From the Big Bang to the Big Brain
It all started with a bang. The Big Bang! And after fourteen billion years, give or take a few million either way, here we are firmly ensconced on a small planet circling a medium-sized star. Our star is one of a hundred billion other stars in the Milky Way galaxy. And our galaxy is one of another hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Living on an isolated planet, surrounded by limitless space, and floating somewhere in a seemingly infinite universe, we are unsure of our origin and are yet to understand our destiny. We find ourselves constrained by the unrelenting weight of gravity and tied to an unstoppable, one-way march of time. There are those who tell us we are here by ‘accident,’ while others say our presence is intentional. John Wheeler, the physicist, asserts that we are a cogent part of the universe that is looking back at itself.
The one compensation that graces our existence is a modicum of intelligence and an ever-so-slowly expanding consciousness.
Before the Big Bang there was neither space nor time. We have no knowledge of the circumstances or conditions prior to the Big Bang. Following the Big Bang, time as we know it commenced, space opened, and tiny bits of matter began to mix and join with other bits of matter. And so began the unrelenting process of development that eventuated in life and culminated in the most phenomenal event of all, mind and consciousness. Today, this same developmental process continues.
After eons of slow, fitful development in water, muck and mud, a rare event took place on an obscure planet called Earth. A few very simple molecules joined. Aided and abetted by the sun’s ultraviolet energy and perhaps a few bolts of lightning, the slow process of life began. This is one possibility. Science is not sure exactly how life began. Perhaps it started in a tidal pool where complex elements were deposited by a meteorite shower and somehow sparked a chain reaction. In some mysterious manner, energized molecular material commenced its frenetic dance, combining and then recombining in more complex formations until finally a single-celled entity appeared with the rudimentary characteristics of life.
Perhaps the finest example of the evolutionary process is how it has moved insentient matter to sentient mind. Of course, the material and the immaterial aspects of nature in their fundamental reality are merely different manifestations of the same unitary, serial Process. Because of the natural laws contained in this process, matter can be converted to energy and energy is captured in matter (E=MC2). Each is part of the same entity in different states and both are results of this same evolutionary process. In like manner, material body and nonmaterial consciousness have resulted from a common evolutionary action, a process that organizes the energy and intelligence pervading the universe and governing its development. It brought together the original particles of gaseous matter issued by the Big Bang. It then formed not only the stars, the elements, Earth, and human bodies, but also created the immaterial world of mind, intelligence, and consciousness. Like the wind, the process is invisible; only its effects are observable.
To the extent the observer understands it, however, the process is an awe-inspiring phenomenon, sublime in nature, superb in accomplishment, and ennobling for the spirit of those who seek to know its workings. Upon the realization that we are a result of this process, it becomes possible to accept ourselves as integral parts of a larger picture, as players in an unfolding universe, and as beings with a purpose.
Some form of Creative Energy has used the cosmos as a workplace for evolution to bring about self-aware, soul-seeking beings capable not only of knowing themselves and the universe they inhabit but who also can aspire to knowing something of the nature of this creative Force. Somehow this evolutionary process has compounded matter into the most dense and intensively interactive globule of material known, the human brain. Once a certain threshold of organized complexity in brain material was reached, higher consciousness emerged. Brain and consciousness are the window not only to operations of the body and whisperings of soul but to the entire universe. When the biofield of the human aura is better understood, this window will widen to embrace the invisible realm from whence the rules of the Process issue. This Process has come to be known by many names: Creator, God, Great Spirit, Superconsciousness, the Force, Evolution, etc.
Over time, the evolutionary process organizes and unifies matter in complex ways so that Spirit can emerge through the vehicle of life and its consciousness. The process continues today both in the physical universe and life. It will continue until full recombination, or Oneness, is achieved. Since Spirit/Energy is inherent in the design of each particle of matter, this has been the engine driving the process of evolution. Today in the awesome organization of the human brain, one-hundred billion tiny cells are integrated in three-and-a-half pounds of hi-tech gray matter. Their immense capabilities still overshadow anything that Silicon Valley has produced.