DELUSIONS — Pragmatic Realism

by Stanislaw Kapuscinski (aka Stan I. S. Law)

  The multiverse (or meta-universe etc.), is assumed by the theoretical astrophysicists to comprise everything that exists, or could exist, or ever will, would, could or might exist, including not just matter and energy but time, space and any physical laws or constants we can or cannot (as yet?) imagine. That’s the pronouncement of scientists. Right—not theologians but hardnosed scientists. Of course, I don’t really have any idea what sort of noses they have, except for those seeking inspirations in a bottle of good Burgundy, while lying down in a hot bath (see chapter 7, above).

  Aren’t we getting closer and closer to God? I repeat, these are scientists speaking, not theologians, who claim to know about God as much as the scientists know about the universe.

  At least, there is a great probability that they know as much. Or not. Or that we are not in any physical universe at all? What if its all imaginary, a state of consciousness?

  Hello… anyone there?

  The answer to this question is becoming tougher. Presumably we are still in the universe, although we can’t be sure which one. There seem to be so many scattered across the mind of God. Oops, we already eliminated God as having anything to do with, well, with anything. No problem, if we exclude God, the universes remain scattered across the minds of theoretical astrophysicists.

  Let’s run another bath.

  Or, better still, let’s start at the beginning.

  We now know that we used to live in one ‘universe’, consisting of about 200-400 billion stars belonging to a spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. When I was young there were only 50 billion stars populating our backyard (in the old days regarded as the only universe around). Whoever said, ‘Go forth and multiply’, wasn’t kidding. Apparently it applied to stars, not just to people.

  Assuming that we are now in one of many universes, it is good to know that even in our neck of the woods we are not alone. Our galaxy stretches some 100,000 light-years across. We are, until further notice, one of about 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. At least that was the number counted by the astronomer Edwin Hubble around 1920s. I’m sure if anyone were to take the trouble of counting them today, there would be at least twice that number. We all multiply, remember? We, the Earthlings, are about two-thirds away from the centre of the galaxy, on the inner edge of Orion-Cygnus Arm. That’s a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way, spanning only some 3,500 light years across, and stretching approximately 10,000 light years in length.

  We reside on a planet orbiting, I’m sorry to say, a rather unimportant star, located in a rather unimportant place, in relatively unimportant galaxy, which we can observe only edge on, thus not seeing, or knowing, much about our galaxy at all. On the other hand, we have developed an emotional attachment to this Via Lactis, i.e. Milky Way, which some of our predecessors have affectionately called the River of Billions of Silvery Fish, and Milton referred to, in Paradise Lost, as “The Galaxy, that Milky Way… Powdered with Stars.” Even before Milton, the ancients wondered about the expanse of stars. Below I offer some extracts from my novel Enigma of the Second Coming, in which Professor Hyden describes our celestial home to his daughter:

  “The Anglo-Saxons of yore worshipped it as the Waetlinga Straet, the Street of the Giant of Waetla. It was also known to the Vikings as the Path of Odin, who was their god of gods. They called it the Wuotanes Weg. The Midland Dutch saw in the starry marvel the Vronelden Straet, the Women’s Path, which seemingly lead those chosen maidens to the divine altar, with their long, snowy veils of intricate starry lacework streaming behind them. The Finns, on the other hand, saw a flock of birds migrating towards a single luminescent nest. They called it the Linnunrata.”

  “The Chinese saw in our galaxy a river teeming with silvery fish running away from the threatening hook of the crescent Moon. They called it Tien Ho, the Celestial River. The Hindus thought of it as the Bed of Ganges, the most holy of rivers. Lord Shiva directed the tempestuous currents of Ganges to flow through his hair and thus feed the streams of Earth. To the ancient Arabs it was Al Nahr, while the Hebrews thought of it as the River of Light, the N,her di Nur. Is that enough?”

