The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?

[Guest guest]

The Sunday Times October 08, 2006

Goldilocks and the riddle of the perfect universe

 

Why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? Physicist Paul

Davies tells Stuart Wavell about the point where science meets

religion

 

Why is the universe, like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and

the three bears, " just right " for life? Even cosmologists have said

it looks like a fix or a put-up job. Is it a fluke or providence

that it appears set up expressly for the purpose of spawning

sentient beings?

 

Until recently the Goldilocks question was almost completely ignored

by scientists. But dramatic developments in our understanding are

propelling the issue to the forefront of the agenda, according to

the acclaimed British physicist and bestselling author Paul Davies.

To stoke the fire, he is to chair a debate between advocates of

alternative theories at Oxford on Friday.

 

Anyone expecting Davies to recant his non-religious views and join

the intelligent design lobby will be disappointed. " We can't dump

all this in the lap of an arbitrary god and say we can't inquire any

further, " he says. " The universe looks ingenious, it looks like a

fix, and words like meaning and purpose come to mind. But it doesn't

mean that we're going to have a miracle-working cosmic magician

meddling with events. "

 

What concerns him in his new book The Goldilocks Enigma is science

and the universe's stringent conditions for existence, so finely

tuned that even the slightest twiddle of the dials would wreck any

hope of life emerging in the universe. " No scientific explanation of

the universe can be deemed complete unless it accounts for this

appearance of judicious design, " he says.

 

Beyond the obvious prerequisites such as water, the sun's energy and

the various chemical elements (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc)

needed to make biomass, there's the tricky stuff. If protons were a

tiny bit heavier they would decay into neutrons, and atoms would

disintegrate. No carbon would have been formed by nuclear reactions

inside stars if the nuclear force varied by more than a scintilla.

 

This is where the acrimony starts. Some cosmologists claim the

bio-friendliness of the universe is explained by a multitude of

universes, known as the " multiverse " . Lord Rees, a leading proponent

and president of the Royal Society, believes the laws of physics are

merely local bylaws that hold good for our universe but will be

different among our neighbours.

 

Such speculation has infuriated some particle physicists,

particularly adherents of string theory, who aspire to a final

theory that will unify all physical laws and tie up the loose ends.

 

Their scorn for the multiverse theory is echoed by Frank Close,

professor of theoretical physics at Oxford and a participant in

Friday's debate, although he is no string theorist: " It's a cop-out.

To my mind it's no different from the idea that God did it. If we

cannot do any scientific experiments to prove what one of these

other universes would be like, it's beyond science. It's just giving

up. "

 

Then there's the viewpoint of Richard Dawkins, the ardent Darwinist

and recent author of The God Delusion, who holds that life is

essentially pointless and came about by chance before natural

selection took over. Close compares Dawkins to religious

fundamentalists, " who know they are right in their position, just as

Richard knows he is right in his position " .

 

Davies wants to rise above such bickering. " I want to get away from

this notion that something has to be accepted on faith, " he

says. " That just becomes a sterile argument. These people can argue

all night, but you're never going to prove or disprove the other

person's position. "

 

He is fascinated by an alternative answer to the Goldilocks question.

" Somehow, " he writes, " the universe has engineered, not just its own

awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have

conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding.

The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to

watch the show, but to unravel the plot. "

 

What exactly is Davies saying? His starting point is the " highly

significant " fact that the universe supports people who understand

its laws. " I wanted to get away from the feeling in so many

scientific quarters that life and human beings are a completely

irrelevant embellishment, a side issue of no significance. I don't

think we're the centre of the universe or the pinnacle of creation,

but the fact that human beings have the ability to understand how

the world is put together is something that cries out for

explanation. "

 

Davies's big idea goes back to the Big Bang. According to the

standard picture, the laws of physics were already in place at the

explosive origin of the universe. But he contends that perhaps the

universe and its laws emerged together in malleable form: " We would

expect that these laws were not infinitely precise mathematical

statements, but they would have a certain sloppiness or ambiguity

that could lead to observable effects from the earliest universe,

when these laws were still congealing. "

 

So how did compatible life and mind come into being? Davies's

explanation, involving quantum mechanics and something called

backwards causation, is impossible to compress without

sounding " ludicrous " , he confesses. He's right: it's impenetrable.

 

But this scenario requires an act of faith as great as that of any

religious believer. So hasn't he sidestepped the God question?

Science can meet religion on middle ground, he says, but a

superbeing who intervenes in events is anathema to most

scientists. " You have to understand that science deals with

hypotheses that can be tested, and religion proceeds from acts of

faith that can't be tested. "

 

Davies has just left an academic job in Australia to delve further

into the origins of things at the provisionally named Blue Sky think

tank in Phoenix, Arizona. One of his first projects is to

investigate the possibility that life emerged not just once on

Earth, but thousands of times. The accepted wisdom is that all the

planet's life derives from a common ancestor, ranged on the tree of

life.

