LifeNotes [Copyright 2007 Compact Library Publishers Inc.]
Where Are We Going?
Every human being has inside them a knowledge and understanding of love. If you are willing to take the journey through your heart, mind, and soul, your very being, you will find in yourself the reason for living. If you care at all about life and people and yourself, you will take the journey.
We begin our journey.
Who
Am I?
The
day you were born you began a learning process that will continue for the rest
of your life. You were, from the beginning, molded by your surroundings,
parents, relatives, playmates, by all the general attitudes, ideas, and beliefs
you came in contact with. As you grew older those early experiences affected
and altered, both consciously and subconsciously, what you felt and did about
all the day to day things that went on around you. Each new year of life added
to your past, changing the way you viewed every new day, influencing how you
reacted to everything from the simplest daily routines to complex events
touching you, your family, and the world you lived in.
As
you grew yet older you interacted with people from different backgrounds with
differing ideas about life. You found yourself actively defending, modifying,
or abandoning your early beliefs, adapting the various ideas you came in
contact with to fit your developing perception of life. Perhaps new ideas were
introduced to you by people with dynamic personalities who espoused one
philosophy or another. Faced with the challenge of those ideas, you may have
tenaciously defended your early beliefs, dismissing unfamiliar concepts with
alarming ease by resort to ingenious, if not solid, arguments. On the other
hand, you may have completely abandoned your past and adopted new beliefs
opposite to those you once cherished.
However,
like most people, you probably belong to that vast river of humanity which
seems to move along in a fairly discernible direction, concerned at any given
minute with living that moment in the easiest, most pleasant way possible. If
so, you were and are more or less able to blend ideas, feelings, philosophies,
desires, and realities to justify what you want to do. Along with the majority
of people, you were and are good at sending questions and ideas about the
meaning of life and death, as well as thoughts and feelings about what is good
and right, deep into the cloudy regions of your mind.
Whether
we realize it or not, most of us are voluntary prisoners of our minds,
unwilling to question who we are and what we believe, happy to simply roll
along through life. Most of us will live from birth to death in a world we have
fashioned from our past to suit our present. Many will find comfort through
unquestioned acceptance of their family's, or even a friend's, religious or
philosophical heritage. Yet few will ever stand free from their present beliefs
and daily lives to ask what is life about? Who am I? What should I do? What
will I do? If there is meaning to life, and a reason for living, those
questions must be answered.
If
there is a true meaning to life, nothing that you do, say, or think will change
that truth. What good is it to live your life believing what you are doing is
right if your beliefs are false and what you are doing is wrong? It is an
understanding of life that we seek, a search for something in life worth living
for.
If
you are to find the meaning of life you must be willing to recognize it if and
when you see it. To do so requires you to open your mind and accept whatever
you discover, even if it is totally opposite to your experiences, beliefs, and
wishes. If you are to understand life you cannot hide in the comfort of daily living,
clouding your mind to avoid discomfort. You must not reject what you discover
if it does not fit what your life has been, is, and what you want it to be.
Since
our discussion deals with the purpose of life, if what we are saying is true,
your willingness to understand is a willingness to grasp the very reason for
your living. If the answers you find are different from those you have molded
for yourself, you must decide whether to continue on the path you are on, or go
another way on a new path toward a new destination.
If You Are Who You Are, Then Who Are You?
Each of us is born, we live lives of
various lengths, and then we die. Each of us has, or perhaps develops, a
separate nature and existence, a being, which is unique to us and sets us apart
from every other person who lives or has ever lived. Indeed we share similar
characteristics, but no two of us are the same person. As humans, each of us is
distinct, each of us is an individual being.
What makes each of us unique is the fact
that we perpetually make choices between alternatives. Our choices seem to be
far more than mechanical selections based on some complex biological decision
making scheme. Rather, your choice seems to be based not only on what you
believe will happen if you make a certain choice, but also on what you
"want" to happen. You, as all of us do, possess the ability to engage
in what we will call “rational thought”, whereby each of us weighs many
variables in a process that includes concepts of good and evil, right and
wrong. “Rational thought”, as we define it, is reasoned thought that presents
us with choices between alternatives. You ultimately reach a point in your
rational thinking where that certain quality of being which is unique to you
takes over and you make your free choice among the alternatives.
Biologists have demonstrated that the line
between animal and human "thought" is not as clear as was once
commonly assumed. There are animals that appear to have self-awareness, solve
problems, communicate, exhibit emotions, etc. While there may be a very high
degree of intelligence in the animal world, animals seem to lack the ability to
make free choices by consciously "thinking" about alternatives and
consequences. It appears that only human beings possess the necessary
consciousness and symbolic languages that allow us to engage in significant
abstract thought.
For example, animals may or may not harm
other animals, yet they do not appear to be able to make reasoned choices to
harm or not to harm by considering whether it is right or wrong to do so. An
animal may make a “choice” to act kindly toward another animal based in part on
their "inherent personality" and “basic instincts”. Yet it appears
that an animal cannot make a rational, reasoned, choice to go against
"inherent personality" and "basic instincts". Human beings
can choose to do that which they would not otherwise do, to go against what
their instincts, personality, and emotions tell them to do. Scientists often
take this apparent distinction for granted. Rather than consider ourselves to
be nothing more than highly evolved animals, we should recognize our ability to
engage in "rational thought” and give more consideration to the fact that
we appear to have truly unique mental abilities.
Unlike any animal, your choices are made
after rational thought. Even though you have instinctive feelings for
self-preservation, procreation, self-satisfaction, etc., decisions may be
freely made for reasons and purposes totally opposite to those instincts. You
can think about what you are going to do, and can choose to do what you believe
is right and good even if it places you in grave danger. Similarly, you can
choose to do what you believe is wrong and evil even if you would instinctively
do otherwise. Your decision is your decision, a product of your singular
existence and being. Able to engage in rational thought, and to choose freely
among various courses of action based on those thoughts, you are in a very real
sense what you choose to be.
One of the oldest controversies in human
history deals with what the significance of rational thought really is. Perhaps
the most debated question is whether or not rational thought actually gives us
the ability to make “freewill” choices. Many scientists argue that every
rational choice you make is in fact predetermined by your biochemical makeup.
They admit that when you have a choice between two options you engage in both
conscious and subconscious thought processes before making what you consider to
be your decision. However they argue that no matter how convinced you are that
your choice between A and B is your own, your brain chemistry actually dictates
your selection. They suggest that your mind's decision-making processes cannot
go beyond the level of chemical neurological activity. Therefore, even though
your choices may in one sense still be said to be your own, they are in effect
predetermined. Despite the agonizing doubts, careful thought, and numerous
changes of mind that accompany daily decisions, most scientists believe the
final decision would be totally predictable if they could decode your brain.
This idea of "determinism" not
only shows up in science, but in some ancient philosophies and religions as
well. Taken to its logical extreme, many believe in super-determinism, where
all that is in the universe was in the past part of a closely related system in
which "matter and energy" were joined. Many scientists and
philosophers view everything from sub-atomic particles to human beings as part
of a universe whose destiny was forever set at creation by the forces between
its constituent parts, and whose future unfolds in a billiard ball like
progression of "predictable" actions. To this school of thought,
humans are prisoners of subatomic laws that determine the behavior of atoms
that determine the behavior of molecules that determine the behavior of nerve
cells that determine the behavior of human brains that determine the behavior
of human beings. Even though the chain is totally imperceptible to humankind,
and a feeling of control exists as an inherent part of human existence, they
insist that what seem to be "spontaneous" decisions and reactions are
actually destined to occur without any possibility of variance.
While most scientists are comfortable with
the idea of an ordered and well-behaved universe, many view the complexity and
reality of life as requiring events to be based on something less than absolute
certainty. On the sub-atomic level this idea has been recognized in the
so-called uncertainty principle. Those who accept the uncertainty principal
might be called probability determinists. They argue for a determinism as
certain as any, one that also sees humankind governed by forces beyond its
control. Yet the reality dictated by their brand of determinism can only be
described by stating how likely it is that a particular event, chosen from a
list of possible events, will occur. In other words, they can eliminate what
cannot happen, can give you a list of events that might happen, and can even
tell you how likely it is each individual item will take place, but they cannot
tell you which of the possible events will in fact occur. The exact future of
the universe may be uncertain, yet it is still fundamentally predetermined.
Modern theories dealing with chaotic
behavior tell us that because of the almost infinite number of possible
combinations created by the interaction between objects we cannot complete the
necessary calculations to determine what will in fact occur next. Furthermore,
some mathematical problems may have no solutions, and seem to be fundamentally
“non-computable”. It is simply not known whether or not non-deterministic
physical mechanisms exist in our universe. Virtually all of the currently
“favored” cosmologic theories dealing with chaos, complexity, and computability
agree that given enough information and processing power (even if the required
amounts approach infinity) the probabilistic behavior of even the most complex
system in our universe is "in theory" mathematically calculable. It
is fair to say that all of the currently favored cosmologic theories conclude
that our physical universe is, in some real sense, fully deterministic.
In a universe that had no living
organisms, determinism would not be as hard to accept as it is in our universe
inhabited by living creatures. One can visualize a universe devoid of life
where every rock, every speck of dust, every atom, every sub-atomic particle,
follows a pattern which was forever fixed at creation, and that expands into
the future with absolute precision. In an inanimate universe, it is not as
difficult to accept that rocks, specks of dust, etc., or even groups of these
objects, have no "ability" to alter the course that the laws of
physics dictate they follow.
It is much more difficult to accept that
our universe, populated as it is by living organisms, is a totally
deterministic one. If super-determinism is correct, we reach the intuitively
unlikely result that the absolute time for every blink of our eyes is
predetermined, every breath that we take is taken at precise moments and in
exact amounts! There is nothing we can do to alter any of our physical motions
- even the slightest twitch of our body occurs at the very moment it was
destined to occur by the forces acting in the first second of the universe.
Every change of our minds is inevitable, every thought we have ever had was
predetermined and occurred without any chance of alteration.
If we live in a fully deterministic world,
I was destined before birth to write precisely the words contained in this
paragraph on the day and at the time and on the computer I wrote them on, and
when the universe was formed you were destined to read precisely the words
contained in this paragraph on the day and at the time you are reading them. At
the beginning of the world, not only were you predestined to be precisely where
you are right now, but you were also destined to be wearing the clothes you are
wearing, have every hair on your head the exact length that each one is, have
every object in the room placed precisely where it is, etc. Every thought you
are having about what I am saying was predetermined to occur without the
slightest variation, even your instant reaction to this very sentence was set
at creation. This simply does not "seem" to be what actually happens,
we intuitively "feel" that we can make meaningful choices among
alternatives, perhaps so, perhaps not.
Even though current theories do not appear
to allow for freewill, some scientists and philosophers argue that no matter
how well ordered your chemical thought processes may be, you reach a point in
each sequence of mental activity where the unique being which you are makes a
decision. A decision that goes beyond the confines of conscious and
subconscious biochemical processes. A choice made after "considering"
the products of your biological thought processes along with abstract concepts
of good and bad, right and wrong, etc. They believe the basic, profound aspect
of human existence, which makes you who you are, transforms your choices among
alternatives into "free will" decisions that transcend physical
constraints.
It is very difficult for those of us who
have grown up in a scientific world to visualize, let alone accept, human
thought extending beyond the chemical confines of the human mind. Yet there has
been no scientific evidence (perhaps because no experiment has been devised
that could test the hypothesis) that would refute the jump from predetermined
biochemical thought to human thought controlled by individual beings. Because
no one has explained the illusive quality that might make each human being
unique and give them control over their decisions does not mean that it does
not exist, nor does it mean it does exist.
Some scientists and philosophers believe
that determinism might be compatible with the existence of a physical, as
opposed to a non-physical, consciousness that can be held to be morally
responsible for its actions. It would seem that those scientists and
philosophers do not adequately appreciate the fact that all the currently
favored physical theories are based on fully deterministic causal relationships,
be they probabilistic or otherwise, and therefore lack any mechanism for human
freedom or responsibility. They incorrectly conclude that because complex
physical systems exhibit almost infinite complexity, those systems might support
some kind of metaphysical freedom. On close examination this is not justified,
simply because in every accepted theory all observable physical systems, from
Planck scale to the scale of the universe, are governed at every level by
deterministic laws. The only escape from probabilistic determinism would be if
the probabilities of quantum outcomes can be altered by rational thought, to
date we have no objective evidence that those odds are subject to change. The
idea that a physical consciousness, based on deterministic physical processes,
might make meaningful choices, seems extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
support.
Other scientists and philosophers argue
that modern science has proven determinism to be "true". In fact,
science has only begun to address the nature of human thought. On a sub-atomic
level more questions have been raised than answers found, leading some to
suggest that quantum effects may allow for free-will. Research into the nature
of physical consciousness has demonstrated the incredible complexity, and
fundamental mystery, of the human mind. Paradoxes associated with thought
experiments suggest we have not yet begun to understand the basics of human
consciousness and the possibility of freewill. Even if the human mind can make
meaningful statements about its most fundamental nature (it is not at all clear
it can), nothing to date either proves or rules out the existence of human
freewill. For the moment we ask you to accept the possibility that freewill
exists beyond biological and physical constraints.
We note that no matter how predetermined your existence may be, it can be argued that "you" make freewill choices even if it is chemically determined what those choices will be, simply because "you" are the product of your biochemistry. While that argument, and variations of it, may be true by definition, it seems if we are to be held accountable for our actions we should have a freedom of choice that can be anticipated to be found only in that which is beyond human chemistry. We ask that you keep an open mind about the possible existence of individual control which makes your decisions truly your own.
Who Will You Be When You No Longer Are?
[Warning! There is a risk that as you read
the following notes, you may misunderstand the discussion and think that we are
suggesting that there is no "reason to live". That is not what we are saying at
all! In fact we are saying the opposite, we have abundant hope that if you
search for the reason to live you will find it. As you read these notes you must
not become discouraged or depressed. If you are or become discouraged, if you
disagree with anything that is said, or if you simply don't believe what we are
saying is "useful" to you, please finish reading all the notes. Even if you
agree with what is being said, and think you understand what we are talking
about, please read every section. If you are to find the true reason for living
it is necessary that you understand what is discussed in the last notes. We are
convinced that after you read these notes and complete your journey through your
heart, mind, and soul, you will find in yourself the reason for living. Anyone
who is, or becomes, seriously depressed should always seek immediate medical
help. If you find yourself distressed or depressed by our conclusions please
read the comment on Distress & Depression that is found near the end of these
Notes.]
If
in fact you do exercise meaningful freedom of choice, what good is it to be a
unique human being if at your death you cease to exist? If you do not continue
to exist in some form after death, what good are all the experiences,
decisions, triumphs, defeats, all the moments of your life? If you do not
survive the grave, if you return to the state of being that preceded your
birth, then I suggest to you that nothing in fact does matter. While over the
ages men and women have sought to perpetuate themselves through their children,
their place in history, their role in society, and through intricate
philosophical webs of existentialism and other essays on physical man's
importance, the fact of physical death remains. If each generation's death
means the end of those individuals, then we are all faced with an endless cycle
of creation and destruction, the meaning of which, if any, is beyond
comprehension.
If
there is anything in life we can count on occurring without fail, it is
physical death. The successful bank president, the champion athlete, the
housewife, the famous, the unknown, every human being, you, I, die. While all
acknowledge the certainty of their eventual demise, few think about death until
they are faced with it. The simple fact of death is not news to anyone, yet the
reality of its impending occurrence is ignored by virtually every living
person. The very nature of human life denies death and shrouds it in the cloak
of future events, events that are not yet real and need not be dealt with in
the present. Living is too important and time consuming to be concerned with
mortality. The fact that you are moving steadily toward your death is most
likely, and literally, to be the last thing on your mind.
Observing
the inevitable death of every creature that inhabits the earth, we may have a
recurrent feeling that death is the end. On the other hand, it is virtually
inconceivable to us that all we are, all we have been, all we will be, will be
rendered void in that moment of death. It goes against human nature to
visualize the effective destruction of our past, present, and future, which
accompanies death without existence beyond death. Yet if each human being does
cease to exist, then all human beings are, or in the case of generations yet
unborn will be, waiting their turn to cease existing. If each and every human
being ceases to be, then the feeling of continuity that pervades the human race
is false (please note, we will explain later why we do not believe that life is
in fact destroyed by physical death).
In
their arguments for humanism, existentialism, etc., philosophers have spent
lifetimes trying to construct a difference between the apparent continuity of
humankind, and the periodic death of individual humans. Most of us think of our
ancestors as a link to the past, and our children as a link to the future, yet
if we do not survive the grave each generation dies an isolated death that
mocks any assertion that humankind has a continuing existence apart from its
individual members. If each person's death results in their no longer existing,
then no manner of historical recording, social progression, or other
remembrance in the minds of those whose time to die is yet to come, can in any
way affect, preserve, or make any difference whatsoever to those who no longer
are. No one will survive to remember. If each of us ceases to be, then your
life has no meaning and your choices make no difference.
We
admit that this logic seems counter intuitive, and even wrong, but if we are
willing to dissociate ourselves from the incredible biologic urge for
self-preservation, both of the individual and the species, and are willing to
apply purely objective reasoning, the logical conclusion, while discomforting,
is perhaps inevitable (there is at least one possible logical loophole we will
discuss below that might give permanent meaning and value to a finite physical
life). This is a very difficult conclusion to accept, it goes against our
intuitive feelings about the continuity of human life, and against our
assumptions that individual physical lives have some kind of meaning and value.
Yet if we are little more than doomed animals, our intuitive feeling of meaning
and value would not be surprising. From the very beginning, to assure survival
of any species, evolution would certainly have instilled in living creatures
the feeling that there is a reason for them to exist, a reason for them to
crawl out of the ocean and build cities. If there is no life after death, and
our lives are in fact consumed by "nothing", it is no wonder that our
genetic heritage argues so strongly against that possibility.
Because
it is so difficult to accept, we will consider our conclusion in more detail.
It is logical to assume that if each person's consciousness is the product of
their physical bodies, then individual physical consciousness exists only
during that person’s physical life on earth. If each of our physical lives
proceeds from birth to death, then the consequence of each person's death
necessarily follows their death. Who can be affected by that death? Certainly
those who survive may be affected, but here is the "problem", the
death cannot be of any consequence to the purely physical human being who no
longer exists! The moment before the death of a human being perhaps it can be
said that their impending death affects that being, but the very moment after
the person dies, he or she is no longer around to be affected!
Let
us assume, for example, that a comet collides with the Earth at some time in
the future before humans have colonized space. Assume further that all life on
Earth is annihilated by the collision. It is very hard to accept, but if
consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomena, if there is no
non-physical continuation of life after death, the most logical, I believe the
only logical, conclusion is that the complete annihilation of humankind is of
absolutely no consequence to humankind! While the words may sound bizarre and
counter intuitive, in fact they are not. The moment after the total destruction
of humankind it can be said with some certainty that the destruction of
humankind had no effect whatsoever on humankind, simply because humankind no
longer exists to be affected.
If
you accept that time has direction (we believe that even absent a “fundamental
time”, all events follow a causal, sequential, chain), then cause and effect,
action and consequence, occur in a fixed order, the former always
"preceding" the latter. Keeping that in mind, the idea that after the
total destruction of humankind there would be no one left to be affected should
not seem as bizarre. Assuming that one event will always precede another event
in order of occurrence, if the event that is called the death of a human being
is equivalent to the physical annihilation of that human being, the consequence
of that event necessarily follows the event. If there is a causal sequence to
events, then the annihilation cannot be of any consequence to a human being who
no longer exists. Again, the moment before the destruction of humankind perhaps
it could be said that the impending destruction affects humankind, but the very
moment after humankind is destroyed there is absolutely no humankind left to be
affected. Assume that the comet annihilates humankind at 12:00 noon, the
consequence of that destruction occurs at 12:00 noon PLUS a moment in time, and
at 12:00 noon plus the moment in time there is no humankind left to be
affected. Indeed, there is no humankind around that is conscious of the fact
that the comet struck the earth!
The
same logic applies to the history of individuals not visited by a catastrophic
event. If you believe that each human being is nothing more than an individual
physical entity, and therefore that there is no life after death, then at the
time of their death each human being experiences the identical individual
annihilation that all humankind would experience together if the earth and its
inhabitants were simultaneously "destroyed". If a human being dies at
The
logic goes even further. If you do not believe that human consciousness
continues to exist after physical death, then death not only annihilates each individual's
present and future, but also annihilates their past. Most people would agree
that for an object to have a present and a future the object must exist. Yet
many would make the distinction that while an object cannot have a present and
a future if it does not exist, it somehow can have a past. It is clear that the
present and future of an object are bound to the existence of the object, but
so to is the object's past. Much of the problem lies in the popular usage of
the words past, present, and future both to describe that which is part of an
object (a "past" that belongs to the object, like a person’s memories
that “belong” to the living individual from birth to death), and to describe
the existence of the object from a third party's view (a “past” which is a
chronological description of the object, like a photo album containing pictures
of an individual who has died).
It
is a misconception to equate the fact that there is a "history" of
all beings or objects that is set in the "past", with the statement
that a being or object that no longer exists has a "past". The first
idea simply states that the being or object existed over a finite period that
is apparent to those who currently exist. The extension of the concept of such
a history to the idea that somehow the object or being that no longer exists
still possesses a "past" confuses the distinction these two words can
convey. Once an object or being no longer exists it obviously has no present or
future, similarly the object has no past. While it may be difficult to accept,
a mountain that no longer exists has no past, present, or future for the simple
reason that there is no such mountain. There is a current history of a mountain
that once existed, but there is no mountain we can point to and describe the
"past" of. This is far more than semantics. A person who lived a
thousand years ago had a historic life that those who are alive can be
conscious of, but the person no longer has a past that is their past, which
they can be conscious of.
The
English language lacks the words that would make it easy to convey the
difference between a “history” set in the past that is the sum of all
lifetimes, and a “past” that is unique to and dependent on the existence of an
individual life. Perhaps humankind has avoided the initially discomforting
possibility of "finite pasts" by not distinguishing them from the
infinite. Perhaps the majority simply do not accept the possibility of the
perpetual annihilation of human beings.
There
are many arguments that purport to counter this logic, including assertions
that a person's life before physical death has “existential” meaning in and of
itself, yet all the alternative arguments are set in the time before death,
within the causal sequence of events that precede death. Every humanistic
theory is based on the biophysics of existence before physical death. We
believe that none of the arguments adequately address the period after death
(perhaps with the possible exception suggested by modern physics that is
discussed below), and therefore none answer the question of how a person who no
longer exists can have a past, present, or future?
If
death is the end of your existence, should you be frightened by the certainty
of your destruction? If indeed you cease to exist, you need not fear death, for
after your death you will feel neither pain, nor pleasure, nor peace, nor
torment. "You" will no longer exist, therefore "you" will
feel nothing. The resulting void is just that, a complete and total void. There
is nothing to fear, for there will be no one to experience anything negative.
There is nothing to look forward to, for there will be no one to experience
anything positive. The only way you can visualize what is usually called a
"nihilistic" death is to picture yourself after death as being in the
same state you were in before birth (of course you were not really in any state
at all). Trying to project yourself into the void that precedes life helps you
understand the void that may follow death. This ultimate void would in a single
moment consume your past, present, and future. No matter what philosophers may
tell us, such a fate, while it would offer no hope, would leave nothing to be
feared.
Admittedly,
our conclusions about physical death are totally opposite to our "common
sense" understanding of life. Virtually everyone is certain, for example,
that if they are eleven years old now, they have already experienced their
tenth year of life, and nothing can take from them the past experience of being
ten years old. It is this assumption, that our past somehow exists forever,
that is at the heart of all humanistic belief systems. Indeed, belief in some
kind of physical persistence of a human being's past is the only rational
argument for the universal humanistic conclusion that even if physical death is
the end, living a "good life" gives meaning and value to human
existence. However there is a deep, deep, problem with the humanist's view.
"Humanistic"
philosophers seem to accept that human consciousness is purely physical in
nature, and acknowledge the end of consciousness at physical death. Yet almost
all modern humanist philosophers tell us that a finite life can have meaning
and value. The problem lies in failure to accept the rational and logical
consequences for each human being if individual consciousness ceases to exist
on the physical death of the mind and body. All of the humanist philosophers
either ignore or misunderstand what the future holds for us after physical
death if we are nothing more than physical beings.
Philosophers
often speak of the void that would follow such a death as the abyss, the
unknown, the approaching void, etc. All of these suggest that we are on a
journey to a "place" which lies at the end of our physical lifetimes.
If on our death we cease to exist, this idea that we are traveling to our
ultimate destiny is false. What the philosophers are doing is giving substance
to nothing. We are not traveling to an abyss, the void, or the unknown, for
these words suggest that we are moving toward something. I recognize the
seeming absurdity of the language, yet if on our death we cease to exist, then
"nothing" totally consumes us.
This
is the heart of the problem, we cannot in any way whatsoever understand or
visualize "nothing". The moment we attempt to comprehend or visualize
"nothing", the comprehension or visualization interjects something
into "nothing", preventing us from reaching our goal. When we define
"nothing" we give it the quality of being definable, a quality that
can only be given to that which is more than "nothing". Nothing might
be thought of as the total absence of physical reality, yet even this assigns a
definition to the indefinable. The moment we think about "nothing" we
make it an object that can be thought about, we make it an object that can only
be more than "nothing". The only way we can answer the question
"what is nothing?" is to answer it by not asking it, for if we ask
the question we destroy the answer. Most people fail to recognize the fact that
"something" simply cannot comprehend "nothing". If we are
no more than physical beings, and if “nothing” follows our physical death, then
at the moment of our physical death, "nothing" totally consumes us.
What
does science have to say about all this? We need to recognize that the very
difficult conclusions we reach in this section are not necessarily supported by
conventional interpretations of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The
current understanding that human being’s have of the physical universe is
fundamentally incomplete. Early concepts of space and time as absolute
metaphysical entities would seem to be fully consistent with our analysis.
However, modern physics tells us that the universe is much more complex than it
was once thought to be. At the start of the third millennium, it is generally
accepted that we exist in some kind of four dimensional “space-time”. The
mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who helped formalize
the math of space-time, said "…henceforth, space by itself, and time by
itself, have vanished into the merest shadows and only a kind of blend of the
two exists in its own right."
Space-time
is essentially the history of the entire universe, containing every
"event" that ever happens. A "world-line" is the history of
an object / observer in "space-time". Each point on the world-line of
a human being is generally thought to be a real physical event that represents
a unique sequential moment in the life of that individual, from birth to death.
Conventional wisdom is that the world-line of a human being is the "human
being", so that human life is in some sense a permanent part of
space-time. If this is so, perhaps we have a permanent physical past that is
etched in the fabric of space-time.
To
see why we do not believe that science provides us with a physical past, we
need to look at three interpretations of cosmologic theories. The first
possible interpretation, the one that we strongly favor, brings into question
the very nature of space-time. At first glance, the concept of a permanent
physical space-time seems to imply that human beings have a physical past,
present, and future. Most people assume that the math of space-time describes a
permanent physical reality that surrounds us, a very real, very physical,
space-time in which we exist. This may not be the case.
The
limited number of physicists who understand the incredibly difficult math,
realize that the theory of general relativity tells us that the universe may be
completely described without using a "fundamental temporal variable",
without even defining what we call "time". The time we measure on a
stopwatch that we use to clock a foot race is derived from comparing the motion
of the runner from the starting line to the finish line with the motion of the
hand rotating around the face of the watch. The time on the stopwatch is not,
as Newton thought, a fundamental quantity in nature, rather it is a comparison
of the motion of the person running down the track relative to the motion of
the hands of the stopwatch. Therefore, we may be justified in concluding that
"time" is derived from relative motion, but that relative motion does
not necessarily require the passage of time. It may be true that “fundamental
time” simply does not exist.
This
is a shocking idea for human beings who are confronted with the ticking away of
years, days, hours, and seconds. Even so, if you think about it, a year is
nothing more than the relative motion of the earth going around the sun, a day
is the relative motion of the earth rotating around its axis, an hour is a
fraction of the motion we call a day measured by a quartz "moving" in
a watch, a second is very close to the relative motion of a beating heart, etc.
We don't expect to convince you in a few paragraphs that time is an illusion,
it took years of reading and thought for us to reach that conclusion, but we do
want you to recognize that there is a strong possibility that fundamental time
does not exist. If this is a correct interpretation of general relativity, it
can lead to the conclusion that there is no temporality of any kind associated
with our universe (please see Physics
Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale for more details).
There
are extremely serious objections to this line of thought. In its most popular
forms, the other 20th century revolution in physics, quantum mechanics,
incorporates a fundamental temporal variable. Some scientists believe that
general relativity will be found to be incomplete, and that quantum mechanics
tells us that time does in fact exist. Other physicists agree that the universe
lacks a fundamental temporal variable by which the universe evolves, yet they
also believe that in some very real sense the universe exhibits fundamental
"temporality". None-the-less, there are a few respected physicists
who believe that we should accept what general relativity is telling us, that
there is no fundamental temporal variable in the universe, and find a way to
modify quantum mechanics to eliminate both "time" and
"temporality" from quantum theory. Given the success of general
relativity in predicting experimental results, we strongly believe that this is
the correct approach. We are convinced that if and when physicists discover a
broad model that incorporates both relativity and quantum theories, what is
usually called a theory of quantum gravity, it will not have any kind of
fundamental temporal variable associated with it, and we will find that the
universe is fundamentally "atemporal" in
nature.
If
the theory of general relativity is in fact part of the illusive theory of
quantum gravity, and if we do in fact live in an "atemporal"
universe, one extremely speculative result might be that physical events in our
lives either exist, or do not exist. The statement that a point on a world-line
exists in the universe may be false, true, false, with no sense that “false” is
“before” or “after” true! If so, then it may be quite literally true that your
tenth birthday does not exist, does exist, does not exist in the universe.
Perhaps you believe that your tenth birthday is a permanent part of your past
only because it is part of your current memories, not because it exists in some
kind of permanent physical space-time. We need to emphasize that this is a very
speculative idea that at the beginning of the third millennium is considered
nothing more than science fiction by most, perhaps all, cosmologists.
If
we live in an essentially "atemporal"
universe, and there is no non-physical existence after death, we are convinced
that physical death consumes each human being's physical past, present, and
future. This is very difficult to understand and accept, yet the idea that
there is no fundamental temporality, and that this fact leads to the
annihilation of our physical past, intuitively appears to us to be the correct
interpretation of our physical universe. When you finish reading this you may
have questions about some of our conclusions, especially about the very complex
relativistic and quantum science behind this part of our notes. You may want to
look at the other notes and look at the comments accompanying our book
that we release from time to time, where we try to present a broader picture of
the foundation and logic that supports the conclusions.
The
reason that we end up relying on intuition, and cannot be more certain that our
conclusions are correct, is simply because no one knows what physics will look
like if and when relativity and quantum theories are united. Furthermore, there
is no way to tell how long it will take to find answers to the basic questions
raised by modern physics. Indeed, it is quite possible that we will never know
the answers to many of our most fundamental questions. We believe that the
universe is essentially atemporal, and that physical
death annihilates our physical (but not any non-physical) past, present, and
future, but we may be wrong!
OK,
let's say that you are unwilling to even think about "time" not
existing, would the existence of "time" restore a meaningful physical
past to your life? The second possibility we will look at is based on the fact
that most popular interpretations of modern physics suggest that the physical
existence of each human being somehow persists in space-time in the form of the
individual's "world-line”. Classical interpretations often say that an
object is the entire world-line of that object, or that a human being is his or
her entire world-line, but they do not really explain what is meant by this.
They do, however, almost universally conclude that each event in a human
being's life exists as an event in space-time, so that if we could observe the
point on a world-line that is the tenth birthday of someone who is now eleven
years old, we would see that person experiencing their tenth birthday. We would
not see a "copy", or a "repeat", of the particular day, we
would see the person's tenth birthday as it is occurring, period!
It
would seem that this characteristic of all popular space-time theories leaves
us without tools for building a rational model of a universe that contains a
"conscious" world-line that is the "me" reading this text.
Rather it tells us that there is, and always will be, a set of unique "me's" that somehow exist in space-time at every single
event on my world-line. We might want to say that I am the "sum" of
all the points, yet the assertion that a human being is his or her entire
world-line, from birth to death, does not appear to be consistent with the
general consensus that every event along a world-line has a singular existence
that cannot be preferred over any other event on that world-line.
