Stasis. Silence. Darkness. Cold. (How cold is
nothingness? Cold, but there is no way and no one to gauge it,
so it's probably comfortable to the entity that IS
nothingness, and in such a universe, everything. In the
Absolute Zero of deepest, darkest space, it might think, "Hmm,
a little chilly." Or, "Cool!" The one thing it didn't think
was "Mmm, just right," because we all know that there is no
nothingness, there is a whole bunch of something strewn across
the sky. Which leads to the timeless question
....)
Did it
always exist or did it suddenly happen? Was there ever
nothingness or did something suddenly occur?
I love
the Big Bang theory. Planck time. The universe expanded to
approximately its present size in less than a millionth of a
second. Now that's what I call inflation! Of course we don't
know how big the universe really is, or if it ends at all.
Therefore it seems logically ludicrous to theorize a beginning
when we can't authentically postulate an end.
We do
know that all organisms are born and die. And we know from the
parable of the fish who can't see above the surface of the
lake that there is likely more to the universe than can be
seen by our eyes or perceived by our brains.
But I'm
getting ahead of myself. Because we see all these wailing
starts and whimpering ends, and our mode of comprehending
natural puzzles is to tend to anthropomorphize everything
(like turning stars into gods and houseplants into imaginary
beings we talk to — and damn if they don't grow better when
you do that), we naturally figment a beginning — that Big Ole
Bang — and an end — called Heat Death — to this starry
potpourri we call the Universe.
Thus,
with our limited understanding, we contemplate the
beginning.
I love
the winter sky at night, and over the years have memorized the
names of many of the stars in it. The regal hieroglyph named
Orion the mighty Hunter chases the Seven Sisters of the
shimmering Pleiades across the night, a timeless projection of
human behavior writ large upon the sky, all enveloped by the
majestic Medicine Wheel, which starts at Sirius and arcs
northward to Capella, like the giant hand of a caring
chaperone shepherding celestial lovers.
A
surprising visitor to the Medicine Wheel this winter is the
radiant planet Saturn, old Father Time himself, settled in
right next to the twins, Castor and Pollux, an
uncharacteristically prominent place in the ethereal pattern
of things. Though I'm no soothsayer, I definitely perceive an
omen in this portentous placement in the heavens. Something
momentous is about to happen, and it involves all the time of
recorded history, happening now right before our
eyes.
Surveying the wonder of the sparkling firmament, a
single question invariably forms, creeping up my spine like
some cold lizard. "Why? Why should all this beauty have come
to exist at all."
Throughout my years of skywatching I have always
received the same answer, and doubtless always will. From amid
the distant quasars and shooting stars comes the soft whisper.
"I created the universe with a wish, because I was
lonely."
Then I
go inside and sip my hot chocolate with comfort and joy. I
know for certain that no force ever would have put us here for
any bad reason. And even though, in the inexplicably cruel
tumult that is the world of men, there is much horror to
regret, I know this life is the quintessential gift in all the
universe, and I give thanks for the chance to live
it.
Therefore, what has been given to me I would give to
others. It is both the nature of the gift and the secret of
real power. The dearest thing in life is something to be given
away, because that is how you nurture the flower that gave you
life, that lonesome wish in the darkness that created all
these exploding suns and teeming seas that sustain our state
of grace, our being, our somethingness.
That we
choose to misuse this gift is not the problem of the universe,
which has sought, literally from time immemorial only to
create conditions perfect for our happiness. The benificent
Sun and his faithful daughter Mother Nature provide all that
living creatures need to thrive on this Eden planet of our
dreams. For all but one creature, who, upon receiving the
great gifts of reflection and abstraction, chose to see the
forest as potential plywood.
And so
it may be that in our manic quest for self-possession we will
destroy ourselves and all we covet. That in the terror of our
own demise that we will go extinct and play no part in the
future evolution of the greater universe.
Sure,
it is to be regretted that we couldn’t be happy realizing that
our lives were given to us only on loan from the universe. It
is a lease arrangement, you see, that no living thing can
break. Not even the stars themselves are exempt from
it.
