I am a gambling man. Every day I bet my whole life on this personal view of the Universe.
In a vast endless sea of darkness there is One point of light. Contained within this point of light, are all the elements of the Universe. Now from this Central point of light, (in what is commonly called "The Big Bang"), came infinite rays of light to spread across the darkness. Now when I say Infinite, I mean two things, one is there is such a vast number of Rays that they are unaccountable and two, each ray exists in a finite state, meaning it will perform it's unique individual role in the Universe only to be drawn back in to the Center. There it will decide to continue the role it's been playing or it may want to break up the monotony by playing a new or at least a different role in the Universe. Now each Ray of light is exactly like the Center light with one minor difference, each Ray contains all the elements of the Universe, but each has there own unique individual role to play. Some Rays became the expanding Hydrogen and Helium gases that calmed down enough to accumulate into clouds, which condensed and heated up again into clusters of stars. These Stellar furnaces fused the hydrogen and helium together, creating the middle weight elements, like carbon, oxygen, and iron. As these stars grew, some exploded into Supernovas. The heaviest elements, like gold and uranium, were formed in the intense heat and blown into space. One ray of light became a spiral galaxy called "The Milky Way" within this galaxy a cloud of gas began to collapse. Pulled together by the force of its own gravity, the compressed mass heated up, spinning faster and faster. The gas got so hot, it's hydrogen atoms began to fuse, and the cloud became a giant Hydrogen bomb; a Star. As the fireball whirled, it flattened out and spun off a blazing Halo into space. Most of the cast-off mass escaped forever, but some remained in orbit around the Star. Bits of this "Space Junk" stuck together, until it had accumulated into nine planets, plus assorted moons, asteroids, and comets. The new star was the Sun, and its third planet was good old Earth.
The Earth cooled, its surface scum hardened into continents, steam condensed, and oceans fell from the sky. Chemicals mixed together forming genetic equipment, and fatty by-products formed membranes, within which proteins could evolve. These little chemical factories protected by their fatty skins colonized the open sea. The cells discovered chlorophyll and when exposed to the Sun, this green stuff enabled the cell to get energy from the simplest food: carbon dioxide and water. The cells had become a blue-green algae, the first plants. As the algae ate, they gave off the first pure oxygen. Oxygen turned ammonia and methane to nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and formed an ozone layer in the upper atmosphere which screened out cosmic rays. The plants paid for this pollution: New cells evolved which breathed oxygen and ate plants - the first animals!
Now, these first animal cells reproduced Asexually, by simply dividing in half. All offspring were exactly like their parent (except for mutants). Now if a predator came along, asexuals being alike, were all equally liable to be killed. Therefore, individual differences are a good thing, and that's where sex comes in. Sex is a genetic way of creating and transmitting individual differences within a population. Sex originally was just the opposite of reproduction. Reproduction meant One cell splitting in two, but sex meant two cells joining for a while to play with each others genes. So sex was good for individual differences, and individual differences were good for survival. Therefore, sexual beings survived, and the ones who did best were the ones who liked sex the most, which is why sex felt good then, feels good now, and can only feel better tomorrow! So, the overall effect sex has on evolution is, One: it creates individual differences for survival. Two: it allows the development of higher organisms. Asexual creatures ensure survival by breeding like crazy. Sexual beings have more leisure to develop. Three: Sex speeds up evolution. Asexual creatures can pass good genes along only one line. Sex allows for variations to be spread rapidly throughout a population. And Four: Sex created the need for natural death. When an asexual amoeba divides, its individual life becomes two new ones-unlike sexual beings, which have to be cleared away for the new generation.
Now, going back to reason One: because of individual differences, sex created an infinite amount of different lifeforms upon the planet. From Sea life to Insects, to Rats, Cats, and Elephants, and to Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! But, the strangest and most beautiful lifeform sex ever creates is something called Human. The Human Being with it's magnificent mind, can use the resources of the planet to create houses, automobiles, roadways, television sets, movie theaters, a wide variety of foods to tantalize the mind's taste buds, books to entice the mind's eyesight, and music of all kinds to please the mind's hearing.