The
theory of relativity tells us that all of the laws of physics are the same for
every inertial observer. If we live in a fully relational, relativistic
universe, we simply cannot prefer observations made in the inertial frame of
reference of one observer over observations made in the inertial frame of
reference of any other observer, no matter where they may be “located” in
space-time. An apparent consequence of this fact is that for one observer your
tenth birthday occurs before your eleventh birthday, while for another
(spatially separated) observer your eleventh birthday occurs before your tenth!
Relativity tells us that both observers are 100% correct in their observations.
The cosmos appears to be a very strange place!
Classic
interpretations imply that each individual exists as discrete human
consciousness in the billions of discrete events located at every point along
that individual's world-line. Some physicists describe this by saying that
there are many "now's", others say there are billions of approximate
"isomorphs" of "me", many claim there are billions of other
worlds in which various versions of "me" co-exist, etc. It seems
reasonable to conclude that modern physics tells us that if time exists,
literally billions of discrete, very real, versions of each of us occupy
space-time!
This
may seem like science fiction, yet surveys of theoretical physicists and
cosmologists confirm that most believe we must adopt some form of many-worlds,
multiple existence, theory (please see 100 Years of
the Quantum ). Remember, this is currently accepted as the most promising
approach to the problems of space-time, and not merely a speculative idea. If
there is a "me" that exists on my world-line for every event in my
physical life, or if there really are an infinite number of parallel universes
in which I exist, then there is no singular "me". Rather there are
billions of isolated "me's" either lying
along my world-line, or stuck somewhere in totally isolated universes.
If
the scientists are correct, it would seem to be impossible to find meaning and
value for a singular "me" in the collective existence of each of the
billions of instances of individual consciousness, no single one of which is
the real true "me" who can live a meaningful life. All of the popular
interpretations of relativistic and quantum theories seem to lead us to the
same conclusion, if you do not have a single permanent existence, your life has
no meaning and your choices make no difference to “you”, simply because there
is no single physical "you" that exists before or after physical
death (please remember, we believe that life has meaning and value).
There
is a third possibility, that the intuitive feeling human beings have that their
physical past exists as a singular entity is based on some real, yet unknown,
physical model of our universe. The intuitive feeling is very strong that our
physical life makes a positive or negative contribution to human existence, and
that our physical life is a permanent part of the physical universe. Perhaps
there is some single physical consciousness that incorporates all of the events
along our world-line, and that preserves our physical past, present, and
future. We cannot rule out this possibility, if for no other reason than the
fact that it is theoretically impossible to prove a negative. In other words,
we might be able to prove that physical consciousness after death exists in the
universe by observing it, but we can never prove that physical consciousness
after death does not exist because we have not observed it (we will discuss
this limitation in some detail a bit later).
The
third possibility seems to require the existence of a physical consciousness
that is not bound to events on a world-line. Some physicists suggest that
consciousness has unique physical properties so that human beings become
sequentially “aware” of events on world-lines that are essentially frozen in a
“block universe”. Yet, as we have already said, in every currently popular
physical theory the universe “evolves” as a sequential progression of
space-time “events”. It seems intuitively true that if human consciousness is a
physical phenomena, that can be explained either by current theory or by
physical laws that are not yet known to science, it is in some real sense
inextricably bound to each of these space-time events. It seems intuitively
difficult, or impossible, to accept that such a dynamic physical consciousness
could incorporate individual predetermined “block” events into a singular human
being without violating the basic tenets of relativity. While it is true that a
physical consciousness that is not bound to physical events might represent a
unique singular existence, it is also fair to say that there is no known reason
to believe that physical consciousness is not inexorably linked to individual
physical events, making the third possibility seem to be almost an
impossibility.
There
may be many “me’s” that are experiencing past events
in the “past”, and I may have a memory of past events in the present, yet the
intuitive conclusion is that my physical consciousness does not experience past
physical events “now”. It seems intuitively true that if consciousness of past
events can be lost when memories fade or are damaged, then physical
consciousness has not incorporated those past events into a permanent singular
“me”. Einstein only briefly addressed this matter when he said “An individual
who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I
wish it otherwise…. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the
inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted
endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that
manifests itself in nature.”
It
seems that if we are to believe that there may be some kind of singular
physical (rather than non-physical) consciousness that survives physical death,
then we must accept that there is some unique physical consciousness that is
"me", that somehow incorporates all of the conscious events of my
life, and that is not dependent on the continuing physical existence of my
biologic body. While current interpretations of popular theories do not totally
rule out the possibility of a perpetual individual physical consciousness,
there is no known method that is both rational and realistic (i.e.- a theory
that appears capable of modeling physical reality), to construct a physical (as
opposed to a non-physical) model that preserves the singular human physical
consciousness of an individual after the physical death of that person. Modern
theories suggest the possibility that multiple instances of a physical “me”
exist in space-time, but they do not offer even a clue as to how to unite all
of those instances into a single physical “me” whose consciousness spans
space-time. Indeed, current interpretations of quantum superposition seem to
deny the possibility of a “single” physical reality in which a unique “me”
might exist.
I
can visualize and accept a “non-physical consciousness” that survives physical
death, yet I am unable to have any confidence at all in the existence of a
singular “physical consciousness” that survives the physical death of a human
being. To do so, it would seem that I would have to discover a new physical
process that incorporates all the “events” in a human life, and that creates a
unique, singular physical consciousness that continues to exist in space-time
as that human being, or at least as something that we can call a singular past
that belongs to the human being. This seems to me to be an impossible task. I
may be wrong, yet I simply cannot find an accepted physical theory that
supports a unified "physical" consciousness that survives physical
death. Furthermore, I do not know of any credible objective physical evidence
that such a “physical” consciousness might exist. I can say that after many
years of thought I am thoroughly convinced that any attempt to construct a
model of permanent physical consciousness does far more damage to the centuries
of accumulated scientific knowledge, than does the acceptance of the
possibility that a permanent non-physical consciousness may exist.
We
have concluded that no current, or reasonably foreseeable, rational theory
provides us with a singular physical consciousness that continues to exist
after physical death, so that a single physical "me" continues to
exist after my death in my physical “past”. We have said that if we do not have
a singular physical or non-physical consciousness that continues to exist after
physical death, then those who believe in nihilism are probably correct, and
some type of "nihilistic" void awaits all of us. It may be a true
void, like the void that preceded our birth, or it may be a very strange void
where billions of "me" merely co-exist. Whatever physical form it
might take, it would seem to satisfy the definition of a
"meaningless" void.
A
moment's comment on those who believe they may be able to physically perpetuate
themselves through cryogenics, cloning, etc. If, we live in a constantly
expanding universe, our universe will eventually return to a state of uniformly
high entropy, so that the cosmos will become a hostile environment in which
physical life cannot be sustained. If, on the other hand, theories that predict
endless cycles of expansion and contraction of our universe are correct,
nothing physical can survive beyond the next collapse of the universe a few
billion years from today. While a physical end to all biologic creatures may
seem absurdly far away, your great, great, great (to the 100th. power), grand-clone
would find it frightfully real when the time came for their physical demise, a
distant time from now which like all imaginable time is but a second in
eternity. There is simply no cosmologic model that we know of that offers any
hope for a perpetual, physical, human existence.
Even
if in some unknown manner multiple clones could survive in an ever-expanding
universe, the idea that they are perpetual extensions of their donor seems less
than credible, perhaps so, perhaps not. Such a perpetual presence seems to be
more like an endless path of meaningless individual moments than a continuous
meaningful existence. Furthermore, if there is no life after death, it would
make no difference if an individual (cloned or otherwise) continued to exist,
or "died" in one hundred years or in one billion years, because
"death" would annihilate the individual's past, present, and future.
If
physical death annihilates all individual consciousness then there is no reason
whatsoever to embrace cryogenics, cloning, strong artificial intelligence, or
any other means of extending physical life. Since an individual's death would
carry with it no possible consequence to that individual, there is no logical
reason whatsoever for the living individual to avoid the "consequences"
of death. If an individual no longer exists after death, that individual has no
reason at all to feel anything positive, negative, or otherwise about death (or
for that matter anything at all about life). Again please note, we do not
believe that physical death annihilates individual consciousness, and we
strongly believe that life does have meaning and value.
What
should our response be to all of this? We strongly believe that there is
absolutely no reason not to live for the possibility that life has meaning and
value. We think we are right about the transitory nature of physical
consciousness, but we may be wrong. If our conclusions are wrong, perhaps we do
in fact have a physical consciousness that survives physical death. If we are
wrong, we may have a perpetual physical existence that gives meaning and value
to our physical lives, even if there is no non-physical life after death. We
will not pursue this possibility, yet you should recognize that it exists.
If
we are right, if our physical consciousness does not survive physical death,
our death may mark the end of our existence. Yet if our physical consciousness
dies, it is still quite possible that we will not face a "nihilistic"
death. Perhaps we have a non-physical consciousness that survives physical
death, and that gives meaning and value to our lives. We will consider this
possibility in more detail as we continue our search for a reason for living.
Beyond
the human desire for meaning in life, we would suggest that the logical consequence
of what philosophers call a nihilistic death, "requires" the search
for alternatives to nihilism. Those who believe that the nihilistic void is
approaching are, by the very nature of their humanity, required to search for
something to believe in other than the void. While it appears to be impossible
to scientifically prove that life has meaning and value, it is equally
impossible to prove that life has no meaning and value. No matter what the
person who believes that life is meaningless may believe to be true at any
particular time in their life, the possibility always exists that he or she may
eventually find true meaning and value in their life.
There
is no reason to be a "nihilist", no reason to believe that life ends
at death. If nihilism is correct, if life does end at death, it makes no
difference whatsoever if we believe it is correct, or not. If we believe
nihilism is correct, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would
follow death. If we believe nihilism is not correct, and it is correct, that
does not alter the void that would follow death. If we do not believe anything
at all about nihilism, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that
would follow death. Yet if nihilism is not correct, belief and/or faith in that
which offers a reason for living may well be essential to our existence. If
because we believe nihilism is correct we accept the void, and we are wrong,
then we have doomed ourselves. If we recognize that the humanistic belief that
there is no life after death leads to the nihilistic conclusion that the
"void" will consume past, present, and future, then to escape the
quicksand of nihilistic time we must search for alternatives that provide a
reason for living.
It
is very important to recognize that nihilism can never lead to suicide, for
nihilism tells us that if we do in fact live in a nihilistic world, nothing
that happens in our lives, no matter how "badly" we may feel about it
at the time, has any "real" consequence at all. It tells us that what
we perceive to be the very worst events in our lives are no better, or worse,
than any other events. I am absolutely convinced that the philosophical
neutrality that nihilism demands, means that nihilism never suggests or
supports suicide as an option for any human being.
Furthermore,
since it is absolutely clear that we may not live in a nihilistic world, and
that nihilism may be wrong, there can never be any reason to terminate our
life, risk the negative consequences, and abandon the possible positive consequences
of living a meaningful life. We are a small part of the whole. Unless the
answer is revealed to us by the whole, we can never know during our physical
lives what really happens when our physical life ends. Life may have physical
or non-physical meaning and value that we do not, and perhaps cannot until our
physical death, recognize and understand.
There
is no reason at all to reject the possibility that each of us has some kind of
permanent physical or non-physical consciousness. There is absolutely no
logical reason whatsoever to reject the possibility that nihilism may be false!
There is no reason whatsoever not to search for an alternative to nihilism, to
explore the possibility of a permanent physical or non-physical consciousness,
to search for a reason for living. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever not
to live for the possibility, however remote you may believe it to be, that life
has meaning and value. [Again, if you find yourself distressed or depressed by our conclusions
please read the comment on Distress & Depression that is found near the end of these Notes.]
Is
That All There Is?
If it is true that your existence ends
with physical death, does that mean that your life is meaningless? As we have
said, the answer is probably (but not “certainly”) yes. Therefore, is it true
that your life has no meaning? The answer is a qualified no. If we are somehow
more than our physical bodies, if we can exist beyond and apart from those
bodies, then perhaps each of us survives physical death and continues to exist,
in some manner and form, beyond the grave. If you are, or you become through
living, a unique individual who possesses the ability to engage in rational
thought and exercise freedom of choice transcending biological processes of
determinism, perhaps you have an existence beyond your physical mind and body,
perhaps not.
Since the dawn of recorded history people
have thought and written about existence beyond physical death. Some have
suggested that extra sensory perception, premonitions, unexplained knowledge of
past events, along with other similar and possibly real phenomena, are part of
the world beyond death, perhaps so, perhaps not. Perhaps the unique being which
each of us is, the present existence that makes your choices and your life
yours alone, exists now and after your death in a realm beyond the physical,
perhaps not. Perhaps that which you are survives like energy in a dimension
coexistent with the physical world but beyond the constraints of space, motion,
and time, perhaps not. Perhaps each of us continues to exist in a manner and
fashion infinitely beyond our ability to imagine, let alone comprehend, perhaps
not.
A great number of people have spent vast
amounts of time and effort studying all manner of phenomena outside everyday
experiences. Many, most, or even all "inexplicable" events may be
explained by future generations of scientists. The most amazing phenomena are
not the dramatic events often attributed to the "supernatural",
events which could as easily as not be emotional illusions or the consequence
of known or unknown physical laws. What are amazing to me are simple
occurrences that defy probability. We have all experienced, and therefore
witnessed, baffling events that leave one with a feeling that their explanation
may lie outside the realm of natural science. For example, most of us have
thought about someone we have not seen for years, only to bump into them a few
minutes later. Even more amazing are instances that may occur when we are
facing major events in our lives, when we are in some way confronted by someone
or something that leads us toward a “better” choice. When faced with such
occurrences, I have often found myself with an “intuitive” feeling that they
are in some non-physical sense “planned”, perhaps so, perhaps not.
I have paid a great deal of attention to
the kind of occurrences that are classified by scientists as "amazing
coincidences". While most can be accepted as coincidental, some appear to
be one in a million events that happen with such regularity that the odds
against them being merely coincidental are incredibly large. It is impossible
for me, in good conscience, to dismiss them as being nothing more than random
events. Many appear to be “objective” phenomena, well suited to empirical
study, that statistically support the conclusion that they are not the result
of chance.
I have little difficulty accepting that
there are events that are in fact controlled by forces beyond our present
knowledge. Indeed, I am convinced that there is a non-physical explanation for
many events. If they are true phenomena, and not products of the mind, their
very existence strongly suggests that there is a world which is quite real
lying somewhere beyond normal human perception. A brief glance at, a fleeting
contact with, what may be the world beyond the one in which we live gives a
shocking reality to what we academically speculate about, or even faithfully
believe in.
Though we may profess to believe in that
which we cannot see, we may also find ourselves surprised when our beliefs
appear to be true. Possible contact with a world beyond human perception gives
us a startling realization that we may be eternally subject to forces
absolutely beyond our control, and leaves us with a chilling or hopeful feeling
(depending on your view of your prospects if eternity exists) that death will
not be a simple, restful, eternal sleep. None-the-less, a belief that we may
have glimpsed the world beyond, no matter how convincing at the moment, is
diluted over time. The human mind's natural presumption is against out of the
ordinary observations that, by definition, provide infrequent reinforcement of
beliefs.
Of course, it may be true that
"supernatural" events, though perhaps of great significance to the
living, are nothing more than manifestations of physical and biological
processes beyond our present ability to explain, similar to early
civilization's attempts to explain through myths the phenomenon's of fire and
lightening. If so they have no significance at all to the question of our existence
after physical death. Yet it may be that they are images created by the
overlapping of the current world and a world you will find yourself in after
death.
There is no present answer to the
questions posed by what many perceive to be “metaphysical” events. Our
discussion deals with what the meaning and purpose of life is. As we continue
you will see that whether or not anyone has in fact witnessed supernatural
phenomena originating from a world beyond the grave, though a question which
peaks curiosity, is not an essential, or perhaps even an important, one. You
will see that we don't need to look for metaphysical events in our lives to
understand what life is all about. The significance of such events is beyond
the scope of these notes and is simply not necessary to our discussion.
We will see that even if no one ever has
had, or ever will have, any contact in this world with a world beyond the
grave, it would not mean that such a world does not exist. We will explore in
detail the possibility that we may continue to exist after death. At this point
we ask that you keep an open mind about life after death. For now, please
accept the possibility, however remote you may feel it is, that in some manner
and fashion we continue to exist after our physical death.
The Search For Truth
If a scientist, philosopher, or anyone
else tells you something is true, and in fact it is not true, it is not true.
To say something is true does not make it true. Even though you are told
something is true, if it is not true it is simply not true. On the other hand,
if something is true it is true, even if you are told or believe that it is
not.
If something is true or false, it is true
or false whether we believe it to be true or false, or have not thought about
its truth at all. If we believe a lamp is on a table, whether we have any
evidence it is or not, and it is in fact on the table, then what we believe to
be true is true. If we cannot determine whether or not the lamp is on the
table, that does not change the actual position of the lamp. Even though
without evidence we cannot prove a lamp is on a table, if it is on the table it
is there and our belief is true.
Just because we cannot prove something is
true does not in any way mean it is not true. Because we cannot prove, or
disprove, we continue to exist after the death of our bodies does not mean that
we do not continue to exist, or that we do. If we continue to exist after our
physical death, then we continue to exist, and if we do not, then we do not.
If there is no one in a forest to hear a
tree fall, does the sound of the tree falling really exist? If there is no one
to see a tree fall, does it really fall at all? "Does an event occur if
there are no observers?" is a valid question that perhaps can be answered
"yes" only if the observer not only sees the event, but also
continues to exist forever beyond the time of the event. In other words, if
only inanimate objects surround an event such as the turning on of a lamp,
perhaps it can be said no event has occurred since nothing has been seen,
heard, etc., to change. Similarly, if a living observer witnesses an event but
at some later date the observer ceases to exist, what value was the
observation? Of course the argument can be made that seen or not seen photons
stream from a light when it is turned on. Furthermore, it can be suggested that
once seen or heard an event has “actualized”. Much depends on how you define
"event", but underlying the question is a troublesome perception that
goes beyond semantics, a feeling that a world without permanent observers lacks
anything similar to what we call "reality".
Even though we disagree, some philosophers
have moved toward the view that "language" is the unique factor which
gives humans the ability to think thoughts, and that language is the only thing
that distinguishes us from animals. They suggest that using language, our
consciousness assigns the concepts of true and false to the things and events
that surround us. Some of them believe that "truth" has no meaning
outside the human mind, and, therefore, in a very real sense, that
"truth" does not exist as an independent reality.
I am not uncomfortable with the idea that
in an inanimate universe "truth" may not exist, and therefore there
must be an observer for "truth" to have meaning. However I am very
uncomfortable with the suggestion that where a permanent observer does exist,
"truth" is merely a creation of that observer's consciousness. If we
survive the grave, we may well have a perpetual consciousness that can observe
and remember the "truths" which surround us. Whether or not a lamp
has been observed to be on a table, if the lamp is physically sitting on a
table the very existence of permanent observers who could observe the lamp may
give independent meaning to the statement that it is "true" that the
lamp is on the table, perhaps so, perhaps not. If memories of human events die
with each person, then events themselves become little more than transient
observations made by the living. Yet if we survive the grave, it would seem
that we would have a continuing consciousness that recognizes a real and
fundamental difference between that which is "true" and that which is
"false". For now, please accept the possibility that some things are
either fundamentally "true", or not.
If we want to consider in greater detail
the possibility of our continued existence after the death of our bodies, we
need to be able to make statements we can believe to be true. In our quest to
find some meaning in life, we must develop some method of determining
"truths" which we can have a fair degree of confidence in. To do so
we first need to understand what it means to be able to "prove"
something, scientifically or otherwise.
Over the centuries the quest for truth has
been refined into the process of scientific analysis. A brief summary of what
has come to be known as the scientific method is helpful. Scientists observe
what they want to study and record properties they believe to be relevant to
their research. While some may have preconceived notions of what they will
find, others begin the process of experimentation and observation without any
idea what, if anything, they will discover. Even though they may believe they
will achieve a certain result, scientists who do not approach every experiment
with open minds are not scientists at all.
After gathering what they consider to be
enough information about an object or event, scientists sit back, study the
data, and try to combine and organize the information to discover a pattern
running through it. They look for a model that not only describes what they
currently observe, but that also perfectly matches past observations. The
resulting descriptions of the world around them are known as theories or
theorems. These in turn can be used to predict what will happen in the future
under the same or similar circumstances.
Efforts to formulate theorems that
describe observations would be in vain if the universe was made up of random
events, occurring without reason or order, for then no one could say what will
happen next. Of course, that appears not to be the case, as our universe seems
to behave in a more or less ordered manner. As we have studied the cosmos in
more and more detail, it seems to be true that (what one scientist called his
"gut feeling") all physical objects comprised of matter and energy
(which may or may not include all aspects of human "consciousness"),
from the tiniest atomic particle to the largest system, behave according to
some fixed set of laws. These laws can be thought of as if-then statements,
which describe what will happen if a certain event occurs. For example, one of
the well-known results of the law of gravity is that IF an apple comes loose
from the branch of a tree, THEN it will fall to earth.
For several reasons I regret using
simplistic examples to make a point. Because of their simplistic nature, they
tend to lessen the importance of the point being made. They narrow the reader’s
focus from the broad, general truth of a statement to a specific, small part of
the whole. Simple examples tend to be incredibly inadequate when used to
illustrate complex feelings, beliefs, ideas, etc. Some people feel they are
being talked down to, or think they already understand what is being said. They
risk missing the deep significance that often hides within the example. On the
other hand, simple examples can be used to bring a point quickly home, allowing
us to bypass a good bit of background discussion and to explore at once
concepts which are best understood when drawn rapidly and simultaneously into
the mind. The dangers of simplistic examples can only be overcome by the reader
who is aware of the shortcomings, and is willing to expand in their mind the
examples so that the "profound" will not be misunderstood to be
"simple".
Back to gravity and the falling apple. The
law itself basically states that objects exert a force on each other that
attracts them toward one another, the strength of the attraction being related
to their masses and the distance between them. The fundamental law of gravity
was described by Isaac Newton after he observed that objects that are dropped
fall toward earth. By repeating his experiment over and over again, by dropping
object after object,
Each successful test of
Enter the world of statistics.
Mathematicians have long recognized that the larger the sample that is taken
from a group of items, the better able they are to predict what individual
items are like in the group. The larger the sample the more confident they can
be that a "strange" or uncharacteristic item will not be found. This
is true due to the fundamental nature of the mathematics behind statistical
inference. It is true no matter what the items being sampled are, so long as
the sample is not biased.
For example, if you randomly sample 500
apples out of a box containing 100,000 thoroughly mixed apples, and find not a
single rotten one, a mathematician can tell you with a great degree of
confidence what the chances are that none of the 100,000 apples is rotten. If
you sample 1000 apples out of the 100,000, he or she can be more certain. After
inspecting 10,000 apples, he or she can be even more certain. If 5 rotten
apples are found in a sample of 500, or 45 in a sample of 1000 the
mathematician can tell you how many rotten apples you are likely to find among
the 100,000 apples. No matter what is in the box, whether it is 100,000 apples,
100,000 pencils, 100,000 transistors, 100,000 anything, so long as the items are
uniformly mixed, anyone can tell by drawing a random sample how many of the
items in the box are likely to have one or more traits in common (i.e. color,
size, shape, etc.). The bigger the sample, the more accurate the prediction and
the more confident the predictor. (please see StatSoft
Statistics – Electronic TextBook )
It should be emphasized that the
predictions are accurate not because of the nature of that which is being
sampled, but because the mathematical relationship between the number of
samples and the number of underlying items being sampled is fixed and
predictable. If you draw at random four pencils from a jar containing 100
pencils, three are white, one is red, there is a certain probability that the
jar contains 75% white pencils and 25% red pencils. If you draw four golf balls
from a jar containing 100 golf balls, three are white, one is red, the same
probability exists the jar contains 75% white golf balls and 25% red golf
balls.
If the apples in our apple barrel were not
uniformly mixed, and/or the sample was drawn in some organized pattern, we
might get only good apples, or at least a higher number of good apples than we
would otherwise. The sample would be unrepresentative of the contents of the
box and useless to the mathematician. It is very, very important to realize if
we take as our sample 99,999 out of 100,000 apples and find not even a single
rotten one, we can be incredibly sure we are right when we predict the one
apple left in the box is not rotten. None-the-less when we examine the one
remaining apple it may in fact be rotten!!!!!
A Law Is A Law Until It Is No Longer A Law
What we are building up to is the fact
that the law of gravity is called a "law" because, in billions and
billions of observations, not once has any documented event occurred where two
objects did not attract each other in precisely the way predicted (we now know
that gravity may not behave exactly as Newton thought, but like Newton predicted,
objects do attract one another in the sense that the theory of general
relativity tells us that the gravitational effect moves objects toward one
another). We can say with an absolutely incredible degree of statistical
certainty that the gravitational "force" between two objects will
always cause them to be attracted toward one another. At this point in time
there is probably less than one chance in l,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 10 raised
to the 1,000,000,000,000,000th power that gravity will not act essentially as
expected. Yet, despite the incredible certainty of gravity, we do not and
cannot know whether it is or is not possible for one contrary event to occur,
and thus for the law of gravity to be proven wrong!
I am not suggesting the law of gravity is
incorrect and that an event whereby it is proven wrong will ever occur. In fact
I would be surprised if any of the basic scientific laws of the universe are
fundamentally wrong. What I am saying is no matter how many times something has
been observed to be true, no matter how incredibly unlikely it is an unexpected
event will occur, we have no way of knowing if such an event is possible or
impossible! If the unexpected event is not possible, it will never occur, and
it will never be observed. If the event is possible, and if it does occur, then
it has happened, period.
We must remember it is not the
"law" which makes objects behave in a certain way, fundamental forces
far beyond human comprehension do that. Rather the law describes the behavior
and remains valid and true only until a single unexpected observation proves it
wrong. Actually the law remains only apparently valid and true, if it is later
proven wrong its former truth was an illusion. The law was in fact always
false. "Modifying" a theory to better fit the observations does not
help render the original theory true, rather it creates a new theory that is
itself either true or false. Since scientific theories are tested by
observation, they are true if and only if each and every event they describe
and predict, from the beginning of the universe to the end, in fact occurs
exactly as expected. Theories, no matter how solid they might seem, must be
discarded as false the very first time they fail to describe real events.
Science is based on observation,
formulation of theories, and more observation. To observe necessarily requires
the ability to perceive - to sense, feel, smell, touch, taste, see, hear. Early
humans used all their senses to explore the world around them. When human
senses proved inadequate, they devised better and better tools and instruments
to extend their range. Microscopes and telescopes to expand vision,
stethoscopes and amplifiers to increase hearing, plus thousands of other
sensitive devices to enhance the senses.
The catalog of devices used to expand our
human senses is enormous and growing by the minute, yet all the instruments of
humankind can do no more than extend the reach of humans into the universe of
which they and their instruments are a part. We know of three spatial
dimensions, height, width, depth, and a forth dimension, time (which may also
prove to be spatial in nature). Space (height, width, depth), and “time” all
exist together as space-time and cannot exist alone. Is there a fifth, a sixth,
a seventh, an eighth dimension? No one knows, for if they exist they appear to
be separate and beyond human ability to sense, measure, and thus scientifically
prove.
Does that mean those dimensions do not
exist, the answer is no. Mathematicians and physicists use formulas to describe
sub-atomic phenomena (e.g. - string theory) that can be interpreted as
happening in multidimensional space. If a fifth dimension exists, it exists. If
a fifth dimension does not exist, it does not exist. This is true regardless
whether we can, or never can, observe that dimension and, of course, is true
for any sixth dimension, seventh dimension, eighth dimension, etc. It is
important to realize that no matter how many dimensions are eventually
observed, one or more additional dimensions may or may not exist beyond human
ability to observe.
Many of you are saying to yourselves it is
one thing to say that a dimension beyond human ability to observe may exist,
but an entirely different thing to say that one probably does. You are right.
Most of you will go on to say it is highly improbable, maybe less than one
chance in a trillion, that even one more dimension exists beyond the observable
number of dimensions, however many that may eventually prove to be. If you think
that, you are wrong. To be able to statistically predict the likelihood of an
event happening we must first observe to see how often the event occurs during
a given period of time. If we cannot observe the event when it occurs, we
cannot determine how often it happens (or conversely, does not happen) and we
cannot predict the likelihood of the event.
One problem with recognizing the
limitations of statistical analysis is understanding the difference between not
observing an event where the event watched for can be observed, and not
observing an event where the event cannot be observed because it is beyond
human ability to sense. The first, not observing an event which could be seen,
leads to the statistically valid conclusion that the event is unlikely to
occur. The second, not observing an event which is beyond human ability to
perceive, cannot lead to any conclusion at all about the reality of that event.
Yet it appears to be human nature to assume that things which have never been
observed do not exist, or at best are highly unlikely to exist.
If something exists beyond human
perception it will never be observed during our physical lifetimes. If you
cannot measure something because it is beyond human perception you cannot prove
it exists, on the other hand you cannot prove that it does not exist! More
importantly, you cannot say that it is statistically likely or unlikely that it
exists. You simply cannot say anything objective at all about that which is
beyond human ability to observe.
It is very, very important to realize that
it is absolutely impossible to say that it is either likely or unlikely
something exists beyond human observation. We simply cannot determine in any
way the probability that something exists, or does not exist, beyond our observable
universe. To understand the significance of this often overlooked statement is
to understand that we have no idea what, if anything, lies beyond our cognitive
boundaries.
A moments thought should bring the
realization that this absolute limit of statistics and science renders all
"scientific proof", as well as subjective feelings, that nothing
exists beyond our perception into feeble "philosophic arguments".
Despite what science might claim to have "proven", and despite what
we might "feel", about what lies beyond our ability to observe, we
cannot say anything objective about that which is beyond human perception. We
may create mathematical models of what should lie somewhere just beyond
observation, yet without a means of testing these projections they can never be
more than idle speculation. We simply cannot say that it is likely, or not
likely, that a "world" or "worlds" exist beyond the
physical world in which we live. From an analytical standpoint anything, or
nothing, may exist beyond human cognition.
Human beings are limited to observing the
effects of fundamental forces on matter and energy, and must draw conclusions
based only on such observations. We can never "view" the forces
themselves, forces whose metaphysical existence and purpose transcend human
observation and comprehension. One of the consequences of being only a small
part of the universe in which we live is the absolute fact that, unless
revealed to us by the whole, we can never know if something or someone exists
beyond the limits of our senses. No one, not you nor I nor the smartest person
on earth can determine whether or not anything exists beyond that which we can
observe. It follows that we cannot know if someone or something beyond our
ability to perceive can and will alter the laws which govern our world.
The significance of the continued
possibility that an unexpected event will occur to disprove even the best of
theories, and the very fact such a possibility will always exist, renders it
impossible to "prove" anything to be absolutely true or false. Since
even the most incredibly supported "laws" are always subject to being
disproved by the happening of a single contrary event, all laws and theorems
and common sense proofs are subject to being disproved. Fundamental precepts
that apples fall, water flows, fire burns, may all be disproved by future
events.
Our limitations not only prevent us from
exploring that which is beyond human perception, but also add to all human
observations a degree of uncertainty that cannot be overcome. We can never say
with total certainty that anything is true, or for that matter, untrue. In this
age of science it is hard for those who have not studied the scientific method
in its most intricate details to understand that, because it is a tool of human
beings, it is necessarily limited in its application by the limits of human
comprehension and understanding.
It is even harder to accept that, since we
are only a part of the whole universe, we can never determine by ourselves what
the entire universe is like. A part of something never knows what the whole is
like unless the whole makes itself known to the part. We can never know what is
true unless the truth is revealed to us. Being a part of the whole means that
every law we construct must be built from unprovable
assumptions, assumptions that may or may not hold true in the future. We can
never know if something, or someone, outside our perception, perhaps greater
than the whole, will alter all or part of what we observe, rendering untrue in
an instant the very best of our proofs.
Of course, if underlying forces do exist,
are not changed, and require the predicted behavior, then the laws never can and
never will be disproved. Apples will fall, water will flow, fire will burn, etc.