 

" The question is whether there's just one tree in the forest. If

life is easy to get going, we might expect many trees of life but

maybe only one tree survived. But maybe there are members of other

trees under our noses, but we don't appreciate what they are. " He

conjectures a fertile phase starting four billion years ago when

ferocious cataclysms caused by comets and asteroids repeatedly

zapped emerging life on Earth before the present " tree " took root

3.5 billion years ago.

 

In writing his book, Davies was struck by how " ridiculous " all the

theories and options seemed. Perhaps, he muses, we have evolved to

think about the world in a certain way and we are posing the wrong

questions. " I wonder if we're just stuck in certain patterns of

thought and we're doomed to forever have these discussions and

arguments. Perhaps the real answers lie utterly beyond our ken. "

 

 

The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? by

Paul Davies is published by Allen Lane, £22. A debate, Confronting

the Goldilocks Enigma, will be held at the Oxford Playhouse at 5pm

on Friday (www.oxfordplayhouse.com)

 

 

>

> What concerns him in his new book The Goldilocks Enigma is science

> and the universe's stringent conditions for existence, so finely

> tuned that even the slightest twiddle of the dials would wreck any

> hope of life emerging in the universe. " No scientific explanation

> of the universe can be deemed complete unless it accounts for this

> appearance of judicious design, " he says.

>

 

Ancient Light

 

“. . . the universe began in a sort of explosion, starting from

infinite density and temperature, and has been expanding, thinning

out and cooling ever since. The beginning was not like an ordinary

explosion, in which debris flies out into a surrounding region of

nonmoving space. Instead the big bang explosion began everywhere.

There was no surrounding space for the universe to move into, since

any such space would be part of the universe. The concept boggles

the imagination . . .

 

.. . . the universe was about 10(-8) seconds old (0.000,000,000,1)

when its material was as a temperature of 10(+14) degrees

(1,000,000,000,000,000). Any further extrapolation back in time

toward the big bang, towards higher temperatures, enters the realm

of speculation. Yet cosmologists have been forced to speculate. Many

of the properties of the universe may have been determined in the

first 10(-8) seconds and much earlier. If the grand unified theories

are correct, then their most interesting effects would have happened

when the universe was about 10(-35) seconds old. . . .

 

The essential feature of the inflationary universe model is that,

shortly after the big bang, the infant universe went through a brief

and extremely rapid expansion, after which it returned to the more

leisurely rate of expansion of the standard big bang model. By the

time the universe was a tiny fraction (perhaps 10[-32]) of a second,

the period of rapid expansion, or inflation, was over . . . The

epoch of rapid expansion could have taken a patch of space so tiny

that it had already homogenized and quickly stretched it to a size

larger than today’s entire observable universe . . . For the purpose

of illustration, we will assume that the inflationary epoch began

when the universe was 10(-35) seconds old and ended when it was 10(-

32) seconds old. At the beginning of the inflationary epoch, the

largest region of space that could have homogenized would have been

about 10(-35) light seconds in size, or about 10(-25) centimeters,

much smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At the end of the

inflationary epoch, this tiny homogenized region would have been

stretched to something like 10(+400) light years. . . .

 

Numerically the Planck density is about 10(+93) grams per cubic

centimeter. The infant universe had this enormous density when it

was about 10(-43) seconds old.”

 

Allan Lightman, Ancient Light

Harvard University Press 1991, p. 33-154.

 

 

The universe began as an explosion from an infinite density and

temperature; expanding, thinning and cooling since. It was an extra-

extraordinary explosion. Unlike normal blasts, where debris fly into

the surrounding nonmoving space, this was totally different. In fact

it’s conception staggers the imagination: there was no surrounding

space for it to move into as all the universe was compressed into

the subatomic sized origin — all existing space being part of it.

Nothing existed before the Big Bang!

 

The universe was only about 0.000,000,001 seconds old when its

material temperature was 100,000,000,000,000 degrees. Most of the

properties of this universe was determined during this period and

earlier still. Any attempt to go back into time would entail

speculation. However, if the grand unified theories are correct then

their most fascinating effects would have taken place when the

universe was .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001

seconds old!

 

The essence of the inflationary universe model is that, immediately

after the big bang, the newly born universe underwent a very brief

and extremely rapid expansion, before slowing down to the pace of

the standard big bang model. By the time the universe was

about .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old,

expansion was over. Within this extremely short period it had

already expanded and stretched from an infinitesimal small pinpoint

to a size much larger than today’s observable universe.

 

To illuminate this fact we will assume that the expansion began when

the universe was exactly .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,

000,001 seconds old, and ended when it was only .000,000,000, 000,

000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old. At the beginning of

expansion the largest area was about .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,01 centimeters, a size far smaller than the nucleus of an atom.

Within that nano-second it had expanded to something like

1,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,

0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000

0000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000

0000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000000

0,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000000,00

0000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000

0000,0000000000,0000000000 light years!

