REFLECTIONS ON OUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE
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The universe that we, as individuals, inhabit began at our birth. It will end when we die. Whatever is in between is our life, as we know it.

Having said that, we have all existed since the universe began (if it ever did) in some form or other. We came from our 'mothers' and 'fathers' (as we put it) and they came from theirs and so on, backwards in what we call time.

This life is not a discontinuous group of circumstances and experiences, it is an analogue of these.

Everything is everything else; everything is connected to everything else, everything comes from everything else. That is how the universe is.

Without one thing there is nothing else to follow.

Time is one moment from this to that in a continual flow. That flow is not static in the sense of a particular measured second, it is relative to what the circumstances are at a particular time. The common fly lives its whole life, so they say, in one (of our) days. It is not a 'day' for them, it is a life-time.

Time is not tangible, it merely happens to be so because we can watch hands move on a mechanical clock. It is a convenience, a tool. Tangible only relates to what we feel to be real.

 What we call matter is merely the illusion that something is what we call solid, for example.  If you take a photograph from a newspaper or magazine, it looks like a complete picture if you look at it from a certain distance. If you look closely, it becomes a series of dots. If you looked closer still, you would see the pigments of the dots. And so on and so, ad infinitum.

The dots, in facts are super complex (as far as humans are concerned). This notion is carried forth into Chaos Theory.

There is an infinity before the number '1 (one)'. It is impossible not to have a smaller number than 1. A number less than 1 is a decimal (or part); for example .1, which is 1/10th of 1. If you divide the 1 further, the fragments get smaller and smaller; there is no end to the smallness, however conceived. This, as you know, is division.

The homonym of division is multiplication, so after the number 1, we can multiply that number and get larger and larger fragments. Again there in an infinite range. Nothing stops.

When we are born, we are born at a certain time, in certain circumstances, in a certain place and are a certain size. We are in tune with the universe. The same way we gained our self-replicating first cell, the same way we gained a more conscious knowledge after our birth, when our gestation was ended. This is all a naturally flowing mechanism.

People (myself included) ask: What is my place in the universe?

I believe that that is just what happens, we are placed in the universe. Unless you choose to take a god-view of the universe (something I have never been able to subscribe to) the answer is that it is just something that happens.

What, of course you do with the life that happened to come to you (because you had no control over it), is up to you. As I constantly say, you are the only one in your head.

I have been a teacher of students with Special Needs (and yes, I know we all have special needs) but that is the label for these children who cannot cope 'normally'.

A lot of children do not even know their home address, let alone anything else about where they are.  So, where appropriate (given their age and abilities), I construct a large wall-chart with them.

It starts with the classroom where they are (even to their desk and chair). We then look at where the classroom is in the school. We then look at the local neighbourhood. Then the State (I was living in Australia at this particular time), then the country and so on and so on until we were in interplanetary space and beyond. It is actually a good exercise for adults too as it gives a good perspective. It also allows one to see that they are part of the universe-as-a-whole, not just a smaller part of it.

If we, probably as older children and adults, look from the outer universe point of view and zoom in, we can see what a minuscule place the earth is, let alone the tiny red spider crawling on your wall.

This, I believe, shows just exactly what our place is in the universe, whether you believe in a deity or not.

The universe is infinitely large and small. There can be no beginning or end. Who is to say that the quark is the smallest particle? We do not have the facility to even imagine how small something will get, any more than we can imagine something as tiny as a light year (on a larger scale).

These notions lead me to conclude that given we are (in crude terms) electro-chemical life-forms, that the universe is an electrical entity. Whether we can fathom out how it works is merely conjecture. However, it is the human animal's nature to try to find out, providing he is not ensconced in the idea of an anthropomorphic amorphous omniscience that is directing all this.

All this means that we all have our place in the universe and on equal terms, whoever or whatever we are. I realise that this is idealistic but for the purpose of this essay, sufficient.

Peter K. Sharpen
September, 2008




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