on the universe, infinity, god, one

no one can know the absolute truth - we can only speculate on it.  questions such as why we are here, why there is something instead of nothing at all, what the ultimate purpose of life is, what the universe is, what god is, can never really be answered by human beings and we can only speculate on the answers.  there’s so much we can never know, yet we can enjoy asking questions and using logic in our speculations.

religion and science both try to understand and describe the truth, and both have their strengths as well as their limitations.  religion's greatest strengths or potential strengths are its emphasis on moral values such as charity, and its focus on developing a concept of god and of how we can serve god.  presently each religion's greatest limitation is its assumption that it has the most developed understanding of god and that it is therefore the only true religion or the truest religion.  religions have also been so attached to their teachers and teachings from the past that they have frequently been very resistant to any fundamental or even minor changes in their belief systems.  religion has relied heavily on authority figures for its credibility; we have been told that prophets and sages have brought us truth from god and therefore we should not disagree with any of their teachings and understandings.  science's greatest strengths are its openness to change its theories to be more in agreement with its observations, and its heavy reliance on observation to verify its theories.  presently science's greatest limitation is that it mostly restricts itself from considering subjects of great importance such as god, oneness, consciousness, peace, and love, for these are entities and concepts which are mostly beyond our ability to measure, and science has instead only investigated and considered that which it could somehow try to measure.  science has concerned itself only minimally with moral issues, with questions such as how we should live and how we should treat our fellow humans beings and other living beings in our world.

obviously with so many people on our planet at the time of this writing still starving, hungry or malnourished, and with so many wars and acts of violence still raging around the world, there is truth that is much needed by our species that neither religion nor science has yet presented to us or made clear enough to us.  both religion and science can derive real benefit from each other as they each open more to each other's greatest strengths, and as this happens we all will benefit considerably.  may religion keep growing less resistant and more open to scientific inquiries and observations; may science keep growing less resistant and more open to considering ideas and theories which are mostly beyond its ability to measure or verify, and to accepting and feeling in one way or another the existence of god.

the greatest bridge can be drawn between science and religion as we observe the skies and contemplate and speculate about the universe, and doing so will help us to be more humble as we discover how incomprehensively large the universe is, and how much we might never understand about it.

first, let us stop making the mistake of confusing our observable universe with the universe itself.  the more powerful the telescopes that astronomers and cosmologists have used, the larger our observable universe has become, and there are numerous reasons for one to speculate that the universe itself extends far, far beyond anything we can now measure or will ever be able to measure.  for centuries the vast majority of astronomers mistakenly assumed that the universe itself did not extend beyond our milky way galaxy, which for technological reasons was then the limit of our observable universe, and most  astronomy and cosmology books are still failing to distinguish  between our observable universe and the universe itself.  in this essay from the beginning we will distinguish between our observable universe and the universe itself, and will sometimes refer to the universe itself as simply, the universe.

the universe is incredible beyond description.  there are about four hundred billion stars in our milky way galaxy, and there are probably more than a hundred billion galaxies in our present observable universe, and there is quite possibly endless more beyond.  the andromeda galaxy, which is our nearest neighboring galaxy, is over two million light-years away, it takes that many years for light to travel from there to here.  light travels so fast that it journeys from our moon to our planet earth in just one and a third seconds, yet from even the nearest galaxy light must journey more than two million years to reach us.  our milky way galaxy is approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, so out there about twenty times that distance is andromeda galaxy, with even more than four hundred billion stars.  and there are more than a hundred billion galaxies further beyond in all directions in the realm that constitutes our observable universe at the time of this writing.  how can we begin to comprehend one hundred billion galaxies and all the stars and other things they contain in our observable universe?  each galaxy like a mini-universe, an island universe, so large in and of itself, and with such vast distances out to its neighbor galaxies.  the milky way galaxy alone is so indescribably vast.  the orbit of our planet around our sun compared to the size of our galaxy is reckoned to be like the size of a pinhead compared to the size of north america.  one light-year is 5.88 trillion miles, or 9.46 trillion kilometers.  nine trillion, four hundred and sixty billion (9,460,000,000,000) kilometers light travels in one year, and it would take light more than two million years to get to our neighbor galaxy andromeda.  and so far away beyond us are so many other galaxies, etcetera.  the size of our observable universe is so awesome and incomprehensible, and the universe itself might extend endlessly beyond.  the universe is such a great mystery.