 

And one light year covers about 6,000,000,000,000 miles! And this is

just a fraction of the area that the most advanced telescopes can

detect from ancient light still coming from the initial Big Bang.

The universe is infinitely larger than is visible. In fact humans

will never know the actual size of the universe as it is still

expanding 15,000,000,000,000 years later!

 

The Planck density, a measure of weight, is about 10000000000,

0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000,

0000000000 kilos per cubic centimeter. Our universe had this

enormous density when it was precisely .0000000000,0000000000,

0000000000,0000000 000,0001 seconds old! It should be noted that the

maximum size of the universe at this time was .000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,01 centimeters. This tiny fraction of an atom was

already weighing billions of trillions of quadrillions of

quintillions of tons! It takes a while for the sheer enormousness of

this astounding Truth to sink in. It defies logic and eludes

comprehension. The more the mind ponders the less it comprehends.

The brilliant scientists, whom the civilized world cherished for

their hair-splitting, or we could say, atom-splitting accuracy, have

hit a colossal cosmic Reality. They have now to prove how did the

pinpoint produce a universe that is now found to be vastly larger.

The ubiquitous questions of this century: How, why and what was that

primeval atom that formed an entire universe within a split second?

The question of the next millennium: “Who made this awesome atom?”

 

The more the human mind visualizes this brain-boggling nature and

awesome grandeur of creation the more humble it will become. There

will never be any scientific explanation to the origin of the

universe and if there is going to any at all, it will be

preposterous, to say the least. Science’s finest atheist minds are

already beginning to whisper ever so softly that there is something

else — the Almighty Creator!

 

Others are beginning to believe that humanity’s quest for Truth

through science is over. John Horgan, a 43-year-old senior writer

with Scientific American magazine is one of them. His book The End

of Science caused a commotion among scientists for its essence

that “pure science, the quest for knowledge about what we are and

where we came from, has already entered an area of diminishing

returns.”

 

For those who have depended on science to disprove the myths of the

scriptures it is time to turn back at these very early stages of

admission that science cannot enlighten anymore. It has reached its

natural limits. Now only the Spirit can take Homo sapiens beyond —

far, far beyond — the limitations of their minds. And it has begun

to do so!

 

Humans have done enormous damage to Nature in this blind pursuit of

materialism. Science bears a disappropriately larger responsibility

in trying to establish the superiority and dominance of humans over

all Nature, and placed a premium on mastering matter. This

scientific search began when Copernicus peered through his telescope

and found that the Earth was not the center of the universe, in

stark contrast to the holy, perfect symmetry that the Church had, in

its ignorance, infallibly asserted. Ever since then there has been a

relentless rape of the divine origin of creation and Western

civilization has been wandering in the maze of mathematics and

matter.

 

The cold, calculating core of science (not scientists) lacks the

human qualities of love, compassion, tenderness, and emotion.

Science is all mental, mathematical, material, logic and

tangibility. Science cannot detect Spirit, vibrations, chakras,

consciousness, thoughtless awareness, the Kingdom of Sadashiva. All

the laws of matter, physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics are

devoid of divinity and lead humankind further and further from the

Absolute Truth. For decades they have stripped away the masks of

this mysterious universe, expecting to find the mathematical mantra

that would have etched their names in atheist eternity. Instead they

have hit a colossal celestial Truth. Some of the greatest scientific

minds on Earth are now beginning to hint that the answer to the

origin of the universe will never ever be found or proven by their

grandest theories. They are also admitting that there has to be a

Creator!

 

The search for the origin of the universe has ended for science: the

Truth lies elsewhere. As more and more theories flounder and crash

in their quest to prove an atheist origin, the Ultimate Truth of the

Almighty Creator will slowly but surely be recognized by His atheist

adversaries. Even Stephen Hawkings, probably the most eminent

theoretical physicist in the world today, while recalling his

childhood fantasy on why the universe came into being, could only

say, “But I still do not understand why.” As long as he denies that

he lives in His creation there will be no answer.

 

Humans have probed and peered far enough into the universe. For

millennia they have projected all their senses outwards and yet

found no answer to the fundamental mysteries of life. Isn’t it time

to separate scientific facts from spiritual Reality, and try a new

approach by seeking from within? Simple logic and the law of

averages point to that direction.

 

“Atoms are so small that the full-stop at the end of this sentence

contains more than one billion of them. Tiny as it is, an atom is

entirely made up of empty space. The rest consists of protons,

neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are found clustered

together in a minute, extremely dense nucleus at the very centre of

the atom. Little bundles of energy called electrons whiz around this

nucleus at the speed of light. It is the presence of electrons that

make the atom behave like a solid, in the same way that a fan blade

spinning rapidly looks and behaves as if it were solid.”

 

Dr. Trevor Day, Nicholas Harris, The Incredible Journey to the

Centre of the Atom, Orpheus Books Ltd., 1996.