However, that does not alter the fact that it is, and always will be, beyond
human ability to "prove" anything. There is absolutely no way human beings can
determine if fundamental forces exist that will never change. We simply cannot
determine if it is possible, or if it is not possible, for a contrary event to
occur. We can never be certain that contrary events will not happen, we can
never prove that anything is absolutely "true".
You
Can’t Believe Your Eyes
We must be sure of observations that are
within the bounds of human perception, and skeptical if what we observe appears
to be opposite to that which is predicted. Yet we must also be willing to
recognize and accept valid experimental data that disproves popular theories.
Scientists have declared many theories to be true and elevated them to the
status of "law", only to discover that future observations, often
more accurate than the first, proved them wrong. There are millions of examples
of these errors. Perhaps the most famous was the early contention that the
earth was flat, a scientific "fact" based on observations that
appeared sound to early scholars, which should not be so surprising to those of
us who live in hilly country without a visible horizon. What all of us,
including scientists, must be aware of is the ease in which we convert our
theories into laws. Even if we believe our minds are open, most of us grab onto
favorite theories and assumptions. We think of, and talk about, them as though
there is no doubt they are true.
We should take a minute to discuss the
potentially "seductive" nature of misinterpreted or misused
"scientific proof". A portion of my high school biology text
described the propulsion method of certain one-cell microscopic animals
(protozoa) through water by declaring they waved a tail like projection back
and forth. The book had been careful to label many new ideas as theories, but
stated this particular description in absolute terms since these one-celled
animals had been observed for many, many years always moving in exactly the
same way. Anyone reading the text would believe, as scientists and everyone
else did, that there was absolutely no question how the animals got around.
As I was watching television almost ten
years later I was surprised to hear of an accidental discovery by a scientist
looking at some protozoa. Trying to hold one still under a microscope he held
down the tail with a needle. Instead of the body of the animal thrashing back
and forth as it should have, he observed it to be spinning around the tail. The
tail was attached to the body by what was in effect a small rotating joint,
which acted like an electric motor spinning a propeller (please see article on motility of
bacteria). Looking more closely, the scientist discovered the tail was in
fact shaped like a corkscrew. Because the microscopic view had always been two
dimensional, rather than three, the corkscrew motion looked down on from above
had appeared to be that of a wave. Since it was common to find waving tails in
larger animals, and since no one had predicted, let alone observed, a 360
degree rotating joint, the thoughts and conclusions of generations of
scientists had been colored by conscious and subconscious assumptions. What had
been accepted as true turned out to be false. But remember, what was found to
be true had in fact always been true.
Similarly, I remember reading an article
by a learned scientist who was upset when a well-accepted theory was
challenged. He noted that of course it was a theory, just as all scientific
laws are really theories, but he then stated that the particular theory was so
well documented it was obviously true. It was and is not "obviously
true" for, as we have seen, no theory can be said to be unquestionably
true.
The theory was the theory of evolution.
I have little trouble with the idea of
either accepting or rejecting evolution, for I can take it or leave it as a
part of the physical explanation of the universe which neither conflicts with,
nor supports, religion or science. I would be quite surprised if the theory of
evolution, in some form or another, is not essentially correct. What is
troublesome is that challenges to evolution, and other theories scientists
adopt as scientifically "self-evident", are often viewed as a return
to the "irrationality" that preceded science. As such they are
rejected without consideration as unworthy intrusions into pure science, which
will go away if ignored.
Many scientists simply will not talk about
anything that upsets their idea of reality, yet all theories do just that. When
any theory is first proposed, it is by its very nature an extension of
humankind's knowledge (whether such knowledge is illusory or not), and as such
goes beyond the then accepted view of the world. So long as such extensions are
orderly and slow there is no problem, but when they leap ahead into the future
they become the immediate concern of scientists who wish to keep science
"pure". There is a strong presumption that something that has not
been proven is somehow less than true. To many people the unproved is not
simply unproven, but is "fantastic" and worthy only of the title
"science fiction".
Thus despite professed neutrality on the
untested, many scientists have made it clear they are ready to label as absurd
that which is significantly outside common experience and which has not been
subjected to empirical scrutiny. If popular theories do not withstand future
scientific challenges, recognition of their weakness will be slow to come, and
acceptance of more exotic alternatives will be resisted with cries that the
alternate theories are irrational myths. One should feel uneasy that correct
theories, which are not subject to easy testing, might be dismissed as absurd.
If something is currently "unproved" it may well be rejected by
scientists as an impossibility, no one beyond the person postulating the
theorem may dare dream of its truth.
As we have already noted, in addition to
rejecting that which may be proved in the future, many scientists are equally
willing to reject as an impossibility the existence of that which is beyond
human perception, and thus "unprovable". No
matter what we may think, or intuitively "feel", we absolutely cannot
say anything objective at all about the "unprovable".
The as of yet "unproved", as well as the "unprovable",
may, or may not, be "true".
We should note one type of statement, the
definition, which can be viewed as an irrefutable truth. By definition, water
"boils" at 100 degrees Celsius. You can always define something to be
what you want it to be, yet no matter how you define an event you will not
alter the physical reality that makes up the event. Water "boils" at
100 degrees because we have defined what water does at that temperature to be
"boiling". The word "boiling" is nothing more than a
description of what happens at a given temperature. As a definition it is a
label, which has nothing to say about the physical laws that affect the water.
Nothing assures us water will continue to
act like it does when it gets to 100 degrees. If in the future the behavior of
water changes, scientists must either continue to label the new activity as
"boiling" by broadening the meaning of the word, or must coin a new
word to describe the changed state. If water would solidify instead of
vaporizing, scientists could continue to define the new behavior as
"boiling" and no one could say they were wrong. Yet the new state
would be totally opposite to the old, only the name would remain the same. Fortunately
most observers recognize a responsibility not to use language to define away
challenges to their beliefs, therefore they create new words to label new
events. The thing to remember is that definitions do not explain or alter the
underlying reality.
Reality Is Unreal
We know science cannot tell us anything
about the world beyond our perception. What then can it tell us about the
reality that surrounds us? Is it able to give us a sturdy foundation on which
to build our lives? Can it answer our daily questions? We will explore a bit of
modern physics to see just how stable, or unstable, science really is. The
information in this section is based on generally accepted theories at the time
of writing, please note that by the time you read this book these theories may
have been replaced by equally exotic scientific descriptions of reality. No
matter what millennium you live in, you will be able to discover and recognize
the absolute limits of science.
If we are to accept our observations of
falling apples as proof of the law of gravity we must first assume several
things, for instance, that our eyes accurately perceive the motion of the
apple, that our ruler accurately measures the distance the apple travels, and
that our watch correctly records the time it takes for it to drop. If
confronted with the question "does the ruler you are using shrink and grow
if you look at it while moving at different speeds?", most of us would
laugh and say to ourselves of course it doesn't, a fixed length is what makes a
ruler a ruler. We would think the person asking the question would have us
questioning whether the apple is real.
Indeed I would have you question all
"scientific facts", for a scientist named Einstein shook the
assumptions about distance, time, and space that scientists had relied on for
thousands of years. In his theory of relativity he "proved" the
length measured on a "perfect" ruler and the time measured on a
"perfect" clock vary according to the relative motion of one object
to another.
Because the change in length and time is
unbelievably small where relative speeds are slow, as in the case of a falling
apple observed by an earthbound viewer, we can ignore the affect of relativity
on everyday life. None-the-less the effects are real and sensitive instruments
have confirmed them. Because our eyes cannot measure any difference does not
alter the effect. The affect on a ruler becomes so great when relative speeds
approach the speed of light that what was measured to be a foot would actually become
a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of an inch.
Time is also affected by relative motion.
If an identical twin could travel to another planet and back in a spaceship
that flies at speeds approaching the speed of light, on return to Earth the
space traveler would find that he or she had aged much less than his or her
sibling. Perhaps the astronaut who left at age fifteen would be only twenty
years old when he or she returned, while the earthbound twin would be ninety!
This is not science fiction, the radical results predicted by relativity have
been confirmed by countless experiments, including experiments where atomic
clocks placed in jet planes ran slower than their earthbound counterparts!
Here is another example of an everyday
"fact" taken for granted as being absolutely true. What is the
shortest distance between two points? Without hesitation the answer for many,
many years was "a straight line". The theory of relativity tells us
the universe may be shaped like a piecrust with bumps and valleys. Thus the
shortest distance between any two points in the universe, whether it is between
towns on earth or stars in space, must be drawn on the surface of the lumpy
crust (the area outside the crust is outside the universe and does not exist) and,
therefore, must be slightly curved! The curvature is so infinitesimally small
it cannot be easily observed, none-the-less the shortest distance between two
points may be a slightly curved line!
Over the last few decades, some of the
things which have been discovered are that energy and matter are different
forms of the same thing (energy = mass times the speed of light squared); the
speed of light is constant and nothing can go faster than that speed; as matter
approaches the speed of light it becomes infinitely massive and shrinks in its
direction of motion to become infinitely small; and at the sub-atomic level
matter is neither a particle nor a wave but is incomprehensibly both. There are
several excellent books written for non-scientists that explain relativity and
other topics in modern physics (also please see these on-line resources The Light
Cone - An Illuminating Introduction to Relativity : UseNet Physics FAQ : Reflections of Relativity).
Another foundation of modern science,
quantum physics, appears to offer a description of reality that is radically
different from the one relativity gives us. Laws that operate at the subatomic
"quantum" level provide probabilities of observing one of many
possible results instead of giving a single observable solution to a problem.
Quantum mechanics is a relatively new branch of science developed to explain
why subatomic particles do not behave according to the Newtonian and
relativistic laws that describe the behavior of "normal" size objects
(please see Quantum Mechanics
FAQ).
Just prior to the time subatomic particles
and events were first measured, physicists had declared that, with very minor
exceptions, all the fundamental forces and laws of the universe had been
discovered and described. When scientists started to apply the traditional laws
of physics to nuclear reactions they were literally amazed to find that the
laws did not work! The search was on for a way to modify
Light is made up of energy in the form of
"photons" which have mass (in motion) and which behave like
particles, SOME OF THE TIME. The rest of the time photons behave like waves of
energy, similar to ocean waves. If you will think about an ocean wave you will
realize water making up the wave simply moves up and down, not forward. Only
the wave itself moves forward. Thus if a boat is sitting a mile from shore,
each wave will cause it to rise and fall, but will do little to move it toward
shore. The boat will move a bit as each successive wave exerts a slight pushing
force in the direction of the shore, but the boat won't be carried to shore by
any one wave as the wave itself sweeps toward land. The vast majority of the
water is simply moving up and down, while only the wave moves forward.
The problem occurs when you try to measure
photons using different tests. Some tests detect "particles" of light
hitting targets while other tests detect "wave" interference when
light passes through narrow slits. Back to the ocean example, when two ocean
waves meet they either cancel each other if the trough of one overlaps the
crest of the other, OR they reinforce each other when the crest of one joins
the crest of the other, forming a single doubly big wave (or any combination
in-between can occur). When two waves interact they are said to be interfering
with each other.
The problem is a particle CANNOT act like
a wave and a wave CANNOT act like a particle, yet photons act like both! The
solution of modern physics to this apparently unsolvable problem is to say that
photons are neither waves nor particles until they are measured, and that the
measurement itself determines the nature of the photon. In other words, it is the
measurement of the event that determines the nature of the event.
To some degree this phenomena can be said
to express hidden problems with what reality really is. In a sense physics is
not able to describe the "reality" of an individual photon since it
appears to have two inconsistent, coexistent, yet separate, natures. To the
extent the point at which a photon is measured (known as the collapse of the wavefunction) can be considered an "event", an
unsolved dilemma occurs in determining when the event "actualizes".
If light is both a wave and a particle until measured, is it "truly"
a wave (when measured as a wave by an interference experiment) at the point it
interferes with itself, or at the point it strikes a photographic plate, or at
the time the film is developed, or at the point a human observes the final
picture, etc.? The answer is simply not known.
One of the greatest philosophical shocks
of this century came in the form of the Heisenberg uncertainty principal. As
far as many philosophers were concerned the last straw was when, to help
explain the observed phenomena, Heisenberg noted that if you measure the
momentum of one of the particles ("momentum" is velocity, which is
speed in a given direction, times mass) that make up an atom you must in some
way affect its position. For example, if you measure the momentum (or velocity,
the uncertainty principal is equally true for both momentum and velocity) of a
subatomic particle by "observing" it move over a given distance, the
observation alters its position in some unpredictable manner. Similarly, if you
measure position you must alter momentum, thus at any given moment you CAN
NEVER measure both the exact momentum and exact position of a subatomic
particle. The more precise you are in measuring momentum, the less precise you
will be about position, and vice versa. The problem is actually more than a
problem of measurement, to be more accurate, the wave function of a subatomic
particle (which describes the particle at the quantum level) that has not been
"observed" is precisely determined (without using probabilities) by a
formula known as Schrodinger's wave equation.
However, the very moment you attempt to measure the momentum or position of the
particle, the wave function collapses, introducing probabilities into the
equation, and the exact momentum and position of the particle CANNOT be
determined.
Heisenberg's theory can be interpreted as
supporting the proposition that at the quantum level the very concepts of
momentum and position have no real meaning. At the level of measured
observation, modern physics can tell you how many particles in a group of
particles have certain momentums and positions, and how many have other
momentums and positions, but physicists CANNOT tell you what the momentum and
position of any one particle is. This failure is far more than just some
inability to measure momentum and position, it is due to the fact that it is
fundamentally uncertain what the momentum and position of any single observed
particle is! A single particle when measured simply does not have position and
momentum in any normal sense of the words, but members of a group do, and the
probability of x number having x momentum and x,y,z
position can be precisely computed!
One interpretation (there are others) of
this finding is that nature appears to determine the behavior of its
"particles" by a flip of a coin. Einstein spent the latter part of
his life attempting to disprove this disturbing idea, it flew against his
concept of the universe and prompted him to say, "My God does not throw
dice". Yet he was unable to disprove quantum theory in general, and the
uncertainty principal in particular, both of which have correctly predicted
every subatomic event that they have been tested against!
To emphasize the significance of the
uncertainty principal remember it says that the uncertainty about momentum and
position is not due to limitations on humankind's ability to make measurements,
but rather is based on the apparent fact that the momentum and
position of an individual particle is fundamentally uncertain. Of course,
future physicists may find an underlying set of rules that can be used to
predict the behavior of individual particles, or may discover a fundamental
unified law which is consistent with the observed behavior. Einstein's
discomfort may well have been the result of human limitations on his
understanding of God. Even though many questions remain unanswered, repudiation
of the uncertainty principal, however comforting it would be to philosophers,
seems uncertain at best.
One current theory, which we mentioned
earlier, that is popular among cosmologists and that would eliminate the
uncertainty, shows just how confusing and exotic the universe may be. The truly
wild (and from some scientists' points of view, virtually unbelievable)
"many-worlds theory", suggests that every time an event occurs which
has a possible required alternative, the universe splits into two identical
parts, except that in one universe one alternative occurs, while in the other
the other alternative occurs. According to this theory (or at least to the most
popular interpretations of it), there are potentially an infinite number of
identical, except for the required alternatives, versions of each of us living
simultaneously in different worlds. Uncertainty is eliminated because every
alternative is guaranteed to occur. Rather than being a model of reality, this
idea may be a product of human limitations.
If you want some more disturbing news I
can give it to you. There is a controversial extension of quantum physics that
deals with the problem of "locality". Components of atoms have a
property called "spin". Spin is one of the fundamental quantities in
the universe that must, and we do mean must, be conserved. For each particle
that possesses positive spin, there MUST exist a particle with negative spin.
When two such particles fly off in different directions from an atom, they
always have opposite spin.
So far, no problems. We can "entangle"
the particles and change the spin of one of them. The very instant we do so the
other particle's spin changes, no matter what the distance is that separates
them! Physicists, who accept that a problem exists, are at a loss to explain
how a particle in a different location without any means of communication knows
what another particle's spin is. It is a mystery how one particle knows to
change spin at the very instant the spin of the other particle is altered
(experiments seem to confirm the phenomena, however there may be a hidden
variable that would explain the observations by extending current theory).
Einstein believed that any
"rational", in the sense of "objective", description of
nature is incomplete unless it is both a local and realistic theory. A theory
is "realistic" if a particle has "intrinsic" properties
that exist even before they are measured. A theory is "local" if
measuring the properties of one particle cannot affect the properties of
another, physically separated particle, in a length of time that would require
"communication" between the particles that is faster than the speed
of light. Yet quantum "entanglement" of spatially separated particles
may require that realism, or locality, or both, be violated!
One highly speculative explanation of
entanglement eliminates the normal assumption of "locality", the
assumption that events occur at one specific location in the space-time
continuum. If it is possible to have a rational description of the universe
without a local theory, then you can have events that appear to be occurring in
different locations actually occurring in the same place. Thus, no matter how
far apart they may seem to be, two particles could know each other's spin
because they are, in some as yet unexplained manner, in the same
"location". Perhaps the two particles occupy the same position in
some unknown dimension where there is no such thing as separation. Speculation
about the significance of lack of locality is really unproductive, except to
note that lack of locality could help explain premonitions and extrasensory
events.
Other complex examples of conflicts with
accepted concepts of reality, truth, and classical philosophy and logic, are
found within the fascinating, unsettling, discoveries of modern physics. We are
left with fundamental paradoxes, the solutions to which are totally unknown.
Indeed, despite what we are told by many scientists, it is not at all clear to
those working at the leading edge of scientific inquiry that an objective
physical description of the universe actually exists. The destruction of
traditional concepts of time, space, matter, energy, of life itself, is both
frightening, and hopeful. Given the dramatic efforts of modern physics to
unravel the mysteries of the physical world, coupled with the possibility of
the discovery of theories that better explain space-time (or atemporal space), perhaps even the discovery and/or
existence of other "dimensions", all manner of extraordinary event
may eventually be explained. Yet it is also possible that, despite appearances
to the contrary, the universe does not have an objective and/or observable
fundamental physical nature, and that no explanation is possible.
Again we need to remember that all
theories owe their credibility to repeated statistical successes. Even in the
case of generally accepted physical laws, like the ones we have just discussed,
one observed deviation would result in the probability of the theorem being
correct going to zero. When a theory is for the first time shown to be false it
is not merely more likely to be false, IT IS FALSE. On the other hand, the more
observations reported which confirm the predictions of a "law", the
higher the probability is that the law is true. No matter how many observations
are made, the possibility will always exist that the law is in fact false.
Creation
Most scientific arguments for and against
the probable existence of that which is “outside science”, outside the reality
that we know, are based on what we might call “micro” science – whether or not
evolution is true, whether or not there are self-organizing systems, whether or
not the big bang theory is consistent, etc. They miss a most remarkable, purely
objective, apparently true, scientific fact, which gives us great insight into
what we will call “macro” science. Simply stated, before we can legitimately
discuss whether or not a Creator must exist for trees and animals and human
beings to evolve, we need to ask what the probability is that a Creator must
exist for our very universe to exist. The apparent answer will surprise many.
At the time this note was written it was
generally accepted that all of space-time was created at or near a point in
time popularly known as the "big bang". By the time you read this,
science may have discovered a better description for the beginning second of
the cosmos, but the possible implications of current knowledge are too
interesting not to mention. Entropy is a measure of disorder. If a glass of
milk turns over, the milk will pour out onto the table, yet one will never see
milk flow from a table back into the glass. This is because the entropy
(disorder) of the system tends to increase over time. Another example, you may
pour cream into your coffee to lighten it, but the cream will never remove itself
to make the coffee black again. As a rule, complex systems tend to become more
disordered over time.
The universe we live in is a place of
amazingly low entropy, were it not so we would not be alive. Each of us is an
example of a highly ordered, low entropy, system. Every star, planet, rock,
tree, living creature, everything in the universe that is more ordered than the
diffuse interstellar gas clouds that surround us, is an example of a system
with varying degrees of low entropy. It is generally accepted that for our
universe to have the extremely low entropy it now has required as the
"starting point" at the big bang the selection of a virtually
infinitesimally tiny volume of the total phase space of all possible universes
(phase space is a complete mathematical description of any physical system).
To be more exact, the universe we live in
apparently began at a point constituting approximately 1 part in 10 raised
to the 10th power raised to the 123rd power of the entire phase space
volume of all possible universes! This is a deceptively large number, which in
fact cannot be written out! If you tried to write it out by writing the number
"1" on a piece of paper, you would have to write a 0 on every single
atom in the universe just to approach the number of zeros that follow the one,
even then you would not be close to writing out the entire number. This amazing
requirement for the initial condition at creation suggests that the odds are no
better than 1 in 10 raised to the 10th power raised to the 123rd power
that the universe in which we live was created by random chance. If the math
holds true, and this interpretation is as logical as it seems, it may mean that
the chance that the universe was created at random is about as close to
impossible as one can get!
Many find comfort in believing that, even
if science has not yet discovered all of the laws, every physical event from
creation onward evolved according to a set of absolute physical laws. The
mathematically precise physical structure of the universe, the tiny place we
have in the incredible vastness of space, the biologic characteristics we share
with animals, etc., all may be interpreted as evidence of a purely mechanistic
process that governs our lives. Yet if we consider the complexity of that which
we observe, and if we are honest with ourselves, we cannot escape the intuitive
feeling that there is an "order" in the chaos that cannot be
explained by science.
Even if the odds against the random
selection of the total phase space of all possible universes that is required
for the observed entropy are not quite as impossible as they seem, we simply
cannot ignore the intuitive feeling that the odds are almost infinitely against
the random creation and existence of all of the following: a) matter and energy
and the physical laws that govern them; b) the expansion of the universe from a
tiny speck to the vast expanse which we see today; c) the defeat of entropy and
the combination of matter and energy in exactly the right way to form every
object in the universe; d) inanimate chemicals structured in precisely the
correct way to create "life"; e) biologic processes that give the
human species consciousness at a level that supports rational thought; etc.
Think about this for awhile. No matter how strongly we may feel that life is
the result of physical processes only, if we are objective we must admit that
it intuitively seems virtually impossible that a purely random physical process
could create the almost infinitely complex, yet extremely well ordered, low
entropy, universe in which we live.
While it seems that the underlying laws of
the universe could not have been created by chance, I have no explanation why
it also often appears that the observable physical universe deterministically
evolves according to complex statistical laws. I don't know why reality is such
that life appears to many as nothing more than a complex, biologic process,
riddled with physical imperfections. I am not willing to say with certainty
that the universe does not appear to exhibit many of the characteristics of a
physical entity devoid of the non-physical. None-the-less, I am convinced that
there is little, perhaps no, objective statistical support for the conclusion
that the world in which we live is the result of purely physical processes. No
matter how hard we might try to ignore them, we are confronted by astronomical
odds against random selection of a set of initial conditions that could create
a low entropy universe that exhibits the complexity of our universe. We are faced
with a mystery that, if we are honest with ourselves, at the very least leaves
us with the possibility that the observable physical universe is not "all
there is".
It is very, very, important to understand
that, no matter what you may have been told or what you may think, no human
being has any idea whatsoever what the fundamental physical nature of the
universe really is. The consensus is that our universe began as a single,
almost infinitely massive, almost infinitely small, "speck". As of
this date, no one has been able to comprehend, let alone explain, the mechanism
during the microsecond of the Planck epoch that allowed the universe to expand
from a dot smaller than an atom, into the billions upon billions of stars that
fill our universe. Anyone who takes the time to try to visualize billions of
stars bursting out of a pinhead, will realize the impossibility of making
"sense" of what appears to be a scientific fact. No one has a clue
how to understand the reality of a quantum particle that is quite literally
"everywhere" at the same time. No one knows how the "action at a
distance" that relativity suggests cannot occur, actually does occur, if
it really does. No one knows how to define or quantify "human consciousness".
There is only one scientific deduction we can be relatively certain of, and
that is that human beings do not know and understand the fundamental nature of
physical reality.
What all this tells us is that we have no
real idea at all what the true nature of our life on earth is, or what the
possibilities are for our continued existence after death! We are so much a
part of the tiny portion of universe in which we live that we seldom realize
the significance of our limitations. Instead of viewing our lack of knowledge
as profound and exciting, we tend to accept with curious apathy that there may
be far more to our existence than we know.
At this point in our journey I am not
trying to suggest that anything exists beyond our perceived universe, nor am I
trying to suggest that nothing exists beyond our known universe. I am not
suggesting if we survive the grave we will find ourselves in some dimension
beyond the one we can sense and measure during our physical lives, perhaps so,
perhaps not. Nor am I suggesting we can never sense and know about that which
lies beyond the grave, if anything, until we experience physical death, perhaps
so, perhaps not.
What I am saying is scientific study and
statistical analysis are absolutely limited to that which we can observe and
measure. The absence of scientific proof does not make it less likely, nor make
it more likely, that something, which is true and real, lies beyond human
observation. The important thing to remember is that no matter how likely or
unlikely you "FEEL" it is that something exists, if it is beyond
human ability to observe, you CANNOT "KNOW" if it is likely or
unlikely that it does exist.
This is true for the probability of the
existence of life after death. From a scientific standpoint we simply cannot
say it is likely that life after death exists. It is equally true that we
absolutely cannot say it is likely that life after death does not exist. While
scientists may offer attributes of physical death as proof that human beings do
not exist beyond the grave, the real answer to the question lies beyond human
ability to scientifically prove, one way or the other. Indeed, we cannot say
anything objective at all about the possibility of life after death. If life
after death does not exist, it does not exist, period. If life after death does
exist, it does exist, period.
Many of you will read what we have just
discussed, agree with it, and then let it fade out of your mind as you move on
to whatever comes next. If what we are saying is true, it is fundamental and
“profound”. Perhaps it will be important and helpful to you later on when we
discuss what may be the most important choice in your life. For this reason we
urge you to think carefully about what has been said, being certain you understand
what we are talking about.
For those who might think the conclusions
above are not based on science, we reprint Roger Penrose’s (an eminent
physicist who in 1969, along with Stephen Hawking, proved that all matter
within a black hole collapses to a singularity) short yet detailed analysis:
(from
the Emperor’s New Mind, Penrose, pages 339-345 copyright 1989,
Penguin
Books – out-of-print – often available in libraries & used book stores)
How special was the big bang?
Let us try to understand just how much of a constraint a
condition such as WEYL
= 0 at the big bang was. For simplicity (as with the above discussion) we shall
suppose that the universe is closed. In order to be able to
work out some clear-cut
figures, we shall assume, furthermore, that the number B of
baryons-that is, the
number of protons and neutrons, taken together-in the
universe is roughly given by
B = 10^80.
(There is no particular reason for this figure, apart from
the fact that,
observationally B must be at least as large as this; Eddington once claimed to have
calculated B exactly, obtaining a figure which was close to
the above value!
No-one seems to believe this particular calculation any
more, but the value 10^80
appears to have stuck.) If B were taken to be larger than
this (and perhaps, in actual
fact, B = infinity) then the figures that we would obtain
would be even more
striking than the extraordinary figures that we shall be
arriving at in a minute!
Try to imagine the phase space (cf. p. 177 of Penrose’s
book) of the entire universe!
Each point in this phase space represents a different
possible way that the universe might
have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with
a `pin' which is to be placed
at some point in the phase space (Fig. 7.19 not shown). Each different positioning
of
the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that
is needed for the Creator's
aim depends upon the entropy of the universe that is thereby
created. It would be
relatively `easy' to produce a high entropy universe, since
then there would be a
large volume of the phase space available for the pin to
hit. (Recall that the entropy
is proportional to the logarithm of the volume of the phase
space concerned.) But
in order to start off the universe in state of low
entropy-so that there will indeed be
a second law of thermodynamics-the Creator must aim for a
much tinier volume of
the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order
that a universe closely
resembling the one in which we actually live would be the
result? In order to
answer this question, we must first turn to a very
remarkable formula, due to Jacob
Bekenstein (1972) and Stephen Hawking (1975),
which tells us what the entropy
of a black hole must be.
Consider a black hole, and suppose that its horizon's
surface area is A. The
Bekenstein-Hawking formula for the black hole's
entropy is the:
Sbh
= A/4 + (kc^3 / Gh)
where k is Boltzmann's constant, c
is the speed of light, G is
constant, and h is Planck's constant over 2pi. The essential
part of this formula is the
A/4. The part in parentheses merely consists of the
appropriate physical constants.
Thus, the entropy of a black hole is proportional to its
surface area. For a
spherically symmetrical black hole, this surface area turns
out to be proportional to
the square of the mass of the hole
A = m^2 x 8pi(G^2/c^4).
Putting this together with the Bekenstein-Hawking
formula, we find that the
entropy of a black hole is proportional to the square of its
mass:
Sbh = m^2 x 2pi (kG/hc)
Thus, the entropy per unit mass of a black hole is
proportional to its mass, and so
gets larger and larger for larger and larger black holes.
Hence, for a given amount
of mass-or equivalently, by Einstein's E = mc^2, for a given
amount of energy-the
greatest entropy is achieved when the material has all
collapsed into a black hole!
Moreover, two black holes gain (enormously) in entropy when
they mutually
swallow one another up to produce a single united black
hole! Large black holes,
such as those likely to be found in galactic centres, will provide absolutely
stupendous amounts of entropy-far and away larger than the
other kinds of entropy
that one encounters in other types of physical situation.
There is actually a slight qualification needed to the
statement that the greatest
entropy is achieved when all the mass is concentrated in a
black hole. Hawking's
analysis of the thermodynamics of black holes, shows that
there should be a
non-zero temperature also associated with a black hole. One
implication of this is
that not quite all of the mass-energy can be contained
within the black hole, in the
maximum entropy state, the maximum entropy being achieved by
a black hole in
equilibrium with a `thermal bath of radiation'. The
temperature of this radiation is
very tiny indeed for a black hole of any reasonable size.
For example, for a black
hole of a solar mass, this temperature would be about 10^-7
K, which is somewhat
smaller than the lowest temperature that has been measured
in any laboratory to
date, and very considerably lower than the 2.7 K temperature
of intergalactic space.
For larger black holes, the Hawking temperature is even
lower!
The Hawking temperature would become significant for our
discussion only if
either: (i) much tinier black
holes, referred to as mini-black holes, might exist in our
universe; or (ii) the universe does not recollapse
before the Hawking evaporation
time-the time according to which the black hole would
evaporate away completely.
With regard to (i), mini-black
holes could only be produced in a suitably chaotic big
bang. Such mini-black holes cannot be very numerous in our
actual universe, or
else their effects would have already been observed; moreover,
according to the
viewpoint that I am expounding here, they ought to be absent
altogether. As regards
(ii), for a solar-mass black hole, the Hawking evaporation
time would be some
10^54 times the present age of the universe, and for larger
black holes, it would be
considerably longer. It does not seem that these effects
should substantially modify
the above arguments.
To get some feeling for the hugeness of black-hole entropy,
let us consider what
was previously thought to supply the largest contribution to
the entropy of the
universe, namely the 2.7 K black-body background radiation.
Astrophysicists had
been struck by the enormous amounts of entropy that this
radiation contains, which
is far in excess of the ordinary entropy figures that one
encounters in other
processes (e.g. in the sun). The background radiation
entropy is something like
10^8 for every baryon (where I am now choosing `natural
units', so that
Boltzmann's constant, is unity). (In effect, this
means that there are 10^8 photons in
the background radiation for every baryon.) Thus, with 10^88
baryons in all, we
should have a total entropy of
10^88
for the entropy in the background radiation in the universe.
Indeed, were it not for the black holes, this figure would
represent the total
entropy of the universe, since the entropy in the background
radiation swamps that
in all other ordinary processes. The entropy per baryon in
the sun, for example, is of
order unity. On the other hand, by black-hole standards, the
background radiation
entropy is utter `chicken feed'. For the Bekenstein-Hawking
formula tells us that the
entropy per baryon in a solar mass black hole is about
10^20, in natural units, so
had the universe consisted entirely of solar mass black
holes, the total figure would
have been very much larger than that given above, namely
10^100.
Of course, the universe is not so constructed, but this
figure begins to tell us how
`small' the entropy in the background radiation must be
considered to be when the
relentless effects of gravity begin to be taken into
account.
Let us try to be a little more realistic. Rather than
populating our galaxies
entirely with black holes, let us take them to consist
mainly of ordinary stars-some
10^11 of them-and each to have a million (i.e. 10^6)
solar-mass black-hole at its
core (as might be reasonable for our own Milky Way galaxy).