In the year 1600 of the common era, brother giordano bruno was burned alive by catholic church authorities for refusing to renounce his belief that our sun was one of an endless number of stars in an infinite universe that contained infinite space.  less than a hundred years later brother isaac newton also declared his belief that the universe is infinite.  i am also of the opinion that the universe is infinite, that it is endless in space, and that it is also therefore endless in time and endless in energy.

Approximately 329 years after the death of brother giordano bruno, it was discovered and announced to the world by brother edwin hubble, using what was then our world's most powerful telescope at the palomar observatory in california, that the (observable) universe is more than our milky way galaxy, that there are a vast number of galaxies beyond our galaxy, that many of these galaxies are located in clusters with other galaxies and with vast spaces between the clusters of galaxies, and that almost all of these clusters of galaxies are rushing away from our galaxy and from each other, they are part of something which is expanding.  there are a few exceptions to this general trend of expansion; for example our milky way galaxy and our neighboring andromeda galaxy are expected to collide in a few billion years as they revolve around each other in a gravitational dance, and our local group cluster of galaxies which is shaped like a cigar with the milky way at one end and which is at the edge of the virgo supercluster containing thousands of galaxies is being gravitationally pulled to the center of that supercluster about 50 million light-years away from us - these are exceptions, and on a more macro scale expansion seems to be the rule in the observable universe.  

our newly gained knowledge of the existence of numerous clusters and superclustsers of galaxies rushing away from each other is what led to the big bang theory, which maintains that all the galaxies came out of one extremely, indescribably dense and hot point which was all once the size of a grapefruit and even much smaller before that; it came out of nothingness, or it hovered as virtually nothing for almost an eternity of time, until something somehow rocked or happened, and then, big bang theory states, the big bang was born out of a singularity.  according to a theory about the big bang called inflation, all of the vast realm of the observable universe is but a tiny fraction of the big bang.  i've never felt  comfortable with the big bang theory, certainly not as a model for the universe itself, nor even as a model for the observable universe.

less than seventy years after brother edwin hubble announced his discoveries, two teams of scientists simultaneously discovered that the clusters of galaxies are moving away from each other at an accelerating rate of speed, that is, the expansion of the observable universe is accelerating, it is expanding at an ever more rapid pace, and this accelerating rate of expansion began when the observable universe was less than half of its presently estimated age.  some very mysterious and seemingly anti-gravitational force is causing the observable universe to expand in an accelerated fashion, and astronomers have called this mysterious force dark energy.

imagine that everything in the observable universe was part of one organ in an infinite being made up of infinite organs, that our observable universe was part of an organ that operates like a heart, let's say.  hearts expand and contract as we all know.  why couldn't the expansion of our observable universe, even its accelerated expansion, represent merely the expansion phase of an incredibly large heart-like organ in an infinite being?  i'm not saying that it necessarily is, and at the same time i believe no one can prove that it necessarily isn't.

a few years before cosmologists had to deal with the mystery of dark energy, they came upon another major mystery.  according to the laws of gravity as we have understood them, it has been discovered that certain motions in the cosmos, such as the manner of rotation of each galaxy on its axis, cannot be explained if the mass of the galaxy is measured only by its stars, by its visible matter.  the combined mass of each galaxy's suns doesn't account for nearly enough gravitational energy to explain why the suns and gas clouds in the outer regions of a  galaxy are moving so fast as they rotate around that galaxy's core, or to explain why those outer suns and gas clouds don't just fly off into intergalactic space.  there is a problem of missing mass to account for the seemingly necessary gravitational energy within a galaxy that would govern its observed rotational motion, etcetera, and this mysterious missing mass or whatever mysterious entity is producing the needed extra gravitational energy is called by astronomers dark matter.

both dark energy and dark matter neither generate nor reflect light, and at the time of this writing both of these entities are incomprehensible mysteries to scientists.  Astrophysicists have recently been speculating that approximately 70% of the observable universe is dark energy with an anti-gravitational effect, another 25% of the observable universe is dark matter with a gravitational effect, and only 5% of the observable universe is visible matter with a gravitational effect.