 

 

“Most of the atomic mass is concentrated in a tiny nucleus, only a

thousand-billionth of a centimeter in size. The nucleus is

surrounded by a cloud of lighter particles — the electrons —

extending out to a distance of perhaps a hundred-millionth of a

centimeter. Thus, by far the greater part of the atom is empty

space.”

 

Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 146.)

 

 

“The exponential factor implies that the odds against randomly-

generated order increase astronomically. For example, the

probability of a litre of air rushing spontaneously to one end of a

box is of the order 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 zeros to one! Such

figures indicate the extreme care with which low-entropy states must

be selected from the vast array of possible states.

 

Translated into a cosmological context, the conundrum is this. If

the universe is simply an accident, the odds against it containing

any appreciable order are ludicrously small. If the big bang was

just a random event, then the probability seems overwhelming that

the emerging cosmic material would be in thermodynamic equilibrium

at maximum entropy with zero order. As this was clearly not the

case, it appears hard to escape the conclusion that the actual state

of the universe has been ‘chosen’ or selected somehow from the huge

number of available states, all but an infinitesimal fraction of

which are totally disordered. And if such an exceedingly improbable

initial state was selected, there sure had to be a selector or

designer to ‘choose’ it.”

 

Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 167-68.)

 

 

“The accumulated gravity of the universe operates to restrain the

expansion, causing it to decelerate with time. In the primeval phase

the expansion was much faster than it is today. The universe is thus

the product of a competition between the explosive vigour of the big

bang, and the force of gravity which tries to pull the pieces back

together again. In recent years, astrophysicists have come to

realize just how delicately this competition has been balanced. Had

the big bang been weaker, the cosmos would have fallen back on

itself in a big crunch. On the other hand, had it been stronger, the

cosmic material would have dispersed so rapidly that galaxies would

not have formed. Either way, the observed structure of the universe

seems to depend very sensitively on the precise matching of

explosive vigour to gravitating power.

 

Just how sensitively is revealed by calculation. At the so-called

Planck time 10-43 seconds (which is the earliest moment at which the

concept of space and time has meaning) the matching was accurate to

a staggering one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

000,000,000,000,000,000. That is to say, had the explosion differed

in strength at the outset by only one part in 10 (-60)

(10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000, 000,

000,000,000,000,000) the universe we now perceive would not exist.”

Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 179.)

 

 

" Adi

In the beginning, to be sure, nothing existed, neither the heaven

nor the earth nor space in between.

So Nonbeing, having decided to be, became spirit and said: “Let me

be!''

He warmed himself further and from this heating was born fire.

He warmed himself still further and from this heating was born

light. TB II, 2, 9, 1-2

 

Numerous texts are to be found in the Vedic scriptures, of

extraordinary diversity and incomparable richness, which seek

unweariedly to penetrate the mystery of the beginnings and to

explain the immensity and the amazing harmony of the universe. We

find a proliferation of speculations, doubts, and descriptions, an

atmosphere charged with solemnity, a sense of life lived to the

full — all of which spontaneously bring to mind the landscape of the

Himalayas. These texts seem to burst forth impetuously like streams

issuing from glaciers. Within this rushing torrent may be discerned

a certain life view, deep and basic, an evolving life view that can

yet be traced unbroken from the Rig Veda, through the Atharva Veda

and the Brahmanas, to the Upanishads.

 

What is fascinating about the experience of the Vedic seers is not

only that they have dared to explore the outer space of being and

existence, piercing the outskirts of reality, exploring the

boundaries of the universe, describing being and its universal laws,

but that they have also undertaken the risky and intriguing

adventure of going beyond and piercing the being barrier so as to

float in utter nothingness, so to speak, and discover that Nonbeing

is only the outer atmosphere of Being, its protective veil. They

plunge thus into a darkness enwrapped by darkness, into the Beyond

from which there is no return, into that Prelude of Existence in

which there is neither Being nor Nonbeing, neither God nor Gods, nor

creature of any type; the traveler himself is volatilized, has

disappeared. Creation is the act by which God, or whatever name we

may choose to express the Ultimate, affirms himself not only vis-à-

vis the world, thus created, but also vis-à-vis himself, for he

certainly was neither creator before creation nor God for himself.

The Vedic seers make the staggering claim of entering into that

enclosure where God is not yet God, where God is thus unknown to

himself, and, not being creator, is “nothing.” ”

 

Professor Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience,

www.cybrlink.com/vedtoc.htm

 

 

“Mr. Horgan contends that science is a victim of its own success.

Astronomers have seen as much of the universe as they ever will.

Physicists have probed as deeply into the nature of matter as

practical experiments will allow. And biologists have been finished

since Darwin conceived of evolution in the 1850s . . . Mr. Horgan

says scientists are just fooling themselves . . . We’ll never know

what existed before the universe began, what processes give rise to

consciousness, or what physical rules lie beyond the ones that are

currently understood, he argues. Those things simply lie beyond the

reach of scientific investigation, so any theorizing or speculating

about them is what he labels “ironic” science. “It’s ironic in the

sense that real science can be taken as literally true,” Mr. Horgan

said. “They have gone beyond what science can do . . . It is

meaningless in human terms . . . It doesn’t tell us about the

purpose of the universe and our place in it, and all those sorts of

things.”