But
this is no reason not to be thankful — most profoundly
respectful — for the amazing gifts we HAVE been given. That we
have chosen not to use them wisely is no one’s fault but our
own, yet even this provides reasons for gratitude, in the hope
that our ugly lesson will serve as an example for wiser
species to come not to fall into the same traps of inventing
deities rather than respecting the real one, and thinking in
our preposterous hubris that we could create a world better
than the one that was given to us by the sacred fates and
elements, by the eternally graceful rhythm of the stars and
the seas that we chose to ignore and disparage.
So
that’s your beginning. On the timescale of the greater
universe, the time it takes to begin to think about raising
your finger and striking a key on this keyboard encompasses
all of human history, past and future — from the flint that
caused the first spark that ignited the first bit of kindling
that heated the first felled wildebeest that fed the first
nuclear family in the first gathered community ... to the last
bomb that was dropped that killed all living beings on Earth
because, as on Mars long ago, it popped the atmosphere like a
soap bubble and turned the planet into a lifeless, frozen
cinder; then five million years passed and life began
anew.
Eventually, the eternal ephemeral intelligence that
animates all living things and drives trillions of different
species on countless different stars and planets throughout
the universe began to contemplate the end of all life
throughout all the vigintillions of galaxies.
Still,
from the great distance of time it had achieved into a far
future we cannot begin to comprehend, it looked back on its
most antediluvian history, and for all its technology and all
its intelligence still could not see the beginning, so it
could not realistically predict an end.
Yet
intelligence remembered everything it had ever learned and it
recalled an ancient creed that had once held sway in the
highest snowy mountains of an exquisitely beautiful planet its
inhabitants had called Earth — now long since consumed by its
exploding sun. It remembered an ancient ritual called the
bardo, in which some devotees created an imaginary alterworld
between life and death which they calculated they traversed
between the time their physical bodies died and they were
reborn into a new life they had chosen after a period of
profound reflection and advice from spirits they had
invented.
If
only, intelligence in the far future mused, if only those
enigmatic humans had practiced in real life what they had
planned to practice in the bardo, how much happier they would
have been. Because they refused to realize their existence in
the corporeal state was in reality a transit between deaths —
and since we know that both states are equal on the astral
plane that governs the lifecycles of the universe — they
waited until they were dead to practice what they should have
been doing while they were living.
Had
they done that, their planet would have been peaceful, as I
intended (intelligence said), and they could have chosen the
end they really wanted, which is of course is not to end at
all. But their fear got in the way, prevented them from doing
it. Thankfully, intelligence continued to muse, there is not
now nor ever was any reason to be afraid, as virtually all
living things have always known.
Thus,
on some crisp night in some happy world of the far future,
some curious adolescent wanders out at night and ponders a
starry sky, imagining a happy face from flickering light high
above that has taken millions of years to reach
him.
As he
looks up, the quintessential question furls on his brow. “Why?
Why should all this beauty should come to have existed at
all?”
Amid
the trillions of twinkles dancing overhead, the eternal
whisper wafts down like an elegant waltz in
time.
“I
created the universe because I was lonely. So now you have no
reason to be, because I am always here. All you have to do is
look up at night. You are a part of me and I am a part of you.
Remember, we’re both stardust. Although my face may change
with the passing of days, as far as you are concerned, little
one, I will always be here. Because I always have
been.
“No
matter where you are, or how bad things seem to be, you are
never alone, because you are always at home, with me, among
the stars, where there is no beginning and no
end.”
The
little shaver smiled, toyed wth a stick in the dirt, and
studied the fine but dim white mist that someone long ago had
called the Milky Way. The voice spoke again.
“The
only thing you have to fear is believing this is not so. Don’t
let anybody fool you. Because it IS so. Just watch the sky and
see.”
And
with that, as they always have and always will, the beautiful
stars rode by.
John Kaminski is a writer of political and
psychological broadsides who lives on the edge of a vast sea
where the stars are very bright. For more information go to
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