Calculation shows
that the entropy per baryon would now be actually somewhat
larger even than the
previous huge figure, namely now 10^21, giving a total
entropy, in natural units, of
10^101.
We may anticipate that, after a very long time, a major
fraction of the galaxies'
masses will be incorporated into the black holes at their centres. When this
happens, the entropy per baryon will be 10^31, giving a
monstrous total of
10^111.
However, we are considering a closed universe so eventually
it should recollapse;
and it is not unreasonable to estimate the entropy of the
final crunch by using the
Bekenstein-Hawking formula as though the whole
universe had formed a black
hole. This gives an entropy per baryon of 10^43, and the
absolutely stupendous
total, for the entire big crunch would be
10^123.
This figure will give us an estimate of the total
phase-space volume V available
to the Creator, since this entropy should represent the
logarithm of the volume of
the (easily) largest compartment. Since 10^123 is the
logarithm of the volume, the
volume must be the exponential of 10^123, i.e.
V = 10^10^123.
in natural units! (Some perceptive readers may feel that I
should have used the
figure e^10^123, but for numbers of this size, the a and the
10 are essentially
interchangeable!) How big was the original phase-space volume
W that the Creator
had to aim for in order to provide a universe compatible
with the second law of
thermodynamics and with what we now observe? It does not
much matter whether
we take the value
W = 10^10^101 or W = 10^10^88
given by the galactic black holes or by the background
radiation, respectively, or a
much smaller (and, in fact, more appropriate) figure which
would have been the
actual figure at the big bang. Either way, the ratio of V to
W will be, closely
V/W = 10^10^123.
This now tells us how precise the Creator's aim must have
been: namely to an
accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.
This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even
write the number
down in full, in the ordinary denary notation: it would be
`1' followed by 10^123
successive `0 's! Even if we were to write a `0' on each
separate proton and on each
separate neutron in the entire universe-and we could throw
in all the other particles
as well for good measure-we should fall far short of writing
down the figure
needed. The precision needed to set the universe on its
course is seen to be in no
way inferior to all that extraordinary precision that we
have already become
accustomed to in the superb dynamical equations (
which govern the behaviour of
things from moment to moment.
But why was the big bang so precisely organized, whereas the
big crunch (or the
singularities in black holes) would be expected to be
totally chaotic? It would
appear that this question can be phrased in terms of the behaviour of the WEYL
part of the space-time curvature at space-time
singularities. What we appear to find
is that there is a constraint
WEYL = 0
(or something very like this) at initial space-time
singularities-but not at final
singularities-and this seems to be what confines the
Creator's choice to this very
tiny region of phase space. The assumption that this
constraint applies at any initial
(but not final) space-time singularity, I have termed The Weyl Curvature
Hypothesis. Thus, it would seem, we need to understand why
such a
time-asymmetric hypothesis should apply if we are to
comprehend where the
second law has come from.
How can we gain any further understanding of the origin of
the second law? We
seem to have been forced into an impasse. We need to
understand why space-time
singularities have the structures that they appear to have;
but space-time
singularities are regions where our understanding of physics
has reached its limits.
The impasse provided by the existence of space-time
singularities is sometimes
compared with another impasse: that encountered by
physicists early in the
century, concerning the stability of atoms (cf. p. 228). In
each case, the
well-established classical theory had come up with the
answer `infinity', and had
thereby proved itself inadequate for the task. The singular behaviour of the
electromagnetic collapse of atoms was forestalled by quantum
theory; and likewise
it should be quantum theory that yields a finite theory in
place of the `infinite'
classical space-time singularities in the gravitational
collapse of stars. But it can be
no ordinary quantum theory. It must be a quantum theory of
the very structure of
space and time. Such a theory, if one existed, would be
referred to as `quantum
gravity'. Quantum gravity's lack of existence is not for
want of effort, expertise, or
ingenuity on the part of the physicists. Many first-rate
scientific minds have
applied themselves to the construction of such a theory, but
Without success. This
is the impasse to which we have been finally led in our
attempts to understand the
directionality and the flow of time.
It
seems that the only reasonable theories that might argue against the physical
reality of Penrose’s conclusions belong to the multiverse
/ manyworlds school of thought, with perhaps the most
promising being Andrei Linde’s idea that our universe
is the result of a quantum fluctuation (allowing for the possibility of
probabilistic multiverses where observation selects
only one or a few actual universes). It seems fair to say that all such
theories are very highly speculative, and that being so highly speculative none
present a real challenge to the Penrose calculations.
The
truly amazing conclusion that we are confronted with is the objective fact that
it appears that the creation of our universe cannot be the result of chance.
Many will dismiss this fact because they misunderstand the solid science behind
it, and the enormous significance if in fact it is true. For anyone with an
open mind, the objective fact that our universe cannot be the result of chance,
while perhaps not 100% conclusive, offers an extraordinarily strong argument
that a Creator must exist. We will return to that question a bit later, after
we discuss the difference between truth, belief, and faith.
Why?
Before leaving our discussion of the
scientific method, we should note the interesting, apparently absolute, limit
whereby the question "how" becomes the question "why".
Let's jump ahead 10,000 years, and assume that a unified field theory has been
discovered. A unified field theory is a theory that describes the behavior of
all forces and elements according to a set of fairly simple laws. If and when
such a theory is "proved" we may in fact have succeeded in explaining
the past, present, and future behavior of all observed matter and energy.
However the ultimate questions will remain. Why were the unified forces that
control energy and matter created? Why do they exist? Who or what is the source
of such primordial forces if they are the most fundamental of forces? These
will still be unanswered, and it is not hard to see, will remain unanswerable.
Science will have succeeded in fully
describing the forces seen in nature, and their effects on matter and energy. The
question "how" forces work will, for the most part, have been
answered. But an explanation of the creation, the existence, the source of the
forces, the answer to "why" such forces exist, will be missing. The
ultimate question, "WHY?", most clearly defines the limits of science
and human beings.
Without realizing it, we constantly bump
against this invisible wall that surrounds us and limits our knowledge. We know
that the force of gravity causes objects to be attracted to each other, but why
is this so? Think about it a few minutes. Obviously gravity needs to exist to
prevent objects from flying apart, but why not have a gravity that is half as
strong, or maybe two times stronger? At a more fundamental level, why does it
matter if objects fly apart or stay together? Why do sub-atomic particles group
together to form atoms that form molecules that eventually form us? We can
reason that laws act like they do to preserve the order of the universe, but
that answer really begs the question why the universe has any order in the
first place?
In this increasingly scientific era, many
of us have lost the wonder we once had when we looked at the physical world.
For example, we take for granted the widely accepted fact that all that is in
the universe started as an almost infinitesimally small speck of energy/matter.
Because science appears to be able to tell us "how" the universe
evolved from a tiny fraction of a second after the "big bang" up to
today, we assume that science can tell us "why" that initial speck
exponentially exploded into that which surrounds us. Yet science cannot explain
the ultimate origin and existence of what we euphemistically call physical
"reality". Despite all that we have discovered, despite what future
insights the scientific method may yield, science cannot deduce the origin of
the universe. Each of us should recognize, and be continually amazed by, the
infinite complexity of the reality that surrounds us that appears to have
evolved from infinite simplicity. We should live in a state of wonder at the
fact that the question "why" is a profound mystery beyond the ability
of science and humankind to answer.
We should note in passing that the anthropic principle points out that if the laws of the
universe were not suitable for our present existence on earth, we would simply
not be here to ask the question "why"? Yet applying that principle to
the question "why are the laws like they are" invites a less than
satisfactory, circular, answer. If we are here because the laws are as they
are, that does not lead to the logical conclusion that the laws are as they are
because we are here, so we are left without an answer to our basic question.
The anthropic answer, along with every other
reasonable answer one can give to what we might call an intermediate version of
the question "why", allows us to continue to ask the ultimate
question "why"? In response to the answer that the laws of the
universe are as they are because they must be so for us to be here, the very
real question may still be asked, "why" are we here? Perhaps the only
answer we can give to the question "why do forces exist and behave as they
do" is "just because" they do. Perhaps, however, the answer is
that they behave the way they were designed to behave.
The more we learn, the more humble science
becomes. What seemed obvious, now seems vague. If humankind cannot know
anything with complete certainty, then science is not the solid rock it appears
to be. Scientific discoveries possess an ephemeral quality seldom recognized by
observers. Since science has not, and perhaps cannot, discover fundamental laws
that guide the physical universe, the failure of modern theories may be the
precursor to incredible discoveries which challenge concepts of space and time,
uncertainty and determinism, entropy and order, etc. As science matures, the
idea that (for want of a better description of the unknown) meaningful fifth
and sixth and seventh dimensions may exist seems to be an increasingly
comfortable one. No matter what the future of science brings, it is a logical,
absolute, fact that unless the answer is somehow "revealed" to us,
the ultimate question will remain, "WHY?"
Truth, Belief, & Faith
We have discussed the fact that we can
never be certain anything is true. We have noted that since human knowledge is
finite, all attempts at proving things must start with unprovable
assumptions. We have considered the limitations on human understanding which
make all human assertions of fact simply statements of belief. Does all this
mean what we believe to be true but cannot prove is any less true? Again, the
answer is no. If something is true it is true whether or not you prove, believe
in, or have even thought about, its truth.
Literally billions of ideas and beliefs
can be suggested to be true. We can propose assumptions, and make eloquent
arguments based on those assumptions, which will send us off in any direction
we might wish to go. Every day we see people who are certain of the absolute
truth of their beliefs, never realizing they have subconsciously talked
themselves into accepting as fundamentally and absolutely true that which is,
and must be, based on their assumptions. Thus, we can argue persuasively that
we are descendants of martians, that inanimate
objects talk to each other, that we really do not exist at all, etc., etc.,
etc. Since we cannot know whether or not something or someone exists beyond our
perception, we cannot know if the wildest of ideas may in fact be true
somewhere outside our current existence. Yet even though "anything"
may be true, we must not allow ourselves to become casual observers applying
logical arguments to first "prove", and then "disprove",
fundamental beliefs about the nature and meaning of life. What we want to
emphasize is that the reader should put aside all assumptions and beliefs; take
a journey into their heart, mind, and soul; and then decide what they want to
believe is true.
What is true is true. What then is the
difference in believing something to be true, and proving something is true, if
indeed the belief is true? The difference is not in the truth of the matter,
for the belief itself is either true or not regardless of any belief as to its
truth. Rather the difference lies in the realization that what appears
absolutely true MAY not be true. That realization, and the humility that should
accompany it, emphasizes the importance of reviewing one's beliefs. If we
cannot prove anything, how do we determine what is true? If the best we can do
is believe something is true, what good is that? The answer lies in what we
just said, if what we believe to be true is true, then not being able to prove
it is true is not important.
We have been talking as though we start
with the belief that everything we seek to prove is untrue, and then go from
there. The fact is that we have built into our existence a set of assumptions
that certain things are true, assumptions that we base our strongest beliefs
on. For example, though nothing can be proven beyond doubt, few would argue the
world they live in does not actually exist, or a ball thrown into the air will
not fall back to earth, or people do not grow older. Few doubt or question the
solid reality of any of the events that make up everyday life, from the
esoteric proposition the sun will rise to the reality of mundane chores
associated with living.
All you are, all you have been, everything
about your life contributes to your belief in the truth of millions upon
millions of things. Your life, and your perception of it, is an incredibly
intricate web of observations, feelings, and experiences, all parts of your
existence, none divisible, all making you, you. Perhaps humans have some
inexplicable intuition that gives them insight into what is actually true,
perhaps not. The fact is that all anyone can do is to use all the abilities
they have to determine what is true. All you can do is to do what you can to
think, and analyze, and test, and rethink, until you believe something is true.
In many cases the scientific method
appears to serve us well when we search for the "truth". This is
particularly so when we sort through results of objective tests to analyze
which drug is most effective, what car is best, etc. In other cases logic
proves inadequate and "feelings" seem a better guide. Philosophy and
religion are both ill suited to scientific inquiry. Because they deal with that
which is beyond human perception, philosophical and religious beliefs must come
from within each individual, and must be based on all that makes an individual
a unique human being. Such beliefs grow when experiences of life combine with
that illusive quality that makes each of us the singular person we are.
How much, if any, of the process of
determining such fundamental beliefs is guided by insight, and how much is a
product of heredity and environment, is a question without answer. I have seen
many people, and have myself been, paralyzed by the fear that what I believed
to be true might be false. Over the years I have come to believe that if anyone
puts a sincere effort into determining what is true, and what is good, they
will succeed. Even though they will never be able to "prove"
anything, what they find themselves believing to be true and good will be,
perhaps even if not perfectly correct, what actually is true and good. There is,
of course, no proof for such a belief, yet for me it is fundamentally true.
I am not suggesting that someone who has
determined his or her answer to a question before searching for it will ever
find the true answer. Those who want to prove their point, even if it is only
to themselves, will inevitably mold everything to fit their answer. With
varying degrees of discomfort, they will reach their previous conclusion every
time. What I am saying is that I am convinced that those who search their
hearts, minds, and souls to understand life will find themselves believing
certain things to be true and right. Perhaps these more or less inherent
beliefs are simply products of human existence and thought. Perhaps, however,
they are insights into profound fundamental truths.
What about the times when you feel
strongly that something is or might be true, but are uncertain of those
feelings because, to some degree, your beliefs lie outside human perception or
experience? Beyond mere "belief" is something called "faith".
When our beliefs are strong we may choose to have faith in their truth. What
then is "faith"? In part faith is having an intense conviction what
you believe to be true is in fact true, but it is more than that. Real faith in
the truth of something is a product of your total being. It is not only what
you believe to be true, but what you want to be true. Faith is a total
commitment by you to believe that what you think should be true is true, that
what you think should be right and good is in fact right and good.
Those who have faith vary in their
intensity of belief. Some are so convinced of the goodness of what they have
faith in that, no matter what happens to cast doubt on their beliefs, they are
determined to hold onto their faith for as long as they live. For them there is
no alternative, they have faith that what they believe to be true is, if truth
exists at all, true. Others have a faith that may be weakened by the
conflicting beliefs of friends, or by the influence of unexpected events.
You cannot have faith in something or
someone simply because there is nothing better to believe in. Faith cannot be
based on negative choices, but must be based on a real, strong, sometimes
total, desire that what you believe should be true actually is true. You must
want what you have faith in to be true. Since nothing can be fully proved or
disproved, unless truth has been somehow revealed, that which people have faith
in is, for them, that which is true.
The End May Be Just The Beginning
What is worth having faith in? Earlier we
said if your existence ends with the death of your body it is virtually
inconceivable that life has any meaning at all. Your existence has meaning only
if you continue to exist in some form or fashion after the death of your body.
So it seems imperative, if there is to be any reason and purpose to your life,
that you prove or believe or have faith in an existence beyond the grave. Since
it looks like no one can prove they continue to exist after death, the question
is whether or not you choose to believe you do. Yet existence beyond the grave
lies so far beyond human perception and observation, beyond human comprehension
and understanding, that human feelings about such existence are inadequate to
base substantial beliefs on.
Then is this a matter you should have
faith in? Your answer to that question, if it is to be more than a casual one
which will not last, must be based on what you believe life is "all
about", not only after death but also right now. If you are to have faith
in a life after death you need to believe people are more than biologic
creatures. To be worth having faith in, to be worth wanting, life beyond the
grave must be more than just existing through time. It must offer a hope of
something worth living for, of "goodness", perhaps of joy.
We may imagine many different things about
life beyond the grave. We may believe in a metaphysical extension of life,
somehow self-perpetuating and dependent only on a communion of some sort of
mental energy unique to human beings. We may believe in reincarnation, whereby
forms change but human beings never die. There is no limit to what we may
believe life after death will be like. As we have said, no one can prove us
wrong, or right.
Speculation about the "physical"
nature of life after death can be little more than guesses, and offers little
help in making a decision whether or not we would want to live in such a world.
If we are more than our physical selves it would seem that there must be more
to look forward to in a life after death than the "physical" aspects
of that life. We need to find out if there is something beyond the physical
that every human must do if they want to be more than worthless travelers in
time.
While we cannot say that it is
“objectively” likely or unlikely, if you continue to exist after physical death
does it not seem "intuitively” likely you will retain the intellect and
capacity for rational thought we have postulated is essential to your
uniqueness? The intuitive answer is that it is indeed likely rational
intellectual thought will exist in a world beyond the physical. It seems that
if you are to remain you, the unique intellect which is a fundamental part of
your existence in your present life would continue to exist in the next. Furthermore,
it seems intuitively likely that rational thought beyond the constraints of
earthly boundaries would be of a much greater character.
If we survive the grave does it not seem
intuitively likely that the most positive aspects of our life on earth will
also be positive features of the world after death? In looking for a reason to
believe in an extension of life beyond the grave that is worth living for, and
thus worth having faith in, you must look at this world and this life. Life on
earth is the only basis we have on which to project what a world beyond the
grave might be like. You must find the most positive aspects of this life, you
must find in this life a reason to believe life has meaning and purpose.
Perhaps you will find “good” in this life that gives you a reason to believe,
or have faith, that there is a life after death filled with "joy". To
help you choose what to believe about life, now and beyond the grave, we need
to explore our present lives. We need to consider not only the
"physical", but also the "non-physical" aspects of our
present existence.
If and when you understand life, and know
what your life could be like both now and after death, you will be able to
choose whether or not you want to have faith that there is something worth
living for now and after death. You may choose to have faith that your life has
meaning and purpose. You may find that you want to have faith your life will
not end at the grave. You may choose to live the kind of life now you hope you
will live after death. In the rest of these notes, we will be considering
whether there is "good" in this life that makes it worth having faith
in a life after death.
If we do continue to exist after our
physical deaths, then each moment of our lives, both before and after death,
may have meaning and purpose. If we survive death then each of us has been, is,
and will continue to be a unique being. What then is the meaning and purpose of
life? What should, or must, you do? What choices do you have right now?
Many philosophers, psychiatrists, and
others, argue persuasively that self-satisfaction is the most important human
goal. A society made up of individuals who maximize their own well being is a
society at its best. They conclude that when each of us reaches our own point
of maximum pleasure, all of us benefit. What constitutes the maximization of
pleasure is a hotly debated question, answered in countless, totally different
ways. Ideas range from doing anything that makes you feel "good", to
espousing intense dedication to such diverse things as political causes,
meditation, or simply the pursuit of pleasure.
Many suggest the free market works well in
selecting what is worthwhile in life, with various methods of providing
pleasure coming and going as demand identifies, supplies, and satisfies needs.
Others argue the best society is made up of family groups that seek to maximize
the family's happiness. Some extend the group to include friends and even
strangers, but often exclude those outside the group's geographic and social
spheres. Volume after volume after volume has been written describing what
various people believe life is all about. Multitudes of people have dedicated
large parts of their lives to convincing others of the truth of their ideas and
the wisdom of following their examples.
Instead of closely examining and
eliminating one at a time what I believe to be the fallacies and follies of
humankind, I will suggest to you what many believe life is all about. If you
choose to know and understand what is said, I believe you will discover what is
true and gives meaning and purpose to life. We are about to look for something
in life worth living for, something to have faith in.
What many suggest is worth living for is
love. Not what we often call love, but that which is the most profound of human
experiences.
LOVE
The love we are talking about is far more,
incredibly more, than that which we normally call love. Love is the most
positive of human experiences. It is the deepest, most profound, of human relationships.
It is the giving of all you have to give to someone else.
What is love? Love is beyond definition,
it cannot be described in words. No effort to describe love can in any way
answer what love is. Love is beyond human ability to analyze and evaluate. Yet
each of us has, as a part of our very being, an understanding of love. The love
we are talking about is basic, profound, a fundamental part of our existence.
In each and every one of our hearts and minds, and I believe souls, we know and
understand what love is.
Love is so deeply a part of human beings,
so far beyond definition and description, so elusive to those who halfheartedly
seek it, that you will know and understand love only if you engage in a very
personal search of heart and mind and soul which leads to the very essence of
your being. To understand life it is necessary to understand love. No one can
make you understand love, you alone must be willing to take the inward journey.
I will repeatedly urge you to do so, for nothing can take the place of that
understanding.
Most of us think we already know what love
is, when in fact few of us do. Sometime during our lives the majority of us
will believe we have found true love, even though we have not. Many of us will
go to our graves believing we have loved, when we never loved at all.
For most people, their understanding of
love is hidden deep within. Each time they glimpse love and feel it trying to
surface, they push it back to its resting-place. Few are willing to search for
the love that may be found inside them, few are willing to let their knowledge
of love surface. I believe each and every person who truly wants to know and
understand love, and who is willing to search and search and search their
heart, mind, and soul, will know and understand love.
The search is difficult, it is perhaps the
most difficult task you will ever face. If you search your heart, mind, and
soul you will find yourself surrounded by multitudes of conflicting feelings,
questions, doubts, etc. These will draw your attention away from your search,
and may make it seem futile and worthless. If you try to deal with each
distraction as it appears, you will end up floundering from side to side,
without direction, your goal appearing on the horizon yet never getting closer.
Before answering the many questions love
poses, before satisfying your doubts, you should complete your search. Search
your heart, mind, and soul, your being, to know and understand love. Set aside
all questions, doubts, and fears, put all your energy and thought into your
search. First understand love, then ask and answer questions about it.
It is very hard to stay on track. Your
search will take you through and among daily experiences and deep memories
filled with the emptiness, cruelty, and physical pleasures of a world where
love is seldom seen. The cold glance of strangers on the street, the reality of
poverty in the shadow of enormous wealth, watching people get sick and die a seemingly
final death. Thoughts of food, drink, luxury, sex, all the physical pleasures
you could be enjoying. All these pull at your attention and cause your mind to
drift. Your focus is blurred as first one thing and then another interrupts
your search.
Even when you think you have broken
through the fog and are running toward your goal, a tiny diversion, a moments
pause, and you are flung back into that strange and cloudy state of doubts, not
knowing where, if anywhere, you are. Back in the haze, you may find yourself
believing you reached your goal when you did not. This feeling of success can
be strong, and the rush of living may make it seem even more real since little
time is available to stop and think about who you are, where you have been, and
where you are going. What can happen is that you can make yourself believe you
understand love, when in fact all you have seen is false illusions of love. You
may wrongly conclude that love is really not that special at all.
To allow yourself to stop short of your
goal, to allow yourself to believe you understand love when you do not, is to
condemn yourself to the deep darkness shared by all who live without love. A
darkness few recognize, a blackness the depth of which can be appreciated only
by those who find love. Only those who finish their search will know and
understand love.
Completing the search requires a
willingness to start. It is far easier to live your life following whatever
sort of daily routine you have, over the years, consciously and subconsciously
constructed for yourself, a routine designed to make you feel good about your
life. For most of us this means mixing with our daily activities that bring us
self-satisfaction and physical pleasure, just enough "good" deeds to
make us feel we are "good" people, even though we are not. For better
or worse you nurture an image of yourself you have been developing since
childhood. An image that dictates what is expected of you and rules how you
act, making your life a repeating cycle of yesterdays.
Even if you do not feel good about your
life, you are usually more comfortable not straying too far from the familiar.
It is easier to live a "normal" life than to question and search and
change. Yet if you want to know and understand love you must give the search
your all, without fear of, or resistance to, the changes it may bring in your
life. You need to search and search until you know what it means to love, what
it would be like to live in a world where each and every person loves every
other person.
This is more than a mental exercise. If
after your search you believe love is what all people should give each other,
then you have perhaps not only found what gives life meaning and purpose right
now, but also found that which makes it worth having faith in life beyond the
grave. At this point I am not suggesting that you embrace without question the
ideas of eternity and the goodness of love. I am saying you will find it
virtually, or perhaps totally, impossible to decide whether or not to believe
that love is worth living for, if you do not know and understand what love is.
Only when you are willing to search your heart, mind, soul, your very being, to
know love, will you understand the decision to love or not to love. Only then
can you make your choice.
In the notes that follow we will give some
examples of love, discuss what those who love do, and talk in general about
love. Yet nothing we say will bring you an understanding of love, only your
search can do that. Your search will begin whenever you want it to, and will
end whenever you want it to. The notes are useful only if you take the hours,
days, months, or years, whatever it takes, to complete your search. If you stop
when you find that half-hearted, fleeting, shallow thing most people call
"love", your efforts will have been futile and worthless. You will
have failed to find what love really is.
It is very easy to stop short of
understanding love. The idea of pure, real love, is so alien to our
experiences, so foreign to the world we live in, we subconsciously, and even
consciously, reject it as a non-existent fantasy. Yet it does exist. Because we
seldom, if ever, witness such love does not mean it is less than real. Because
the experiences of our past and the realities of our daily existence attack
love does not mean it is a fantasy. Our doubts and fears, desires and
temptations, weaknesses and longing to "live", cannot change the fact
that pure, true, real, love exists, and that people can love one another.
If you love someone who is hungry, you
will give them food; someone who is thirsty, you will give them water; someone
who is cold, you will give them your coat. If you love someone who is sick, you
will care for them until they are well; someone who is in prison, you will
visit them; someone without a home, you will take them home with you. These are
all acts and deeds those who love do for the people they love. Yet love is far
more than the doing of any particular act or deed. While those who love people
will do the things we just mentioned, simply doing "good deeds" is
not the same as loving. Many who do not love do "good deeds". Many
who say they love, and perhaps even believe they love, if they love at all, do
so only halfheartedly and from moment to moment.
It is hard to say that someone who feeds a
person when they are hungry and then leaves them to find their own shelter,
really loves that person. It is hard to call love the giving of money to an
orphanage, when children's cries for attention and companionship go unanswered.
It is difficult to understand how someone can say they love a person when they
make that person feel they must applaud their donor for every gift they
receive. Love is far more than acts, deeds, words, or feelings. To love
someone, really love someone, is to give them true, deep, pure, indefinable,
indescribable love. It is giving to others the love that you will find and
understand if you complete your search of heart, mind, and soul.
We said we seldom, maybe never, see true
love. You may have witnessed, or been part of, one of those rare occasions when
people truly love other people. When a mother gently hugs her baby and love
flows between them, when two people’s eyes meet and they exchange soft smiles
that flow from the love in their hearts, when someone gives all they have to
help someone in need. These are moments of true love, moments we choose to give
one another. What we are talking about is love - true, pure, real, love.
If you love, you will help a stranger who
needs help, even if it puts you in danger. If you love, you will think first
about the needs of those you love, and only then think about your own needs. If
you love, you will do what you can, all you can, for everyone you meet.
Those who really understand love know in
their heart, mind, and soul that love is the greatest thing in life one human
being can give another. If you truly love someone you are giving them your very
best. We have reached an awkward point in trying to use language to describe a
state of being which affects the totality of human existence. How can we
adequately describe how a person who truly loves thinks, feels, and acts? We
can't. Only you can search within yourself to know and understand love. Unless
you have completed your search of your heart, mind, and soul and know and
understand love, you will not understand what I am saying, or what anyone else
is saying, when we tell you about the love we find in our heart, mind, and
soul. So how can you understand what we are saying when we say love is the best
part of human life?
Regardless of human inability to describe
love, you and I and everyone else can look inward to know and understand love.
And when you, or I, or anyone else, completes their search and knows and
understands love, we know and understand that love is indeed the most positive
element of human existence. We know that the very best each of us can do is to
love. We may find it difficult to talk about love with someone who has not yet
finished their search, however once a person understands love they join all
others who have completed their search in a communion of knowledge which makes
communication of ideas about love easy, and makes what is said clear.
If you have trouble visualizing love, it
may be helpful for you to travel in your mind to a world where pure love is
freely given by every human being to every other human being. Do not let the
fact that such a world does not exist around you discourage you. We may never
choose to fill our world with pure love. Yet because each of us can choose
love, such a world is possible! Let yourself feel in your heart, mind, and soul
the love such a world would be filled with.
Visualize in your heart, mind, and soul a
place where you love every person, and where every person loves you. Feel the
joy of love flowing from you to every person, and from every person to you. No
war, or even anger, no prisons. No loneliness, no hunger, no poverty. Instead
that world would be an incredible place filled with peaceful joys of love not
only shared by, but in fact chosen by, all who live there.
It may take minutes, or it may take years,
for you to enter that world in your imagination and feel the glowing warmth and
peace. Now is the time to start your trip. If visions of a place filled with
love do not come to you today, try again tomorrow, or next week. Keep letting
your heart, mind, and soul drift off to a world of pure love. Love every person
you meet in that world and let them love you in return.
At this point you should sit back and
think about what is being said, for in these few pages we have jumped from
looking for something worth living for, to the suggestion that you search
yourself for an understanding of love, to the idea that all people should love
one another. If you have not searched your heart, mind, soul, your very being,
and do not yet understood love, what we are saying may seem interesting but not
profound. I wish I could think of words and logical arguments that would make
true, pure, real, love, crystal clear to you, but I can't. We are simply not
talking about the kind of understanding that comes from reasoned analysis. I
could fill these pages with elegant prose and poetry describing love, yet not
one word would have the power or effect that even a fleeting inward glimpse of
love has.
Your Best Is Good Enough
If
you understand love you know loving does not require you to mechanically follow
a set pattern of "right" actions. You know instead that if you love
you will do the best you can in every situation, even if you cannot determine
what the real solution is. If you love you do your best, and doing your best is
something you can always do. Doing your best simply requires that which you are
capable of, no more.
This does not mean loving is any easier because you do not have to know what
the "correct" answer is. On the contrary, to say love requires you to
do your best is to say that love requires of you all you have to give. Love
requires everything you can give, your total effort. By requiring only that
which you are capable of giving, it is always your choice whether you love or
don't love. If you understand love you know it is your choice, and your choice
alone, to love or not to love. It is a profound responsibility to be able,
every moment of your life, to love or not to love.
Two of the most misused words in the English language are the words
"can", and its opposite "cannot". Everywhere you go you
hear people saying they can't do something, or they can only do so much.
Everyone declares what he or she can and cannot do.
How are these words misused? The word "can" is frequently used to
announce a person's intention to do that which there was never any doubt of
their ability to do. Similarly, people say they "cannot" do that
which they can, but do not want to, do. The words can and cannot have become so
popular you seldom hear anyone say, "I don't want to go to the
movie", instead they say, "Sorry but I can't go".
If you are unable to do something, then you may say, "I cannot do
that" with the assurance that what you have said is correct. Yet when you
use the remarkable power of the word cannot to relieve the human mind of the
unwelcome responsibility of making a choice, you are not really relieved of
anything at all. If we are presented with the choice to do something, and we do
not choose to do it, we have made the choice not to do it. When faced with a
choice between doing what is right and what is wrong, failure to make a choice
is a decision not to do that which is right. Failure to choose to do right is,
in and of itself, wrong.
In day to day living, the most important effect of the word "cannot"
is the strengthening of a thoughtless, habitual denial of giving love. Since
love only requires that you do your best, something you can always do, you can
always choose to love.
Who Should You Love?
The following Notes will be very
difficult to read and accept if you have not completed your search of your
heart, mind, and soul. As you read them please do not reject what they say.
Complete your search, know and understand true, pure, real, love, before you
make your choices. Take all the time you need, days, weeks, months, to search
your heart, mind, and soul to know and understand love. Search your very being,
until you know and understand what it means to love everyone with true, pure, real, love.
If you love another human being you are
giving that human being your very best. If you love every human being you are
doing the very best you can do for each of them. Similarly, if they love you
they are doing the very best they can for you. It is not hard to see that a
world where each and every person loves each and every other person would be the
best possible world. Since each of us can love if and when we want to love, a
world filled with love is very much a possibility. Pure love is so rare a
quantity in daily life it may seem almost impossible that, if they are willing
to, people can love all other people. Yet they can. We can bring about a world
filled with love, a world that is worth living for.
Few of us
seriously expect to see a day on earth when all people love one another. There
are too many people for whom physical pleasure is more desirable than love.
Only the most optimistic dreamers hold hope for a world filled with love. So
what is the next best world? If you understand love you know you can love
people even if they do not love you. You can always choose to love, and if love
is the best you can do, does it not seem true that you should love even if you
are not loved? Does it not seem intuitively true that you should always choose
love?
Who should you
love? If loving is good, the question really becomes is there anyone you should
not love? If you understand love you know you can always love someone even if
the person you love hates you. When you hate those who hate you, you are doing
the same wrong to them they are doing to you. The natural reaction is to hate
those who hate you, but if you understand love you should, after deep thought
and consideration, reach the conclusion that since you never have to hate, you
should always love (we discuss a possible exception in a later note).