 

The Globe and Mail, August 13, 1996

 

 

“In recent times there has been a proliferation of literature

drawing parallels between holonomis theories of light, quantum

physics, and the mystics’ view of integral wholeness. As a culture

we have looked primarily to Western science to alleviate human

suffering and to understand our purpose in the scheme of things. But

is science capable of freeing us from all suffering? Can science

guide us to a direct mystical experience through the bliss of

integrating with the One Light? Is there a parallel between modern

physics and the yoga of sacred art regarding the nature of light and

consciousness? . . .

 

The mechanistic parameters of Western science have permeated our

perceptions, our thinking, our emotions, and even our ways of

relating to one another. The result had been nothing less than a

total fragmentation of our collective consciousness. The scientific

worldview has led to the neglect of our intuitive spiritual

perceptions and the creative developments of our souls — which,

according to the sages of the East, are there to lead to greater

understanding and release us from ignorance, laws of duality, and

suffering. Because it is constrained within the laws of polarities,

science by itself cannot help us to achieve wholeness. As Yogananda

says:

 

“The entire phenomenal world is under the inexorable sway of

polarity; no law of physics, chemistry, or any other science is ever

found free from inherent opposite or contrasted principles.

 

Physical science, then, cannot formulate laws outside of maya: the

very fabric and structure of creation . . . Future scientists can do

no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied

infinitude. Science thus remains in a perpetual flux, unable to

reach finality . . .” ”

 

Judith Cornell, PH. D. Mandala: Luminous Symbols for Healing,

Theosophical Publishing, 1994 p. 27-29.

 

 

“We are all literally made up of stardust,” said astronomer George

Smoot of the University of California's Space Sciences Laboratory

and author of Wrinkles in Time. This much we know. But where that

first pinpoint of intense energy came from — what unleashed its

force to explode outward over billions of light-years of space; what

set that power loose to evolve over the billions of years since into

the intricately interconnected system of planets and stars; what

brilliant design could set forth the pattern of development that

could bring as complex a structure as humans into being — the

scientists cannot explain or are uncomfortable explaining because it

requires them to suddenly trade their theories and facts for the

possibility that a supreme force beyond their explanations set it

all in motion for a purpose.

 

“Facing this, the ultimate question challenges our faith in the

power of science to find explanations of nature,” Smoot wrote. “Is

this then where scientific explanation breaks down and God takes

over?” ”

 

Walter Mercado, Beyond The Horizon,

A Time Warner Company, 1997 p. 51-2.

 

 

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is

the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.

He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and

stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

 

To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifests

itself as the highest wisdom, and the most radiant beauty which our

dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive form — this

knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness. The

Cosmic religious experience is the strongest and oldest mainspring

of scientific research.

 

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable

superior spirit who reveals himself in the slightest details we are

able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply

emotional conviction of the presence of the superior reasoning

power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my

idea of God.

 

Religion without science is blind and science without religion is

lame . . . The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can

experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all

true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no

longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know

that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as

the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull

faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms — this

knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”

 

Albert Einstein

 

 

“We must first know what is Absolute Truth. We have human awareness.

We also have freedom to form our own mental ideas. But Truth cannot

be known through human awareness . . . Any type of mental projection

or ideology ultimately will recoil back because it has to be

substantiated by Reality.”

 

Shri Nirmama Devi

Moscow, Soviet Union — June 25, 1990

Nirmama (164th): Without selfishness.

 

 

“What has gone wrong with the West is that they have never worried

about their Spirit. They have negated all that is Spirit, all that

is subtler life and have thought that it is better to master the

matter, master all these things which they master . . . Whatever you

master is lower than you, is not higher than you . . . If you want

to be higher then you have to be useful to that higher goal . . . we

should allow the Higher thing to rule us.

 

So in ancient times so many people, we can call as seers and saints,

went into the forest to find out what is the basis of human beings?

What is the meaning of human life? What is the ultimate goal of

human beings. And they found out that it is the Spirit. And they

based all the Indian laws and Indian philosophies, music, art,

dance, drama — every aspect of life — on the basis that we have to

become the Spirit. But when we have the western influence and

western education put on to us, everyone decided that give up

whatever was traditional, whatever was old, and take to this.”

 

Shri Sanakadi-samaradhya Devi

Importance Of Self-Realization, Delhi, India — February 8, 1983

Sanakadi-samaradhya (726th): Worshipped by sages like Sanaka. . .

She appears as Guru to the seekers because She is the source of all

Knowledge.

 

 

“The other type of people are who think no end of their

intelligence. They have denied God. They say, " Where is God? There

is no God. We don’t believe in God. This is all nonsense. Science is

everything. " What has science done so far, let’s see that? Science

has done nothing so far. It has only done all dead work. It has only

made you ego-oriented.”

