Dear Neil,
I believe that creation has no beginning and no end. This Earth, this Sun, this
solar system and this universe one day shall be no more, but there will be others. Like snowflakes, always the same, always different, the creation goes on and on.
As to what came before the Big Bang. Well there was something before, and when
it came to an end it became super compressed into that incredible dot. That dot
contained all the potential that is now in our universe and will be, until it ends and the great recycling begins again. I think, without proof yet of course,
that what was compressed in that dot was what went before. What went before I
think, were previous galaxies, universes, solar systems. I think that's what was in the dot. The recycled before that came before this. The before this was recycled from what came before it. And so on back to infinity. How did what was
in our doat get so compressed? Well, I may be "out to lunch," but I think it could have been sucked into a black hole and so compressed, until it couldn't take any more compression and it exploed. Somehow the time came for the new release through a Big Bang, and hence a new beginning that we know now.
I am reading a wonderful book by Brian Greene that I would like to highly recommend to you. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Have you read "The Elegant Universe" yet? It is very readable physics by a top man in the field.
He writes so understandably to share his knowledge with we non-physicists. Some
say he is even better than Stephen Hawking at explaining in ways we can understand. I think so, too. Easier to read for me than Hawking. His book is Subtitled "Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory." I find the elegant universe he describes as so awe-inspiring that it increases my personal faith, just as I feel when I contemplate the starry heavens in a deep, dark night sky which always increases my awe, and belief and faith in an all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving Creator.
Everything, from the greatest to the least in size are part of an incredible further development of the same fabulous pattern. There is no end to smallness and
no end to largeness, and the pattern develops and opens out more and more, without end. The only end there is for us, is our own incapacity to develop ways to see and penetrate further. We have only just begun to really explore this marvellous and infinite creation. The same goes for our understanding and exploration of our own spiritual selves. There are marvels upon marvels waiting to open
out.
I suspect that human life doesn't always take our form. It develops according to conditions on the planets where it was able to take root. As to whether it is
planted by comet dust, or seeded onto planets in some other way --I don't know.
There are speculations about that, but whatever conditions in which it finds it can grow are sure to cause it to develop a body modified for those conditions. We fit our home planet very well, but another planet would have other conditions that would require different adjustments to fit that home. It is the mind
and heart that make us human -- the rational soul and heart. These aren't a part of our earthly bodies. Why can't they also be associated with modified bodies
? In other places at other times there must have been "humans" who looked quite
unlike us, yet had our qualities. A planet is complete when it has mineral, vegetable, animal and human life. Human life, with its extra-worldly rational soul/heart, is like the soul is to the human body. A body isn't complete without its rational soul and a planet isn't complete without that rational level brought
to it by humanity.
That isn't to say that all planets are at the same stage of development. Some may have passed through conditions suitable for the whole development, and now be
waning in their ability to support life. Others may be just entering the phase
when they can support such life. Others are just being born, or are dying and
will at the very last become the stuff of new life just as happens here on earth
with what dies and returns again in another years or time.
We humans still seem to be very centred on ourselves. Just as we once thought that Earth was the centre of all things, we still think that only our kind of human could possibly exist. We also think that we can find out just how the universe works. A theory of everything. I think we're a long way from that and things continue to open more and more to infinity of openings, the deeper you explore
. Have you seen fractyls of coastlines from space, then further and further in
until at last you are looking at coastlines in miniature, which continue indefinitely into infinities of smallness, but still show coastlines? I think that's the kind of pattern I'm trying to explain as happening in everything. The deeper
we explore the more it opens out, different, yet the same. A new vista every time. But a related vista.
The life to come is a spiritual existence, and what we have to take along with us is that rational soul and heart. As present, future and past are all one before God, so they are all one in the spiritual world which is known as the Kingdom
of Heaven or the world of God. "Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in heaven."
The world to come is a world where all knowledge is available to us. You can be sure that I have many questions I want to know about. From that point of view
alone, I look forward to the next life. I'm glad you saw this understanding in
your aunt and your father. They were awake. That bodes very well for their existence in the next world.
I hope you can put your hands on a copy of "The Family Mark Twain" by Mark Twain
, of course. There is a great story in there called "Excerpts from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven." In this story Twain is funny and but he was also so
far ahead of his contemporaries in his thinking that he's still away out in front of most thinkers today. I very much hope you will read it. In a funny and entertaining way he throws brilliant light onto what we are discussing here in this
post and yours, to which this is a reply. Please Neil, try hard to get to read
this particular story.
Can you imagine not being burdened by your physical body that belongs to this world? No weight of gravity. No stubbed toes. No polluted air or water. No flu
or colds. No genetic gliches. As I understand it, we will have a body of a kind suitable to conditions. The next life isn't all rest and perfect peace with nothing to do. We continue to grow and develop spiritually there, but through the grace of God, and not through our own will. We only have free will here in this life and what we make of ourselves and what we contribute here is what determines our situation there. Have you ever read "Life After Life," or the sequel to it: "Reflections on Life After Life?" Very. very instructive.
Although material progress is good, these understandings are even more valuable
and the way we live here because of our faith, trust and understandings are vital to life in the world to come.
I only just realized why some people can find themselves metaphorically as
"stones" in the next world. It's because the qualities of stones are coldnessand hardness and stillness. People who have those qualities here and haven't accomplished much with their free will except what brought on those qualitiesare like stones in the next world. They can make progress through the mercy of
God and through the prayers of others for them and good done in their names, but
no longer by free will, which is not part of that world. It also occurred to me during my meditations on spiritual subjects that probably the world of God is
heaven because people don't have the free will to much it up! The ruler in that
world is God. ;->
Just now, physicians who work with the brain can't find the mind there and they'
re quite puzzled by that. I would like to follow up on their research. I'm not
surprised, because my understanding is that the brain is an excellent instrument that is used by the mind, but it isn't the mind/heart which is the everlasting
spiritual, and which has never entered our bodies so never exits, either.
The reason I'm sorry about my cousin deciding to stop living is because I think
she is understandably in despair and depression because of her situation. For some reason she isn't being treated for anxiety or depression. When a woman takes to her bed and begins deliberately to die she isn't depressed? And her physician believes this? She says she isn't depressed. Of course she isn't because suicides aren't, once they have made the decision. She's just waiting.
We aren't supposed to commit suicide. Taking our life causes us to arrive in the
next world like a person who crashes a party. We didn't have an invitation, yet we came. There is some kind of a penalty for that. In "Reflections on Life After Life"that is what people who were revived from death by suicide and remembered their time while they were dead had to say about what they had experienced.
Since it is fairly consistent and we also know from scriptures that it isn't to
be done, I think we have had a pretty good warning not to
cause ourselves trouble by doing it. We really aren't welcome yet and we have shortened our lives here where there were still things that were to be accomplished because we were still here. That's why I regret. But on the other hand I believe that the Mercy of God takes into account the reason for the suicide. So it isn't the same for everybody. And probably the loving and merciful creator would understand my cousin's despair and comfort her.
Well Neil, I look forward to your thoughts. You must be starting to get busy. Ben's finding work is starting to come in now.
Affectionately, Mary