Now, the most amazing thing the Human Mind can create is the Human Mind. Going back to the concept of individual Rays of light, each Ray contains all the elements of the Universe, but each has there own unique individual role to play. When One individual Ray of light meets another individual Ray of light, another individual Ray of light can be created. Sex can be so much fun. Thus the Universe (or the Human Mind) recreates it's Self over and over so that it may experience life in an endless and infinite variety of ways, constantly changing yet still remaining the Universe. In other words, "The Song Remains the Same."
So, the individual can and should be seen, as One particular focal point at which the whole Universe expresses itself-as an incarnation of the Self. Thus every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree, and each individual has unique talents, some may create great paintings or Saturday morning cartoons, compose musical symphonies or write a book on their personal views of the Universe, but the fact is individuals are unique, no two sets of fingerprints are exactly alike, not even with "identical twins." To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the Universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected-and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo-the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.
Now, mythology has reduced Man to an utterly unimportant little germ in an unimaginably vast and enduring Universe. Is it too much of a shock, too fast a switch, to recognize that this little germ with its fabulous mind is evoking the whole thing, including the nebulae millions of light years away. We have lacked the real humility of recognizing that we are members of the biosphere, the "harmony of contained conflicts" in which we cannot exist at all without the cooperation of plants, insects, fish, cattle, and bacteria. In the same measure, we have lacked the proper Self-respect of recognizing that I, the individual organism, am a structure of such fabulous ingenuity that it calls the whole Universe into being.
It is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling and choice which you call your own should have sprung into being from nothingness at a given moment not so long ago; rather this knowledge, feeling and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically One in all Men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense-that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal, infinite being, an aspect or modification of it. For we should have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? What, objectively differentiates it from others? No, but inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you-and all other conscious beings as such-are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the Whole; only this Whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.
The Universe implies the organism, and each single organism implies the Universe - only the "single glance" of our spotlight, narrowed attention, which has been taught to confuse its glimpses with separate "things," must somehow be opened to the full vision.
"I" and "Universe" are One, you ask, "So What? What is the next step, the practical application?" The answer is simple, consolidate your understanding to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Also, try not to take life too seriously, after all, the reason you create It, is for the Fun of It.
Now, If I am I because you are you, and if you are you because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you. Instead we are both something in common between I-and-Thou and I-and-It the magnet itself which lies between the poles, between I myself and everything sensed as other.
Thus, with this "dawning" I find myself not in a world but as a world which is neither compulsive nor capricious. What happens is neither automatic nor arbitrary: it just happens, and all happenings are mutually interdependent in a way that seems unbelievably harmonious. Every this goes with that. Without others there is no self, and without somewhere else there is no here, so that-in this sense-Self is other and here is there. Experience and experiencer become One experiencing, Known and Knower One Knowing.
Each organism experiences this from a different standpoint and in a different way, for each organism is the Universe experiencing itself in endless variety. One need not, then, fall into the trap which this experience holds for believers in an external, all-powerful God - the temptation to feel "I am God" in that sense, and to expect to be worshiped and obeyed by all other organisms.
When this new sensation of Self arises, it is at once exhilarating and a little disconcerting. There is the feeling that you are not doing it yourself, but that it is somehow happening on its own, and you wonder whether you will lose it - as indeed you may if you try forcibly to hold on to it. In immediate contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the sensation, as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside: they move together inseparably, and at first you feel a little out of control because the world outside is so much vaster than the world inside. Yet you soon discover that you are able to go ahead with ordinary activities - to work and make decisions as ever, though somehow this is less of a drag. There is a feeling of the ground holding you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes itself in and out of your lungs, and instead of looking and listening, light and sound come to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear as wind blows and water flows. All space becomes your mind. Time carries you along like a river but never flows out of the present: the more it goes, the more it stays, and you no longer have to fight or kill it.
You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling? Of what use is the Universe? You understand and see that tasks are being done for their own sake, whereupon farms begin to look like gardens, sensible living-boxes sprout interesting roofs and mysterious ornaments, carpenters take time to "finish" their work, and cooks become gourmets. You realize, life is at root playing. That the spectacle is so fascinating. For the world is a spell, an enchantment, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game. We become fascinated to the point where the cheering and the booing are transformed into intense love and hate, or delight and terror, ecstatic orgasm or screaming meemies. All made out of on-and-off or black-and-white, pulsed, stuttered, diagramed, mosaiced, syncopated, shaded, jolted, tangoed, and lilted through all possible measures and dimensions. It is simultaneously the purest nonsense and the utmost artistry.