  “The ancient Polynesians scattered across the islands of the South Pacific saw in the sky a great shark consuming the clouds floating over the endless ocean. The Canadian Indians from the environs of Ottawa saw a celestial turtle roiling the muddy currents of the very same Celestial River. We took our name from the Romans. Via Lactis or Via Lactea means the Milky Way, or the Road of Milk. Possibly the North Frieslanders also reached out to Rome for their inspiration; their name of Melkpath speaks for itself.”

  “…the Greeks had many gods and goddesses. One day, Hera decided to adopt and nurse Hercules, a very, very strong mortal. In fact Hercules was so strong, that he hurt Hera’s nipple, and she was forced to pull him away. Inadvertently, she spilled some of her divine breast milk. And there you have it. From these droplets arose the Milky Way. After all, Hercules was Hera’s son, and Hera was the consort of Zeus, the god of gods in the Greek heaven.”

  “And so the Greeks called our galaxy the Galaxias Kuklos, meaning the Milky Band. The Romans always liked to borrow ideas from the Greeks, so they changed the name a little, to Via Lactea, or the Road of Milk. And that’s all there is to it.”

  It seems that all people waxed poetic when thinking of our Milky Way. We, however, must return to the PRESENT, and be a little more scientific. Our galaxy, at 13.2 billion years, is almost as old as the universe, it is rotating around its center once every few million years, we don’t know how fast, and it is also moving away from the Big Bang at a rate of between 522 to 630 km/second, depending on the relative frame of reference.

  So much for our backyard.

  There are other backyards. The Hubble Space Telescope estimates the number of galaxies at 125 billion. More recently, a German supercomputer simulation increased that number to 500 billion. Don’t worry. Within a few years this number will grow still further. We all multiply, remember?

  Closer to home—ever since Copernicus in the 16th century—we understood that Earth is just another planet. In fact, although our planet is the fifth largest in our Solar System, and measures 12,756.3 kilometers in diameter, we managed to destroy any fragment of the original Garden. Our planet still looks pretty, especially from far away, but we no longer abide in Eden. We tend to be a destructive lot, although, as already mentioned, we multiply very well. A little like vermin. When we consume everything in our vicinity, we move on to greener pastures. Albeit, we might well, soon, run out of pastures.

  Chapter 10

  What We Are

  As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use. A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

  William James, American psychologist and philosopher

  (1842—1910)

  That’s easy. About 99% of the human body is made up of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. The remaining 1% consists of trace elements from dead stars, which for the purposes of our discussion, I shall ignore. (Actually, most of us are made up from elements of dead stars). Assuming an average weight of adult around 70 kilograms, that would account for some:

  7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.

  [Approximately. Give or take a few billion. With my weight of 95 kilos—that’s some 210 pounds for my American friends—definitely give…]

  Regardless of my dietary achievements, the number of atoms is represented by a 7 followed by 27 zeros. The scientists would write it as 727. It would seem quite a handful, until we realize, as already stated in Chapter 6, that the overwhelming preponderance of the volume of each atom is empty space. Thus, this gargantuan number for which there is no name in English language, adds up to very little mass and an awful lot of void. Next time you put on a little weight, don’t worry too much. It’s mostly empty space.

  Alternatively multiply the gain by 0.000000000001%, and have another piece of chocolate.

  So… what are we, real
ly?

  Scientifically speaking, i.e. excluding mind, emotions, and of course souls, we are as much empty space as the universe that surrounds us.

  Of course, the scientifically minded people will hasten to mention that the space is not empty because it is filled with wave function. Nevertheless, the total mass occupying space mentioned is emphatically negligible.

  In spite of our size (“the mass of our physical bodies”), neutrinos have no problems with passing through the Earth, and through our bodies en route, without ever slowing down. Neutrinos are subatomic particles, with virtually non-existent mass, and they seem quite unaware of our presence. Perhaps we only imagine we live on Earth, whereas in fact we (see below), and the whole planet, and everything on it and in it is… just empty space.

  I have one more problem with the, already mentioned, neutrinos. To recap, a neutrino (Italian for “small neutral one”) is an elementary particle that usually travels close to the speed of light, is electrically neutral, and is able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed. This makes neutrinos extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a very small, but nonzero mass. They are denoted by the Greek letter ν (nu).