What if the
person who hates you continues to hate you, and does all kinds of evil to you
and to others without sign of remorse? Again, if you understand love you know
you can always love another person even if that person hates you. If you can
always choose to love people, does it not seem true that you should continue to
love them even if they hate you? If we agree that the best we can do in this
life, and in a life after death if one exists, is to love each other, the
answer seems clear. If it is your choice to love or not, you should choose to
love every moment of your earthly life. That means you should love even if you
are not loved.
Does this mean
you should never show any anger? If a child does something you know will hurt
them, and those who love them, you will be disappointed and "angry"
at both their actions, and perhaps at them. Yet anger that accompanies love is
far different than anger that comes from hate, and is perhaps not anger at all.
Such "anger" is in fact a deep and emotional concern for people,
which seeks to bring a person back to love. The "anger" of a person
who loves passes quickly when love is restored, and forgiveness is freely and
repeatedly given. If you understand love, you know that if you love someone who
hates you, you will forgive them each time they wrong you.
Loving someone
does not mean you must condone, or even tolerate, the wrongs they do. Many
people who love others and try to help them out of problems like gambling,
drinking, casual sex, etc., find themselves defending the other person and
slipping into their way of life. There is a fine line between being with people
and loving and helping them, and, in an attempt to reach them, accepting at
least part of their way of life. If at all times you keep in your heart, mind,
and soul what it means to truly love, you will have no trouble knowing where
that line is.
If you choose to
love, you will constantly have to decide what you should do in particular
situations. The natural tendency is to take a middle of the road position that
seems to be positive toward everyone involved without being too negative toward
yourself. You then declare that your decision is based on love, and all seems
well. Loving is not that easy, every single decision about love must be made
from your heart, mind, and soul.
If you want to
love you must search your very being for the answers love requires, and you
must be willing to accept without change the answers you find. You are driving
home from work, heading for a birthday party your wife and friends have been
planning for you. Traffic is heavy on the freeway. You see a man hitchhiking,
he seems unsure of his footing, as you get closer you can tell he is drunk. If
you stop you are sure to be late for your party, anyway, there are lots of cars
one of which is bound to pick him up, and he doesn't look like he will stagger
into the roadway.
You think,
"he may be pretending to be drunk so he can rob somebody, a policeman is
bound to drive by, I can call one as soon as I get home". Time to decide
what to do. You want to drive on by him and not have to decide, but you know
you have to stop or not stop. You stop your car, help the man into the
passenger seat, he mumbles the town he is going to and then passes out. When
you reach the right exit, you get off and try to rouse your passenger. He gets
sick and throws up, you stop to let him get some air and to clean out the car.
You're forty
minutes late for your party and there isn't a phone in sight. You think about
leaving him at a gas station, but you help him back in the car and go on. He
sees a bar, yells for you to stop, and curses you when you don't. You arrive in
his hometown, but he is too drunk to remember where he lives. You see a motel,
get the hitchhiker a room, and pay the desk clerk to look in on him to see he
is all right and to bring him breakfast the next morning. You buy him some
clean clothes and put them in the room.
You call home and
your wife slams the phone down. Finally you arrive home three hours late, your
guests have gone, your wife and kids are mad, you are hungry and cold. You think
about all the hassle you went through; the party you missed, your party; the
drunk hitchhiker cursing you. You think, I hope I never get into another
situation like this one, but if I do, I'll do it all over again. If you have
not completed your search you may not understand the love given the hitchhiker.
If you have, you know that if you choose love you would do the same things the
driver did.
You choose love,
that means everything is all right, right? In a very real sense the answer to
that question is yes, for you everything is all right. Everything being all
right does not, however, mean that your life on earth will be physically
better. Probably it will get much worse, for those who choose not to love will
be doubly hard on those who do. If you love someone you will not hit them when
they strike you. You will give them food, and drink, and shelter even if they
hate you and even if you end up not having enough for yourself. If you love
them you will help them when they are sick, even if they have cheated you and
cursed your stupidity. You will love them no matter what they do to you, with
the knowledge that you are doing what all human beings can and should do.
What if the
choice comes whether to kill someone, or be killed by them? The answer to that,
and other questions less dramatic but as hard or harder to answer, is to be
found in your knowledge and understanding of love. After you have completed
your search, and know and understand love, you will have to decide for yourself
whether or not our answer to the question about killing (which we discuss in a
later note - A Fanatic Life or A
Normal Life?), as well as our answers to the many other difficult questions,
are based on love, or not. We believe they are, but perhaps they are not. If
after you finish reading this you do not agree with one or more of the
conclusions we reach, you may want to get a free copy of our book “LOVE – In Search of a Reason for Living",
and the associated comments and notes, which discuss some of our more “radical”
views on complex questions.
We believe that
after you complete your search of heart, mind, and soul you will know and
understand that if anything is true, it is true that every moment of their
lives each and every human being can and should love each and every other human
being. There is no question in my heart, mind, and soul, that every person
should love every other person. Indeed, if every person chose to love every
other person as they would have those people love them, if every person chose
to love every other person as himself or herself, then each of us would do the
very best that we could do for every human being in the world. There would be
nothing more that we should do for each other, nothing more that we could do.
Difficult questions arise only because
there are people who are unwilling to love each other. There are many people
who chose not to love other people. There are many people who chose to hate
other people. Even though it is a difficult answer, it seems intuitively clear
to me that we should love those who love us and we should love those who hate
us. Yet many say that we should not love those who hate us, and want to harm
us. While I am convinced that we should love those who hate us, I cannot say with
absolute certainty that you will agree with me after you complete your search
of your heart, mind, and soul. The important thing to remember is that your
answers to the millions of questions you face throughout your life must come
from the knowledge and understanding of love that you will find when you
complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul. You must be absolutely
certain that you complete your search, and that you know and understand true,
pure, real, love.
One essential
warning, when faced with a hard question the normal human response is toward
self-interest, with elaborate arguments to justify the answer and make it seem
to be the result of love. The answer dictated by love is often (for some people
almost always) very, very, hard to accept. Yet I am convinced that if you
choose love you will accept the toughest of answers, and will find peace and
hope in your decisions. At all times you must be absolutely certain that your
answers are based on the knowledge and understanding of love you find in your
heart, mind, and soul. You must be certain that you always choose true, pure,
real, love.
War
One of the strange threads of lovelessness that pervades human history is the cruelty of
war. Leaders and their led have, from the ancient days of Viking conquest
through the mindless cruelty of Hitler to the countless deaths from hundreds of
mini-wars going on today to gang warfare in the streets, inflicted the most
horrendous tortures on their fellow human beings. The choice of war is easily
explained as a choice of power, riches, and the perverse pleasures of pain.
It is simple to define a group as an
enemy, be they another nation, race, or merely a group of people with whom you
disagree. For those who choose the physical pleasures of power over love, the
conversion of human beings into the enemy, and from an enemy into inanimate
targets, is simple and automatic. Perhaps it is accompanied by some form of
logical argument such as freeing of the oppressed, creation of a master race,
etc. Perhaps it is supported by a vocal cadre of men, women, and children
urging on the conquest of the infidel, the bourgeois, the communist, etc.
Whatever the rationale, the bad guy is defined, the good guy is identified, and
the war is on.
The view of the enemy depends a great deal
on the reason for the war. Initiators of the confrontation may see themselves
as breaking the bonds of economic oppression, and thus "love" the
victims but hate their leaders. They may see themselves as protectors of
freedom, or religious soldiers, or any other manner of noble warrior who hates
no one and who kills only so others may live. Or they may see themselves as
simple killers, whose mercenary skills are listed on employment applications.
Each of these groups, no matter what the rationale, kills people.
Soldiers sometimes adopt intense devotion
to their own families, as though they receive some cooling balm from those
relationships that makes their actions toward others less real. The
intensity of "love" of family that accompanies combat is a prelude to
the destruction of true love that is the inevitable result of war. Though it
may appear love plays some part in the motivation for fighting, by its very
nature love can only be a victim of warfare.
For those who understand love, it is not
hard to condemn war as the opposite of love. It is less easy, however, to
condemn the deterrence or containment of war. If, for example, the presence of
nuclear arms prevents a war, can such weaponry be a tool of peace? Can someone
threaten to destroy an entire nation out of love for its inhabitants? The
answer must come from your understanding of love. What does appear true to me
is that humankind will always have among it human beings whose choice of
physical pleasures will lead them to war. The person who espouses disarming
must accept that the consequence of doing so may literally be the death and/or
subjugation of the majority of the human race. Indeed, the elimination of the
nuclear weapons umbrella might return the world to confrontations between
troops armed with conventional weapons that would kill and maim millions.
On the other hand, a world without weapons
might be a world at peace. I am not suggesting that there could ever be a
reason for actually using nuclear weapons, as opposed to the maintenance of a
peacekeeping bluff. Nor am I suggesting love does not require an absolute
rejection of use of any violence, I believe it does. What I am saying is that
if we are to be honest with ourselves, we know that if we reject violence even
in self-defense we must accept that the possible consequences may include death
and subjugation.
You never "have" to commit any
violent act against another, it is always your choice to do so or not. If love
requires rejection of all violence against another human being, as I believe it
does, those who understand love should understand it is worth enduring pain and
torture in this life if accepting such pain leads to love, both now and in
whatever existence follows death. Subjugation and death followed by a joyful
eternal life of love seems far superior to a pleasant life followed by eternal
torment. We need to remember that no matter how hard we try to avoid our
inevitable deaths, the fact is that we live lives that are no more than single
grains among the infinite sands of time. We will discuss this difficult
conclusion in more detail in a later Note - A Fanatic Life or a Normal Life.
Where are we? We have said that since
existence may not end at death, you should live for the possibility you will
continue to exist after your physical death and, in anticipation of that
continued existence, should do the best you can while you are alive. We said it
is always your choice to love or not to love. We said that if you understand
love you know that the best anyone can do for other people is to love them, and
therefore you should always choose love. We said it is reasonable to believe
life after death will offer eternal love for those who choose to love each
other while on earth. We concluded that since each of us must die, it is totally
right to love on earth and enter a "heaven" of never-ending love,
even if choosing love brings immediate physical death, and it is totally wrong
not to love, even if not loving prolongs earthly life and pleasures.
Is It Bad To Be Not So Bad?
Good is good and bad is bad. I am not
about to suggest all wrongs are equal, that cheating on an exam is as bad as
murdering somebody, that watching an x-rated movie is as bad as rape, or that
yelling at your spouse is as bad as beating them. What I do suggest is that all
are bad. If you understand love you know if you choose to love you will do what
is good for people, not what is bad. If one person is guilty of cheating and
another is guilty of murder, it is in fact profoundly true that both have done
wrong.
Yet no-one loves all their lives, everyone
chooses to give in to temptations sometime, even if it means just a quick look
at a sex magazine or telling a lie to stay out of trouble. It may seem
"unfair" (though it really is not), but once done even the slightest
wrong can never be undone. You cannot uncheat a test,
unmurder a victim, take back an argument, undo an
affair, etc., etc., etc. We have, each and every one of us, done wrong. From
the moment we commit our first wrong, it is clear that we can never return to
the state of having done no wrong. Since even newborn children will choose to
do at least one wrong when given the opportunity, perhaps we can say that, with
one or two exceptions (members of many religions believe that one or more
people did no wrong during their lifetimes on earth), all of us are
"wrongdoers" from the moment of birth.
We have said you can choose to love any
time you want to. This is true no matter what you have done in the past, and
only requires that you want to love now. If you decide to love, what can you do
about your past? The only thing that can be done is that you can be forgiven
for having not loved. If you understand love, you know that if you love someone
you will forgive them the wrongs they have done to you. Think carefully about
love and forgiveness, and you will understand that if you love someone you will
always and repeatedly and truly forgive them for having not loved you. If you
love someone you forgive them for everything they do to you and to other people
(we discuss later the one exception to forgiveness).
The murderer who admits his wrong and asks
forgiveness is perhaps better off than the cheat who denies he has done
anything wrong and rejects any thoughts about needing forgiveness. If we have
all done wrong, and if those who love forgive, should we not quit trying to
keep score of each person's wrongs and merely forgive them when they ask for
forgiveness? If you love people, you will forgive them.
Can, and should, we forgive someone who does not want our forgiveness?
Perhaps it is true that we cannot forgive someone unless and until they seek
our forgiveness, perhaps not. Perhaps we cannot forgive someone unless and
until they are willing to accept our forgiveness, perhaps not. Yet whether or
not someone must seek forgiveness before they can be forgiven, does not in any
way alter the fact that we can love someone who is our enemy, who hates us, and
who does not want to be forgiven. If you know and understand the love that is
in your heart, mind, and soul, you know and understand that you can and should
love those who are your enemy and who hate you.
It is clear that if someone loves you and
seeks your forgiveness, you can and should love them, and out of that love you
will forgive them. No matter how many times they may ask you to forgive them,
if they seek your forgiveness and you love them, you will forgive them. If you
have completed your search and know and understand love, you also know and
understand that if someone is your enemy and hates you, you can and should love
them. If you love those people who hate you, and who do not seek forgiveness,
you will love them and do good to them, with the hope that they will choose to
love you and seek forgiveness. You can and should love both those who love you
and seek forgiveness, and those who hate you and do not seek forgiveness.
I am not saying that every person who
seeks forgiveness is sincere, perhaps most are not. I am not suggesting that
forgiving someone who has murdered means giving them a knife and gun. I am
saying that if you love someone you will tell them about love, so they will
want to love and will want forgiveness. If you understand love you know what it
means to love both those who seek forgiveness, and to love those who hate you
and do not want to be forgiven. To love those who hate you and who laugh at
forgiveness is perhaps the greatest test of your desire to love.
Men,
Women, & Love
If you listen to
people talking about love between men and women, you will quickly find that the
love they describe may have only a slight, or even no, resemblance to the love
you found when you searched your heart, mind, and soul. Many men and women
sincerely believe love is a physical attraction between the sexes that somehow
magically appears, must be cultivated by keeping the partner interested, and
sometimes simply fades away. From the rush of adrenaline and the pounding heart
which accompanies puppy love, to the passionate emotions of the
"perfect" affair, most of humankind accepts, and in fact welcomes,
the pleasant feelings of sexual thoughts and deeds.
All manner of
sexual experiences are accepted without question. From the "innocent"
enjoyment of a beauty contest, to the pleasures of casual sex, to unbelievable
perversions, people enjoy whatever degree of sexual excitement their background
and their "morals" will allow. Each of these indulgences is justified
by some form of argument about sex being only natural, and feeling good being
all right.
Even those whose
ideas about love and marriage are more traditional are often lulled into what,
for lack of a better description, may be called romantic love. The intense
emotions that accompany any relationship, plus the pressures of society,
combine to push people into playing stereotypical roles of dating. Men and
women do the best they can to be interesting to each other, to make each other
have a good time, and particularly not to rock the romantic boat. A general
fear of being unpopular, of losing favor with another person, of being an
oddball, runs through most people's minds.
When a man and a
woman fall into playing "the game of love" they lose their identity
as people who can truly love each other. Even though they may think what they
are feeling is love for one another, it is more often infatuation with the
romantic atmosphere and the idealized images of themselves they have created.
The question is asked with increasing frequency, can a man and a woman really
love each other for the rest of their lives?
Think a few
minutes about the love you found when you searched your heart, mind, and soul.
Then think about giving that love to another person, and in return being loved
by them. If you truly understand love, you will understand that true love can
exist between any two people, and that true love between a man and a woman can
exist. The love you find in your heart, mind, and soul is far more than
physical attraction, or magical moments. It is the ultimate, joyful
relationship between two people, where each person cares as much for the other
person as for himself or herself. If you understand love, you know it is the
deepest commitment one human being can give another.
If a man loves a woman, and a woman a man, when they look in each other's eyes they are not filled with lust, they are filled with love for each other. When their hands touch they are not filled with desire, they are filled with deep feelings of love. When they are with each other they know their love will not fade but will truly last their lifetimes. If they decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together as husband and wife, then they may choose to marry, and perhaps have a family. They may choose to live their lives, as many say, as if they were “one flesh”.
Some readers will throw their hands up and exclaim what simplistic mishmash this is, life is nowhere near as easy as that, nor are human relationships that simple. Those who understand love know that what I am describing is far from simplistic. If you truly understand love, you will understand that the love I am describing is the basis of the deepest and most profound relationship two people can have. What makes these sentences sound naive and childish is the tendency of all of us to equate the word love with what we have been told love is. Novels, movies, poets, television, rock stars, friends, parents, teachers, have told us love is some sort of fragile entity which comes and goes with adversity and changes in the weather.
To people who only understand love in so limited and weak a form, the idea of deep and permanent love shared by two people seems a romantic absurdity. It is little wonder they find it almost impossible to believe true love can exist between a husband and a wife. Yet those who have completed their search and know and understand love, understand what it means to say that a man and woman who love each other and choose to marry become as “one flesh”. They also know and understand why it is not said that the husband and wife become as “one being”. They continue to be individual human beings, each one continues to have the independent choice to love people, or not to love people. When we say they become as "one flesh", we are not saying that they become as “one being”, we are saying they continue to be two individuals united as if they are one by love.
I am not suggesting sex is evil, indeed having a family is one of the strongest expressions of love between two people who have chosen to marry and live their lives together as “one”. What I am saying is that if two people truly love each other, they are not attracted to each other by desire for physical pleasure, they are brought together by love. When they are with each other, they have real, true, deep, love, in their hearts.
It is often difficult for people who have decided to marry to understand why it is wrong for them to express their love before marriage through sex. They see sex between two people who are truly committed to becoming as one with each other for the rest of their lives, as being far different from sex between people whose commitment may be something less, or none at all. There is no question it is the commitment that unites two people, and not the legal institution of marriage. Yet marriage is much more than a legal formality.
If marriage was measured by its legal utility it would be quite insignificant, fortunately it is more than the granting of a license. Marriage is the moment of final commitment when two people declare to the world and to themselves their love and their decision to live as one. By tradition it is the point in time when two people join together, yet more than tradition, it is when human beings who truly love one another know in their hearts that their commitment is complete. It is the single act of marriage that marks the combining of two lives.
Any physical joining between two people before this total commitment is complete, weakens forever the bond of love between them. On their wedding day, a person becomes one with someone they love, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and in a deeper sense we cannot describe. When two people have sex before this final expression of their commitment, the sex they enjoy is not part of the ultimate joining of two human beings. Sex before marriage is something less than the final confirmation of the decision to give a lifetime of love to another person. It robs people of that one moment in their lives that should be the beginning of their marriage. Those who engage in sex before marriage, even if they do so the night before a marriage that will last their lifetimes, will feel a loss of love, however slight, in their hearts.
Those who wait until they are married will find much more than physical pleasure. They will be engulfed by a unique sea of joyful emotions as love joins two people who, for the first time in their lives, are truly one with each other. Each of us has only one opportunity to experience that moment, yet we have hundreds of opportunities to lose that chance forever.
What we are saying does not in any way mean that those who have already lost that unique moment, cannot still choose to love people for the rest of their lives. Those of you who have had sexual relations outside marriage, can choose to love all people, now and for the rest of your lives. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to love and marry the person with whom you had sexual relations. If you do not have the opportunity to marry that person, it does not in any way change the fact that it is your choice to love people, or not to love them. From this moment on, it is your choice, and your choice alone, to love all people, and perhaps to marry one of them, or not to love. If you have not loved in the past, you can make the choice to give to all people, now and for the rest of your life, the true, pure, real, love you find in your heart, mind, and soul.
What about divorce? Again, the answer comes from truly understanding deep, real love. If a man and a woman choose to love each other and live their lives as one, what can make them change their minds? So long as two people choose to love each other they will never part. Remember, what we are talking about is true, deep love, not that which is called love but is only a shadowy illusion which fades in the light of dawn. We are talking about the love a husband can always choose to give a wife, and a wife can always choose to give a husband, love very few couples are willing to share.
Those who choose love don't fight over daily living, they are not annoyed by each other, they do not need to constantly worry about keeping their partner's love. They compromise, they try to understand each other's problems, and they support each other's efforts. They share love. Of course there will be problems and difficulties, yet they will face them together. Men and women who choose to love each other and become as one, will live the rest of their lives together as husband and wife.
But what if one spouse chooses not to love the other? If you understand love, you know that even if you are not loved you can love. You know that the answer to marital problems is not separating, but is for each spouse to choose to love the other. If one partner chooses not to love, their spouse should continue to love them and hope, even if it never happens, that they will once again be loved. A spouse who wants a divorce may make it impossible for the other person to live with them, or even to be near them, perhaps ever again, but that does not mean the rejected spouse should quit loving their husband or wife. Even if one spouse breaks the legal ties and leaves the other, their partner should continue to love them.
What about the millions of women and men who meet without any intention of marriage, what harm is there in the pleasure of a little sex among friends? The answer to that question is a difficult one that, at least for this and future generations, seems far harder to grasp than for previous generations. Indeed sex is not new, and perhaps casual sex was quietly practiced as much or more in the past as it is today, yet it was generally accepted that it was "not right". Today that idea has faded, and for many sex has become a popular sport.
The answer to the question of casual sex is not found in logical arguments, or in medical reports extolling the mental and physical benefits of an active sex life. It is found in an understanding of love. If you truly understand love, you understand what it means for a man and a woman to choose to love each other and live as one for their entire lives. If you understand love, you know that when two people who are not married choose to have sex, they are choosing the opposite of living together as one for life.
The ultimate purpose of sex in marriage is the creation of a new human life. Love between a husband and wife, conception and birth, and the giving of love to a child, makes sex far more than a physical act. All sexual acts and relationships entered into, not for the purpose of having a child, but rather for physical pleasure, or even emotional pleasure, subtly destroy the true love men and women can give each other, and weaken the real love all human beings can share. Having children is not only an expression of love between a man and a woman who choose to marry, it is an expression of love for the whole human race. Each child born as a result of the love of each spouse for the other, is born into and becomes part of a family filled with love. Each child born as a result of true love, adds to this world a family filled with people who truly love people.
When a husband and wife give to each other real, pure, true, love, having a child is the reason in their heart, mind, and soul for sexual relations, whether or not the purpose of having a child is or can be fulfilled. When physical or emotional pleasure from sexual relations is one of the goals of a human relationship, the true love that a man and woman who choose to marry and give birth to a child can share is slowly destroyed. When a man and a woman, or for that matter two men or two women, seek physical or emotional pleasure from sexual relations with each other, they not only weaken their love for each other, they weaken their love for all people. Every sexual act that has pleasure as its goal, and not a child and family, renders sex less than an expression of love between spouses who are one with each other, and weakens our love of all people.
Yet the temptation of physical pleasure dims our resolve and muddies our recognition that to gain sexual pleasure, inside or outside marriage, love must be abandoned. Each time you choose sex instead of the lifetime of love that can be shared by a man and a woman who choose to marry and become as one, you not only reject love between you and your partner, but you reject love itself. Sex within marriage can be an expression of the love two people can give one another, every sexual act outside marriage denies that love.
It is hard to imagine how anyone could treat another person as an object from which they derive physical, or emotional, pleasure one moment, and the next moment love other people as human beings. The dehumanizing effect of sex for physical and emotional pleasure extends far beyond the moment and the relationship of the people involved, it follows them into their daily lives. Not loving even one person makes it difficult, or impossible, for someone to love all people. Each time someone chooses a moment of physical or emotional pleasure, it not only weakens their love for a wife or husband, it weakens their love for all people. Eventually they may not truly love anyone at all.
If you lust for someone, your love for them will grow weaker and weaker as physical and emotional pleasure replaces love. If you love someone you will have love for them, not lust, in your heart, mind, and soul. Remember, even if you have not loved in the past, you can make the choice to love now and for the rest of your life.
We have said that if two people love each other they will not have sexual relations with each other unless and until they choose to marry and live the rest of their lives as "one". We have concluded that lust and sex outside marriage destroys love, but that does not really answer the question of whether or not we should marry? If we truly love all people, is it possible that we should choose not to focus our love on one person, on a spouse? Is it possible that if we love all people, we should choose not to marry?
If we love a spouse the focus of much of our love will be turned toward them and away from other people. If we have a child we will focus our love on that child as we guide them through infancy to adulthood. I do not see how it is possible not to direct toward our spouse and child some of the love we would give to others if we did not have a spouse and child. Even if both of us want to love others, it would seem to be impossible for two who are "one" to give as much love to as many people as they would be able to give if they could go out into the world without having a spouse.
It seems likely that there will be times when we focus our love on our spouse and child, and will provide food, water, and clothing for our spouse and child, even if our neighbor is hungry, thirsty, and cold. Indeed, it seems true that there is no harm done if we never marry, no harm done to a child who is never conceived, yet there is harm done by focusing our love on a spouse and child while other people need food, water, and our companionship. My conclusion is that if you choose to love all people with the love that, if it is to be given to one, must be given to all, you should not marry. This is a very difficult conclusion, yet I believe that if you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, and know and understand love, you will reach the same conclusion.
I believe you will also reach the conclusion we discussed earlier, that if you do choose to marry, or you are already married, you will not divorce. This may seem contradictory, but it is not. By choosing not to marry, a person does not separate two people who have become as one. However, if a person divorces his or her spouse, they "tear apart" two people who have become as one. It seems intuitively true to me that a person who divorces their spouse will not continue to love that person with the love that we can and should give to all people. It seems that even though we should not marry, if we do choose to marry or we are married, we should not divorce (be sure to read the Notes “A Lesser Love” and “A Fanatic Life Or A Normal Life?” for more discussion on difficult topics).
What about the millions upon millions of people who most would conclude do not "lust" for each other, but who look at each other as being physically attractive, and who may "flirt" with each other? When the vast majority of people look at each other, at least to some extent they see each other as more or less physically attractive, as having a more or less pleasant personality, as being more or less desirable to be with, etc. Far beyond the question of sexual attraction, most human beings will tell you that they get along better with people who exhibit “compatible” personality traits. Indeed, most people have a group of "friends" they enjoy being with. It seems that people like to be around people who make them "feel good". Is there anything wrong with that?
If when you look at someone you are looking for something in them that makes you feel good, whether that may be "innocent" sexual attractiveness or delightful conversation or something else, you are not giving them the love that is in your heart, mind, and soul. If you love someone, when you look at them you do not have thoughts about their physical appearance. If you love someone, you do not think about what their personality is like. If you love someone, you do not have thoughts about whether or not you want to be around them and be their friend. If you love someone, you do not have thoughts about whether or not they make you "feel good". If you love someone, when you look at them you have love for them in your heart, mind, and soul.
If you give someone true, pure, real, love, you will love them, and you will not think of them as someone you do or do not want to be around. You will love all people, including those who other people consider to be ugly or dull or stupid or inferior. When you look at them you will not see someone who is sexually attractive or vivacious or funny or popular, you will see someone you love. When you look at them you will not see someone who is ugly or dull or stupid or inferior, or anything else, you will see someone you love. If you give to everyone, the true, pure, real, love that is in your heart, mind, and soul, they will be more than your friends, they will be your family who you love.
Doubts
There is one
thing that if it is true may be interpreted as shaking the foundations of my
beliefs. This potential nemesis, which may render my life and thoughts useless,
is found in the question of whether or not the vision of love some of us find
within ourselves truly reveals the full nature of human love. We have discussed
the desirability of true love as opposed to hate, or even to simply not loving,
and have plead for all to love one another. The cloud on my horizon comes when,
being by nature and choice a very logical and perhaps a rather "cold"
human being, I see intense, passionate "love" between people which
may seem to render less real and anemic my concept of love.
If I was simply
asked to describe that set of human emotions which may drive one human being to
heady, irrational, and "total" commitment to another human being,
even to the point of deeply hurting friends, children, or spouses, I would
never label such emotions "love". Having never experienced such
passions, and being unlikely ever to do so, I have always dismissed them as
fueled by shallow desires, fostered and encouraged by people whose object was
far from "love". To suggest true love might exist between people
having an "affair" attacks the very foundation of my beliefs about
such love.
Yet I have
witnessed the pain that some of my friends went through when they reached the
end of one of those forbidden relationships. The pain I saw in a special few of
them was so intense I could not at the time say with great conviction that they
did not really love the other person. It frightens me to think intense love for
another might bring pleasure as intense as the pain it can inflict, pleasure
which might make our vision of true love between people seem not a very
desirable goal at all. I can, of course, never really know what my friends
felt, but I know that at the time I did not feel as comfortable as I once had
declaring their passionate romances loveless.
What is
particularly disturbing to me is that we can predict such an absolute advantage
for intense, passionate love, over what we have called true love, in only two
ways. The first downgrades love to being only one of many positive human
emotions. If we are the product of our biologic instincts, directed and
modified but not altered by rational thought, then we should expect the
ultimate positive experience of an individual to be filled with emotional
lightening. Such "love" is not at its best when given to everybody,
nor is it any less strong when it is between those for whom loving means
destroying others. It is love which, if not properly described as
self-centered, must at least be limited to a few, for by its nature it is an
intense, often physical, always personal, experience only a few can share.
It elevates the
role of sex in a relationship, and downgrades the importance of fidelity
(though perhaps only to a point). It may even make divorce desirable, and
suggests love is but one transient emotion to be supplemented by other physical
and mental pleasures. The implications are far reaching, and none bode well for
hopes of love among all people. Applying this logic, a person who loves all
people may not have reached a desirable goal. Indeed, the pragmatism of such
love gives added strength to the nihilists cry that nothing really matters.
The second way of
explaining why what we have described as true love may not be as desirable as
passionate "love", is simply to note what I find in my heart, mind,
and soul to be true love may not be. Perhaps generations of philosophical,
theological, and psychological thinkers who have modified concepts of true love
to include all manner of things outside my ideas of such love are right, and I
am wrong. If so, perhaps those of you who possess deep and real emotions will,
when you search your very being, learn more about what true love is than those
of us who are rather cold and analytical.
Even if my ideas
of love are naive, it is hard for me to believe there is nothing special about
the unique and intense and "good" nature of the love I see when I
look at those who love. Even if passionate love is a desirable part of human
love, it may still be quite possible for all people to love one another with a
more complex, but still true, love. If such is the case, a world filled with
love may indeed still be the one world worth living for.
One quick comment
should be made, when I say my friends experienced passionate love I am not in
any way talking about a casual, merely physical, experience. What I am talking
about is intense and apparently real and lasting commitments between human
beings. I am in no way suggesting the vast majority of personal relationships
that masquerade as loving ones have any love in them at all. Anyone who has
experienced only the shallow emotions of passionate love should take no comfort
in my discussion of whether passionate love may, in a few special cases, be
real love.
Now, the hard
part, explaining why I still do not believe that the intense, passionate love
of my friends was and is the real, true love we should seek. I do not suggest
the intensity of passionate "love" does not bring to its participants
incredible pleasure, pleasure beyond the physical, pleasure which would perhaps
be the goal of all humankind were it not for that which must be lost in gaining
it. For even though I have tried and tried and tried and tried to imagine the
coexistence of what we have called passionate love with that which we have
called true love, it seems to me they cannot exist together in one human being.
A person who chooses to give passionate love to another person, cannot also
choose to give true love to all people. Passionate love overwhelms true love,
it demands that people do that which they would not do if they loved all
people.
The love I found
when I searched my heart, mind, and soul, love every person can give every
other person, may not bring with it the "emotional high" passion
offers, yet it is an all consuming love which becomes part of a person's very
being. Though it may lack the emotional fever that accompanies passionate
romance, the transformation that occurs when a human being chooses to love all
people gives that person love which does not appear and disappear, brighten and
fade. It is love that is with them and comforts them every moment of their
lives. A love that does not focus its energy on one or two people, but rather a
love that spreads out from a person and grows and strengthens as it radiates
into the world. That love, whether it is called ideal or pure or true, or just
called love, is more intense than any love I can imagine.
Indeed, while it
is true the love between two people who love all people is clearly different to
the explosive passion of two lovers for whom the rest of the world does not
exist, I believe it is in fact far more intense and beautiful and joyous. Only
a man or a woman who gives real, pure, true love to all people can give real,
pure, true love to each individual person.
Only those who understand and give pure, selfless, true
love to all human beings can give that kind of love to each other. The love
that fills the very being of those who choose to love all people, fills every
moment of their lives with love only they understand, love only they can give.