 

Shri Panca-tanmatra-sayaka Devi

Kundalini And Kalki Shakti, Bombay, India — September 28, 1979

Panca-tanmatra-sayaka (11th): She has in the fourth hand an arrow

symbolic of the sense elements. By shooting with the mind as bow the

arrow of the five sense elements, She creates the Universe, a

projection of the mind through the senses.

 

 

“There are three questions which science cannot answer — How are we

here? what are we here for? and what are we going to do? These three

questions can be answered in Sahaja Yoga after Self-Realization . .

Science is not conclusive. It does not give you Absolute Truth. It

goes on changing from this to that . . . we don’t know the Absolute

Truth.”

 

Shri Manorupeksu-kodanda Devi

United Nations Public Program, New York, USA — September 9, 1992

Manorupeksu-kodanda (10th): In the left lower hand She has the sugar-

cane bow which symbolises the Samkalpa (power of desire) of the mind

which creates the phenomenal Universe.

 

 

“The only thing we can enjoy is the Play of the Spirit . . . Till

the Knowledge of this Science does not come within us, the outside

science is absolutely useless because there is very little of

science that can explain about the material things outside. There is

no comparison of this outside science — no collectivity, no

humanity, no love, no art, no poem, no respect. There is nothing

alive in it. It becomes like a machine.”

 

Shri Sadasad-rupadharini Devi

Shivaratri Puja, Pune, India — February 23, 1990

Sadasad-rupadharini (661st): She assumes the form of existence and

non-existence. She is the source of this universe of name and form

and the unseen cause behind it. ‘Satyam Canrtam Ca, Satyamabhavat’

(Taittiriya Upanishad) Both Reality and unreality emanated from the

Ultimate reality. The power of illusion i.e. Maya-Saktii who creates

the illusion of the Universe.

 

 

“And He can do anything that He feels like and we are nothing. We

are nothing. There should be no rationality about it; about

understanding God’s miracles. How can it be? How could it be? You

can’t explain . . . we are limited people. We have limited powers.

We cannot understand how God could be All Powerful because we

haven’t got the capacity. So this God who is our Creator, who is our

Preserver, the One who desired that we should exist, who is our

existence itself, is All-Powerful God.”

 

Shri Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala Devi

Mahashivaratri Puja, Pandarpur, India — February 29, 1984

Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala (12th): Her red

brilliance engulfs all the Universes. It means all the created

Universe is only Her radiance.

 

 

“Thus this mind is created like bubbles on the Ocean of Reality, but

that’s not Reality. With this mind whatever we decide we know its

very limited, illusive and sometimes shocking. The mind always moves

in a linear direction and because there is no Reality in it, it

recoils and boomerangs. Thus all the enterprises, all the

projections so far we have done it seems come back to us. Whatever

they discover comes back to us as a big destructive Power or a very

big shock. So one has to decide what to do, how to be out of this

trap of our mind — Kundalini is the solution . . . With the

awakening She takes you beyond your mind.”

 

Shri Pada-dvaya-prabha-jala-parakrta-sororuha Devi

The Witnessing State: To Know God, Shivaratri Puja, Sydney,

Australia — March 3, 1996

 

 

“It was such a solace and such a hope that people who apparently

appear to be in the charge of helm-of-affairs, are also in charge of

the helm-of-affairs of God. A day will come when they will take up

their new roles, when they will become aware that it is God who

rules them. It is He who does it, it is He who has created

everything, and it is He who enjoys everything.

 

For this awareness . . . the seeking ultimately has to come to human

beings because all that is done through mental projections and

conceptions has one good point — that it is always exposed and comes

to an end. Every set enterprise of human beings only moves in a

linear way and at a point it drops down. That is why all our

conceptions and all our ideas are challenged after some time.”

 

Shri Ksetra-Svarupa Devi

Ksetra-Svarupa (341st): The highest consciousness to the grossest

matter and space consists of Ksetra. It is Her form.

 

 

 

Nirmama (164th): Without selfishness.

 

Sanakadi-samaradhya (726th): Worshipped by sages like Sanaka. . .

She appears as Guru to the seekers because She is the source of all

Knowledge.

 

Panca-tanmatra-sayaka (11th): She has in the fourth hand an arrow

symbolic of the sense elements. By shooting with the mind as bow the

arrow of the five sense elements, She creates the Universe, a

projection of the mind through the senses.

 

Manorupeksu-kodanda (10th): In the left lower hand She has the sugar-

cane bow which symbolises the Samkalpa (power of desire) of the mind

which creates the phenomenal Universe.

 

Sadasad-rupadharini (661st): She assumes the form of existence and

non-existence. She is the source of this universe of name and form

and the unseen cause behind it. ‘Satyam Canrtam Ca, Satyamabhavat’

(Taittiriya Upanishad) Both Reality and unreality emanated from the

Ultimate reality. The power of illusion i.e. Maya-Saktii who creates

the illusion of the Universe.

