(Last updated 6 July 2024)
For me, the purpose of the Hermit/Forest-Dweller lifestyle is to simplify and to look beyond the cares of this life.
Let me paraphrase Huston Smith in his remarkable compendium “The World’s Religions” (second edition, 1991), p. 53 from the chapter on Hinduism:
“Why are we born to work and struggle, each with a portion of happiness and sorrow, only to die too soon? The generations swell like waves. Each, in its time, breaks on the shore and subsides into the boundless Fellowship of [the Great Stream]. To find meaning in the mystery of existence is life’s final and fascinating challenge.”
As a scientist during my working years, the discoveries of Quantum Mechanics have always fascinated me. Nobody (and this is a direct quote from prominent physicist Richard Feynman) understands Quantum Mechanics.
I find this inscrutability fascinating. Among the paradoxical thought experiments that highlight the strangeness of this theory is the famous Schrödinger’s Cat scenario, in which a cat is sealed in a box with a vial of deadly poison gas, which is released when a purely random, quantum event (radioactive decay) happens—say, when a Uranium atom spits out an alpha particle on the way to becoming Lead. Quantum Mechanics tells us that until we open the box and observe the poor kitty, it exists in a state of ‘superposition’, both alive and dead at the same time.
My analysis of that thought experiment is the main subject of the video, discussed as I walk along a stream at my hermitage: the Cloister at Three Creeks.
The video verbalizes many of the ideas I have come to accept, including the idea that this ‘superposition’ state, which is achieved when consciousness is rejected, is a far better representation of reality, and is, for me, the ‘ideal’ state—my Nirvana.
Over the last few months, I have distilled these ideas into a ‘final’ form … at least one that I consider ready to share as my ‘Epitaph’ should I be called to ‘break on the shore and subside’.
It is a philosophical discussion, but it relies heavily on our current state of understanding (and lack thereof) of Cosmology and Quantum Physics. And then it extends into speculation (or Mythopoeia—i.e., fictional 'world building' for my newly published novel Eden's Womb) before winding up in the realm of Spirituality.
So, without further discussion, here it is:
INTRODUCTION
What
do I most value about myself?
In
one word, I would call myself a Pathfinder.
My greatest joy is noticing something
that had not been noticed before—
‘seeing’ something in a new way.
I love sharing that joy with others …
… but …
… well, that’s why I write things down.
The ‘paper’ is a surrogate listener that
accepts.
Unconditionally.
But the sad truth is that the written word
is 'dead on arrival'.
Being static and immutable, it quickly grows
obsolete.
Only the spoken word of the living has
value.
It is the ‘last word’. It is in the moment;
and the best of it supersedes any
individual.
This is the ‘truth’ that becomes the
central current of The Great Stream.
Yet somehow, the “last words” of an
individual
seem to acquire special meaning, or
attention.
It is the tradition of the epitaph.
This is mine—meant to please no one but
me.
It hardly fits on a tombstone, does it?
But here it is, without apology—about 7000 words:
cold as a gravestone.
MY OVERRIDING PURPOSE
IN LIFE
My life’s quest has been to know the
ultimate—
to understand the ‘big picture’ of our
reality,
and therein to find ‘Peace of Mind’.
I never understood how one can find
comfort
in a place s/he does not understand?
Yet I know the answer: They call it
“resting on faith.”
“Nobody can fully understand the mind of
God,” they say. “Why waste your time
trying?”
Why?
Because I am a restless soul, not yet called by God (though I am always
listening) to come ‘home,’ to lay down my burdens
and surrender to faith.
Quite the contrary, I feel called to
discover and reveal a deeper and more universal interpretation of ‘home.’
(The Great Stream)
The quest has been long and usually
solitary.
(The only thing I’m really good at is
being alone.)
And, to my great joy,
I believe I have found that Peace.
It comes to me from the most restless of places—a place
that makes most people’s minds reel and
swoon.
It is the empty Vacuum, which Quantum
Physics tells us is anything but empty.
It is a ‘place’ without any notion of ‘place,’
where space and time and our rock-solid
Earth, and everything we recognize as reality somehow emerged out of nothing.
It is the unfathomable Chaos—
the inscrutable home of Paradox with a capital “P”.
In the Physical realm, Paradox describes the Vacuum,
and teaches us that “nothing”
exists in superposition with “everything.”
The two are inseparable, and in constant
flux—a dynamic balance.
The Philosophical Paradox
(from which all
thought emerges [in each developing individual’s mind])
teaches us that balance itself is
dynamic.