The person for whom love must be a passionate emotional experience shared by a
few does not understand and cannot give to anyone the all-consuming love which
lies within them. They have locked fellow human beings out of their hearts,
minds, and souls and thus have lost the love that, if it is given to anyone,
must be given to all.
I may have clouded the understanding of love you found within yourself by discussing ideas of "passionate love" (and perhaps have discouraged and muddled the resolve of those who have not yet searched for that understanding). If and when you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, you will know and understand love. You must use all the understanding of love that is in your heart, mind, and soul when you consider if some other "love" may be better.
An understanding of pure love brings with it a belief that we
should love each and every person. I have no doubt that if you know and
understand the love that is in your heart, mind, and soul, you will know that
the best you can do in life is to love all people. You will know that no love is
better than the true, real, pure, love every human being can give to every other
human being. You will know and understand that "passionate love" is "cold" and
"empty" when compared to the true, real, pure, love, you can give to all people.
You will know and understand that the true, pure, love, you can choose to give
to all people, is the only love worth living for. Any doubts I may have had have
vanished. Any doubts you may have will vanish when you complete your search and
know and understand real, true, pure, love.
What will those
who choose to love all people find when they go out into the world? It is
impossible to say what those who choose love will find when they venture into a
world full of people who don't even know what love is. For those who do not
marry the pressures of passionate romance may grow. Only an understanding of
the loss of true love that is the inevitable consequence of passionate love
will help them hold on to true love of all people.
Where does this
leave us? It leaves me with the conclusion that no matter how fantastic and
real a passionate romance may be, it can never be worth choosing over the love
you find in your heart, mind, and soul, your very being. It leaves me with a
belief that the "pure" love in the human heart, mind, and soul really
does exist and is the one true, real, and good love that can and should be
shared by all. It leaves me convinced that loving all people was not only worth
discussing, but is worth living for.
The question is
often asked, do human beings have sufficient capacity to truly love everybody?
The answer is not an easy one for the amount of energy loving takes from you,
if not replenished by being loved, is enormous. Even if you love only one
person such love can be draining, and the demands on you increase dramatically
as you spread your love among all people. If you love all people, does that
weaken the love you give to each person?
If you give most
or all of your love to one or two people, you may not have enough love left for
other people. But if you love all people, something amazing happens. If you
love all people you will not focus your love on one or two, you will give your
love to everyone. When you love all people, the limits you placed on your love
are released, and your love grows to an extent you never thought possible. When
you share your love with all people you will find that you have plenty of love
for each of them.
The true, pure, love you can give to each
person is love that you can give only if you love all people. It is love that
cannot be focused on one or two without being weakened or destroyed. It is love
that blossoms and blooms and expands and grows as it is given to more and more
and more people. You will find that when the love that was locked in your
heart, mind, and soul is given freely to all people, you will have more than
enough love to give to each and every person.
Why
You Do What You Want To Do
Why would anyone choose
not to love? Why does a person show off his or her diamonds to friends who
can't meet their house payments? Why do employees do everything they can to
make sure they get a promotion instead of fellow workers? Why do people lie
their way through tight spots, blaming every mistake on someone else? Why do
people read in the newspaper every cruel detail of a violent rape? Why does a
person have an affair with someone else's wife? Why do they party through the
night, drinking until they pass out? Why do they gamble away the family grocery
money? Why do they periodically indulge themselves in their favorite form of
"orgy", sexual or otherwise?
Why do they rape?
Why do they torture? Why do they kill? The questions are endless. The
possibilities are as numerous as all the schemes and plots and cruelties and
fantasies and perversions the human mind can imagine. The answers are as
numerous. They range from "normal instinctive human behavior" to
"environmentally aggravated hereditary mental disease". Those who
shudder at the acts of someone else often offer explanations that seek to
explain how people are "led" into aberrant behavior. Each commentator
tries to define and isolate the unacceptable behavior, whether it is some form
of sexual perversion or shoplifting or murder. The behavior is seen as a clear
deviation from the norm, which can be traced to childhood traumas,
social/economic pressures, impressionable minds, etc. When other explanations
prove absurd, behavior is often attributed to the catchall "they must be
crazy".
I am not prepared
to reject the possibility that organic mental disease, and perhaps even
non-physical psychological trauma, cause, or contribute to, much of the horrors
of the world. In fact, researchers can bring on the most perverse behavior by
artificially stimulating the brain with chemicals or electricity. However I am
convinced that the vast majority (perhaps all) of human behavior is not
determined by external or internal forces acting on the mind, but rather by
conscious human choice among more or less clear alternatives.
I am not saying
biophysical urges to gamble, drink, have sex, etc., do not exert incredible
pressures to act and not think. I realize they are major factors on which we
base our decisions. Nor am I saying peer group pressures and lifetime
experiences unique to each person's surroundings (in the broadest sense,
including teachers and relatives, as well as neighborhoods, etc.) do not exert
incredibly strong pressures. What I am saying is neither heredity nor
environment nor a combination of both is adequate to explain human behavior.
If a person does
not get pleasure from a perverse act, they will not do it. That basic common
sense statement, however seemingly true it may appear, has fostered centuries
of controversy. Early religious thinkers, and many humanistic philosophers as
well, accepted the general proposition that each of us is in control of our
behavior. Later generations of scientists saw in such statements a
sociopolitical attempt to justify repression of beliefs and lifestyles
practiced by any group in a numerical and/or political minority. The scientists
virtually ignored the idea that some sort of meaningful individual free will
process is involved in decision making, and instead adopted a deterministic
approach to human behavior, which described nearly every human action in terms
of heredity and external influences.
We have already
discussed the idea of human freewill, no one is going to prove free will
exists, or that it does not. Your belief about your freewill ability to choose
among alternatives is a question of what you believe, or have faith, is true.
Yet even those scientists who would answer affirmatively if asked whether
humans have a free will, curiously choose sides in the heredity vs. environment
controversy, as if freewill plays an insignificant role in decision making.
I believe both
hereditary-physiological and environmental-psychological factors are real, and
play a crucial, critical role in the human decision making process. However, I
believe the controversy over which is "controlling" misses the real
point that neither are "controlling". Each influence human beings to
a degree that varies from individual to individual. Perhaps many individuals
who do not understand such influences are affected to the extent their
decisions become virtually automatic, perhaps not. Regardless of the relative
strengths of heredity and environment on human beings, I believe the
"controlling" factor in the human decision making process is the definitionally illusive freewill choice. Those who seem to
respond automatically to hereditary and environmental pressures do so simply
because they have not chosen to do otherwise.
While a
significant number of scientists champion various forms and degrees of
determinism, in reality, I doubt the majority would argue strongly against the
proposition of free will ability to alter conduct. For one thing, to do so
virtually takes away any claim of uniqueness for the human species, the species
of which all scientists are members. For another, there appears to exist deep
within us a feeling of control over our decisions. That feeling does not prove
you can make free will choices, but it does not weaken any faith or belief we
may have in the existence of free will.
Since we have
said we cannot prove or disprove the existence of free will, the fact you feel
a sense of ultimate control should tend to strengthen your belief in free will,
and is as positive evidence for such belief as you are likely to find. So is
the answer to the question "why do people do what they do" simply
that they do what they want to do? With the possible exception of those driven
by compulsions truly beyond their ability to control, if such compulsions
actually exist, the simple answer is people do what they want to do. If you
agree, as I do, with those who believe that people have the free will ability
to make choices and decisions, you should have little problem agreeing that if
you have a choice to do or not to do something harmful to another person, and
doing it does not give you pleasure, you will not do it.
But how can
anyone want to rape or kill somebody? Even the most sheltered human beings
experience, at some time and to some degree, the feelings of physical pleasure
that come from sexual fantasies, dreams of wealth, desires to beat an opponent
to a pulp. Most of us have led less sheltered existence's and, to varying
degrees, know the pleasure of being slightly drunk, of winning the daily
double, of an x-rated movie, etc., etc. The list of physical pleasures is long,
and for some the degree of intensity of pleasure associated with them seems to
increase as their acceptability in society goes down. Yet you know that most
people could get no satisfaction from a violent or perverse act, how then can
human beings who do violence to other human beings enjoy what they do?
The answer lies
in the absolute opposite natures of love and, what for want of any better
description, we will call physical pleasure. When you love somebody the last
thing you want to do is hurt them. You may choose to "love" some
people, but use others for your own pleasure. That pleasure may be sexual, or
perhaps may be the feeling of power that can come from being boss and master,
or may be any other pleasure that is enjoyed at someone else's expense. You
choose physical pleasure when you do any of the millions of possible acts you
would not do if you loved people. As you "love" fewer and fewer
people, and give less "love" to those people you do love, you get
further and further and further away from love.
Even though we
may leave love behind, most of us never get so far away that we no longer feel
the physical and mental pain which goes with not loving others. When two people
who have lost sight of love get together they may enjoy physical pleasures with
only a slight and distant feeling something is missing and wrong. Yet for those
people there is always a limit to the "pain" they will inflict on
another human being. They may not realize such a limit exists, but it does, and
it results in their pleasure being cut off by the increasing emotional or
physical "pain" of others.
Yet some choose
to go so far in their quest for physical pleasure that love becomes distant,
unknown, and unwanted. Among those who choose such an existence are people who
seek only their own pleasure, pleasure that not only does not diminish, but is
enhanced by the pain of others. When love becomes a word without meaning to
someone, people that they meet are no longer “people”, they are literally
objects, deserving no more than an animal. As more and more people become like
animals to a person, so too the one who dehumanizes is dehumanized. No one can
continue to consider himself or herself to be something unique and special if they
consider others as mere objects of pleasure. Such people, unhampered by
feelings of love, can do virtually anything that gives them physical pleasure,
without any remorse for the pain inflicted on fellow "animals".
It is hard for
people who may not truly love, but who have not come close to abandoning love,
to understand the physical pleasures of rape, murder, and all the other
horrible perversions imaginable. Yet everyone should realize that people who
have virtually abandoned love, and thus have almost no limits on their actions,
actually do get pleasure from the perverse. If they did not get pleasure from
their acts, they would not do them. (Beyond the people who have distanced
themselves from love, are those who have totally rejected and abandoned love,
they are discussed in another note.)
Again what we
have said comes with the caveat that, among those people who are unable to
control some of their actions, perhaps there exists a group of people who cannot
choose not to harm others. One can never be sure how many, if any, fall in that
group. Since most of us retain at least some of our sensitivity to the pain of
others, we tend to label as "crazy" anyone who acts without regard to
such pain. Perhaps some people are compelled to do that which harms others,
perhaps not. Perhaps (as I believe), everyone, including those who are
"crazy", can choose love, perhaps not. What we can say is that those
who harm others and who are not “crazy” choose to do whatever brings them the
physical pleasure they seek with conscious, reasoned, contempt for the pain of
others.
I should
emphasize that I am in no way suggesting that those who have distanced
themselves from love but not totally rejected it cannot reverse course and
choose love (again, the possibility of totally rejecting love is discussed in
another note). Indeed those people who are engaged in perverse human
depravities, but who have not totally rejected love, may at any time choose to
love people for the remainder of their lives. Conversely, many who would never
dream of committing rape may choose to continue to "enjoy" newspaper
accounts of rapes, never losing sight of what love is, yet never choosing to
love. Those people continue to be what the former rapist was.
What I am trying
to emphasize is that people choose not to love, not because loving makes them
feel bad, but because the alternative to loving is physical pleasure which is
real and intense and lasting. Those who think that people who choose the
perverse don't know what they are doing are kidding themselves. Most, if not
all, have made a conscious decision to enjoy physical pleasures at the expense
of love. Anyone who wants to understand the millions of people who do millions
of acts against love needs to remember those acts give them pleasure. They also
need to realize that as long as we live in a hedonistic world, such pleasures
will continue to be real, intense, and available to all who choose to enjoy
them.
As long as you
are busy with the normal routines of life, such pleasures seem remote and less
than real. If you risk getting closer to the pleasures, you will find yourself
beginning to tingle with an unexpected but pleasant sense of anticipation. If
you let yourself go, you will literally be engulfed in a whirlpool of rapidly
intensifying feelings that draw you deeper and deeper into mindless enjoyment
of the moment.
Those who have
not experienced the electricity of physical pleasure, or who might not
anticipate the power of a particular experience, are likely to find themselves
alternately condemning the moment and wanting it to be more intense. They might
justify their actions by promising themselves they will reform immediately
after this time; by declaring they are too weak to resist; or, even worse, by
asserting that some intellectual insight shows them the overall social
desirability of their behavior. It should be noted that those who have
experienced the depths of physical pleasures usually describe a sort of
disappointment, emptiness, or other negative feeling, which, over time, invades
their bliss. This feeling of loss is combated by shaking it from their minds
with the help of drugs or alcohol or mind-blanking self-induced euphoria, or by
doing a little something different, or by going just a little bit further.
At one time or
another most people choose physical enjoyment over love, and some live their
entire lives for pleasure. Yet most carry with them an understanding of the
dark side of physical pleasure that is an inseparable part of such pleasures.
Someone who toys with those pleasures may only glimpse the darkness that
accompanies them, and may indeed be able to ignore the feeling within that
something is wrong. In fact they may be able to deaden their feelings of love
so much that they live their entire lives enjoying physical pleasures while
ignoring the inevitable destruction of their lives, as well as the lives of
those around them.
The enjoyment of
"physical pleasures" is far more pervasive than most people recognize.
Have you ever considered the fact that newspapers seldom detail a burglar's
entry into a home, or the details of a simple traffic ticket, but practically
always go into great detail about rapes and murders. Have you ever noticed the
extreme detail in news reports about wars and war machines. That detail, of
course, is not accidental. Regardless of claims of news value, it serves no
other purpose than to provide a source of perverse, supposedly
"harmless", physical pleasure for the reader. Just as the act itself
is harmful, the pleasant feelings of morbid curiosity are also harmful.
Those who
fantasize about sexual pleasures, perhaps watching an R rated movie or a
pro-football half time, are rejecting love as surely as someone who is having
an affair with his neighbor's wife. Those who "enjoy" newspaper or
television accounts about war, crime, etc., are choosing physical pleasure over
love. Love does not come from a person's acts and deeds, but from inside their
heart, mind, and soul. If a person is filled with love, their thoughts will be
thoughts of love, and their deeds will be deeds of love. I am not suggesting
evil thoughts do not cross the minds of those who love, what I am saying is
that such thoughts are not welcomed by them. Nor am I suggesting it is no worse
to have an affair than it is to see an R rated movie, what I am saying is that
those who love do neither. Just as it is not right to kill someone, it is not
right to fantasize about killing someone who wrongs you. Just as it is not right
to have sexual relations with someone for physical pleasure, it is not right to
replace thoughts of love with sexual fantasies. Fantasies of lust and power and
money replace feelings of love with dreams of physical pleasure, weakening the
love between people. Thoughts about "physical pleasures", sexual or
otherwise, are the opposite of thoughts of love, and crowd more and more love
out of our heart, mind, and soul.
If you have
searched your heart, mind, soul, your very being, and know and understand love,
then you know that choosing physical pleasure is the opposite of choosing love.
If and when you truly know and understand love you will understand that
choosing physical pleasure destroys love. Each moment that you choose physical
pleasure could have been a moment that you chose love. When you truly know and
understand love you will know and understand that you should always choose
love.
You’re Not
Normal If You Think I’m Not Normal
What about those people who go through
life "just living"? One of the great mistakes in life is to focus
attention on those who openly indulge in the perverse, or obviously hedonistic,
pleasures of life, while giving only fleeting attention to the vast majority of
people who live in that quite, almost invisible world of "normalcy".
Within this great mass of humanity lies the borderline between love and no
love. The boundary separating these two groups divides not only those who
occupy the extremes of life, but also marks the real and absolute division
between those whose love, or lack of love, is hidden by daily living. Whether
or not a clear and "visible line" can be discerned by people, or even
exists, I believe there is a real and absolute division so that at every moment
in your life it is true you are either a member of the group that loves, or you
belong to the group that does not. If it is your choice to love or not, then
making that choice determines at every moment which group you belong to. Though
some disagree, I believe those who understand love know that the borderline
exists, even if it is beyond human ability to locate.
Either you choose to love and belong to
the group that loves, or you do not choose to love and belong to the group that
does not love. This is not to say that passage between groups is restricted
during your lifetime, for it appears it is not. If we are to continue to assume
it is your choice to love or not to love, then passage among the groups depends
on that choice, and is apparently prohibited only to those who have totally
rejected love. Perhaps those who love and who do not love are not even
"defined" as a “group” before death, perhaps they are. Whether they
are or not, at any one point in time, and thus every moment of our lives, we
either love or we do not love. Many variations of this proposition of a
division between people exist, including ideas about a "purgatory"
from which escape is possible even after death. While the groups are described
differently by different cultures and religions, most end up as two clear, separate,
and distinct, masses, which, sometime before or after death, are forever fixed
and unchanging.
The vast majority of "normal"
people appear to give little thought as to which group they belong to. They
seem rather indifferent to the presence among them of the borderline, yet the
existence of the line and their choice of sides determines the very nature of
their being. A normal person exists among a huge mass of fellow normal people
who embrace, protect, and shield him or her from the world around them. The peer
group discourages thoughts and concerns about what the members as a whole stand
for, what the individual really believes in, and where the group is headed.
The routines of daily life that guide a
normal person (and guide you if you are "normal") appear to be one of
the strongest anesthetics of all time. The products of a normal person's labors
include responsible corporate positions, attractive suburban houses, sensible
cars, extensive charitable activities, active participation in church affairs,
union membership, solid family ties, etc. All contribute to the individual's
feeling that they are comfortably situated among, and a solid member of, the
normal people of the world.
The output of the normal person's mind bombards
his or her fellow human beings through newspapers, televisions, shows,
theaters, books, advertisements, conversations, interviews, etc., with the
message that the normal person's values, behavior, likes, dislikes, ideas, and
lifestyles, are not only acceptable, but are right, good, normal, healthy, and
desirable. As each member moves through familiar streets, shops, offices, and
homes, the whole structure of normal society reinforces a belief that they and
their peers are the foundation and strength of the society of which they are a
part. Each reflection of the normal life, as seen by every member as they look
at other members, solidifies their belief that they are what they should be.
To do that which is not normal brings
immediate reaction from those around you. To persist in doing that which is the
exception and not the rule focuses all the pressure society can bring to bear
on the rebellious member. If a member's public behavior does not rapidly
conform to at least the minimum requirements of normalcy, they find themselves
outside the group, which seems to huddle closely together and shrink from them
with the intention of not only banning them forever, but their ideas as well.
With the increase of tolerance in modern society, this process has become muted
and less obvious, however it is still a basic tool of society. While
friendships may now be tolerated among normal people and "outcasts",
the bond of membership remains coldly and cruelly destroyed, preventing
exchange and acceptance of ideas.
A curious state of mind accompanies normal
life, it is as if a restful, peaceful cloud surrounds and deadens human
feelings, isolating each person from every other person's problems. A day may
be spent with a "normal" amount of concern for others, even with a
few shining moments of human compassion interspersed among scheduled routines.
Yet the cloud of normalcy engulfs the mind and senses, making those moments no
more than rare attempts at loving. The sense of people loving people is
missing.
The frightening thing about normalcy is
that it carries with it a sense of right, which is the logical result of the
sequence of intense socializing pressures that accompany normal growth. This
myopic view of life is virtually devoid of the influence of love. Even worse is
the conviction of most normal people who have not searched their heart, mind,
and soul to understand love, that they not only know what it means to love, but
that they are indeed loving, caring individuals. The narcotic effect of
normalcy renders those who do not throw aside the strong beliefs instilled by
years of normal living and replace them with an understanding of love, slaves
of their perfectly logical but loveless lives.
Though you may find it difficult to
comprehend, all manner of philosophical beliefs from Nazi fascist superiority
to Marxist revolution, right-wing militaristic conservatism to left wing social
upheaval, sexual liberation to fanatic isolation of women from society, all can
be argued for, intelligently supported, and devotedly engaged in, by people who
have total conviction in the "rightness" of their ideas and acts.
Indeed, a “normal” person often exhibits unquestioning acceptance of the
"goodness", and perhaps even superiority, of their group's values and
lifestyle.
General beliefs and traditions of whatever
group or groups one identifies with (whether ethnic, social, political,
economic, intellectual or otherwise) mold, and may distort, the personal ideas
each of us spend lifetimes developing and nurturing. Group ideas are so much a
part of our lives that they become for us truths which we not only must live
by, but which we are duty bound to defend and propagate. Group beliefs are
absorbed by individual minds, so that each of us lives our life, more or less
intensely according to the nature of our beliefs, as if we, and the other
members of our group, are the only ones who know how life should be lived.
There is another kind of pressure to conform to a “normal” routine, an internal pressure that few of us recognize. Each of us inherits millions of biological "traits" from our parents, who in turn inherited millions of traits from their parents, etc. Some of us inherit better math skills, some greater artistic ability, some more athletic dexterity, etc. Some of us are, from birth, calmer, more emotional, faster, slower, smarter, musically inclined, etc. As clearly as our environment is for us an external definition of a "normal" world, our heredity is an internal definition of a "normal" world. For many, this inherited "normal" world can be a far stronger anesthetic than the "normal" world offered by a somewhat detached environment.
Many, many
people live their lives, from birth to death, blindly following the path that
heredity provides for them. Those who are more emotional may be easily angered
and lash out at family members, those who are less emotional may be apathetic
toward the needs of others, etc. Each person who follows the hereditary forces
at work within them, "feels" that they are doing what they do because
they are who they are. For most, it is
far more difficult to recognize that they are intentionally following an
ancient biologic roadmap, than it is to simply believe that they are just being
"themselves". Indeed, many deny that they are "like" their
parents, only to eventually see an image of their parents’ lives when they look
in the mirror. They fail to realize and admit to themselves that, in many ways,
they are willing clones of their ancestors.
Yet the traits that we inherit are just
that, they are traits that cause us to have a "tendency" to make
certain choices. While our hereditary traits may exert incredible internal
pressure on us to make particular choices, the choices we make are
none-the-less our own free will choices. Our choices are not automatic, they
are not determined by our heredity or environment, unless we allow them to be.
Our choice to follow our hereditary or environmental path is our free will
choice not to do otherwise. If heredity or environment dictate our choice, it
is because we have not been willing to recognize the influence of our biologic
heritage and our surroundings, and because we have not been willing to make our
own free will choices that transcend heredity and environment. Admittedly, it
may be incredibly hard not to follow the path our heredity and environment
dictates for us, yet it is clear that we can make our own free will choices, we
can make our own path.
We have criticized normalcy as if it was a
universal plague whose victims are unaware of the pain it inflicts. There is
another way of looking at it. We can view normalcy as model behavior determined
by a more or less democratic combination of biologic, environmental,
intellectual, and other characteristics of human existence. What is normal is
normal because it works "best" in the given situation. For example,
the normal routine for a particular office worker is adapted from time tested
routines for similarly situated employees. It is followed by a worker not only
because his or her ability to perceive alternatives has been numbed, but also
because the normal routine serves them well. Thus when we suggest you break
free from the restraints of normalcy, it is very important that you be
committed to understanding love. For if you do not replace your normal routine
with true love, you will have simply given up the companionship and comfort of
normal people for some lonely individualism, which in the long run will prove
no better for you.
Perhaps most of us need a degree of
"normalcy" where we follow routines that add stability to our lives.
While it is wrong to hide among the majority of normal people who blend into
the group to avoid doing what is right, it does not follow that one must stand
apart from the crowd. There is certainly nothing wrong in being with people.
Being distant and cold, separating yourself from society, is the opposite of
loving. It is one thing to be alone because you are the only person in a group
who is willing to love, but it is quite the opposite to be alone because you
are afraid or unwilling to love. What is required is that you love people with
the hope that all will join together in a community where it is
"normal" to love. To help build such a normal existence filled with
love for all, whether or not you succeed, should be your goal.
Lonely
Individualism is in many ways the opposite
of being a member of a group of "normal" people. The more isolated
and sheltered we are from people while growing up, whether by barriers erected
by protective parents, or by our own fears or personality, the more likely we
are to expect our lives and the people in them to behave according to an
individual plan we construct in our minds. The greater our separation from
people, the more we transform them into characters in plays we author in our
minds, expecting each person we meet to take their place in our script and to
faithfully play the role we have written for them. For the vast majority, on
opening night or soon thereafter, the players get restless, the lines muddled,
and the show slides downhill like a melodrama that just won't work. As the
story starts to fall apart, we find the fault to be with others. The simple
problem is every actor is also a writer, and writers seldom write the same
story.
People who grow up close to other people
learn at an early age that very few do what other people expect them to do, no
matter how "right" or "good" it may seem. Those who
understand the complexities of human beings are not surprised when things go
totally opposite to what they plan, and want. The many, many people who for
some reason have not been close enough to others to really understand this are
at the very least repeatedly hurt, and at worst devastated, by the
"failure" of others. They often seek solitude and peace in an individualistic
world of dream lovers and dream successes, a world where what they want to
happen does happen.
Anyone who thinks only a few people fit
that description does not realize that the world of dreams can be as subtle as
the escape offered by television, movies, books, and particularly, as subtle as
acceptance of the rhythm of daily lives filled with repetitious
"normal" patterns of living. Just as being "normal" can
make us part of a group, a veneer of "normalcy" can help us hide
within a group, relieve us from the need to get to know other people, and
protect us from hurt and disappointment. Some will never wake from their
individual dreams, others will be awakened only to find themselves in the
nightmare of a loveless reality they never dreamed existed.
Is escape all that bad? Without some
release from reality, the pressures of living would perhaps be too great for
all but a few. Yet if we are to bring love into our lives, we cannot ignore the
very real obstacles to love that can only be dealt with in the harsh reality of
life. Someone who is always looking for a romantic prince or princess will
reject the real people around them who bring with them some pain, but who also
could be people the person could love and be loved by. To hold back waiting for
the storybook ending is to abandon the real, pure, and true love you can choose
to give to people, and to reject the love, however imperfect, people are
willing to give you. If we are to be more than observers of life we cannot seek
only those who are "perfect", for it is likely that we will never
find anyone who comes anywhere close to being "perfect". We must love
people, even if we are not loved, and be willing to accept the inevitable and
repeated rejection and defeat of a real world where love plays but a small
part.
It would be great if I could tell you that
it is likely this world will someday become a world filled with people loving
people, but I can't. Love is the guiding force for only a few, a multitude of
other goals control most lives. Often those who would choose love if they
understood the choice are prisoners of their lack of understanding. What about
those who understand and choose love, what can we expect from them? Those who
understand love and choose to love you now, may, at some time in the future,
choose not to love you. This leaves us with the possibility of a world filled
with forgiving love that does not demand perfection, yet even that love is
rarely seen.
Perhaps the best we can ever expect is a
world where each of us is willing to recognize and accept that life is filled
with imperfections and hatred and cruelties and loneliness, yet also recognize
and accept that no matter what the world is like, each of us can choose to love
one another. A world where some choose to love, while others do not, is not an
easy one to live in, yet given the nature of human existence, it is the best we
can expect. Many of those who say they love you, don't, and are eventually
going to hurt you. Some who love you one minute, will choose not to love you
the next, but that rejection of love is part of human behavior. It does not
have to be, but it is, and it will continue to be so as long as people choose
among all the multitude of pleasures that compete against love. No matter what
other people do, whether they love you or not, you can always choose to love
them. When you understand true love, you will know that you should always
choose to love people, even if you are not loved by them.
Perhaps the cloud of living can never be
pierced until a person knows and understands true love, for each and every idea
and belief that can be convincingly argued for and that can pass all manner of
manmade tests, may fail only when tested against true love. Many are sincere
when they declare their intentions to help their fellow human beings, yet if
people should love each other, they cannot really help anyone until they
understand and give true love. It is difficult to describe the state of
consciousness most of us live in, for that consciousness argues against
anything that might awaken us.
I see a distinct difference between those
who truly understand love and those who either think they do, or think they
have discovered something more important than love. That distinction is clear
only to those who truly know and understand love. Yet that which blinds those
who think they understand love, but in fact do not, also makes it far, far more
difficult for them to see any need to question their beliefs, let alone to
search their heart, mind, and soul for that which they believe they have
already found. Most people will never recognize that their lives and beliefs
may need exploring and changing. The great danger to humanity is not any
possibility that those who seek an understanding of love will not find it, but
rather that most people will never complete their search.
Those who do not understand love often do
not understand the need to understand love. The horror is that masses of people
will live their lives following invisible patterns, without ever allowing
themselves to question their reason for living, and will die without ever
having sought an understanding of love. The solution? There is only one, and
that is for you to search your heart, mind, soul, your very being, and know and
understand love.
At the start of our discussion we asked
you to put aside your questions about love until you completed your search, and
knew and understood love. The answers to those questions, and the millions of
other questions you will face throughout your life, can come only from your
understanding of the difference in what most people mean when they use the word
love, and in the love you found in your heart, mind, and soul. I have yet to
find a single question that does not have real, true, pure, love as part of the
answer. Those whose experience with "love" has been bad, those whose
response to hate has been anger, those for whom love is simply one of several
human emotions, none have understood and given the true love that is inside
them. Those who understand love know why we have said that you should love even
if you are not loved.
If you have completed your search of
heart, mind, and soul you already know the answer to the most difficult of
questions. You know that choosing to love people is part of the answer to every
question. Whether you realize it or not, you also know the rest of the answer,
which we will discuss next.
Forever
If you understand love you know that if
anything in life is worth living for, it is for people to love, really and
truly love, people. Yet if death is the end, what use is it to love anyone? If
death is indeed the end of your existence, then love and hate and you and I and
life are all transient puffs of smoke in an ultimately inanimate eternity. Even
love will succumb to death, making its apparent beauty no more lasting than a
winter's snow.
We really do not know, and will not know,
what lies in store for us beyond the grave until the inevitable moment of death
arrives. If life and love end at the grave we will never know the answer for we
will no longer exist, and thus the question will die with us. Of course, as we
have said, such an end would be the ultimate in painlessness, for it would take
with it all the sad and glad and in between experiences of your lifetime. If
you no longer are, you no longer are, period. The void that follows death
without a life after death is a complete and total void. There would be no one
to experience joy, there would be no one to experience pain.
We have said there is absolutely no way we
can prove life continues beyond the grave, but we have also said there is
absolutely no way we can prove it does not. If there was nothing really
positive and good about life, the question of existence after death would be an
academic one. Yet that seems not to be the case. We have said love is the very
best one human being can give another human being. We have said that love is
the most positive of human experiences. It is the deepest, most profound, of
human relationships. It is the giving of all you have to give to someone else.
If it is possible that we continue to
exist after death, then should we not live for the possibility that life and
love will continue after death? Those who complete their search and understand
love, know that if life does not end at death, love is worth living
for in this life and the next. It seems intuitively clear that since you may
continue to exist after death, you should live with the hope that love has
meaning and is worth living for in this life, and with the hope that after
physical death you will live forever in a world filled with never ending love.
What connection then does life on earth
have with life after death? What does love on earth have to do with life after death?
What can we say about the nature of life after death? We have once again
returned to that murky area where intellect, insight, and intuition blend with
belief and faith.
We simply cannot know what life after
death may or may not be like. Yet, as we have already noted, the
"feeling" persists that life beyond the grave should possess the
positive aspects of life in this world. If the most positive aspect of life is
love, then a life after death that is filled with love seems to be worth believing
in. If we continue to exist after death, we may indeed find ourselves in a
"world" where people love people. If love is worth living for, and if
the only realistic alternative is nihilistic death, then it seems that you, and
I, and everyone else, should love each other and live for the possibility that
we will continue to exist after death in an existence filled with love. Yet
choosing love because the alternative is a meaningless death is not a good
enough reason. Love must be chosen by those who in their heart, mind, and soul
truly want to love, or their choice will be a shallow one that will not last.
Those who choose to love must do so because they want to love.
We have said that since your existence may
not end at death, you should live for the possibility you will continue to
exist after your physical death, and in anticipation of continued existence you
should do the best you can while you are alive. We have said that if you
understand love you know you should love people. We noted that since it is
always your choice to love or not, you should always choose love. We have said
that life after death may offer eternal love for those who choose to love each
other while on earth. We have said that since each of us must die sooner or
later, it is totally right to love on earth and enter a forever of never-ending
love, even if choosing love brings immediate physical death, and it is totally
wrong not to love, even if not loving prolongs earthly life and pleasures.