 

Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala (12th): Her red

brilliance engulfs all the Universes. It means all the created

Universe is only Her radiance.

 

Ksetra-Svarupa (341st): The highest consciousness to the grossest

matter and space consists of Ksetra. It is Her form.

 

 

 

, " jagbir singh "

<adishakti_org wrote:

>

>

> " The follower of Sakthism, the worshipper of Shakti, is called

> Shakta. His conception of the Goddess is described in the Shakti

> Tantra Shastras, i.e., the holy scriptures of Sakthism, often in a

> very poetical way. Whereas we speak of Mother Nature only in a

> comparative manner, for the Shakta it is absolute reality. Nature

> is Her body. Her presence is personally felt by him, when he is

> standing on the fertile ground of the earth; he touches Her life in

> the blossoms of the pure lotus-flower. She animates all living

> creatures. His own body is a part of Her great body. Worshipping

> Her in all Her different forms, he will find Her light, too,

> within his mind and consciousness. Thus, to the Shakta the whole

> universe of mind and matter reveals itself in its unity; he see

> before him Her great body which he adores; Her sacred feet, Her

> heart, Her mind.

>

> It might be useful to describe this poetical view, which is at once

> physical and transcendental, by means of another diagram. We may

> for this purpose represent matter and mind by two circles , which

> intersect each other.

>

> Where they intersect, there is Shakti, so to speak, in Herself. But

> Her influence, Her being spreads into the whole realm of matter as

> well as that of mind. Nowhere is She absent, but Her presence is

> less distinct, is somehow veiled in those parts, which are further

> from the centre, where She is in Herself. Thus, for the sake of

> linear explanation, the mineral world--the solid matter--would have

> to be situated the furthest from Her, because there, as for

> instance in stone, she--Life Herself--is, much veiled, stone to

> the ordinary human view appearing to be dead. Nearer to Her is the

> realm of plants, where, with their growing and blossoming, She

> already becomes more apparent. I need hardly remind you of the

> well-known researches by Sir Jagadish Bhose of the University of

> Calcutta, who is endeavouring to make visible the actual heartbeat

> of plant life. Then, in due order with regard to Her would come

> the world of animals, which being animated have within their life--

> although perhaps still unconsciously--some access to Her. Lastly,

> within the highly developed organism of man She, for the first

> time, is inherent in her essential being. There She finds the

> possibility of being consciously awakened, so that she appears to

> him, who is looking and striving for her, in Her true nature as

> Shakti herself. The other side--the mind circle--comprises the

> mental faculties of man such as consciousness, will, feeling and

> logical perception, which, with regard to their aptitude for Her

> realisation, may be put in such order. The directions of

> development therefore go in the matter-circle from left to right--

> from stone, vegetable, animal to man, where Shakti will be

> realised; in the mind-circle, from right to left--from mere

> logical thinking to feeling, will-power, consciousness to man--

> where Shakti may be realised. Thus, as you can see from this

> diagram, everywhere there is Shakti. She is inherent in everything

> and at the same time transcends every thing; by meditation and

> religious ceremonies She may be realized everywhere, being

> inherent in the whole physical universe as it is given to us. And,

> moreover, above this we may touch Her in Her transcendental aspect

> as well. When She appears in Her true nature, then there is no

> more mind or matter, but only She Herself, in no sense bounded by

> such limitations. As such a one She may well be represented by a

> circle, the universe in its true aspect.

>

> To the European it may perhaps at first sight appear to be a mere

> poetical presentment and but little different from the theory of

> vitalism of modern natural science or from ancient animism in the

> religious aspect. But with regard to Vitalism, even if there be

> similarities the essential difference seems to me, that the

> Vitalism of the natural sciences is based principally upon the

> conception of a material world which is regarded as being animated

> by, for instance, the " lan vitale " of Bergson. But Sakthism holds

> its standpoint entirely on the spiritual side. She, the great

> mother, exists, and what in the material world is vitalised or

> animated, certainly comes from Her, but is only a veiled

> appearance of Her, who in Her true being can be experienced

> spiritually. And Sakthism is also not animism, if by animism may

> be understood the primitive idea of everything being ghost-like,

> being animated by " Phi " or spirits, resulting in as many ghostly

> spirits as there are different things. Sakthism represents a

> spiritual unity, all different things being united within Her

> always-greater aspect.