gravity is a form of energy that is so powerful it can bend time and space, as brother albert einstein taught in his theory of general relativity.  the theory of black holes speculates that there are places where gravitational energy is so overwhelming that anything at a certain distance from one of these black holes is sucked into it and completely vanishes in the singularity at its center.  as hard as it is to comprehend, black holes are thought to have the ability  to eat up time and space as well as mass.  such a mystery!  how can time and space just vanish?  as hard as it is to comprehend, brother albert einstein's theory of relativity holds that mass, time and space are all fluctuating in relation to each other instead of being absolute quantities.  a clock for instance will tick slower on the earth than on the moon, because gravity (and acceleration) slows down time; a person who could travel at a speed approaching the speed of light would age much slower as time slowed down.  the theory of general relativity assumes that nothing travels faster than the speed of light, and that the laws of physics are the same everywhere.  we might someday discover that neither of these assumptions is correct, but for the purpose of studying the observable universe the theory of relativity has been a tremendous tool and breakthrough.

could it be that dark matter might mostly be a lot more black holes of all sizes, even very tiny ones, that we haven't yet discovered?

the more astronomy we learn the more questions we have and the greater the mystery becomes - it is ultimately the mystery of infinity and eternity.  looking through our telescopes we have not yet discovered any edge or any center of the observable universe, and i speculate that we never will.  as far away as we can observe we see galaxies until they are too faint to be seen.  the largest-scale structure that we have been able to observe till now is that of clusters and superclusters of galaxies joined together for hundreds of millions of light-years.  stretched out as long as this and surrounding these chains of galaxies or surrounded by them are huge voids of space.  maybe the voids are not nearly as empty as they look, maybe they and the entire universe are full of types of energy that we can't begin to measure or even imagine.  as for the galaxies, might they be like nerve cells in an indescribably immense being?

no one at this time can conclusively prove that our observable universe was or was not born in a big bang.  in the event that it was, i speculate that it is merely one of an endless number of big bangs or other manifestations in an endless universe.  in the event that it wasn't born in a big bang,  i would not be surprised.

i speculate that the universe itself is eternal in time, infinite in space, and contains endless amounts of energy in which matter is always being created and transformed, so that, on the ultimate macro level, the universe does operate on some kind of steady-state principle.

we are all limited by our five senses, by our brains, by our experiences, and by our measuring instruments.  there are so many ways for us to try to grasp what is reality based on the information we're receiving and on how each of us with our unique chemistry perceives, processes and interprets that information.

the universe as i envision it is infinity, it is infinite in size and eternal in time.  it is endless energy, it had no beginning and it will have no end.  it is endless mass, endless space, endless time, and in all likelihood it contains many more dimensions we're not aware of.  mass, space, time and velocity in the universe are all affecting and shaping each other and being affected and shaped by each other in an energy dance of relativity that also stretches in and out of black holes.  the universe has no edge, no boundary, no border, and any cosmic wall or barrier that might ever be discovered will not mark its end and will merely signify the end of this part of it.  wherever there's any wall, something that is some form of energy or another might exist beyond that wall, and it's all in the endless universe.  beyond the reach of our measuring instruments there might very well be an indescribable number of other atoms and galaxies like ours, and there are other places in the universe that do not contain atoms or galaxies at all, and that might contain forms of energy and matter completely unknown to us.  there are any number of possible ways to imagine the endless universe, and theories backed by mathematical equations could probably be invented to give support to these various imaginings, and at the same time this subject will probably always remain an unknowable mystery to us.

thinking about the universe really gets me thinking about god.  for me, god is the largest entity i belong to.  i was born into a family, a people, a species, this world, this solar system, this galaxy, this cluster of galaxies...i belong to all that.  i belong to this realm of all the billions of galaxies around us, and to everything beyond that, it is all one.  i belong to the universe.  i belong to god.  god is one.  everyone and everything is inside that one, there is nothing outside that one, there is nothing outside god.  god is endless.  there is no point where god ends and something else begins.  god doesn't end.  god is the endless all.  god includes all.  god includes everyone and everything in the endless universe.  there is truly no point where god ends and the universe begins, and i believe that likewise there is truly no point where the universe ends and god begins.  instead of believing that god created the universe, i believe the universe is endless energy which is god.

