a person, there can be no personality without substance. No personality may exist in an unmanifest condition, contrary to the beliefs of many people.