  None of this bothers me. What does get my dander is that they, the neutrinos, those Italian pests, pass through me, through my body, uninvited, and without so much as leaving a card behind. We are constantly bombarded by them, and we don’t even know if they’ll ultimately kill us, or if they, in fact, keep us alive. Don’t ask the scientists, or physicians, or priests. They’re all as ignorant as I am.

  But if they do give you any reasonable answer, then ask them about cosmic rays. I am told that they come from outer space and that they, too, are harmless. Like the neutrinos. Only… some of them, a very small fraction, I am told, are stable particles of… antimatter, such as positrons or antiprotons. Wikipedia assures me that the precise nature of this remaining fraction is an area of active research. Well, now. Finally I can sleep in peace! The scientists are busy researching. Theoretically, I suppose?

  So much for scientific facts. You could add another million pages, but I hate writing about empty space.

  It bears mentioning, that our medical profession continues to specialize in our ‘physical’ bodies, not realizing that they, the bodies, are not only essentially empty space, are also already dead. What is alive within us is the force that continually rebuilds our dilapidating physical envelopes, cell by cell, atom by atom. Since, the present scientific theory holds that the cells in our body are replaced every 7 years (some slow movers say 10 years, others say 14 months—as you can see this is a very precise science), I can only presume that in the intervening periods we are sort of half or three-quarters dead, depending on the rate of exchange.

  The bodies we’re so proud of, which many of us spend hours pumping iron in a plethora of gyms to improve, well, those bodies are mere, fragile remnants of our real selves. Our real selves are our bodies of light. In other words, life is not a biological infestations but a process, which wrenches order and harmony out of chaos. And if we’re very lucky—beauty.

  The late Eastern mystic, Sai Baba, thus described our physics or, if you prefer, our physiques:

  We sit in the light.

  The light is us.

  We are the light.

  Please note that there is no mention of spirit or any supernatural elements. He simply states that we consist of photons. In the next part, THE FUTURE, we shall argue if photons have mass. At present, photons are traditionally said to be massless. So much for our bodies.

  A word about Christians. “…I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,”(John 11:25) said the great teacher. As stated, our true body is in constant process of renewal (resurrection), and thus, our true nature is life itself.

  Should we follow in Yeshûa’s footsteps? Did he know something we, or our scientists, don’t know—as yet? We must discover our true nature. Remember Socrates? “An unexamined life is not a life worth living.” Let us examine who we are. Who we really are. Not the nonsense taught us by the blind who appointed themselves to lead the blind: the teachers, the politicians, the religious leaders, the pseudo philosophers, even the men aspiring to be called scientists. Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are scientists. Most of them are deep into probabilities. Not into dogmatic or even agnostic statements about god or their version of reality.

  Let us begin to examine reality within which we find our being and our becoming. Our static and our active states.

  The basic and fundamental difference between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and physical states of consciousness is that in heaven there are no consequences of our actions. (My father—who is in heaven—judges no man). Thus the learning process for an individualized consciousness is extremely slow. On earth, however, we pay for what we do. Or we are rewarded. We learn fast, we grow. Life on earth is an incredible gift for us—one that we ought to explore and exploit to the maximum. Whatever we do, we cannot be indifferent, as in indifference there is no good or evil, thus there is no learning process. In indifference we are static, spiritually dead.

  But that’s philosophy. Or is it Pragmatic Realism?

  There is another way of looking at our nature, also espoused by scientists, though of a very different kind. They also carry the title of Ph.D., as do physicists. Their particular specialty is psychology and, on occasion psychiatry.

  In my book Visualization—Creating Your Own Universe, I wrote the following:

  “The renowned Sigmund Freud is responsible for the introduction of id, ego and the superego. His model of the psyche, however, places all three components of our self within the realm of the ‘unconscious’. Margaret J. Black describes Dr. Freud’s primary constituents of the mind as follows:

  ‘The id is a cauldron full of seething excitations of raw, unstructured, impulsive energies; the ego is a collection of regulatory functions that keep the impulses of the id under control; the superego is a set of moral values and self-critical attitudes, largely organized around internalized parental imagoes’.”