Can we accept a random existence after
death that has no guidance, might there be more? If we are to accept that human
beings may continue to exist after the death of their bodies we need to
consider what, if any, external force or presence may "guide" or
"control" such existence. We are way past the limits of human
comprehension, at the point where belief must turn into faith. The more modern
science has discovered, the more it seems that some form of
"logical", "rational", process occurs in nature,
replacing random events with "planned" sequences far too complex to
be explained by the interaction of mechanistic forces. Such "logical"
progression of nature may be the result of some incredible computer like
property whereby nature is equipped with some sort of "artificial
intelligence", perhaps so, perhaps not. Yet we have already concluded that
the odds that such an “artificial intelligence” might be created at random
appear to be as close to zero as can possibly be imagined. Perhaps the universe
is not "controlled" or "guided" by some deterministic
process. Perhaps the universe is "controlled" or "guided” by
someone.
GOD
Throughout human history there has existed in the majority of people a belief in some power, existence, a logical presence beyond human existence, a God (or gods). During at least the past few thousand years there has appeared in many cultures a belief in a God who is good, a God who wants human beings to do that which is good. Those who have completed their search of their heart, mind, and soul, know and understand love. Those who have completed their search know and understand in their heart, mind, and soul that it is good for people to love each other. Many believe that a God exists who gave us the love that is in our heart, mind, and souls. Many believe that a God exists who wants people to do that which is good, to love each other.
This belief in a God who wants people to love each other has its roots in intuitive feelings of humankind, in messages of prophets, and for those who believe in Jesus, in the word of God. There will always be arguments that the messages are messages made up by the messengers, yet from all that we have discussed, from all that those who have completed their search know and understand about love, it seems that if God does exist the message from him would be for us to love one another, precisely what we are told it is.
There is, I believe, in most of us a feeling that perhaps God does exist. That feeling may be insight, or it may be the result of a collective deep seeded desperation in human beings to be more than doomed animals. We will not know until our death, the definitive answer forever prohibited us by the limits imposed by our being no more than a part of that which we seek to explore. We are forbidden the ultimate knowledge, leaving us forever poised at the point where faith must take over if we are to believe in the existence of God.
Perhaps the "logical" selections that appear to take place in nature cannot be explained by physical processes, but rather represent actions taken by some indescribable presence, God, perhaps not. If our intuitive feelings and the calculations that support them are correct, then the complex low entropy universe in which we live cannot be the result of random chance, a universe which we are told by science literally exploded out of the head of a pin, a universe that supports complex living organisms which exhibit remarkable levels of consciousness. Furthermore, we are confronted with the ultimate “Why?” There is no objective way to logically deduce why the laws that govern the universe are as they are, why matter and energy exist at all, why there is more than nothing? Those who truly understand the question know that the very first matter and energy to appear in the universe cannot be the source of the creation of that matter and energy. Nor does it do any good to say that matter and energy were not created and have always existed, for that begs the question why do they exist, and invites the question why would probability be rendered meaningless by the formation of a low entropy universe out of that matter and energy?
Self-assembling systems form organized structures out of pre-existing disordered components, those who believe that the universe self-assembled cannot get past the ultimate question why pre-existing components were created and existed in the first place, and for that matter the question how an infinitesimally small phase space was selected to achieve low entropy. If we are honest with ourselves, the only possible answer we can construct from objective observations as to why the low entropy universe in which we live exists, is that it was designed and created by someone to be as it is. If God does not exist the logical conclusion is that the low entropy universe in which we live could not have been designed and created, and we would not exist.
It seems to me, no matter what their predisposition's are toward the existence of God, future generations of scientists will find themselves faced with the necessity of postulating an intelligence which somehow directs natural events. Of course, scientific theories would not prove nor disprove the existence of God, for if God exists it appears that he has not chosen to reveal that fact in an objective, scientifically observable, manner. We simply cannot scientifically prove God does or does not exist. We may "believe" that God exists, yet rather than belief, is the existence of God something we should have "faith in"?
As we have said, having faith something is true is far more than believing it is true. Faith comes from your heart, mind, and soul, it is beyond adequate definition. We can say that those who have faith accept as true what they choose to believe is true, at least until proven beyond doubt to be untrue. Yet if you realize what it means to say that nothing can be totally proved or disproved, then what you choose to have faith in is in fact what you choose to accept as true for the rest of your life. What you have faith in is not simply what you believe to be true, but rather what you choose to believe is true because in your heart, mind, and soul, you want it to be true. You decide what you will have faith in, what you want to be true if anything at all is true. Having faith that something is true does not make it true, if it is not true, it is not true. Yet if what you have faith in is in fact true, it is true, period.
Why should you have faith God exists? If the message about God had been that he wanted wars or sacrifices or other manner of destruction, then there would be little reason to have faith in him. But the message was and is that God wants every human being to do that which is good. The message was and is that God wants every human being to love every other human being.
In our heart, mind, and soul we know and understand love. In our heart, mind, and soul we know and understand that it is "good" for each of us to love each other. If you have not completed your search of your heart, mind, and soul, if you do not yet understand that it is good to love each other, if you do not yet understand that we can and should do that which is good, then you will find it very difficult to find a reason to have faith in the existence of God. But if you have searched your heart, mind, soul, your very being, and know and understand love, you should find it worth having faith that a God exists who wants all people to do that which is good, a God who wants all people to love each other. For if God exists he exists, period.
What is God like if he exists? In your heart, mind, and soul you know and understand that if God exists, God is good. Why do we say that if God exists, God is good? In your heart, mind, and soul, you know and understand that if a presence greater than all else in this universe, a Supreme Being, God, exists, God is good. In your heart, mind, and soul, you know and understand that the love that is in your heart, mind, and soul is good. In your heart, mind, and soul, you know and understand that if a Supreme Being, God exists, then it is that Supreme Being, God, who has given you the love that is in your heart, mind, and soul.
If you do not want evil to have power over good, if you do not want evil to fill the world instead of good, I cannot imagine why you would not choose to have absolute faith that if the presence greater than all else in this universe, the Supreme Being, God, exists, God is good. Whether you believe that God exists or does not exist, if you do not want to reject good and embrace evil, if you are not against good, you should have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good. There is absolutely no reason not to have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good. I have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good. You can and should have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good.
Saying that if God exists, God is good, does not "prove" that God exists, it does not even say that God exists. It says that if God exists, God is good, period. It says that if God exists, God is good, and that he wants each and every person to do that which is good. Even if you do not believe that God exists, or you are not sure what the "good" is that God would have us do in this world, in your heart, mind, and soul you know and understand that if God exists, God is good.
In our heart, mind, and soul, each of us knows and understands that if God exists, God is good. In our heart, mind, and soul, each of us knows and understands that if God exists, God wants every human being to do that which is good. The question is not "If God exists what would God have us do?", for in our heart, mind, and soul we know and understand that God would have us do that which is good. The question is, if God exists "What is the good that God would have us do?”
I have almost absolute faith that every human being who has completed their search of their heart, mind, and soul, knows and understands the love that is in their heart, mind, and soul. I have almost absolute faith that every human being who knows and understands the love that is in their heart, mind, and soul, knows and understands that it is good for each and every human being to love each and every other human being. I have almost absolute faith that every human being who has completed their search of their heart, mind, and soul, and who knows and understands the love that is in their heart, mind, and soul, knows and understands that if God exists God would have each and every human being love each and every other human being.
When I say I have absolute faith, I am saying that what I have absolute faith in is absolutely true, period. Why, instead of saying that I have absolute faith, do I say that I have "almost absolute" faith that God would have each and every human being love each and every other human being? It is because I recognize that I am not good. I am a small part of the whole, and I cannot know anything with absolute certainty unless the whole has revealed it to me. I do not believe that I should have absolute faith in anything except that if God exists, God is good, and absolute faith in all that follows from that absolute truth. I may be wrong, perhaps God has already revealed to us that he exists and that we can and should love each and every human being. Yet I am not certain that God has revealed this truth to us.
When I say that God would have us love each and every human being, I am making a statement that goes beyond saying that if we do that which God would have us do we will do that which is good. Even though I have almost absolute faith that God would always have each and every human being love each and every other human being, I cannot say that I have absolute faith that this is true. I cannot be "absolutely" certain that I am right. If we lived in a world where every human being chose to do God’s will, it seems clear that each and every human being would love each and every other human being. Yet it appears that the world we live in will continue to be a world where many people choose not to love as God would have them love, and where some people choose to totally reject God.
There are many people in this world who choose to do physical harm to other people. I have almost absolute faith that God would always have us love our “neighbor” even if they are our enemy and would do physical harm to us, yet I am not absolutely certain that I am right. Perhaps there are times when God would have us do physical harm to a neighbor to prevent them from doing physical harm to another neighbor? Furthermore, I am not absolutely certain how God would have us treat those who totally reject him, perhaps they are not our “neighbors", perhaps God would not have us love them (we discuss this possibility later)?
With the understanding that our “neighbors” may not include those who have totally rejected God, I have “almost absolute faith”, not “absolute faith”, that if God exists, God would have us love each and every one of our neighbors each and every moment of our lives. I have “almost absolute” faith that God would always have us love our neighbor, however, since I am not good, I do not have “absolute” faith that this is true.
After you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, and know and understand the love that God has given us, perhaps you may believe that I am wrong about what the good is that God would have us do. I have absolute faith that if God exists, God would have each and every one of us do that which is good. To find the answer to the question what is the good that God would have us do, you must use the knowledge and understanding of what God would have you do that you find in your heart, mind, and soul. Whatever the answer you find is, you must be absolutely certain that it is based on the true, pure, real, love that, if God exists, God has given you in your heart, mind, and soul.
Some people who believe that God does not exist, believe that human beings can do good even in a universe where there is no God. Is it possible that they are right? If human beings want to do good, can they do good if God does not exist? After many years of thought I reached the conclusion that if we do not survive the grave, then the most logical deduction is that after our physical death we have no meaningful past, present, or future. I may be wrong, but I think I am right (if you don't fully understand what we are saying please reread the note "Who Will You Be When You No Longer Are?"). If there is no life after physical death, then it seems clear to me that on our physical death our life is in fact consumed by "nothing", and our life is meaningless. If there is no life after death, neither life nor love nor good nor bad have any real meaning for human beings.
If physical death annihilates our physical past, present, and future, then our life has meaning and purpose and value only if after our physical death our consciousness continues to exist in a non-physical life. We cannot prove that we continue, or do not continue, to exist after our physical death. Indeed there may be no life after death, and your life may have no meaning and value. Yet if there is a life after death, then you will continue to experience a non-physical existence after your physical death, and your life does in fact have meaning and value.
If God exists, God is good. If God exists, perhaps God gives each of us a non-physical life after death, so that our life both before and after physical death has meaning and value. If God in some manner beyond human comprehension grants existence to human beings, even after the death of their bodies, then and only then life becomes more than a brief, isolated event. Then, and only then, life and love have meaning and purpose, we can do that which is good, and life is worth living.
Is it possible that even if God does not exist, there may be a non-physical life after death that gives meaning and value to our life? The intuitive answer seems to be no. I cannot imagine a human spirit that survives death if there is no presence beyond life other than human spirits, if there is no Spirit greater than the human soul. I do not believe that the only non-physical presence in the universe can be the human soul. I intuitively believe that if there is no Spirit greater than the human spirit, then there is no human soul, and we do in fact cease to exist on our death.
If there is no non-physical Spirit greater than the human soul, if there is no God, it makes no sense to conclude that a physical being born into our physical world has at birth, or somehow develops, a non-physical soul. I can see no possible way that a physical human being, who is a tiny part of an unimaginably huge universe, can survive physical death if there is no Spirit, no God, to grant that "physical being", in some manner and fashion beyond our understanding, a non-physical soul and life. It somehow seems intuitively true that without God there would be no reason to believe that we possess a "consciousness" that continues to exist beyond the death of our bodies, no reason to have hope that after our death we may live forever in a non-physical world. Even though it cannot be proven, it seems intuitively clear that if God does not exist then there is no life after death.
Similarly, it seems intuitively clear that if God does not exist there is no "heaven", no life after death that is good. It is intuitively impossible for me to imagine the existence of a life after death in a heaven where there is no Spirit greater than the human soul, where God is not present. I cannot imagine a heaven filled with perfect love that is "created" or "sustained" by imperfect human souls, who during their physical lives repeatedly fail to choose love. It would seem that only God, the One who is good, the One who is perfect, the One who loves with perfect love, could forgive human sins so that heaven would be filled with love. I cannot imagine a heaven filled with real, true, pure, love without the presence in heaven of One who loves with perfect love, without the presence of One who is good. Without the presence of God who loves with perfect love, I cannot envision a heaven where human beings share real, true, pure, love. I cannot "prove" anything to be true, yet it seems intuitively clear that if God does not exist, there is no heaven.
I simply do not believe that there is a life after death in a heaven filled with love if God, the One who is good, the One who is perfect, the One who loves with perfect love, does not exist. It would seem that without God each of us ceases to exist on the day of our death, annihilating our past, present, and future. It somehow seems intuitively true that without God, good and love and life are empty ideas that live and die with each human being.
Perhaps God has "revealed" to all or some of us that he exists. Yet even if God has not "revealed" this to you, he has given you the choice to have faith or not to have faith that he exists. Why should you have faith that God exists? We have said that we should have absolute faith that if God exists God is good, and we should have absolute faith that God would have us do that which is good. Should we have faith that God exists because if God exists, God is good? I believe the answer to that question is that if we want to do good, we should have faith that God exists. If we want good to exist and have meaning, if we want to do that which is good, we should have faith that the Supreme Being, God, exists.
Should we love God because if God exists, God is good? If we want to do that which is good, the answer is yes. If God does not exist, good and love and life are meaningless and have no value. If love among people is good and meaningful and has purpose, it is good and meaningful and has purpose only if God exists and only because of God. It should be clear to all who want to do that which is good that they should have faith that God exists, and that they should love God, the One who is good. It should be clear to all who believe that loving people is good, and who want to love their neighbor, that they should have faith in God, and love God, the One who is good, the One alone who gives meaning and purpose and value to love and to life.
If God makes it good for us to love each other in this life and in a world after death, and thus makes life worth living, then his existence alone gives us hope. It is right to have faith in God and to love God, the One who is good. It is right to have faith in God and to love God, for without him love would be no more than one of many emotions that die with those who embrace them. Without God each of us would cease to exist, making all the love we gave and received during our lifetimes empty and totally useless. Without God love would be destroyed by physical death and life would have absolutely no meaning or purpose. Without God, good and life and love have no meaning, or purpose, or value. Without God there would be no reason for living.
When you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, you will know and understand that you should have faith in God and love God because God is good. When you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, you will know and understand love, and you will know and understand that you should have faith in God and love God because God gives meaning and purpose to love and to life. You will know and understand that the existence of God gives meaning and value to a "good" life on earth, and gives us hope for a "good" life after death. You should love God for making life worth living by giving us love in this world, and by giving us hope for a world after death that is filled with love.
If God exists, God is good. You should love God with the greatest love you can give. I have absolute faith that you should love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength. You should love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, for God alone makes it meaningful and right and good for us to love him and to love each other. You should love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, for God alone gives us hope that if we love him and love each other we will live forever in a joyous communion of love. If you love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, you have chosen to do that which you can do, you can do no more, you should do no less. If you love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength, you will do what God wants you to do, you will love your neighbor as yourself.
Even though many believe that God has already spoken to us, and that we have not listened, why does God not speak directly to each and every one of us and tell us that he exists? Perhaps God has not revealed to us that he exists, in a manner that no one could question, and has instead caused the observable physical universe to appear to follow deterministic laws, because he does not want us to know with absolute certainty that he does exist. Perhaps if we knew for an absolute fact that God exists, we would not choose to do God's will because we choose to love God and our neighbors, rather we would choose to do God's will to avoid punishment. Perhaps God has not revealed to us that he exists so that we may have the free will choice to have faith that God exists, and the free will choice to love God and our neighbors, or not.
Why does God give us a choice to love or not to love? Why would God not create all of us in such a way that we must love as God would have us love? Why not require all people to do to others what they would have others do to them? Perhaps the answer is that if evil did not exist, then not only would human beings not have a choice to do that which is bad, they would not have a choice to do that which is good. Perhaps if during our life on earth we could not do that which is evil, if at some point in our physical existence we did not have the free will choice to do that which is good or not, we simply could not do that which is good. Perhaps to do good during our physical lives, we must have the choice to do that which is good or do that which is evil, because it is our choice that determines whether we do good or evil. Perhaps if we are to do that which is good, before we act we must choose to do good instead of evil.
We have completed a full circle back to the question, what is the meaning and purpose of life, yet it has become the question, should we believe God exists and have faith in him and love him? We have suggested that the reason we should have faith in and love God is because if God exists, God is good, he wants us to love him and to love each other, and he gives meaning and purpose to life and love. A "why not" argument can be made that if God does not exist nihilists are probably right and death is the end, but since God might exist we should do what he would want us to do or we might end up tortured in some form of eternal punishment. That play it safe logic sounds good in theory, yet it leaves us with a feeling that those who love to avoid punishment don't really love at all. If we are to have faith in God, and love as he would have us love, we must choose to love him because we want to love as he would have us love, not because we want to avoid the consequences of not loving.
After you have searched your heart, mind, and soul and know and understand love, you must choose whether or not to believe that there is nothing in the world better than people loving other people. If you truly know and understand love I believe you will agree if anything in life is worth living for, love is worth living for. If you agree love is worth living for, and if love has meaning only if God exists, then you must choose whether or not to live for the one hope for human beings, that God exists. You should not have faith in God because you want to avoid eternal punishment. You should have faith in God and love God, because God is good. You should have faith in God and love God because you want to do that which is good, you want to love God and your neighbor.
If we love as God would have us love, what will happen to us after our physical death? Think about the real, true, pure, love you found when you searched your heart, mind, and soul, and you will know and understand what love in heaven would be like. I have absolute faith that if God exists, and if there is a heaven, then if we choose to do God's will, we will live forever in heaven in the presence of God, the One alone who is good. After one moment in heaven, we will know that every single moment of our existence, for the rest of eternity, will be filled with the joy of real, true, pure love. We will know that our entire being will be totally filled with real, true, pure love, forever. All the illness, pain, and sorrow we experienced during our life on earth will vanish completely. In an instant, memories of even the worst tortures that happened to us before our death will be overwhelmed by the love that surrounds us, and will "disappear" forever. We will exist in the presence of real, true, pure, perfect love, forever. We will exist in the presence of God.
If the existence of God is your one hope for an eternal life of love, and if you believe love is good, and if you want to love your neighbor, you will choose to have faith in God and to love God, the One who is good. If you want to love your neighbor, you will choose to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, for without God your desire to love any person is an empty dream that ends at the grave. If you love God you will do what he wants you to do, you will love your neighbor as God would have you love, you will love your neighbor as yourself. To love God and your neighbor is right and good, it gives meaning and purpose to life, it makes life worth living.
Answers to the many questions life poses may now be found by those who truly know and understand love. Yet knowing the answers does not mean you will choose love. If you believe love is good, you must decide whether or not you want to love. The alternatives to faith in God and to love are tempting. Many, if not most, people will choose them.
Just as it is your choice to love people or not to love people, it is your choice to love God or not to love God. The choice is yours, and yours alone. I can only hope you choose, every single moment of your lives, to have faith in God and to love as he would have you love. I truly believe if you know and understand love and want to do good, you will choose to love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and you will choose to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the complete answer to all questions.
I have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good. I have absolute faith that if God exists, God is perfect. I have absolute faith that if God exists, it is God’s will that each and every one of us do that which is good. If God exists, it is God’s will that each and every one of us be perfect. If you do God’s will, you will love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and you will love your neighbor as yourself.
What about traditional religious beliefs, Christian theology and doctrine, baptism, sainthood, communion, all the beliefs and observances generations have cherished. What role do they play in our discussion of love? We have said love is a basic, profound part of each and every person's being. We have stated that if you are willing to know and understand love you will know and understand it. We have said that love is good and life has meaning only if God exists. We have said that if God exists he wants you to love him and love your neighbor. We have said that if you want to do good you will choose to have faith in God and love as he would have you love. If you do so you will be doing the best you can do, you will be loving now and living with hope for a joyful eternal life.
So what does this say to us about baptism, positions on church doctrines, participation in organized religion, beliefs about the nature of Jesus, etc? Must we address each of these questions before loving God and our neighbor? If you understand love, the answer is clear that if you choose to love God and your neighbor, you will do the best you can do. You will do the best you can do to do that which you should do. That is all you can do. If you choose to love God, you will decide what role organized religion, and church doctrines and philosophies, will play in your life. If you choose to love God and your neighbor, every decision you make will be determined by that love. If you choose to love God and your neighbor, all you do will be governed and controlled by love.
If you think about it for a few minutes, you should realize that if you love God and your neighbor you will in every instance do the best you can to do what is right. That is all you can do, that is all God requires. Certainly loving God means you will help your neighbors when they are in need of help. Perhaps you will decide that if you love God you must be baptized and observe communion, perhaps not. Perhaps you will decide loving God requires you to make many changes in your religious beliefs, perhaps not. When you choose to love God and your neighbor, every choice you make will be made out of love. It is the choice to love God as he would have you love him, and out of that love to love people as he would have you love them, that is the one important choice, all other choices will be governed by that one profound decision. To love God and our neighbor as God would have us love is the complete answer to all our questions.
Some two thousand years before the writing of these notes, a man named Jesus said to all who would listen that God gave these commandments to all people, including you, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
When asked who is my "neighbor", Jesus replied, "A man was on his way from Jerusalem down to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down by the same road; but when he saw him, he went past on the other side. So too a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him he went past on the other side. But a Samaritan who was making the journey came upon him, and when he saw him he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, bathing them with oil and wine. Then he lifted him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him there. The next day he took out two silver pieces and gave them to the innkeeper, and said, take care of him; and if you spend any more, I will repay you on my way back. Which of these three do you think was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" The questioner answered, "the one who showed him kindness." Jesus said, "go and do likewise."
Who is your neighbor? With the possible exception of those who have totally rejected love by committing the eternal sin (we discuss later the possibility that people who have committed the eternal sin are not our neighbors), every person who loves you, every person who hates you, every enemy, every stranger, people of every continent, people of every race, every single human being in the entire world, everyone, is your neighbor. Jesus said that all who "keep the commandments" will live forever, continuing to exist after physical death in a state of never-ending joy.
Who was, and/or is, Jesus? Many people differ in who they believe Jesus to be. Many believe Jesus is the Son of God. There are many, many different beliefs as to what it means to say Jesus is God's son. Some believe Jesus was God incarnate. Other people believe Jesus was a prophet, given knowledge by God of the nature and meaning of life. Still others believe Jesus was a wise man with great insight into human existence. Some do not understand, or have not completely agreed with, what Jesus said, and therefore have thought little about who he is or was. I cannot scientifically prove that any one of the answers given to questions about Jesus is the true answer, that one or more of the answers are partially true, or that none truly answer the questions.
Many people believe that Jesus and God are One, and that you must accept Jesus as God before you can know God and love God. In the Gospel of John we are told that Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. .."; Luke says that Jesus said "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."; Matthew tells us that Jesus said "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven."; and John tells us Jesus said; "The Father and I are One.".
I believe that even if you have not decided who you believe Jesus is, you can and should love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, and that out of that love you will choose to believe, and have faith in, what your heart, mind, and soul leads you to believe or have faith about Jesus. If you do not believe or have faith that Jesus and God are One, and if Jesus and God are One, then if you can and do love God perhaps you are loving Jesus, and God will forgive you for not having believed and had faith that Jesus and God are One, perhaps not. Perhaps it is possible for you not to believe or have faith that Jesus and God are One and at the same time not to believe or have faith that Jesus and God are not One, and if Jesus and God are One, perhaps God will forgive you if you can and do love God, perhaps not (the last two sentences are complex, you may need to give them some additional thought). Perhaps, if Jesus and God are One, to love God you must first have faith that Jesus and God are One, and you must love Jesus. As we have said before, since we cannot know anything with absolute certainty unless the whole has revealed it to us, the best we can do is have faith, or not, that Jesus and God are One (many have faith that God has already revealed to us that Jesus and God are One).
You must answer for yourself the question of who Jesus was, and is. You may choose to believe, and have faith in, what your heart, mind, and soul leads you to believe about Jesus. Perhaps it is beyond human ability to comprehend his true nature, perhaps not. Whoever you have faith or believe Jesus to have been, and to be, his message about life remains the same. The message of Jesus is that God exists; each of us continues to exist after the death of our bodies; God commands you to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength" and to "love your neighbor as yourself"; it is right and good to love God without limit, the One alone who is good and who gives meaning and purpose to life and love; it is right and good to love your neighbor as yourself; and all who do God’s will shall, after their physical death, live a joyful life in heaven, forever.
Jesus said that "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets", "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.", "You shall love your neighbor as yourself.", "There is no other commandment greater than these.", "... do this, and you will live." There is nothing else that we can and should do. It is your choice to love as God commands or not, period.
When you complete your search and know and understand the love that God has given you, you know and understand that you can and should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength, and that you can and should love your neighbor "as yourself". When you complete your search it will be clear to you what God means when he tells you that you can and should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
When you complete your search it will also be clear to you what God means when he tells you that you can and should love your neighbor "as yourself". To say that you can and should love your neighbor "as yourself", is not the same as saying that you can and should love your neighbor "as you love yourself". To say that you should love your neighbor "as yourself", does not mean that you should "love yourself". If you love your neighbor "as yourself", and both you and your neighbor are thirsty, you will not drink the only cup of water that you have because you "love yourself". Rather, you will give the cup of water to your neighbor because you love your neighbor "as yourself".
When you complete your search and know and understand the love that God has given you, you will know and understand that you can and should love your neighbor "as yourself", as if he or she was in your place, as if he or she was "you". You will know and understand that you should give your neighbor the food that you would give yourself, the water that you would give yourself, the shelter that you would provide for yourself, the clothing that you would wear, etc. You should care for your neighbor when they are sick as you would care for yourself. You should do to your neighbor what you would have them do to you. You should give your neighbor the food, water, shelter, clothing, etc., that you would have them give to you. You should care for them when they are sick as you would have them care for you if you were sick; you should visit them when they are in prison as you would have them visit you if you were in prison; etc. You should give your neighbor real, true, pure, love. You should give your neighbor the love that God has given us. You should love your neighbor "as yourself".
Some may be uncomfortable with lack of references to particular Biblical passages. In my writings I rely only on the message that Jesus gave to us. I have faith that no matter who Jesus was or is, the message of Jesus is a message from God. I have no opinion on words not spoken by Jesus. What I sincerely believe is that, if we search our very being to understand love, each of us can love God and our neighbors, without discussing Old Testament writings and New Testament prophecies. I strongly believe loving God and our neighbors as God would have us love is all that God would have us do.
I do not particularly care what happened in Old Testament times, what descriptions of heaven are like, or what the future may bring. I have faith that I can and should "love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my strength" and "love my neighbor as myself". I have faith that if I choose to love as God would have me love, I will make the best choices I am capable of making. I have faith that if each moment of each day I love as God would have me love, when I die I will have done all I could do, all I should do, and I will live forever in a heaven filled with joyful love. To love God and your neighbors each and every day as God would have you love is all that you should do.
I have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good. I have absolute faith that if God exists, God does that which is good. I have absolute faith that if God exists, God would have us do that which is good. I have absolute faith that if God exists, and if there is a heaven, then if we do God's will, after our death we will live forever in a heaven filled with joy. Even if I am wrong about what it is that we should do if we choose to do God's will, I have absolute faith that if God exists, we should do God's will. If you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, you will know and understand what God would have you do. You must be absolutely certain that you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, and know and understand the love that God has given us. You must be absolutely certain that you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, and know and understand and do God’s will.
We have talked about existence after death, love, and God, and now we have come to a point where you will make choices and decisions about what you have read, for even if you do nothing you have made your choice. I believe all we have discussed is so deeply a part of human existence that you must search your heart, mind, and soul to know and understand what we have been talking about. I believe that you must search your heart, mind, and soul to know and understand love. I believe that if you complete your search, you will find in your heart, mind, and soul, the love God has given us, you will find the reason for living. You must be absolutely certain that you have completed your search, and that each of your answers is based on the knowledge and understanding of the love that God has given you that is in your heart, mind, and soul. If you choose to love as God would have you love, you will accept the most difficult of answers, and you will find peace and hope in your choices and decisions.
I have almost absolute faith that when you have completed your search of your heart and mind and soul, you will know and understand that you can and should "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself". When you search the very depth of your heart and mind and soul, you will know and understand that, even though many may not choose to love, each and every person has the choice to love, or not to love, as God would have them love. When you have completed your search you will know and understand that each and every one of us can and should choose to love as God would have us love.
You will know and understand that it is your choice, now and for every moment of the rest of your life on earth, to believe and have faith in God and to love as he would have you love, or not. You will know and understand that if there is a heaven, if you love as God would have you love, you will live a life worth living on this earth, and after your physical death you will live an endless, joyful, life in heaven in the presence of God, the One who is good.
After many, many years of thought and discussion, I believe that there are many difficult questions which have answers that are unclear, uncertain, or unknown; that there are many thoughts and ideas that language cannot adequately express; that there is knowledge beyond human ability to know; that we cannot "prove" anything unless truth is revealed to us; etc. After completing my search of my heart, my mind, and my soul, I believe that we do not need to answer all the difficult questions, express in words all that we intuitively feel, know what we cannot know, "prove" what is beyond human ability to prove, etc.
I have absolute faith that if God exists, God is good.
I have absolute faith that if God exists, God would have us do that which is good.
I have absolute faith that if God exists, and if there is a heaven, if we choose to do that which God would have us do, after our death we will live forever in heaven in the presence of God, the One who is good.
I have almost absolute faith that if you complete your search of your heart, mind, and soul, your very being, you will know and understand the love that God has given us, and you will know and understand that you can and should "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself", nothing more, nothing less, period.
You will make your choice.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Additional Notes
A Lesser Love
There is no question that you can choose to love God with all your heart, all
your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, and love your neighbor as
yourself. There is also no question that you should choose to love God with all
your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, and love your
neighbor as yourself. What if you choose to love God with less than all your
heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, and to love your
neighbor less than yourself?
You can and should love as God would have you love. I
believe that if you are unwilling to love God and your neighbors as God
commands, you can choose to love God with a lesser love, you can choose to love
God with as much of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength as you
are willing to love him with, and you can choose to love your neighbors with a
lesser love, you can choose to love your neighbor as much as yourself as you are
willing to love them. Perhaps God will forgive you for not having loved as he
would have you love if you choose to love him and your neighbors.
What does it
mean to love God and your neighbors? Will God forgive everyone who loves God and
their neighbors? Will God forgive us if we choose to love him and our neighbors
with the "least" love we can give? Will God forgive us if we love him and our
neighbors with "more" love than the "least" love we can give, yet choose not to
love as God would have us love? Will God forgive us only if we choose to do what
we can and should do, only if we choose to love as God would have us love?
I intuitively
believe that God will forgive only those who love God and their neighbors. At
the same time, I do not believe that it is possible for us to identify those who
will be forgiven for specific choices to do less than God would have them do,
and those who will not be forgiven. If we are not willing to love as God would
have us love, I believe that God alone will judge who, if anyone, will be
forgiven for choosing to love him and their neighbors with a "lesser" love.
What should
you choose to do if you are not willing to love as God would have you love and
you are faced with the choice to love God and your neighbors with the "least"
love or with "more" than the "least" love you can give? When you make the choice
to love God and your neighbors with "less" love or with "more" love, choose to
love God and your neighbors with the "most" love you are willing to love them
with. For example, I have faith that if out of love for your hungry neighbors
you may choose to give food to 100 or 50 or 20 of them, you can and should
choose to love as God would have you love, you should give food to the 100. If
you choose not to do what you can and should do, if you choose not to love as
God would have you love, then do not give food to 20 neighbors, give food to 50
neighbors.
I strongly
believe that if I know and understand that I can and should love the Lord my God
with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength,
and love my neighbor as myself, then I know and understand what it means to love
God and my neighbor as God would have me love, and I know and understand what it
means to love God and my neighbor with a lesser love.
