QUESTION6.com
We,The People, are not happy
5 - Can we blame our environment?
Many levels
So far, our way of thinking has been for the material world. It was well adapted to 5% of reality. It may be presumptuous to assume that we can project our limited way of thinking on the whole universe.
Size matters!
All the cells of the human body are replaced about 10 times a year. Our skin is replaced every 5 or 6 weeks. Even most of the calcium of our bones is replaced every 3 months. In those conditions how can you explain that we keep our tattoos?
To answer such questions, we have to change our way of thinking. The answer is that our body does not replace 'our skin' as a whole. It replaces 'the cells of our skin' one by one. We don't renew our skin one morning like the snake sheds its skin and the lobster molts. We replaced one dead cell with one new cell. One at a time. The ink inserted in your skin is not part of your body. It does not get replaced any more than the fillings in your teeth. Our thinking must be at the level of the cells, not the level of the skin.
We must adapt our thinking to different levels.
This is only the beginning:
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When we look at the water in a swimming pool, we see a clear liquid. When a chemist looks at water, he sees a combination of hydrogen and oxygen. Our thinking must be at the right level, and this level is not the same for swimming and for chemistry.
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We don’t have a problem separating Time and Space. The clock on the wall stays at the same place and keeps telling us about Time. This is not an idea that we can apply to the moon. You cannot imagine the moon staying in the same place in the sky, like a clock on the wall. The moon must move. There is some connection between Time and Space. We cannot think about the solar system the same way we think about objects on Earth. Time and Space are combined like the chemist combines oxygen and hydrogen to make water.
Size really matters! We cannot think about our cells like we think about our skin. Can human thinking be adapted to our solar system or the Red Giant
Size matters
We were told, at school, that the world is made of matter, plants, animals and humans. We placed ourselves on top, of course, and there was no need to look any further.
Reality may be a bit more complicated. We are floating halfway between the infinitely small atoms and the immensity of the universe. This is not a very comfortable position for somebody who pretends to dominate the world.
We knew that our consciousness was limited to the material world. We are now discovering that our consciousness is limited to a narrow part of the material world.
We can find, above us, a few things that are important but difficult to describe. Click “List of Angels in Theology” and we will discover many levels above us that you did not expect. We gave them names such as Angels, Archangels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones and many others. What we know, for sure, is that the world around us does not come as a soup. It comes as many separate layers.
Level 1: Matter: This is the lower level. As far as humans can tell, the level of matter is the level of raw materials. There are atoms made of many particles. Plenty of them! Those atoms can combine to make molecules. Plenty of them! There is a lot of movement inside those atoms. That does not mean that there is life inside them. At least this is the way humans see the level of matter. Only rocks! No life. No movement. No feelings. Nothing but eternity!
Level 2: Plants: You make plants by adding something to matter. Something important! You must add the ability to grow and to take a certain shape. You also need the ability to make seeds and reproduce. The level of plants is particularly important to humankind. This is where our food comes from. We don’t know if there is life in plants, but we can be sure that there would not be life on earth without them.
As far as we can tell, many stars don’t have the plants levels. That does not mean that there is no life on those planets. It only means that their kind of life does not use matter. It could be made of souls floating around.
Level 3: Animals: They use matter. They have their own shape. They reproduce. They can also move from one place to another. Some move their legs. Some move their wings. Others swim. They all use the same idea. They move by changing the shape of their body. The main difference that we can see between plants and animals is movement controlled by the brain. This is also our criteria of life. That does not mean that everything that moves is alive. There is a lot of movement in the electrons of an atom. So far, we have not considered atoms to be alive.
Level 4: Human beings: They are made of matter. They grow in their own shape. They are moving. They also think. That does not mean that animals cannot think. The lion must evaluate the speed and the distance of its prey. Compare it with its own speed and how long it can run and in which direction. The lion could make better decisions than us with our GPS and our computers. The difference is that thinking is much more developed in humans than in animals.
We move from one level to the next, by adding something important.
-To get from matter to the plants, we added a shape.
-To get from the plants to the animals we added the possibility to move by changing shape.
-With thinking, we are entering the non-physical. We added something immaterial that does not have a shape.
What could the levels above us be made of? We have a body that belongs to the material world. What is most important in our life are ideas, love, feelings, consciousness… They do not have shape or weight. We are halfway between the material and the immaterial domains. Could the level above us be made of energy? Heat? Consciousness? Love? Could it be a level of souls without a body?
When astronomers look for life on another planet, they look for a body. They search for water because our body, on earth, is made of 80% water. They use the tools and the way of thinking that we have developed in our material world. It was a good point of entry into the vast universe. It was a way to develop a basic way of thinking under the guidance of Nature. To explore the non-physical requires a new set of tools and a more elaborate thinking.
The only way the scientists could explain the trajectories of distant stars was to accept the idea that 27% of the universe is made of “Dark Matter” and 68% is made of “Dark energy”. This is our dark side! Our material world is nothing more than 5% of reality. How can we pretend to know our place in the world when we are only conscious of 5% of reality?
Our Glass Ceiling
There is about the same difference between us and the level above us as there is between animals and humans.
We have seen that moving from one level to the next requires the addition of something important. How can we find our way to the level above us? Let’s try some extrapolations.
First extrapolation:
- We move from matter to plants by adding the ability to grow, to take a certain shape, to make seeds and reproduce.
- We move from plants to animals by adding the ability to move. That may require some nerves, some muscles, and a brain to use them.
- We move from animals to humans by adding the ability to think.
We keep using the attributes of the earlier levels and adding a new attribute that must be important.
Second extrapolation:
To control one level, we need access to the level above it.
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How can you explain that the water in the ground can overcome gravity, rise in the air, and take a certain shape? You need to have access to the level of the plants to understand what happens to matter.
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How can you explain that fruit trees can reproduce? You need the pollination of the bees. You need access to the level of animals to understand the level of the plants.
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The cow does not know what will append after her death. The farmer does.
To understand the level of mankind we would need access to the level above us. That means that we need to have access to the level above humanity to understand the purpose of our own life.
That would require something better than human thinking – something that we don’t have. This is our glass ceiling.
The purpose of our life is to get through our glass ceiling.