  This subdivision of our nature into three basic components dates back to the Bible: Is-ra-el, in which Is represents the feminine element, as well as our subconscious, Ra, the masculine principle or the conscious awareness, and El, the internal divine spark, which might correspond to the Freudian id, or the synthesis of the first two elements. After all, ‘holy’ comes from ‘whole’, and whole means complete.

  It should be noted that Is, or Isis, is the Egyptian goddess, and Ra, the Egyptian sun-god. Furthermore, in Egyptian symbolism, Isis was often represented by a cow, suggesting Hindu influences.

  It’s a small world.

  While Freud repudiated all religious influences, which precluded any recognition of our spiritual nature, Carl G. Jung studied and accepted the symbolic meaning of a number of biblical precepts. Indeed, only a fundamentalist can read the Bible à la lettre, thus missing the totality of the message contained therein.

  Other Ph.D.’s offered more studies on similar themes. Carol Pearson suggests that we express our nature through six archetypes. Ms. Pearson borrows the concept of archetype from Carl Jung, and the concept of hero from Joseph Campbell, and evolves an interesting amalgam. Again in my book Visualization, the matter is discussed in much greater depth:

  “…that once we leave Eden, wherein we manifested the nature of an Innocent, we will find our expression by identifying with the following archetypes: Orphan, Martyr, Wanderer, Warrior and Magician. The names of the five archetypes, somewhat suggestive of their modus operandi, manifest different needs, aspire towards different goals, exhibit different responses to, and methods for, overcoming problems (slaying-the-dragon), possess diverse spiritual needs, emotions, etc.. The world of each hero (that’s you and me) symbolizes, and is colored by, different hues inherent in the perceptions of the various archetypes. We embody, according to Pearson, these dominating traits of character in a cyclic m
anner, until finally we merge the Magician again with the Innocent, our place of origin, only to eventually leave Paradise once more in search of new adventures.”

  In addition to references given above, anyone who wishes to discuss the matter of “what we are” further, I offer my essay Organized Matter, from my collection of essays Beyond Religion II and Self, in Beyond Religion I, both published on Amazon and Smashwords. The matter is also discussed in depth in the chapter Redefining Self, in my book Visualization—Creating Your Own Universe.

  That only leaves the avowed ‘believers’. The ‘faithful’.

  Now I don’t give a bag of bones if you decide that you are a bag of bones. But about a billion Christians, a comparative number of Moslem, believe that they possess soul, and even more Hindus believe in atma, which is best translated as soul. Thus, like it or not, we must examine the concept.

  Soul is the most mistranslated word in the Bible. Most times, the Hebrew word nephesh is translated as soul. The true or correct translation is “animal soul”, or that attribute of our body, which keeps us physically alive. You might call it ego, which is necessary for physical survival. The most powerful aspect of nephesh is the survival instinct. Nephesh also corresponds to our subconscious, which is a storehouse of information since the instant of first awareness. Every animal is endowed with it; it is that which causes us to feed, to hunt, to procreate and to do all we can to assure our physical survival. However, note that animals do not hunt for the future. They eat as much as they can and refrain from hunting until hunger motivates them to start looking for food once again.

  Not so man. Man, speaking generically, i.e. both men and women, are not satisfied with a full stomach. We, tend to amass extra food both, in our stomachs and our fridges. What we cannot fit there, we put in the banks, in the form of eventual food, presumably to maintain our status of the most obese species in human history. Of the world? Survival of the least-fit? Darwin would turn in his grave. No matter how Christians we profess to be, we choose to ignore the biblical admonition, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?” It seems the only admonition that reached our ears is about what ye shall put on. We put on weight without any worry. In the USA, at least 65% of us do. In Germany, 75.4% succeed in not worrying either.