8 - Many levels and glass ceilning
QUESTION6.com
We,The People, are not happy
We cannot think of the atoms like we think of the trees or the solar system. 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 in our bones is replaced every 3 months. In those conditions, how can you explain that we can keep our tattoos?
The answer is that our body does not replace our skin as a whole. It replaces the cells of our skin, one by one. People don't renew their skin one morning like the snake sheds its skin and the lobster molts. We replace one dead cell with one new cell. One at a time. The ink inserted in our skin is not part of our body any more than the fillings in our 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.
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.
This is only the beginning:
We don’t have a problem separating Time and Space. The clock on the wall stays in the same place and keeps telling us about Time. This is not an idea that we can apply to the moon. We 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! The way we think about our cells is not the way we should 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 we saw no need to look any further. Reality may be different. 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.
Above us are……. a few things that are important but difficult to describe. Click “List of Angels in Theology” List_of_angels_in_theology and you will discover many levels above us that we 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 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. It is made of atoms. 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. 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 plant level. 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 cannot be seen by telescope.
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 between plants and animals is movement. In most animals their movements are controlled by their brain. Movement is also our criteria of life. That does not mean that everything that moves is alive. The slime mold moves and digests food but does not have a brain. Is it alive?
Level 4: Human beings: They are made of matter. They have 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. The lion could make better decisions than humans with their GPS and their computers. Thinking is more developed in humans than in animals. This is what justifies our place in a higher level.
We move from one level to the next, by adding something important.
-To get from matter to the plants, we added a shape.
-To move from the plants to the animals we added the possibility to change shape.
-With thinking, we added something immaterial that does not have a shape. We are entering the non-physical domain.
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. Could the level above us be made of energy? Heat? Consciousness? Love? Could it be a level of souls without a body?
When our astronomers look for life on another planet, they look for a body. They use the tools and a way of thinking that was developed in the material world. To explore the non-physical requires a new set of tools. The material world 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. It was the first step in the development of human thinking. To explore the non-physical requires a new set of tools and a new way of thinking.
The glass ceiling
The Homo sapiens have been on planet Earth for many years. All that time they assumed that “reality” was limited to their planet, their solar system, their galaxy and whatever they could see in the sky. They thought that the universe was limited to what they were conscious of. Modern science is changing all that. The material world that we see around us stands for nothing more than 5% of reality.
Our media did not have big titles like: “Give me my 95% or give me death!” Telling people that they are prisoners of a small jail is not the best way to make friends. How can we pretend to know our place in the world when we are only conscious of 5% of reality?
There is about the same difference between us and the level above us as there is between animals and humans. To move 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:
To move from one level to the next, we have to add something important.
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We move from matter to plants by adding the ability to grow, to take a certain shape, to make seeds, and reproduce.
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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.
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We move from animals to humans by adding the ability to think.
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To move from our level to the level above, we need to add something important. Something that we don’t have.
Second extrapolation:
To control one level, we need access to the level above.
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How can we explain that the water in the ground can overcome gravity, rise in the air, and take a certain shape? We need to have access to the level of the plants to understand what happens to matter.
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How can we explain that fruit trees can reproduce? We need pollination by the bees. We 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 happen after her death (fortunately). The farmer does. You cannot dominate the level of animals without having access to the level of humans.
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To understand the purpose of our life on Earth, we would need access to the level above us. That would require something better than human thinking – something that we don’t have. This is our glass ceiling.
There is hope:
There is already, in every individual, something coming from the level above him. Each level has some characteristics of the level above in a simplified way. Animals can do some thinking. Animals are also capable of strong feelings, like a mother protecting the newborn.
The general idea is that the main characteristic of one level percolates to the lower levels. That means that humans already have in themselves some trace of the level above them. A solution to our problem may be to amplify something that is already at our disposal. Our ancestors used this idea 4000 years ago when they developed agriculture. They saw grains falling on the ground and producing more seeds. They developed the process and started agriculture.
The solution to our problems may already be available inside us. Instead of using our sense organs and looking outside, we should look inside. Mother Nature placed a stepladder at our disposal. There is an open door waiting for us. There is a way out of our cage.
Science could help.
Science makes us conscious that we are confined to a small jail and should try to escape. Science was a good place to start. This is where we learned to think. We learned to generate theories and verify their validity by conducting experiments. Mother Nature was always at our side to confirm our theories or to correct our mistaken thinking. It is from the laws of Nature that we learned to think. Today, Nature is telling us that there is a way out of our cage.
Human evolution is accelerating.
Our ancestors were not trail blazers. It took them 300 000 years to make a bicycle. Fortunately, we are catching up. In the last two centuries, we went from bicycles to landing on the moon. Is ‘time’ speeding up? What seems to be happening to us is a contraction of ‘Time’. Did our sun find a shortcut in its cycle around the Milky Way? We assume that time is the same all over the Milky Way. We prefer simple ideas. They are the ideas we understand best!
We may have an explanation for what happened in our last 200 years.
We know that humans appeared on planet Earth about 1.5 million years ago. If there was any evolution, it happened very slowly through the Homo habilis, the Homo Heidelbergensis, the Cro Magnon, the Homo erectus, the Neanderthal and others. The last one is Homo sapiens. They have been on Earth for 300 000 years. They think that nothing on Earth could be better than the Homo sapiens.
Then something happened. Something quiet and simple. There was an improvement in the level of our consciousness. We observed nature. We tried to understand what we saw. We became conscious of a law of nature. We used this law to our advantage. We thought of other applications. We increased our level of consciousness.
Thinking develops consciousness,
and consciousness opens the door to more thinking.
Our development in the last 200 years could result from a chain reaction where consciousness and thinking amplified each other. It started with some observation of Nature, followed by the development of science, itself followed by an elevation of our level of consciousness that needed more thinking. Pushing the envelope of our thinking made us conscious of our limitations. We found ourselves on the fourth step of a long staircase, above matter, plants, and animals. The purpose of our lives is to climb those stairs. We reached an obstacle. It was a glass ceiling. Today, we are becoming conscious that we have to increase our level of consciousness to break our glass ceiling.
We can decide that this is a ridiculous theory, or we can wonder where the next chain reaction will come from. Could it be an association of love and consciousness? Where do we cross the line between science and fiction?