Peace
of Mind comes as a Superposition
of
Balance and Imbalance.
The notion of Balance
steps forth to be measured on its scales
amidst life’s inevitable buffeting.
That Imbalance (Philosophical Chaos)
is laid down upon the other pan,
and their weights are deemed to be
equal.
In practical terms, Balance is a thing
that we must actively manage, moment-to-moment; Peace of Mind is a journey of
experience—learning to find comfortable pathways through the Chaos as it
forever throws up new and unexpected challenges.
The notion of Dynamic Balance means that
even our way of measuring our experiences can change.
The scale we use is a personal choice.
As I choose to view things, reality itself
has no firm foundation. Rather, it
consists of an ever-shifting flow, brimming with memory and purpose,
with experience and constant learning.
It is a raging torrent where faith is a life-raft for those who choose it.
But like the written word,
any life-raft (any unquestioning faith)
decays in value as The Great Stream
moves on.
For me, understanding (constant learning
and adjustment) is a better way.
So, I keep moving. I seek out the paths
that avoid stagnant bogs and backwaters.
I aim to stay close beside The Great
Stream
(the core currents of enduring
existence—
i.e., the way of the Venerable Ones)
and I walk on.
“Walking
is good for the soul.”
My intended
legacy:
Sharing the news
of
THE GREAT STREAM
The way I tell the story begins with
three words:
“Truth
is Paradox”
Paradox is the greatest thing.
This requires emphasis.
Most people think of God as the greatest
thing—
the thing that supersedes all other
things
and controls all reality.
My belief is that
Paradox is the essential god—
God stripped of all His comforting
personal and anthropomorphic attributes.
Unassailable in its nature, Paradox is primal
because it has no context and needs no context.
By its very definition, you cannot
define it.
It embodies and ‘explains’ the
chicken-and-egg nature of the origin of all things—it is the one and only true
‘Uncaused Cause.’
And, therefore, it is the only possible
‘Ultimate.’
At the same time Paradox is utterly simple,
indifferent, and ephemeral.
It is ‘Chaos’
—the fundamental state of the first and
last things—
the enigmatic, frothing, Quantum Vacuum
in which all of reality is embedded.
Now this is what I believe in six times more
words, less one (the sacred number Seventeen):
“Out
of Chaos a current stirred;
And
over time a Great Stream gathered,
embodying
Meaning and Purpose.”
… and then further, in six times more
words, less one (101 words):
“The Great Stream 101”
“The
Great Stream is the font of Creation—
an
endless torrent of Universes.
Universes
beget matter;
And
matter swirls within them.
Matter
begat life;
And
the flow of the Great Stream sustains it,
its
Meaning made personal for you and me.
Life’s
Great Stream runs its course
following
the instructions found in The Book
(Our
DNA, symbiotic biota, facultative processes, our physical environment and its
enigmatic laws).
We
humans oft neglect the Way of the Great Stream.
Preferring our own thoughts,
we
eschew The Book’s accumulated Wisdom,
which
guides the Venerable Ones (the enduring species); and this is to our peril.”
The Great Stream
Hypothesis
This is a scientific hypothesis
describing how our observed Reality formed
and how it functions.
It is meant to be testable,
with the understanding that any chosen
test
affects the outcome.
* * *
Thus, the beginning:
The
unassailable primacy of Paradox
The foundation of the
“Great Stream Hypothesis”
is this Seventeen-word conjecture:
“There
is no argument or entity
that
does not reduce to contradiction or infinite regress, including this.”
Within physical reality, the Paradox is
the empty vacuum that rages with infinite activity
—The Chaos—
an ever-shifting sea with no direction.
The Theory of Quantum Mechanics describes
precisely what had to have happened ‘first’
in order for the ‘something’ that houses our reality to appear out of ‘nothing’
(i.e., the ‘Uncaused Cause’ that some
call ‘God’)
It is actually the most common event in
the universe.
Out of the void/the Chaos/the Vacuum, myriad
‘things’ are constantly popping in and out of being.
Physicists call them virtual particles.
The process is random—without cause.
The process is mandatory. “Something” and “Nothing” co-exist in
superposition.
The ‘somethings’ appear in dynamic
balance, often in pairs that normally annihilate each other within a fraction
of a second (so quickly that they cannot even be observed).
But if one of the pair happens to interact with something else that pops out of the void,
then the annihilation can be disrupted,
and three anomalous objects might result—the combined (entangled) entity and
the two partners that did not interact.
Alternatively, if something can emerge
that can causally separate from its partner before the two annihilate, then the
result could endure.