all the galaxies and whatever is between them or beyond them are all in god.  the belief that god is not in any way physical and that anything that's matter and energy cannot be considered part of god is a mistaken notion, because it places such extreme limits on god in our minds.  the vast observable universe and everything beyond our ability to observe is all in god, every part of the universe is part of god.  there might be energy in the universe which somehow exists even beyond mass, space and time, and this energy too would be part of god.  rather than believe that god is beyond energy, beyond matter, space, time, and any other dimensions still unknown to us in which energy might somehow exist, i prefer to believe that god can best be described as endless energy made up of endless amounts of matter, space, time, gravity, black holes, anti-gravity, and endless amounts of worlds, of living beings, and of all the other dimensions and forms of energy that might exist and that are beyond our ability to observe, imagine or comprehend.  the universe is so incredible that it proves the existence of god - either god made the universe or god is the universe.  how could the universe exist unless god exists?  i believe god is the universe.  how could anything as awesome as the universe not be god?  how could anything be more awesome than the universe, than god the endless universe?

the belief that the physical and the spiritual are two separate realms is an allusion.  everything physical is also spiritual and everything spiritual is also physical.  just think about the amazing thoughts you're having right now - it is the so-called "physical" atoms and molecules doing their incredible dance in your brain cells that are causing you to have all of these deep "spiritual" thoughts and questions as you're reading these words, which proves that atoms are a fundamental unit of spirit, of feeling, and that the physical world is also the spiritual world.  i believe that god's very essence and being is both physical and spiritual which are actually one essence.  each star can be thought of as an atom, and each galaxy can be thought of as a cell, in god's mind or brain or heart or body, however you wish to imagine it.  if atoms and molecules can fill our brain cells and our brains with feelings, then it is quite possible that suns and solar systems and everything they contain including life, and everything that is contained between them, can fill each and every galaxy with very much feeling, and this as much as anything else can be considered part of the mind of god.  i believe god's mind includes galaxies, black holes, stars, you, me, and everything else that exists.

god, which is infinity, does not have one center but rather an endless number of centers.  it is the nature of infinity that no place is more the head and no place is more the foot; infinity itself is beyond even any metaphorical concept of a head or a foot.  everything in infinity is being influenced by fields of energy and is also influencing those fields of energy, everything is a result of the endless chains of cause and effect which make up infinity.  any person or planet  or atom or star or galaxy or anything anywhere is just as much a center in the infinite god, in god the infinite universe.  when every human being truly understands that each other human being is just as much a center in god, then murder will disappear from our world, for we will all understand that to attack anyone is to attack god, not because the person being attacked is god since god is much more than that person, rather because that  person belongs just as much to god, is just as much a part of god, is just as much a center in god as anyone or anything else.  gone will be the days when people will kill each other in the name of god, gone will be the days when people will kill each other at all.

my god is not a godhead that manages the universe or that could be distinguished from it.  my god is an endless head, an endless body, an endless being that each and all of us are in, and just as much a part of, and just as much a center of.  nothing in god is more creator, nothing in god is more creation, everything in god is both being created and is creating at the same time.  the endless chains of cause and effect energy transformations in god the endless universe, in which each thing is an effect of other things and at the same time is a cause which is affecting other things, suggests to me that any distinction between creator and creation is an illusion in our minds.

i make no distinction between the physical and the spiritual, between god and the universe, between creator and creation; i believe all such distinctions and dichotomies are illusions in our minds and are causing suffering in our world.

certainly everything in the universe is in god; the real question is whether there is any place where the universe ends and god continues, any place where god exists beyond the universe?  in considering that question, why should we ever assume that something beyond a certain point or beyond a certain dimension is part of god but not part of the universe, why can't that something also be considered part of the universe, part of god the endless universe?  instead of assuming two entities and calling one god and the other the universe, i prefer to assume and feel and see one entity, god the endless universe.  according to physics it takes energy to transform energy.  whatever would be capable of creating the universe would require an indescribable amount of energy, and instead of assuming two fields of energy, one that would be a creator god and another that would be a created universe, i see and feel one field of energy that is god the endless universe.  i believe the universe is endless, infinite energy that was never created from out of nothing, that's always been and always will be, and that within the endless universe, in any place and time, energy is undergoing transformations.  if we can believe that god is endless energy that has always existed, why can't we believe that endless energy in and of itself has always existed, and why should we make any separation at all between endless energy and the universe, between god and the universe? - they're all one and the same.  god is an infinite amount of energy, that is, god is as much energy as could possibly exist, and in this energy, atoms, suns, planets, galaxies, black holes, and many other things including no doubt many other realities which we're not aware of, are constantly being born and are existing as happenings in god and are being transformed into other forms of energy in god.  everything that exists, exists as a happening in god, and is involved both in being created and in creating at the same time.