Once you have seen this you can return to the word of practical affairs with a new spirit. You have seen that the Universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "You" is the One that comes and goes, Manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "You" is the Universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.
Now, for so long as you manifest yourself in human or animal form, you must eat at the expense of other life and accept the limitations of your particular organism, which fire will still burn and wherein danger will still secrete adrenalin and possibly make you shit and piss your pants. Also, you will be susceptible to diseases like measles, mumps, chicken pox, love, and horniness, Etc. Of course those last two usually go hand in hand. The morality that goes with this understanding is, above all, the frank recognition of your dependence upon enemies, underlings, out-groups, and indeed upon all other forms of life whatsoever, to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost. To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. The real goodness of Human nature is its peculiar balance of love and selfishness, reason and passion, spirituality and sensuality, mysticism and materialism, in which the positive pole has always a slight edge over the negative. (Were it otherwise, and the two were equally balanced, life would come to a total stalemate and standstill.) It comes, then, to this: that to be "viable", livable, or merely practical, life must be lived in the spirit of play rather than work, and the conflicts which it involves must be carried on in the realization that no species, or party to a game, can survive without its natural antagonists, its beloved enemies, its indispensable opponents.
Life has been defined as energy in motion, anything that moves has life, that movement is action, and that the goal of action is always contemplation-knowing and being rather than seeking and becoming. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. The best answer is: "It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what's happening now." The past is past, its done and gone, live for today, for today is the NOW!
I will coincide there is some difficulty in Being IT, IT can be frustrating, but to be bored with IT? No Way! To those who say life is boring I ask: How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous pattern of its environment - from the tiniest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies - how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all Eternity can be bored with being?
Now, the difficulty or problem with IT, is that IT is so much more myself than I thought I was, so central and so basic to my existence, that I cannot make it an object. There is no way to stand outside IT, and, in fact, no need to do so. For so long as I am trying to grasp IT, I am implying that IT is not really myself. If it were possible, I am losing the sense of it by attempting to find it. This is why those who really know that they are IT invariably say they do not understand it, for IT understands understanding - not the other way about.
The image of Man is changing as it becomes clearer and clearer that the Human being is not simply and only his physical organism. My body is also my total environment, and this must be measured by light years in the billions.
The poets and philosophers of science have used the vast expanse and duration of the Universe as a pretext for reflections on the unimportance of man, forgetting that man with "that enchanted loom, the brain" is precisely what transforms this immense electrical pulsation into light and color, shape and sound, large and small, hard and heavy, long and short. In knowing the world we humanize it, and if, as we discover it, we are astonished at its dimensions and its complexity, we should be just as astonished that we have the brains to perceive it.
But, we have been taught, however, that we are not really responsible for our brains. We do not know (in terms of words and figures) how they are constructed, and thus it seems that the brain and the organism as a whole are an ingenious vehicle which has been "given" to us, or an uncanny maze in which we are temporarily trapped. In other words we accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the Self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.
Yet we can still awaken the sense that all this, too, is the Self - a Self, however, which is far beyond the image of the ego, or of the human body as limited by the skin. We then behold the Self wherever we look, and its image is the Universe in its light and in its darkness, in its bodies and its spaces. This is the new image of man, but it is still an image. For there remains - to use dualistic words - "behind," "under," "encompassing," and "Central" to it all, the unthinkable IT, polarizing itself in the visible contrasts of waves and troughs, solids and spaces. But the odd thing is that this IT, however inconceivable, is no vapid abstraction: It is very simply and truly yourself.
There "you" have IT, my "Individual" personal view of the Universe. Of course, I could be wrong, IT could be just a dream that I'm having that's taking place inside the imagination of my mind. Well the stage has been set, the names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent, the casting call goes out, and IT's Lights, Camera, Action! Does anyone want to STAR in a movie with me? How about "YOU?"