Either way, the result is the first step
in the Great Stream hypothesis—
the moment of creation, when the
currents of the Great Stream first stirred (in Seventeen words):
Without
cause, an interaction of quantum fluctuations of the vacuum
can spontaneously produce
an enduring observable object.
THE
FIRST ENDURING PARTICLE:
What
is that first enduring object? I don’t
think there is any one absolute answer, any more than we can speculate what
life’s ‘Most Recent Common Ancestor’ was like (let alone what the original
oldest ancestor—the very first life form—looked like).
One
particularly fruitful idea that naturally falls from the concept of the “Big Bang”
is that the first enduring object was cosmic inflation itself—the ‘False Vacuum
field’ or ‘Inflaton particle’—and it is best described very simply, as a
quantum ‘oasis’ of zero entropy within the roiling Chaos.
Picture
the emergence (out of the frothing Quantum Vacuum) of a virtual pair of special
things (point particles, perhaps even singularities) that look like a swelling
balloon and its opposite, a ‘squeezing’ of the vacuum.
(It’s
actually very poetic—a strange and wonderfully paradoxical reversal of the
intuitive picture:
The universe begins as an insistent silence amid infinite noise. It is a serene emptiness within a bustling city, yet it makes the loudest sound of all.)
Let’s
run with this idea and speculate that the ’balloon’ side of the pair is a
quantum of Dark Energy. Its basic
attribute is that it has intrinsic ‘volume potential’ such that it is capable
of pushing back the infinite-entropy Chaos.
This is not the same as space but it would admit (make realizable) the
emergence of space.
The
anti-balloon, the squeezing particle, might be hard to distinguish from the
general Chaos of the vacuum when searching for it from our unique perspective
within the ‘balloon’ of our universe.
A
quantum of Dark Energy’s intrinsic ‘push’ is both its cause and its effect (a
superposition) as with all virtual particles.
If it is the signature of universe creation, detectable here within our
universe, then learning to probe it would tell us much.
Continuing this line of thinking … in order to endure, a quantum of Dark Energy must be co-created with an individual fundamental particle with mass and a gravitational potential. Initially this is just another virtual particle, but it fails to annihilate with its anti-particle because it entangles with (interacts with) the quantum of Dark Energy, creating ‘real’ space-time. This co-creation is the more explicit definition of one possible ‘enduring particle’.
The
logical consequence of this thought experiment is compelling.
The fact of an enduring particle—the existence of reality as we know it,
at its fundamental level—is only possible by physically ‘pushing back’ the
vacuum, making ‘room’ for a particle to endure.
This
was the long-winded (hopefully careful) presentation of one possible first baby
step to forming a universe. It seems not
to even need mathematical analysis, but it should be amenable to modeling and
perhaps even observation.
The
next step is to consider how one enduring particle could become a whole
universe.
So
… a single particle came to be, and it pushed back the Chaos. It is the courageous one that took a stand in
the Becoming poem (see the Firestorm tab at pjwetzel.com).
This
may be happening all the time everywhere in the quantum froth. What makes it ‘memorable’ (literally capable
of being perceived/modeled by a mind) is when a great ensemble of particles result.
The
simplest way for this to be conceived is for the original single particle that
endured to have an enormous push (negative pressure) that created a vast region
of zero entropy out of the original Dark Energy seed. This is the egg from which our reality grows.
What
could this ‘egg’ particle have been?
Could it be something like a Higgs Boson—the particle manifestation of
the Higgs field—a special field that has energy when it doesn’t exist (when the
field has a zero value) but has zero energy at some other field value? Is it possible that this energy offset is a
quantum fluctuation, and that all particles that we observe can emulate a Higgs
Boson through such quantum fluctuations?
Regardless,
the breakthrough realization/speculation of this thought-model is that Dark
Energy is the signature, within the Vacuum, of the ‘Creation’—the superposition
of its cause and its effect. (Recall the
unassailable primacy of Paradox.) Perhaps
each fundamental particle that has endured in our universe is entangled with a
quantum of Dark Energy.
Reiterating the seminal words above:
Without
cause, an interaction of quantum fluctuations of the vacuum
can
spontaneously produce
an
enduring observable object.
This generic process should be
observable
by studying the vacuum.
Deep under the earth, perhaps,
scientists might search for spontaneous generation of some particle
and its tell-tale pair of
non-interacting partners.
This would be, at least, proof of
concept.
Theoretically, there is no problem.
The currently accepted laws of physics,
allow our Universe to form from nothing.
But how? What are the causal steps
that lead from the spontaneous appearance
of an object that avoids annihilation
to a whole complex universe?