for those who have made a separation in their minds between god and the universe,  with one creating the other, a major philosophical problem follows:  because god is eternal and infinite and cannot be added to, how could god ever have created the universe since god was already infinite and so there was only god and no space for anything else to come into existence?  it is certainly a valid question.  to try to solve this philosophical dilemna, some have come to believe that god somehow, as it were, contracted to make a space, a place for the universe.  such an explanation seems to me to be lacking in a sufficient understanding and appreciation of the true nature of infinity, of the infinite god, which would in no way contract for any purpose.  that which could in any way contract is finite, it would contain some aspect of an edge and of one center, whereas the infinite god would always have no edge and an infinite number of centers.  infinite space would seem to imply and even require an eternity of time, and since god is eternal and infinite, god's existence implies and requires infinite space and infinite time, which means an infinite and eternal universe, not separate from god, not younger than god, not different from god, which is god.  to believe that god and the universe are one and endless is an ultimate affirmation of the faith that god is one.

there are people alive at the time of this writing who can remember when the universe was considered to be the milky way galaxy and no more.  now we know that "just" in our present observable universe there are estimated to be more than a hundred billion galaxies.  since telescopes were invented we humans have been repeatedly discovering that our observable universe is more vast than most of us had previously thought or ever imagined.  so let us be open to the possibility of a universe that is endlessly vast, far beyond our ability to observe, to comprehend, to imagine.  after all, if the observable universe that we can see through telescopes already extends far beyond any size that we are able to mentally grasp, then why couldn't the universe be endlessly vast?  why should anything be so vast and then stop - what would be the point of it?  isn't it more likely that something as incomprehensibly vast and energetic as the observable universe is a profound sign to us that nothing would be more vast and more overpowering than the universe itself, that nothing would extend beyond the universe and that if anything is infinite it is the universe?  it would be worthwhile at this point just to try to contemplate again the vastness of the observable universe.  if the distance from the earth to the sun could be thought of as a quarter of an inch (about 6 millimeters), then on that same scale the nearest star from our sun would be a full mile (about 1.6 kilometers) away, one of about 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and the nearest galaxy from our galaxy would be about 500,000 miles (roughly 800,000 kilometers) away on that same scale.  so a map showing the earth to be a quarter of an inch from the sun would have to be about 500,000 miles long just to show the galaxy that is nearest to our galaxy.  astronomers have photographed millions of other galaxies and believe there are more than 100 billion galaxies within our observable universe, not to mention what lies beyond.  the actual distance between the earth and the sun is about 93 million miles (about 150 million kilometers).  our distance to the next nearest star is about 250,000 times our distance to the sun, and our distance to the nearest galaxy beyond ours is about 125 billion times our distance to the sun.  and beyond that nearest galaxy are those more than 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe, and beyond that is so much endless more.  we are really lost trying to comprehend the vastness of the universe.  the truth is we can't at all imagine the vastness of the observable universe, so why should we place a limit on the dimensions of the universe itself?

is there other life out there?  yes, of course.  i felt for a long time that other suns had planets before this was recently confirmed by telescopes.  i believe life usually evolves on at least one or more planets in the history of most solar systems with one sun.  half or so of all the solar systems, unlike our solar system, have two or more suns orbiting around each other.  a solar system with two suns is called a binary star.  (the unaided eye sees the two stars as one).  three stars held together by gravity in one solar system are called a triple star.  solar systems with two, three or more stars are called multiple star systems or multiple stars.  most of the stars closest to our sun are multiple stars.  life would be more likely to emerge in solar systems containing one sun than in multiple star solar systems, for the planets of multiple star systems would have less stable and more eccentric orbits, and therefore would experience harsher extremes of temperature, etc.  it is reasonable to speculate that most stars have planets, and that somewhere in most solar systems, or at least in most single star solar systems, life in some form or another is in the process of coming or going.  we are living witnesses that our planet is a world full of life.  we can view the emergence of life more as a rare exception, or more as a normal occurence in the universe; taking nothing else into account except the meanings of those two descriptions and the fact that we do indeed exist, it is less likely that life is a rare exception and more likely that life is a normal occurence in the universe, and this seems all the more so when we consider how average our own sun and galaxy are.  given perhaps the infinite number of planets that exist in all the solar systems beyond ours, it's reasonable to assume that there are so many other worlds out there with life, and the questions we ask here are probably being asked wherever there are galaxies in the universe, and the wonder we feel here is probably being felt in countless worlds in countless galaxies in the universe.