It may be that
God will forgive you only if you love him with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as
yourself. If that is true, what I have said about choosing a lesser love is
wrong, and choosing either a lesser love or no love will lead you to eternal,
loveless, punishment. Yet one of my strongest beliefs is that God will forgive
many, most, or all, of those of you who love God and who love your neighbors,
even if you do not love him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your mind, and with all your strength, and do not love your neighbor as
yourself.
If you are not
willing to love God and your neighbors as God commands, love God with as much of
your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength as you are willing to love
him with, and love your neighbor as much as yourself as you are willing to love
them, with the hope that God may forgive you.
A
Fanatic Life or a
What will our life be like if we love God and our
neighbors as God would have us love? What will our life be like if we love God
and our neighbors with a "lesser love"? These are very, very,
difficult questions. It is intuitively true that if we love God and our
neighbors we will give food to a starving child, water to a thirsty stranger,
shelter to someone who is homeless and cold. This intuitive truth is strong and
basic. Is it always good to give a drink of water to a thirsty neighbor? There
may be situations where we must choose to give water to one of two neighbors
who are literally dying of thirst, based on our evaluation of which neighbor
must have the water immediately to live and which one can survive without water
at that moment. There may be times when we are physically prevented from giving
water to a thirsty neighbor, or when there may be other negative consequences
of doing so. Yet it is intuitively clear that the basic, fundamental, statement
"we should give water to a thirsty neighbor" is always true.
So
where does all that we have said leave us? Does it leave us with pragmatic,
situation ethics, where that which is "good" is determined by
individual circumstances? It does not. There is a single answer for all
situations, that answer is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength" and
"love your neighbor as yourself". As we have said, whether or not
that which we do is good or bad, right or wrong, is determined by whether or
not we love God and our neighbor as God would have us love.
Perhaps
God will forgive us if we love God and our neighbor with a lesser love, yet
that does not change the fact that you can and should "love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your
strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself", nothing more,
nothing less, period. There is no question that if because I love God and my
neighbor as God would have me love I give my neighbor something to eat or
drink, then I have done that which I can and should do, I have done that which
is good.
If
I love a neighbor who is hungry and thirsty what will I do? The answer is that
I will give them food and water. No matter how hard I have tried to find
another answer, if I love my neighbor and my neighbor is hungry and thirsty, I
cannot imagine not giving them food and water. If you know and understand the
love that God has given us, you know and understand that there is no other
answer. This alone tells me that if we love our neighbor as God would have us
love, we will not live a "normal life", we will live a "fanatic
life".
So
what will we do if we live a "fanatic life"? If you love your
neighbor as yourself, you will do what you can so that each and every one of
your neighbors knows and understands that they can and should choose to do that
which is good, that they can and should choose to do God’s will. We know that
if God exists and there is a heaven, then if our neighbors choose to do God's
will, our neighbors will live forever in heaven, there is nothing better. We
know that if God exists and there is a hell, then if our neighbors do not
choose to do God's will, they will live forever in hell, there is nothing
worse. It seems clear that if I love my neighbors as God would have me love
them, I will do all that I can so that each and every one of my neighbors will
know and understand God's commandments, so that they may choose to do God's
will and live forever in heaven. If you love your neighbor as yourself, how can
you do anything less than the best you can so that each and every one of your
neighbors knows and understands that they can choose to do God's will, and live
a joyous life forever in heaven?
What
can and should I do? It seems absolutely clear that if I do God's will, I will
do my best to visit my neighbors and help them know and understand God's word
so that they may choose to do God's will. It also seems absolutely clear that
if I do God’s will, I will give food to each of my neighbors if they are
hungry, water if they are thirsty, shelter if they are homeless, etc. It seems
absolutely clear that if I do God’s will, I will care for my neighbor who is
sick until they are well, visit my neighbor who is in prison, and comfort my
neighbor who is lonely. I do not see how I can reach any other conclusion.
I
strongly believe that this means that if I do God's will my life will be a
truly "fanatic life". If I do God’s will, then every moment of my
life for the rest of my life I will do the best that I can to communicate God’s
word to my neighbors by word and by deed. If I do what I can and should do, I
will go from neighbor to neighbor, conveying God's word to them and helping
them if they need food, water, shelter, etc. I will stay with each neighbor
only as long as is necessary to see to that neighbor's needs and to tell them
about God's commandments. This is a very difficult life, yet I cannot imagine
that I should do anything less. I simply do not believe that there is any other
life that we can and should live.
Even
though you may agree with what we have just said, you need to recognize that it
is incredibly difficult to live a "fanatic life". It is relatively
easy to accept that living a "normal life" filled with love for our
family and friends is far better than living a life filled with selfish
physical and emotional pleasure. It is not as easy to accept that a
"normal life" is not the life that we should live, that it is not the
"good life". It is extremely difficult to accept that we should live
a life filled with "fanatic" and total acceptance of that which God
would have us do.
This
brings us to a troubling question, if you "love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your
strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself", and you live in
a world where some people do not choose to do God's will, will you ever do that
which you would not do in a world where every person does God's will? If you
love God as God would have you love, if you love your neighbor as yourself,
will you ever do a specific act in this world that you would not do in a world
where every person loved as God would have them love, where every person loved
their neighbor as God would have them love? This is a very, very, difficult
question.
God
has given each and every one of us the choice of giving food to our hungry
neighbor or not. God has given each and every one of us the choice of doing
physical harm to our neighbor or not. No matter what anyone else may choose to
do, each of us has the choice to give food to a hungry neighbor or not, and
each of us has the choice to do physical harm to a neighbor or not. I strongly
believe that God would never have a neighbor choose not to give food to a
hungry neighbor. I strongly believe that God would never have a neighbor choose
to do physical harm to another neighbor. I simply do not believe that it is
ever God's will that any of us choose not to give food to our hungry neighbor,
or that any of us choose to do physical harm to our neighbor.
If your neighbor has plenty to
eat yet is thirsty, and your neighbor refuses to share their food, it is not
God’s will that you say to your neighbor “give food to your hungry neighbor and
then I will give water to you”, it is God’s will that you love your neighbor as
yourself and give them a drink of water if they are thirsty. If your neighbor
is doing physical harm to their neighbor, and your neighbor is homeless,
hungry, and thirsty, it is not God’s will that you say to your neighbor “do not
do physical harm to your neighbor and then I will give food, water, and shelter
to you”, it is God’s will that you love your neighbor as yourself and give them
food, water, and shelter. If your neighbor is doing physical harm to their
neighbor, it is not God’s will that you say to your neighbor “do not do physical
harm to your neighbor and then I will not do physical harm to you”, it is God’s
will that you love your neighbor as yourself and not do physical harm to them.
If
we can kill one neighbor and prevent them from killing two other neighbors, it
is not God’s will that two people be killed, it is not God’s will that one
person be killed. It is God’s will that the person who would kill repent and
that no one be killed. It is not God’s will that two people be killed, it is
not God’s will that one person be killed. It is God’s will that we do that
which is good, that no one be killed. If we do physical harm to reduce the
physical harm done by another person, there is one more person in the world who
is doing physical harm, not one less. It is only when the person who has chosen
to do physical harm repents and chooses to do God’s will, that there is one
less person doing physical harm, and one more person in the world who is doing
God’s will. I am unwilling to conclude that God would have any of us do physical
harm to our neighbor when each and every one of us has the choice to do
physical harm or not to do physical harm, to kill or not to kill.
It
is not God’s will that even one person for a single moment does anything less
than God’s will. It is God’s will that each and every moment of our lives each
and every one of us do God’s will, nothing less, nothing more, period. (after
you finish reading these notes, you may want to read our book, Love – In Search
of a Reason for Living, which discusses difficult topics in more detail).
My
hope is that if we live a “fanatic life”, we will have done God’s will on
earth, and after our physical death we will live a joyous life in heaven,
nothing could be better. If we do God’s will we may suffer pain, or even death,
at the hands of those who do not choose to do God’s will. I strongly believe
that God would have us live a “fanatic life”, and that if we do, after our
physical death the horrendous pain and suffering, all the horrors of our life,
will be completely overwhelmed by the love and joy that is in heaven, and will
“disappear” forever. I have absolute faith that, no matter what happens to us
during our life on earth, if God exists and there is a heaven, if we do God’s
will we will live a joyous life forever in the presence of God, the One alone
who is good.
What
if I am wrong about God wanting us to live a “fanatic life”? I understand that
if I am wrong, the consequences of choosing to live a “fanatic life” may be
devastating. I strongly believe that we can and should live a “fanatic life”,
yet I do not believe that during my lifetime on earth I will ever be able to
say in good conscience that I am absolutely certain that I am right. I have
noted that what I find in my heart, mind, and soul to be true may not be.
Perhaps I have not completed my search, and I simply do not know, or will not
admit, that I have not? Perhaps the hundreds of millions of people, including
virtually every theologian and philosopher, who believe that we can and should
love God and family and friends with a more complex love are right. Perhaps
those who believe that we should use minimal physical force to prevent or
minimize physical harm are correct. If so, perhaps the "normal life"
that the majority considers to be a "good life" is the life that God
would have us live.
Perhaps
many people will choose to live a “normal life”, believing that they are doing
that which God would have them do. Perhaps many other people who understand
that they can and should live a “fanatic life”, but are unwilling to do so,
will also choose to live a "normal life". I am not in any way saying
that many, or most, or even all, who live a "normal life" will not be
forgiven by God. Indeed, while I cannot be sure, I strongly believe that God
will forgive many, most, perhaps all, people who choose to love God and their
neighbors, yet choose not to love as God would have them love. I strongly
believe that God will forgive most, perhaps all, of those who choose to live a
"normal life".
Let
us take a brief look at a “normal life” that most would consider, for a middle
age man or woman, to be characteristic of a "good life", a life where
each individual has:
1. Strong spiritual beliefs and faith:
Faith
in God. Strong spiritual beliefs and faith that provide a foundation for daily
living. Active membership and participation in a church, synagogue, or other
place of worship.
2. A strong family unit:
Marriage
to a spouse who has strong positive characteristics, few negative traits, and
is both loving and supportive. A life long relationship filled with love
between husband and wife. Living as "one flesh" with our spouse,
never lusting after him or her, but rather loving our spouse and out of that
love welcoming the physical pleasure that accompanies sexual relations. Two
children, a boy and a girl, who are healthy, bright, energetic, loving
children. Parents and close relatives who are healthy, supportive, loving,
individuals. Friends who are loving members of an "extended family".
3. Economic and personal security:
A
well paying job that gives employees plenty of time at home and provides
sufficient income for the family's comfort, including a pleasant, yet modest
house in a pretty setting that has enough room for the family, a yard for the
children to play in, and that is in good repair. Modest furniture, including a
nice couch, soft chairs, pretty tables, comfortable beds, etc. A simple but
nice television, vcr, stereo, stove, refrigerator,
microwave, personal computer, etc. Two late model, medium size cars with safety
and basic comfort options. Nutritious and tasty meals, including reasonably
priced restaurant meals several times a month. Protection from criminal
activity and threats from foreign governments, provided by government agencies
using social programs, diplomacy, and the minimum police and military force
necessary to prevent one person from doing physical harm to another person.
4. Recreation and sports:
Participation
by the adults in a sport at least a few hours a week. Participation by the children
in one or more sports. Two to four weeks of family vacations each year in
pleasant, inexpensive locations. Hobbies such as electronics, photography,
crafts, woodworking, cooking, etc., that cost little to participate in.
5. Lifestyle:
Several
hours a day with our children, helping them with homework, games, sports,
reading, learning, etc. Several hours a day with our spouse, talking, playing
games, working around the house, etc. Several hours a week with other members
of our family and extended family, enjoying games, sports, hobbies, etc.
Several hours a week for volunteer work at hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless
shelters, etc. Several hours a week for volunteer work with children and adults
who are lonely and need companionship. Generous donations to international,
national, and local charitable organizations. A pleasant, happy, positive
attitude toward all our neighbors – including family, friends, and strangers. A
pleasant, happy, positive outlook toward our “normal” daily lives.
This
is a “normal life” that most people would call a "good life". It
appears that thousands of years of human biologic development, modified by
human communication and intellect, have led to the majority view that this is
the life we should live. Indeed, most people believe that this is the life that
God would have us live. It is a life that focuses primary love and attention on
family and self, and secondary love and attention on friends, while at the same
time providing what each individual considers to be their fair share of love,
care, and help to those outside what is commonly known as an extended family.
The
collective wisdom of generations of human beings who want to do that which is
good, is that God would have us live a "normal life". The vast majority
of people believe that we should do the best that we can to maximize the
positive physical aspects of our lives on earth, while minimizing the negative.
Most view life after death as a separate existence from life on earth, where
those people who lived a normal life on earth will live a joyous life in
heaven. Human beings intuitively believe that they should do the best they can
to make physical life on earth as “good” as it can be.
Is
a "normal life" the life God would have us live, or not? I return to
the question, if I love a neighbor who is hungry and thirsty what will I do?
The answer is that I will give my neighbor food and water. My conclusion
remains the same, I strongly believe that God would have us live a “fanatic
life”. I strongly believe that if I am wrong and God would have us live a
normal life, God will forgive those who live the “fanatic life” we have
described. Yet I may be wrong. You must complete your search of your heart,
mind, and soul and find the answers to these questions yourself.
Even
though I strongly believe that each and every one of us can and should live a
“fanatic life”, I intuitively believe that very, very, very, very few will
choose to live such a life. Almost everyone who chooses to love God and their
neighbor will choose to love God and their neighbor with a “lesser love” than
God would have them choose. Almost everyone who chooses to love God and their
neighbor will choose to marry and have a family, to have a successful career,
to support government use of minimal physical force to minimize physical harm,
etc. Almost everyone who chooses to love God and their neighbor will choose to
live a life that maximizes the positive physical aspects of their life on
earth, without causing what they consider to be unacceptable negative
consequences for their neighbors.
I
am sickened when I realize that if I live a fanatic life and do not use minimal
physical force to prevent physical harm, then infants, children, and adults
will almost certainly suffer torture and death. If we do nothing to physically
stop them, there will almost certainly be people who inflict excruciating pain
and almost unimaginable tortures on helpless infants and children. I strongly
believe that we should live a “fanatic life”, and that if we do so we will not
do physical harm to our neighbor, yet I tremble with fear that I may be wrong.
It would seem that only those who have extraordinary faith in God, who strongly
believe that they know and understand God’s will, and who have almost absolute
faith that God would have them live a “fanatic life”, would be willing to
accept the horrors that would probably accompany a fanatic life. I cannot
imagine that, even among those who have extraordinary faith in God, there are
many people who have a strong enough belief that they know and understand God’s
will that they are willing to choose to have almost absolute faith that God
would have them live a “fanatic life”.
Among
those who believe that God would have us live a “fanatic life” and who want to
love God and their neighbors, only a very, very, very, very small number will
choose to live a “fanatic life”. I strongly believe that almost all people who
want to love God and their neighbors will choose to live a “normal life”, and
that God will forgive most, or all of them. I may be wrong, nothing we have
said alters my strong belief that we can and should live a “fanatic life”.
Perhaps if we know and understand that God would have us live a “fanatic life”,
God will not forgive us if we choose to live a “normal life”.
Yet one of my strongest beliefs is that among those who are unwilling to live a “fanatic life”, God will forgive most, or all, who choose to live a “normal life” like the “normal life” we described. A “normal life” where we love God and our neighbor with a lesser love that is less than the love that God would have us love him and our neighbors with, yet is more than the least love that we can love God and our neighbors with. A "normal life" where you love God with as much of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength as you are willing to love him with, and love your neighbor as much as yourself as you are willing to love them. A “normal life” that, perhaps, is a “good life” that God will forgive us for choosing.
If you are unwilling to live a “fanatic life”, if
you want to live a “normal life” that may be a “good life”,
communicate God’s word to your neighbors so
that they may choose to love God and their neighbors.
If
you love God and your neighbors, if you want to live a “normal life” that may be
a “good life”, you may focus some of your love and attention on a spouse,
children, and other members of your extended family. Yet if you love God and
your neighbors you will not focus all of your love and attention on your family
and your extended family. If you focus all of the love and attention you are
willing to give to your neighbors on your spouse, children, and extended family,
then you do not love all of your neighbors. I strongly believe that if we love
God and our neighbors, we will love each and every neighbor, focusing love and
attention on our spouse, children, and other members of our extended family,
while at the same time giving to neighbors outside our extended family as much
as we are willing of the love that God would have us give to them.
One
of the most difficult requirements of a “fanatic life” is not to do physical
harm to a neighbor to minimize the physical harm that they do. Almost everyone
accepts and encourages self-defense and the defense of others. Almost no one is
willing to live a “fanatic life” that would allow a parent to savagely beat an
infant, or a sadist to torture another human being. Almost no one is willing to
live a “fanatic life” that would allow a mass murderer to kill innocent
children, or a brutal political leader to commit genocide. Almost every human
being who wants to love God and their neighbor accepts physical violence that they
believe will “minimize” physical harm.
If
you are unwilling to live a “fanatic life”, and you want to live a “normal
life” that might be a “good life”, then love your neighbor with a lesser love,
supporting social programs and diplomacy that might prevent violence, accepting
only the minimum police, military, and personal force necessary to prevent one
human being from doing physical harm to another human being. Love your
neighbor, do your best to communicate God’s word to your neighbors who would do
physical harm to their neighbors, so that they may choose to repent and not do
physical harm to them. Do your best to inflict the minimum physical harm
necessary to minimize the physical harm that is done by both your neighbor and
by you.
My
intuitive feeling is that unless you have almost absolute faith that God would
have us live a fanatic life, if you choose to live a “fanatic life” you will be
unwilling to accept the physical consequences, and you will turn from that
life. My intuitive feeling is that some, perhaps many, of those of you who have
almost absolute faith that God would have us live a fanatic life, and who
choose to live a “fanatic life”, will be unwilling to accept the physical
consequences, and you will also turn from that life. Unless in your heart,
mind, and soul you have almost absolute faith that God would have us live a
fanatic life, it seems likely that if you choose to live a fanatic life you
will be tormented by fear that you may be wrong. If you have almost absolute
faith that God would have us live a fanatic life, unless you are willing to
accept the probable physical consequences of living a fanatic life, it seems
likely that if you choose to live such a life you will be tormented by anguish
that you may be wrong. Indeed, as the consequences of choosing to live a
“fanatic life” unfold, perhaps including the torture and death of adults,
children, and infants, it seems likely that many of you would be paralyzed by
that fear and anguish. If you do not have almost absolute faith that God would
have us live a “fanatic life”, or if you do have almost absolute faith that God
would have us live a “fanatic life” yet are not willing to accept the physical
consequences of a “fanatic life”, do not be paralyzed by fear and anguish,
choose to live a “normal life” like the “normal life” we described, with the
hope that God may forgive you.
You
must be absolutely certain that you complete your search of your heart, mind,
and soul, and know and understand the true, pure, real, love that God has given
us. You must be absolutely certain that you complete your search of your heart,
mind, and soul, and know and understand God’s will, what God would
have you do. You must decide for yourself what you will do. You will make your
choice.
You
cannot go back, even a single moment. The choices you make every day of your
life can never be taken back. Every moment that you choose not to love is a
moment when you could have chosen to love as God would have you love, or to
love God and your neighbors with a lesser love.
If you are not willing to accept the physical consequences of living a “fanatic
life”, live a “normal life” like the “normal life” we described. If
you are unwilling to live a “fanatic life”, love God with as much of your
heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength as you are willing to love him
with, and love your neighbors as much as yourself as you are willing to love
them, with the hope that God will forgive you.
An Unforgivable
Act
A very real problem is how to treat those
who may have totally rejected God. If we believe in God, then we must recognize
that evil exists which is opposed to God. Some human beings appear to have
rejected love and God, and to have chosen the pleasures of evil. Jesus tells us
that even though all else will be forgiven, there will be no forgiveness in
this world or the next for those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit (Matthew says
Jesus said "blasphemy" against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven,
whoever "speaks a word against" the Holy Spirit will not be
forgiven). Those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit have not only chosen to do evil,
they appear to have separated themselves from, and totally rejected, God, the
One alone who is good. Those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, who blaspheme God,
the One alone who is good, even once, will never be forgiven, they have
committed the eternal sin. No matter what else you do you must never commit the
eternal sin.
Those who think they may have already
committed the eternal sin, may not have. Carefully searching heart, mind, and
soul, may help people tormented by fear that they have blasphemed, spoken a
word against, the Holy Spirit. If the reader is afraid they have done so, the
very fact they are frightened by the thought of blaspheming God perhaps
suggests they may not have done so. If you believe you may have committed the
eternal sin, perhaps you have not. If you believe you may have committed the
eternal sin, you should talk with those who love God. You should talk with
those who know and understand and have chosen to do God’s will, so that if you
have not committed the eternal sin you may stop being afraid. You should use
the knowledge and understanding of love you find when you complete your search
of your heart, mind, and soul, to decide if you really believe you have
committed the eternal sin, or not. If you have not committed the eternal sin, then
if you choose to love as God would have you love God will forgive you for
everything you have ever done. [if you are distressed or depressed, or if
you continue to think you may have committed the eternal sin, see the
following note]
How
do you know who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit, and who has simply chosen to do
evil? Are you not judging others, and not forgiving them, if you try to decide
who has and who has not blasphemed, spoken against, God? If you can determine
who they are, are you supposed to love those who have rejected God and embraced
evil? Perhaps you should love them, perhaps not. Perhaps they are no longer
your neighbor and you should not love them, perhaps not. Perhaps you should
totally reject them. Certainly you must completely separate yourself from their
evil, probably you should cut yourself off from them completely (perhaps with
the exception of giving them food when they are hungry, etc.). There is an
argument that you should tolerate but not love those who have blasphemed the
Holy Spirit. At the very least you must be certain not to let those who may
have blasphemed the Holy Spirit influence your life in any way. You must never
commit the eternal sin.
You must decide for yourself how to
treat those who have committed the eternal sin. You must decide for yourself
how to treat those who you believe may have committed the eternal sin. Your
answer to the question of how to treat those who have or may have committed the
eternal sin, who have or may have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, must come from
the knowledge and understanding of God’s will you have when you complete your
search of your heart, mind, and soul.
Love
I have almost absolute faith that you can
and should "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, with all your strength" and "love your neighbor
as yourself", nothing more, nothing less, period.
DISTRESS
& DEPRESSION
We have received comments from readers who tell us
that our ideas caused them to be distressed and depressed. If you are one of
those readers you need to consider the following. As human beings become
anxious they often lose their focus and misinterpret what they are reading. If
you understand what we are saying, there is absolutely no reason to be
depressed by our ideas.
Why not? First, we may be wrong. What we conclude to
be true and correct may not be. Yet beyond the fact that we cannot be sure we
are right, the fact is that if we are right, for the vast majority there is
nothing to fear or dread. This fact is extremely difficult to accept if you are
searching for meaning in your life, you do not believe that there is a life
after death, and you are discouraged or depressed before you start reading.
When you read our ideas they may touch raw nerves, and you may stop
understanding what we are saying.
Either there is a life after death or there is no
life after death. If there is no life after death and we are correct when we
conclude that physical death annihilates our past, present, and future, then
there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be even the slightest bit
distressed or depressed. If physical death annihilates your past, present, and
future, then after your physical death you are consumed by a totally peaceful
void, with absolutely no pain or sorrow or other negative result. There is no logical
or rational way whatsoever to conclude that there is any negative consequence
if your ultimate end is a nihilistic death.
If your mind is not receptive and clear, then you
may have a violent reaction to our conclusions about death if there is no life
after death, a reaction that ignores the fact that there cannot be anything to
fear about such a death. It is human nature to attack anything that suggests
that our life today may be destroyed by death, yet that reaction can have no
rational basis in logic. If your past, present, and future is annihilated by
your physical death, after your death you will not suffer pain or sorrow or
regrets or anything negative at all, period.
Furthermore, if your past, present, and future is
annihilated by your physical death, that fact can have no affect whatsoever on
today, on now. If a nihilistic death lies in your future, it cannot affect your
present at all. You can live every day, from now to the moment of your death,
to the fullest. It is very important to understand that every person who is
unwilling to believe that there is a life after physical death can live a
positive life for the rest of their life, loving their neighbor, doing that
which is good, with the hope that physical life does have meaning and purpose.
There is no reason whatsoever for those who are unwilling to believe that there
is a life after physical death to be depressed, there is every reason for them
to do that which is good and live the most positive life they are willing to
live. If you are unwilling to believe that there is life after physical death,
there is every reason for you to do that which is good and live a positive
life, with the hope that your life may have meaning and purpose.
Many who are deeply depressed believe that their lives
are meaningless, and to escape the pain of living they seek the peace of
suicide. It you are suicidal it may be very difficult for you to accept the
fact that if there is no life after death and we are correct when we conclude
that physical death annihilates our past, present, and future, there is
absolutely no reason whatsoever to commit suicide. If your physical death is a
nihilistic death, there is no reason to end your life now because you will
experience the same “peaceful” end if you die next year, or twenty years from
now. Your mind may be too clouded to understand what we are saying, yet if you
are suicidal you must take whatever time it takes to fully understand, and you
must seek immediate professional help (see below).
If on your physical death your past, present, and
future are annihilated, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to commit
suicide, because all the physical and emotional pain you suffer in your life,
now or next week or next year, will be annihilated whenever you die, even if your
death does not occur for many, many, years. It is simple logic that if no
matter how far in the future a nihilistic death occurs, it causes all pain that
you ever suffered to be as if it never happened, then there can be no logical
reason whatsoever to commit suicide now to avoid future pain, period.
Committing suicide necessarily eliminates all possibility of finding meaning
and purpose in your life. You cannot know if a nihilistic death awaits you or
not. Even if there is a nihilistic death in your future you cannot know that
there is, so there is no reason whatsoever not to live for the possibility, no
matter how remote you may believe it to be, that in the future you will find
meaning and purpose, and perhaps happiness, in your life.
No matter what we may think or you may think right
now, there is always a possibility that your life has meaning and purpose. If
there is a life after death, or if there is no life after death, there is
always a possibility that sometime in the future you will find meaning and
purpose in your life. If in fact there is a life after death then there is
every reason to live for the hope that you will enjoy a peaceful existence
after death. If in fact there is no life after death then there is every reason
to live for the hope that your physical existence has meaning and purpose. Even
if there is no life after death and physical death annihilates our past, there
is no reason whatsoever not to live for the possibility your physical existence
has meaning and purpose right now, simply because during your physical life on
earth you can never, never, know with any degree of certainty whether your life
has, or does not have, meaning.
If you are depressed and suicidal it is extremely
difficult for you to see the absolute fact that there is absolutely no reason
not to live every moment of your natural life for the possibility that you may
find meaning and purpose and happiness in your life. There can be no reason
whatsoever to commit suicide and eliminate the possibility that your life has
meaning and purpose. There can be no reason whatsoever to eliminate the
possibility that you will eventually find, if not joy and happiness, at the
very least peace and contentment in your life.
We have readers who indicate that they are
distressed and depressed by the possibility that they may have committed the
eternal sin. If God exists and if there is an eternal sin, then God gives us
the choice to commit the eternal sin or not to commit the eternal sin, period.
It would seem that those who have not committed the eternal sin would be
distressed if they believed that they might have committed the eternal sin. It
would seem that the very fact that someone is distressed by the belief that
they may have committed the eternal sin may suggest that they have in fact not
committed the eternal sin.
It seems that physical and mental disease may cause
extreme anxiety and depression, and may lead a person to believe that they have
committed the eternal sin and that they will live in hell after their death when
in fact they have not committed the eternal sin. It appears that mental illness
may cause a person who has not committed the eternal sin to believe that that
they may have committed the eternal sin. If you are distressed and depressed by
the possibility that you have committed the eternal sin, then you need to talk
with those who have not committed the eternal sin, including ministers and
religious counselors. If there is any chance at all that you are suffering from
physical or mental disease, you also need to consult health professionals. Talk
to several people, especially mental health professionals if there is any
possibility of mental problems, so that you may better determine what you have
and have not done. It can be very difficult to find qualified professionals,
and even when you do find them, it can be very difficult to tell them about
your fears. Find qualified professionals and talk to them. You need to overcome
any reluctance you may have to talking with those who might help you, and be
willing to allow them to help you decide what you really believe is true. Seek
professional help now!
If you do not yet understand the fact that there is
no reason whatsoever to be disturbed or depressed by our conclusions, including
our conclusion that if there is no life after death, then your past, present,
and future may be annihilated on your physical death, then you still do not
understand what we are saying. Please take as much time as you need to reread
and carefully think about what we are saying, until you satisfy yourself that
there is in fact absolutely no reason to be depressed by our conclusions, and
absolutely no reason whatsoever for any human being to commit suicide.
DEPRESSION
IS A MEDICAL CONDITION, IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED, FOR ANY REASON, YOU MUST SEEK
PROFESSIONAL HELP NOW!
(from the National Mental Health Association website
- http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/suicide):
Life is full of good times and bad, of happiness and
sorrow. But when you are feeling "down" for more than a few weeks or
you have difficulty functioning in daily life, you may be suffering from a
common, yet serious medical illness - called clinical depression.
You are not alone
Every year more than 19 million American Adults
suffer from clinical depression. Young or old, man or woman, regardless of race
or income - anyone can experience clinical depression. Depression can cause
people to lose the pleasure from daily life. It can complicate other medical
conditions - it can be serious enough to lead to suicide. Yet this suffering is
unnecessary. Clinical depression is a very treatable medical illness. So why
don't many people seek the help they need? Clinical depression often goes
untreated because people don't recognize the many symptoms. They may know some
symptoms, such as sadness and withdrawal, but they are unaware of others,
including anxiety, irritability, and sleeplessness. Some incorrectly believe
that only people whose depression lasts for months, or who have completely lost
their ability to function, have "real" - or "clinical" -
depression. Many people even wrongly think that depression is
"normal" for older people, young adults, new mothers, menopausal
women, or those with a chronic illness. The truth is, clinical depression is
never "normal," no matter what your age or life situation. Also,
people need to know that treatment for clinical depression really works - and
to learn how to go about finding the treatment they need.
Clinical Depression can be Successfully Treated
Clinical depression is one of the most treatable of
all medical illnesses. In fact, more than 80 percent of people with depression
can be treated successfully with medication, psychotherapy or a combination of
both. Only a qualified health professional can determine if someone has
clinical depression. But knowing the symptoms of clinical depression can help
you as you talk with your health professional.
As with many illnesses, if treatment if needed, the
earlier it begins, the more effective it can be. And, early treatment increases
the likelihood of preventing serious recurrences.
You Do Not Have to Cope with Clinical Depression on
Your Own
Some people are embarrassed to get help for
depression, or they are reluctant to talk about how they are feeling. Others
believe that depression will go away on its own. You can't just "Tough it
out!" Help is available.
Talking to friends, family members and clergy can
often give people the support needed when going through life's difficult times.
For those with clinical depression such support is important, but it is not a
substitute for the care of a health professional. Remember, clinical depression
is a serious illness that you do not have to treat on your own.
Depression (from the National Institute of Mental
Health www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml):
A depressive disorder is an illness that involves
the body, mood, and thoughts. It affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the
way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. A depressive
disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal
weakness or a condition that can be willed or wished away. People with a
depressive illness cannot merely "pull themselves together" and get
better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years.
Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people who suffer from
depression.
Also see:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/depression.html
[Please Note: Most of the content of this site is taken from our book – LOVE – In Search of a Reason for Living, which was written and edited over some 20 years. In contrast, some of these LifeNotes were written and/or edited in much less time. Our book represents a complete discussion of our conclusions about life. LifeNotes represents our attempt to convey our views in a more concise manner. After reading LifeNotes, those who want to consider in more detail how we reached our conclusions may want to read our book - however it is not necessary to read the the book version to understand the message contained in both our book and our LifeNotes.
Readers should be aware that because some of our Lifenotes were written or edited over a shorter period of time the content may contain misstatements and errors. While LifeNotes are written to be read without reading our book, if you decide that you want to read both our LifeNotes and our book – please do not conclude that the content of the book is identical. If you read the entire book you will find that, while the message is the same, it includes additional materials, including an expanded discussion about living a “fanatic life”.]
Copyright 2007 Compact
Library Publishers Inc. www.LifeNotes.org [Last edit
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