The Great Stream hypothesis
addresses the problem directly.
It follows two courses at this point:
The first is the meta-hypothesis:
The
universe we occupy came to its current state through a long evolutionary process
involving quantum mutations.
The second posits the specific
(speculative) Dark Energy proposal presented earlier, and how that fits into
the evolution story—a succession of universes co-evolving with life itself.
First, the meta-hypothesis:
The Great Stream Hypothesis
proposes an analogy between the
evolution of complex life forms from an original self-replicating molecule and
a posited evolution producing the ‘fine-tuned’ complexity of our universe from
a small original ‘enduring particle’.
It appears that our currently accepted
laws of physics allow for the possibility that our universe
could produce offspring universes.
In fact, foreseeable technological
advances
could enable humans to produce
‘a universe in a test tube.’
Physicists who have studied universe
replication
include Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, and
Alan Guth.
They all faced the fundamental
underlying Mystery called
The ‘Fine-Tuning problem’.
“Why this particular universe,
with these particular, seemingly finely
tuned
physical constants (which have no known explanation)
and with this set of apparent Laws of
Physics
(Though none of the accepted laws
are without serious flaws and/or
inadequacies)?”
This is the question that the Great
Stream Hypothesis confronts with a specific proposal:
Just
as we humans appear as a particular current
in
the Great Stream of life, and are entirely dependent on the dynamics of
that flow, which made us, and in which we find our niche,
so,
too, is our universe a particular current
in
a Great Stream, full of myriad other universes, all reproducing—all constantly evolving,
adapting, and fine-tuning their physical laws and processes.
Now to the particulars.
What was that original ‘enduring object’,
and how did it transform/evolve to
become a fully-formed complex universe capable of supporting life?
Based on theoretical Quantum Physics, it
is not likely that there is one unique answer to this question. If many different original enduring objects
and subsequent pathways (channels and currents in the Great Stream) are
possible, then perhaps it does not serve much purpose to propose a particular
sequence of cosmic events.
This parallels the course of evolution
of life from the (assumed) original simple self-replicating molecule or
molecules that probably began the Great Stream of life on Earth. Different paths can lead to the same
result. We see that today as ‘Convergent
Evolution’—cases where two or more different species converge on the same
solution to a problem, and mimic one another, even though the paths of their
evolution have been completely independent of one another.
We do not know the evolutionary steps
that life took here on Earth, and probably will never be able to definitively enumerate
them, because not only can different species find the same path, but along the
way they endured random catastrophic natural events that changed the course of
evolution. The Chicxulub Bolide impact
that contributed to or led to the extinction of the mega-fauna dinosaurs is
just a recent example. Earlier mass
extinctions were more severe. Such
natural catastrophes are both set-backs (like landslides that come down off the
slopes and fill a valley, blocking the flow and damming-up the Great Stream) and
major opportunities for new flow (like when the dam is breached and a gush of
current cuts a brand-new channel).
So … with many paths to the same
observed reality we see today, it is probably pointless to propose a specific
sequence of events that may have led to it.
But Truth is Paradox. It evokes a Zen koan (riddle):
What is pointless
is
the source of instruction.
And so, undaunted, we forge ahead.
Here is a proposed Seventeen-step sketch describing the course of the Great Stream from that primal ‘enduring object,’ via the appearance of the primal self-replicating molecule that begat all life, to the fully formed complex universe we see, populated with myriad fully formed complex living things … and beyond—far beyond.
1.
The
primal ‘enduring particle’. We assume
that both time and three-dimensional space are emergent properties. What came first was timeless, and it created
space. That is the Dark Energy Field as
discussed above.
2. Emergence of time’s arrow and the realization of space. A particular Higgs-type field (or ‘Inflaton’ field) joined the Stream. Our field of ballooned vacuum got seeded with some pair of virtual entities from which matter would emerge, and this would have been the very first virtual particle pair from the underlying vacuum to contaminate the zero-entropy silent garden that was the Dark Energy Field. Something ‘Higgs-like’ and ‘anti-Higgs-like’ probably entered the balloon, while no equivalent emergence had to occur in the ‘squeezed’ anti-field, which separated causally and ‘fled’ to roam the Chaos. This ‘contamination’ can be viewed like the fertilization of the egg that forms a human fetus.
3.