we are many we are one - this is also a description of the endless god, it is another name for god when the we is understood to include everyone and everything everywhere.  i believe god is one, the universe is one, the universe is infinity is god is one.

why have most earlier teachings about god and the universe drawn such a sharp distinction between them and seen them basically as two entities instead of one?  for one thing, since each of us is finite and was born, we therefore mostly have imagined till now that the universe is also finite and was born, we have tended to see god as the parent of a finite universe rather than see god as an infinite universe.  the knowledge that each of us came from our own parents has further reinforced the belief of god as the parent of the universe.

another reason why so many of us have created such a distinction between god and the universe till now has to do with how we've regarded things which we consider to be in the so-called physical realm.  "physical" things have often been regarded as course, low, gross or even dirty in comparison with the so-called spiritual, which has been regarded as being something on a much higher level.  till now human beings have mostly been considering the universe as "physical" in essence and god as spiritual in essence, and since "the physical" has been so distinguished from the spiritual in most of our minds, with the former being viewed negatively in comparison with the latter, it has been hard for many to accept that god could include "the physical," and this has reinforced the distinction they've been making in their minds between god and the universe.  one might resist for instance that something as "low" as a rock or dirt could be part of god.  the universe also contains the excremental waste matter of an endless number of creatures, and there  are those who could not bear the thought of this waste matter being in and part of god; yet where could it possibly be if it's not in god, for god is endless and includes all things in all places.  to suggest that god does not include waste matter is to imply that god does not include the living creatures which produce, contain and excrete it, and this would be placing an erroneous limitation on god.  i believe that everything we've been considering "physical," including our waste matter, is in god and part of god.  feelings of shame or embarrassment or resistance or anger in connection with this idea probably have as much to do with our toilet training as with anything else.  i don't think anything less of god because of all the waste matter from living creatures which god contains in addition to everything else.  in the worlds which contain life in god the universe, this waste matter is used as nourishment by numerous biological organisms and is indispensable to their existence, which means that ultimately it is indispensable to the existence of very many other forms of life which are interdependent.  the day will come when knowing about all this waste matter in god and knowing about its biological importance will only add to god's glory and wonder in the minds of human beings.  in life we take so much from god, and excreting out the food we eat is one of the things we can give back to god.

still another basic reason why so many people have made such a sharp distinction between god and the universe till now has to do with our attempts to explain the existence of evil.  there has been evil in this world, people have been terribly violated to death; if this world is in god then that means that the evil in this world is also in god.  we've been reluctant to believe that evil could exist as a force in god and we haven't wanted to blame god for the evil that exists, we've preferred to blame human beings for the evil that exists, and this philosophy of looking to cast blame somewhere has forced us to make a strong separation in our minds between the universe and god in order to avoid blaming god.  people have wanted to believe that god is perfect, and so they've had to believe that the evil, the destructive energy, the imperfection that's existed in this world in the universe has not existed in god.

i often contemplate the shoah, the genocide directed against the people of israel during world war two, which took place shortly before i was born.  why did such a horrifying event occur, what is it suggesting to us about human beings, what is it suggesting to us about god, what lessons can we and must we learn from it so that history stops repeating its hideous atrocities.  Some years ago, when working on a previous edition of this essay, i wrote, “while this essay is being written hundreds of thousands of people have been brutally murdered in rwanda and dozens of wars have been raging on our planet; we've obviously not yet learned the lessons we need to learn from the shoah and from other horrendous crimes in human history.”

