This is a fantastic universe we live in. We can say it is magical, even. How can it be otherwise? We inhabit it. Is it an inconceivable supposition that some of its magic, its attributes of wonder, may have rubbed off on us? Fair question? Are we not endowed with the Creator's purpose? Too fantastic? Too unrealistic? Too improbable in a universe of several trillion galaxies, each galaxy with 100 to 200 billion stars - one of them we call our sun, a mere particle of sand in a swirling dune where the number of stars exceeds all the sand in all the earthly beaches our imagination will allow us to comprehend?
Even though we merely occupy an incomprehensibly miniscule corner, a relatively mere dimensionless point of dust revolving around one starlit flotsam - one of 200 to 300 billion flotsams - swirling around an average galaxy that one early human observer fondly described as a freshly stirred milky concoction. Yes, relative to the entire Milky Way galaxy our home is less than an invisible point filled with over seven billion other even more miniscule points and you are one of those reading this - pondering as I do with many others thinking the same way. However, thinkers and wonderers that we are, why is one lifetime allotted to each one merely an average of less than seventy years, some longer or shorter, and it ends. Then, that is all there is?
Well, it is a fantastical world when we get right down to it. So, let's get deeper into the meaning of our existence. For this to work we need to unshackle the limits of our imagination, go past the stop sign of what we are used to believe and go beyond the boundaries of human philosophy, sociology, even its physiology.
It is highly unlikely I will go to the theater to watch the movie - Eternals - based on another set of Marvel comics characters of that title. "In the film, the Eternals, an immortal alien race, emerge from hiding after thousands of years to protect Earth from their ancient counterparts, the Deviants".
Obviously this musing will not be about that. I will venture that based on the above one sentence plot description, it seems to be just another frequently used storyline of the universal tug of war between good and evil. This will not be about that either.
Then why phrase the title of my musing, "We Are All Eternals"? It is a hopeful provocation. But let's not get ahead of the punch line.
Physiologically, every part of your body has been around for far longer than since your first birthday. These elements had been recycled for millions of years, most of it for billions and billions of years. You are practically made of stardusts, figuratively and literally, you are. Your physical body, that is. We'll get to what is beyond your physical structure later.
Every iron element in your body, in your red blood cells and cells in your muscles, was at one time in the belly of a huge star that exploded into a supernova. Every star ultimately will run out of its fuel - hydrogen - and when that happens the extreme gravity will implode the entire star the moment iron is formed at its core from the intense pressure. Almost instantaneously the implosion will be followed by a huge explosion, hurling all the material outward into empty space, causing shock waves along the way that created all the other heavy elements like gold, potassium, etc. The exploded remnants after many millions of years will recombine with other debris in the vastness of space to be reborn into another star. One of those stars became our sun.
With that sun were several swirling spheres of hot gasses, half of them cooled to form rocky structures on their surfaces - Mercury, Mars, Pluto (if you still consider it a planet), asteroids, moons, and of course, our dear earth.
You are therefore a physically recycled material. The oxygen you inhaled just now, may have been through the nostrils of one extinct dinosaur a long time ago, which may have been part of an exchange made possible by an ancient Jurassic fern when it took one molecule of carbon dioxide exhaled by some other air breathing creature, now extinct, when it stripped the carbon and expelled the oxygen. The process repeated many trillions of times before your lungs processed it.
The long and short of it is that we are part of a series of universal recycling processes long before recycling aluminum cans and plastics became part of our social conscience. This majestic universe of ours is one great recycler extraordinaire.
So, we know our bodies came from recycled material. Soon, as we pass on, our bodies, together with cut grass, banana peels, gray whales, racoons, wildebeests, wet cardboards, eels, algae, innumerable luminaries, unknown homeless people, warriors and civilians, saints and politicians will be recycled too.
Death in the end equalizes everything that perished. Is that it then?
To quote Werner Herzog, a filmmaker whose "films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams,[2] people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who are in conflict with nature.[3]", one might be led to believe not only in our insignificance but that ..
"The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man".
On the other hand, a noted physicist, Michio Kaku, had this to say,
"The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe".
Suppose you were the Creator, would you let that creature live only for so long and then cast it into oblivion? You are not expected to answer that because, one, you are not the Creator, and two, you, I and everyone else, are not equipped with all the fantastical and magical powers of the entire universe. However, those 100 billion neurons and the trillions of connections they are capable of making are enough to make us ponder, contemplate and wonder. The universe, therefore, may have rubbed off some of its magical powers on us, after all.
That magical power, that we are allowed to have, however weak, gave us consciousness. The latter is no trivial matter. It is what makes us human. It is what differentiates us from one another. Why then do we have it? What purpose is consciousness if it must exist only within the confines of one lifetime? A mere nanosecond out of an eternal universe?
We think not. Well, going back to unshackling the limits of our imagination, is it not possible consciousness will live on forever? If every physical element that gave it a home - the 3.5 pounds of tissue with 100 billion neurons that Michio Kaku referred to, sitting atop our shoulders, are recyclable, why not for the stream of consciousness to flow forever?
Let's try another analogy. Recorded music in a reel of master tape, grooves on a vinyl record, pits on a CD, once heard, appreciated, memorized by those who liked it, will live on long after the reels of tape, vinyl and plastic discs have been destroyed. There is a universe of people on whom the music of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Elvis, Michael Jackson live on; likewise, why can't this universe accommodate every consciousness that had ever existed?
Is it possible, our consciousness has existed all along, for billions of years, and will continue on for the next billions of years? Just asking.
Like I said when I started this musing, "For this to work we need to unshackle the limits of our imagination, go past the stop sign of what we are used to believe and go beyond the boundaries of human philosophy, sociology, even its physiology".
I close with why I write these musings, as premised at the top:
When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber.
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