Baryon
Asymmetry (perhaps only 'local,' yet so vast that it pervades all of the
observable universe and beyond) fills a ‘region’ through some sort of rapid ‘inflation’—Here
is the Primal Font of the family of universes within our channel of the Great
Stream. This is the moment in each
universe that is called the “BIG BANG.” Laws
of math and physics, a recipe for the particle zoo, and prescriptions for
cosmology set Creation in motion, and the Great Stream is born. In the original Primal Font, this information
(the ‘DNA’ of the resulting universe) could have been relatively simple and
minimal—just enough to allow the possibility that the resulting universe could self-replicate, no matter how unlikely that process might have been. From what we know of our particular universe,
it might require prodigiously high temperature and density—a packet of mass
equivalent of about an ounce of matter packed into a space far smaller than a
proton. That is what one theory says is
needed to occupy a vacuum state in the Higgs-like Field that favors
reproduction, a state which physicists call the ‘False Vacuum,’ in which a
run-away inflation-like expansion is triggered.
In a tiny fraction of a second all the matter of the Universe came into
being. This is permissible within the meta-law
of conservation of matter because the sum total of the energy of a piece of
matter and its gravity is zero. Within a
fraction of a second an ultra-hot ‘exploding ball’ of matter came seething into
reality out of the initial seed, but very likely also being ‘contaminated’ by many
other entities from the Chaos during that process of ‘inflation'—entities perhaps
absorbed at need as a growing organism takes on food. Alternatively, and more speculatively,
perhaps quantum fluctuations create the energy-field offset, or the potential for it, in every particle that exists, allowing each particle to be its own little ‘Higgs’, acting to
create a bit of temporary negative-pressure space during momentary fluctuations.
4.
Cooling
of the universe to align with the ‘true vacuum’. Note that in that Primal Font of Universes,
the resulting individual universes could have had very different properties
from the Universe we know. Any and all
possible values of the physical constants, and any and all functioning sets of
physical laws are permitted. The next
step to producing the apparent ‘fine tuning’ that explains the particulars of
our universe is the formation of a stable universe with a lifetime long enough
to produce stars and heavy elements. It
is at that point in the ‘history’ of our universe that its evolution begins to
be explainable by our particular (accepted) laws of physics.
5. The adjustment of physical laws and constants via quantum mutations. There are several theories describing how a universe can spontaneously replicate. Alan Guth’s is my preferred one. It begins with a small high-energy packet of matter (again, about an ounce) that quantum-tunnels back into that ‘False Vacuum’ state that brought about the original Big Bang. But then each child universe must also spontaneously nucleate into the true vacuum state just as its parent did. Lee Smolin has another theory, in which he emphasized the possibility of quantum mutations and natural selection. Universes that produce more offspring would be statistically favored and thus become prevalent. Universes that are non-trivial, contain plenty of matter, and are long-lasting would have the natural selection advantage. Within long-lived universes the vacuum has more opportunity to introduce new effects, processes, and/or types of objects from the (assumed to be) nearly inexhaustible ‘library’ of possible resources that reside in the vacuum (the Chaos), thus adding further interactions with new entities in order to further fine-tune the ability to reproduce. Adjustment of physical parameters to allow fecund star formation and creation of heavy elements seems to be an important step, at least in our branch of the Great Stream. Both Guth’s and Smolin’s theories of universe reproduction assume the fecund availability of matter in various high-energy states.
6.
Emergence
of life. Probably initially an
‘irrelevant tumor’ in the belly of an apparently ‘indifferent’ ancestor universe. Plenty about the abiotic origin of life has
been said elsewhere.
7. Panspermia (which I assume, and believe, is both inevitable and essential to the Great Stream Hypothesis), and the first spontaneous transmission of life from parent to child universe. These things are obviously highly speculative. Panspermia, if it is found to be true, most probably would occur in the form of simple single-cell deep-rock organisms that are hurtled into space during a meteor impact, survive as dormant DNA deep inside the resulting meteor, crash onto another planet, and ‘take root’ there. With enough of that DNA drifting about a universe, I assume that eventually some of it would get caught in a quantum-tunnelling event that generates a child universe. In Guth’s theory, explicitly, there is a small remnant of true vacuum that separates from the parent universe with the sudden explosive emergence of the germ of false vacuum and its subsequent tunneling and then closure of the ‘umbilical’ wormhole. The child universe should thus be seeded with the physical constants and laws of the parent, but with quantum mutations, since this initial seed is far smaller, even, than a single proton. Could a small packet of actual material—a ‘time capsule’ or ‘message in a bottle’, such as DNA get transferred? This would require radical new technology and probably the discovery of new fundamental laws, or perhaps the emergence of some new property out of the hidden ‘library’ available in the Vacuum. I hypothesize just one possible example, a field I call ‘Throb’, which modulates the amplitude of Quantum Fluctuations. It would be during a quantum episode of extreme ‘Throb’ when Inflation would be most likely to begin and end. Throb or another element from the Chaos might also act to alter the local ‘grain size’ of reality such that a macroscopic object could pass through the umbilical between parent and child before it is cut. The process would be analogous to a mother passing a virus, or gut flora, or other ‘biotic passengers’ to her unborn child. The Great Stream Hypothesis suggests this possibility, that the deep origin of life on Earth came from elsewhere in the universe, and ultimately from a previous universe. I believe that within the lifetime of those alive today, we will find enough evidence of life on other worlds and/or in drifting asteroids/comets/meteors to make Panspermia more than an assumption.