i believe genocide, war, murder, and all crimes of violation have first of all occurred because god the endless universe was unable to prevent them when they happened, that is, they could not be prevented in god when they happened.  if i had to choose between believing in a god who could have prevented the cruel and evil genocides and other horrors in human history but for some reason didn't, or simply not believing in god at all, i would choose the latter.  fortunately i have more choices; i do believe in god, just not in a god who could have prevented genocides and other terrible events in human history and didn't.  if believing that god was unable to prevent genocide whenever it's happened means i'm placing some kind of limit on god, i'd rather believe in a god with some limits than believe in a god who would ever deliberately allow such a magnitude of suffering or ever be cruel or angry.  anger itself represents a limit because it's coming from a finite place, not an infinite place, since it's directed at something it feels is beyond itself which it's not feeling one with.  i believe god is never an angry god, and instead anger exists in god in the minds of finite creatures in god.  if it's limiting god in some way to believe that god wasn't able to prevent genocide and other atrocities when they've occurred, perhaps it's time to recognize that some limits do exist even with regard to god, that just because god is infinite does not mean that god is omnipotent, that just because god is endless energy does not mean that that energy can behave any way or can do anything that we might wish or imagine about it.  the energy in god is governed by laws, all the fields of energy in god behave according to laws, and even if those laws change with time, velocity or other factors, the change in those laws is also governed by laws.  when genocide or any act of violation has taken place in this world, it is not that god wanted it or deliberately allowed it to happen, it is that god was unable to prevent it, and we in god were unable to prevent it, we didn't have the consciousness or the will or the ability to prevent it.  as for the killers, they were experiencing a certain level of pain and fear combined with a certain level of ignorance that caused them to kill; their ignorance blinded them to the truth that their victims were every bit as much a part of god as anyone else and that we must stop taking out our pain and fear on each other.  everything is evolving in this world in god including the knowledge of god, and the tragic events of genocide, war, murder, racism, rape and other crimes have occurred here because the knowledge of god has not yet been sufficiently evolved and developed.  genocide, racism and all of these crimes are diseases in god, they are diseases, and where else are these diseases except in god, for everything is in god.  the evolution of our awareness has not proceeded rapidly enough to have prevented genocide and other acts of destruction and violation in our history.  i believe a fundamental nature of god the endless universe is the expression of unity, peace and harmony in god; it's just that this unity and peace does not exist everywhere at all times and sometimes it arrives after there has been much pain and destruction.

perhaps instead of using the word evil in this discourse, it might bring more clarity to think of some energy as more destructive, unpeaceful, disunifying, hurtful and negative, and to think of other energy as more constructive, peaceful, unifying, helpful and positive.  anger, hatred and violence are obvious examples of hurtful, negative energy; love is an obvious example, the best example, of helpful, positive energy.  since this world is in god, all the energy in this world, both negative and positive, is also in god.  i try to remember not to actually blame either god or human beings for the destructive, negative energy which has existed and still exists here, for i believe that god is an endless series of cause and effect relationships, an endless series of energy fields affecting each other, which means that everything has been unfolding here and everywhere the only way it could, and neither god nor anyone in god can truly be blamed for anything.  i see and feel that there is much more unity than disunity in god and in this world, and at the same time i acknowledge that just as the unity and harmony and symmetry that exists in our world exists in god and is coming from an aspect of god that reflects god's unity, so the disunity and disharmony and dissymmetry that exists in our world exists in god and is coming from an aspect of god that reflects god's disunity.  i believe there is both unity and disunity in god the endless universe, there has been, there is, and there will be, and i have faith that the unity in god is much greater than the disunity, and that the direction of life in this world and in every world where there's life is to greater awareness, peace and unity.  i don't believe that god on purpose created or preplanned the destructive, negative energy as a test for human beings in this world,  

i cannot believe that god would purposefully allow so much suffering to have occurred for the sake of any test or for any other reason.  the suffering, disunity and destruction could not have been prevented by god as it was happening or it would have been prevented, and what needs to happen now in this world is for all of us here in god to try to let go of the blame and at the same time to try to take responsibility to learn all the lessons we can from all the suffering, destruction and violation so that there will come to be only less hurtful and negative energy, and only more helpful and positive energy, and we will come to express and reflect only more of god's unity.