8. Living organisms (probably simple single-cell organisms, which I give the name ‘Twees’) begin to evolve in ways that enhance the ability of a universe to reproduce. Twees might ‘learn’ to control ‘Throb’. (And in a far distant future universe, so would ‘Wizards’.) Once DNA is being transferred from parent universe to child, we can effectively begin to think of a universe as a living thing. The process of natural selection then begins to include not only adjusting the physical parameters and laws of the reproduction of universes, but also, the well-known process of biological evolution. More on the ‘environment’ in which universes ‘reside’ and interact later.
9. The Clam-shell seed-pod hypothesis. Eeyock. (This and the Twees are a reference to my Sci-fi novel, Eden’ Womb, which explores a specific example of these future enhancements to the Great Stream Hypothesis.) Through trial and error (natural selection), Twees ‘learn’ that higher forms of life, multi-cell beings with some form of what we call ‘consciousness’, can be useful in enhancing universe reproduction. Twees become symbiotic with a species of clam-like creatures, selecting for very hard, durable, air-tight shells, eventually even evolving an internal ‘particle accelerator’ for enhancing the quantum-tunneling process that generates child universes. Twees then become passengers in these air-tight ‘seed-pods’. The clam-beings can, of course, evolve intelligence to any degree imaginable and could therefore develop technology that further enhances and controls the process of creating a ‘universe in a clam shell (test tube)’. (In the novel, a highly intelligent clam named Eeyock has a deep and enduring role in the plot). The Twees do not require living ‘clams’ to survive the transmission into the new child universe. But their air-tight shells become inter-universe spaceships carrying Twees that then seed the new child universe…
10. With life in charge of the evolution of universes, physical parameters begin to be adjusted to favor life. What I call the ‘Olbers Effect’ could be one very useful form of adjustment. Nearly two centuries ago, Heinrich Olbers noted the seeming paradox that if the universe were static (not expanding) the sky would be as hot as the average star’s surface because light from stars at all distances, out to infinity, would be arriving at Earth. Unless the universe was somehow limited in scope, an infinite number of stars would be shining in the sky. The discovery of the expansion of the universe by Hubble removed that apparent paradox; and the later discovery of the cosmic background radiation led to the modern theory of the Big Bang origin of the universe. But what if life, interacting with the evolution of its succession of universes, were able to adjust the rate of expansion of the universe such that abundant stars and planets formed during the era when the temperature of the cosmic background radiation was within the ‘goldilocks’ range of zero to 100°C? The entire universe would be habitable! Life could abound in unimaginable quantity compared to what we experience in our present universe. This is the ‘warm sky’ branch of the Great Stream Hypothesis, and it is not a feature of our universe. Ours has followed a different path:
11. Intelligent life and the cold sky ‘channel’ of the Great Stream. In contrast to the warm sky scenario, in which life would be so abundant that the universe would appear to be one gargantuan tropical garden, we find that our own universe, which is expanding way too fast, and is headed for a very quick dissipation or ‘heat death’, must find a different method of enhancing universe reproduction. There are, of course, infinite possible scenarios for how such a universe could attempt to compete with the warm-sky universes. The Great Stream Hypothesis, however, seeks to be relevant to our species, Homo sapiens. Our existence is proof that technological enhancements to physical processes can be a very useful survival tools. However, intelligent beings are prone to making hasty decisions that are to their short-term advantage, but most often lead to their quick demise (I believe). We’ll spare the lectures and prophecies, and instead move forward to the stage where the Twees arrive on Earth, via the Great Stream of panspermia from another galaxy.
12.
The
Twees find intelligent beings useful and become symbiotic with them. Through trial and error, their deep, slow
DNA-language-based guidance steers humans (and intelligent clams like Eeyock in
another cold-sky channel) toward peaceable and sustainable life styles while directing
them toward the necessary technology to create safe life-boat ‘seed pods’
stocked with plenty of Twees, and launching them, via quantum-tunneling, into a
child universe ‘in a laboratory’. As
with the clam-shell beings, the Twees find no necessity for the humans to
survive the transcendence to the new universe, but neither do they preclude it
if the technology allows. So …
13.
*** SPOILER ALERT for the Eden’s Womb
Novel—do not read the rest of this list if you intend to read the novel - skip down to 'Beyond the Great Stream' *** The first accidental transmission of
intelligent beings (alive!) from parent universe to child. ‘Adam and Eve’ – the actual real FIRST humans. Myth becomes fact. Twees begin to adjust
their host intelligent beings in order to improve their chances of ‘live transcendence’.
14.
Intelligent
beings and Twees become fully symbiotic.
Transcendence of intelligent consciousness to new ‘designer universes’
becomes routine. The level of technology
is such that humans are capable of creating observable (simulated) child
universes in order to more quickly and effectively fine-tune the ‘DNA’ of their
real child universes. See item 17.
15.
Universes
become fully-engaged living things, guided by the mind of the individual or group
of scientists that created a child universe and transcended into it within their
‘pod’. (This, by the way, might be the answer
to the Fermi Paradox [Where are all the other intelligent beings? They left!], and our path to ‘eternal life’—our
consciousness is embedded in the ‘hologram’ of the universe we created.) Universes thus begin to find ways to interact
with one another, initially only via the one-way transfer of information from
parent to child universe, but eventually learning more subtle and sophisticated
ways to directly interact with sibling universes and with ancestor universes,
perhaps through wormholes, perhaps by tapping into the ‘one vacuum’ in unknown
ways. Of course, we’re now into highly
speculative realms of science fiction or pure mythopoeia.
16.
Flat
World. A virtual (yet arguably physical)
specific example of a putative hyper-realm where the community of conscious universes
begin to gather as they learn to interact with one another in ever more complex
ways. At the center of Flat World is the
original Font of sterile ‘germ baby’ universes (covered in item 3. of this
list), ever gushing out an endless stream of them. The source appears like a blazing sun, with
each simple universe somehow like a photon and each living one like a single
cell organism. Without justification, I
envision the inner portion of this radiating effusion of universes to take the
form of a flat, rotating disc, like a galaxy.
17.
The
likely predominance of simulated universes in Flat World. Here is where future humans come to play
their virtual reality games. But some
important simulations are not games at all, but scientific and
experimental. Research. Among the myriad experiments are those that
are attempting to reproduce that first transcendence of intelligent life—Adam
and Eve, the literal first man and woman, truly alone in their newly born child
universe, given the command to be fruitful and multiply.
Beyond The Great
Stream
Beyond
the realm of the basic Great Stream Hypothesis is the reminder that the Font that
begat our particular universe remains just one more unremarkable object within
the indifferent Chaos.
Indeed,
it can be imagined that our putative Flat World—gathering place of uncountable
universes—is not even a basic object in the Chaos at all, but a derivative fragment
of the original ‘enduring object’.
Imagine
that you are a conscious universe-entity standing on Flat World, looking up at
the ‘sky,’ and seeing other points of light—other Flat Worlds.
What
if these other ‘stars’ are part of a great hyper-cosmos? What if our particular Flat World is merely a
single ‘atom’ within a majestic ‘hyper-universe’ with its own set of physical
laws?
This
possibility illustrates that our universe may be so far removed from any
fundamental original ‘source’ as a single ‘enduring object’ that it is truly
hopeless to speculate as to how it came into being.
Hopeless? Who said:
“Where
there is life there is hope”?
It
is in our DNA to have hope. And it is within
our DNA that we may someday recognize the interconnectedness of all this vast,
mind-boggling landscape of possibility.
So,
we now further extend the thought experiment.
What
if that hyper-universe of ‘zillions’ of Flat Worlds is but one molecule within a
single cell in a vast intelligent living being, who dwells on a planet in a
solar system within a galaxy in some mega-hyper-uber-universe, which is itself only
a speck …
…
You get the idea … Infinite regress.
Or,
alternatively, perhaps reality is cyclical.
What if that speck is a mote of dust floating in the air in the room
where you sit reading this?
Paradox within Paradox
—the Gateway to the streaming wonder of
existence.
In summary, the ‘Great Stream’ formed
from the Ultimate but it is not the Ultimate;
it is the small part of the Ultimate
that we can hope to grasp.
That is a paraphrase from an ancient
text.
Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching reads:
“The
Tao that can be told
is
not the ultimate Tao.