when i look up at the stars, i am inspired and gladdened to be a living witness to god's unity.  yet there are times when i wonder if there are many other calamities of genocide and war out there in the history or future of other worlds of life in the universe, and sometimes i think that there probably are.  in those moments, and when i also contemplate all the suffering that's still going on in our world, i begin to question the very purpose of life in the universe and wonder if life might be some pathetic chemical reaction on the surface of some planets heated up by suns, and wonder if life itself deserves to be placed on that exalted pedestal and center stage we are fond of placing it on.  there are times when i've thought that suns, and not life, might occupy the center stage in god the universe, that suns might even have some form of self-awareness and might be communicating with each other through sun-spot cycles or however.  suns are so awesome, they are a splendid example of god's unity in their nuclear fusion process in which their hydrogen nuclei, their protons, fuse into helium atoms, releasing tremendous amounts of energy as a fraction of the mass of these uniting protons converts into gamma radiation and then into other forms of energy.  our sun converts about four million tons of matter into energy every second.  the protons in the newly formed helium atoms are slightly lighter than they were before, with some of their mass having converted into the solar energy of sunlight and heat that sustains all life.  back to the subject of life...the light returns and i realize that however remarkable suns might be, life, with its incredibly complex cellular and molecular structure, and with all its feelings and awareness or potential awareness, is also so awesome, such a miracle.  it's only coming from ignorance and despair to put life down - my job is to believe in life and to help life, starting with myself and continuing with others.  a brother named medicine story wrote, “love is life believing in itself.”  yes, and love is having pleasure in accepting, in accepting life first of all, beginning with oneself.  it's when life doesn't believe in itself or accept itself that genocide is able to happen.  life is an incredible miracle in an endless god that has no center stage, a god that has an infinite number of centers instead of one.  and even if in each world with life there might be much pain before peace is born, as has been the case in our world, let's regard that pain as the birth pains of a world that will soon have much more love and peace, and let's believe in life, and believe in love and peace, and believe in the basic oneness, the basic unity of god.  it is not only us who need god's help, it is also god who needs our help.  so let's love god and be as doctors to god and dedicate our lives to serving god by protecting life here in this world in god, by working for peace and by giving and sharing, for god is one.

it's worth repeating that everything in this world is evolving including our knowledge of god.  more and more of the truth will emerge with time.  and what is the truth?  the most important truth is that knowledge which will ultimately make all of us happier, not make some of us happier at the expense of others, but sooner or later make all of us happier.  peace comes about as teachings are born which reveal more truth about god.  replacing hurtful energy with helpful energy and building a world of peace is very much a matter of proper education and example; teaching about god's unity, that god includes all of us, that each of us is just as much a part of god and a center in god, and approaching each other with respect, non-violence, and kindness will bring much positive change to our world.  may i try to help and not to hurt.

the birds chirping their morning song, the sun rising and setting, the light of numerous stars reaching my eyes after traveling so very far, everything i see and hear and smell and taste and touch is in god and of god.  looking into the night sky filled with stars is gazing into the face, the mind, the essence of god, as is looking around at all the faces and the various forms of life and other things here on earth.

looking into the eyes of a fellow human being can provide such a strong feeling of connection with god.  we can experience more connection with each other than with anything else in god.  and we're connected somehow to everything in god for god is full of connections.  everything is connected in god in ways we can hardly begin to comprehend or imagine.

as for a final cosmological answer, how can i or anyone here know god's ways?  we can only speculate and share our visions, and hopefully all learn to tolerate and appreciate each other more in the process.  each of us has intimate feelings one way or another concerning the subject of god.  let us create circles of tolerance where we can sit together and share our visions and questions about god, and really listen to each other and respect where each person is coming from and treat each other kindly and have faith that more of the truth that will unite us will emerge with time and that each of us is contributing to the emergence of that truth.  

brother carl sagan wrote, “the total number of stars in the universe is greater than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet earth.”  the only change i would make to that sentence, which i'm sure he would have agreed with, is to insert the adjective observable before the word universe.  god is great.  god is one.  god is endless.

and we certainly have a purpose and a direction in god.  fixing ourselves more and fixing our world more is our most important work.  helping to generate more of god's light and healing unity on our planet is our holiest responsibility.  may we all love each other in god, and all love god.  we are many we are one.

last edited 5767 (2007)

an afterthought:
god is energy, as much energy as there can possibly be, and with that energy comes consciousness.  i believe that the universe, even if it’s not actually endless, is as endless as anything can possibly be, and is therefore my god.  we will never know if god the universe is actually finite or infinite, and it doesn’t really matter.  since everything is in god, genocide in this world is in god, it’s like a tumor attacking god from within, it’s as if god has cancer here on our planet.  so my god is not perfect, but i still love god and want to serve god.  let us drive the cancer out of god in this world by bringing an end to genocide, war, murder, rape, the extinction and near extinction of species caused by our carelessness and ignorance, and other calamities.  at the time of this writing millions of people have been murdered in the genocide in the congo, and hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered in the genocide in darfur in sudan.  there’s much work to do to help heal this world in god.  may god help each of us to help ourselves and to help others, and may we all thank god.

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