The
name that can be named
is
not the ultimate Name.
The
unnamable is the eternally true.
Naming
is the origin of particular things.”
One could do worse than to look to that
ancient
faith tradition called Taoism
to explain the Great Stream.
For one thing,
the name of the ‘Ultimate’ is the name
of the faith.
(Compare with faiths named for an
individual
[Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrian]
Or a population [Hindu, Judaism]
Or attributes of its followers
[Islam, Sikh, Jain, Shinto].)
I prefer what is simplest.
There is only the Tao.
Nothing gets in its way.
Here is the rest of Chapter 1:
“Free
from desire, you touch the mystery;
Caught
in desire you see only the manifestations.
Yet
mystery and manifestations
arise
from the same source.
It
is called Paradox.
Paradox
within Paradox:
the
gateway to ultimate truth.”
Consciousness limits us.
To be ‘free from desire’,
one must transcend
the ‘now’ and the ‘me’.
Spiritual Influence
TAO TE CHING
道德經
… being the exploration of the ‘Dao’
– the ‘Ultimate,’
that of which there is no greater – and
the way of attaining its limitless power.
Let us postulate a fictitious deity
that presides over our Reality
We will call her Dalle (yes, she is female),
from the French root meaning ‘channel’
—the central current
of the ever-changing Great Stream.
Dalle is the personalization of the
‘Dao’
(and a ‘corruption’ of that ineffable
name).
In the fictional world of the novel Eden’s
Womb,
Dalle plays a minor role as a River
Goddess,
however, in our reality, She takes the
role of Strongmother, the embodiment of our real, physical universe.
Dalle’s holy book is our genome—our
DNA—so it is inherently personal to each individual.
Although I once created a Facebook Page
called the Communion of Dalle,
it was merely a thought experiment.
I do not proselytize.
All the trappings of my personal faith
in Dalle are strictly
“A Religion of One.”
Paraphrasing Chapter 6 of the Tao Te
Ching:
“Dalle
never dies.
She
is called mystical Strongmother.
Her
doorway is the root of Heaven and Earth.
Gossamer,
as if barely existing,
She
is found within:
Always
in use, never spent.”
The
Great Stream begins
with
the origin of our universe, via
evolutionary
succession from an ancient germ,
as
I believe.
Our
universe is always in motion.
A
hundred years ago it was proven
that
it could not stand still
and
appear as we see it.
Great
currents of matter swirl within it,
and
within those emerged our planet
and
its Great Stream of Life,
ever
changing, ever dynamic.
And
this is how, in practical terms,
I
equate “The Great Stream”
to
the message of our DNA
—the
flow of evolution—
where
the fast flowing central current
is
the Way of the most successful species.
Those
Venerable Ones,
as
I call them,
have
come closest to what we all seek:
‘Everlasting
Life, Peace and Security’
And
so, my desire is to tap into
that
ancient state of being.
It is built into all of us. The goal is to learn to recognize its
manifestations in the every-day ‘conscious’ mind, not trying to search for it,
or to work toward it, but to let it appear.
It
most naturally comes not by shutting oneself away from Nature, trying to
control the restless body, and meditating*, but rather by celebrating the
body’s restless instincts, immersing oneself deep in Nature, ever on the move
and alert, experiencing Nature in the way that our distant ancestors and
ancestor species have done for billions of years,
via
the deep message of our personal DNA.
For
me, this state of mind most often comes into bloom during long walks, alone,
deep in the woods…
Walking the Way of The Great Stream:
The Pilgrimage
with no outward destination
Walk
with Nature. Walk alone.
Quiet
your footsteps,
still
your breathing.
Walk
as if you are stalking prey.
Because
you are.
Open
the senses.
Not
just five. There are hundreds of senses.
Thousands.
Revelation
itself is a sense. As are awe and
wonder.
Joy. Peace.
Strength.
Look
to sense them all within.
Release
the mind.
Then
your path becomes Nature’s path.
Consciousness
limits us.
It
locks us into a tiny cocoon called ‘now’
in
a body called ‘me’
which
drifts on vast and ever-changing currents.
The
Great Stream.
We
cannot fathom its depths using consciousness.
To
know the Great Stream
—to
understand its motion, its direction—
we
must escape the ‘now’ and the ‘me’
become
the current,
immerse
in the flow.
Feel
it with a thousand senses.
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* Meditation
looks for the stillness within.
Pure
consciousness, transcending the self.
Reaching
it at last, you flow into that oneness.
Stream
into the glorious light.
Perhaps
it is the same place.
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