>

> The principal doctrine of " Sakthism " , that the whole Universe of

> mind and matter is created by Her, the Powerful Goddess Shakti, is

> described in full detail, with Indian accuracy in spiritual

> matters, in the Cosmogony of Sakthism. It must be understood that

> every great Indian philosophical system has its own Cosmo-Genesis,

> that is, its special conception of the evolution of the world and

> its beginning. As a matter of fact, every conception of life and

> the Universe requires such a foundation to give it the necessary

> firm hold. For Sakthism this source, out of which the Universe as

> mind and matter has evolved, is the female spiritual Power,

> Shakti, who is the Great Mother of the Universe. In Her most

> concentrated form, when Her Power is just ready to expand, She is

> represented by a point called Bindu. This Bindu Point is mere

> Spirit. Everything manifested and created in this Universe has

> Spirit. Everything manifested and created in this Universe has

> Spirit as its source and essence. In the Christian Cosmo-Genesis

> of the Gospel of St. John it is called " logos " or " the word " . By

> expansion the Spiritual Power Shakti becomes, going through many

> different stages, Mind, Life, and Matter. She--the Goddess--is

> contained, in all the manifestations of the universe, but She

> remains, so to speak, unexhausted by being the material cause of

> the Universe. She in Her essence remains unaffected and greater

> than all the created world.

>

> In a diagrammatic way this cosmogenetic evolution can be

> represented like this. The active, most concentrated Point Bindu

> is red, the colour of activity. From this point the lines of

> evolution expand through the stages of mind and life towards

> matter, the mineral world. So the material world stands not first

> but last in the evolution of the Universe.

>

> According to the general doctrine of Indian metaphysics, this whole

> created universe is not everlasting but will one day be dissolved.

> The life or appearance of the universe lasts, as it is figuratively

> expressed, one day of Brahma, the Almighty, that is, millions and

> millions of years. After that the whole expansion contracts again

> in the opposite direction; first, matter will be dissolved, then

> life and mind will disappear till it reaches the state of the

> beginning, the spiritual Point, Bindu, where it will find its

> rest; until the dawn of a new day of Brahma, when a new creation

> will start. This Bindu Point is the great Goddess, the universal

> mother--womb--yoni--the creator and receiver of the Universe,

> which, as Shakti, is worshipped by the followers of Sakthism.

>

> The Indian Religion of the Goddess Shakti

> DR. HANS KOESTER

> THE JOURNAL OF THE SIAM SOCIETY

> Vol.23, part 1

> 1929 July

>

[Guest guest]

Is There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God? How the

Recent Discoveries Support a Designed Universe

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

 

Introduction -- What is implied by the concept of " an intelligently

designed universe " ?

 

What does it mean on a grand scale to assert that the universe is

the product of an intelligent designer? In a scientific age that

exalts rationalism and chance, what empirical evidence could

possibly support such a claim? As humans contemplating the immense

complexity of the cosmos, might certain features of the universe

suggest that our " home " has in fact been carefully crafted for our

benefit? Can our own human experiences of creativity and design

illuminate the concept of a cosmic designer? These questions

underlie the discussion of intelligent design theory, a resurgent

area of inquiry by both Christian and secular scientists in search

of a reasonable explanation for the marvelous complexity of the

universe.

 

In his classic, Natural Theology (1802),{1} eighteenth-century

English philosopher and theologian William Paley marshaled evidence

for a designed universe from both the physical and biological

sciences. However, his argument for design was called into question

by Darwin's theory of evolution. But new discoveries in the latter

half of the twentieth century in the fields of astronomy, cosmology,

and abiogenesis (the origin of life) have provided extremely

compelling evidence for a designed universe. These findings have

been publicized in the popular print media (Time, December 1992 and

Newsweek, July 1998), featured in television specials on PBS and

BBC, and disseminated through a wide variety of popular and

scholarly books, including entries from prestigious academic

publishing houses such as Oxford and Cambridge University Presses.

 

My personal experience as a lecturer supports the growing openness

to intelligent design theory in the academic world. Having given

over 135 talks on this subject to more than 65,000 students and

professors at over 65 major university campuses from 1986 to 2002, I

have observed a dramatic change in audience receptivity to the idea

that an intelligent designer of the universe may exist. I have noted

a widespread acceptance (albeit begrudging in some quarters) that

this growing body of scientific evidence demands an intellectually

honest reckoning, as no exclusively naturalistic explanation seems

capable of rising to the occasion....

 

Blueprint for a Habitable Universe: The Criticality of Initial or

Boundary Conditions

 

As we already suggested, correct mathematical forms and exactly the

right values for them are necessary but not sufficient to guarantee

a suitable habitat for complex, conscious life. For all of the

mathematical elegance and inner attunement of the cosmos, life still

would not have occurred had not certain initial conditions been

properly set at certain critical points in the formation of the

universe and Earth. Let us briefly consider the initial conditions

for the Big Bang, the design of our terrestrial " Garden of Eden, "

and the staggering informational requirements for the origin and

development of the first living system.

 

The Big Bang

 

The " Big Bang " follows the physics of any explosion, though on an

inconceivably large scale. The critical boundary condition for the

Big Bang is its initial velocity. If this velocity is too fast, the

matter in the universe expands too quickly and never coalesces into

planets, stars, and galaxies. If the initial velocity is too slow,

the universe expands only for a short time and then quickly

collapses under the influence of gravity. Well-accepted cosmological

models{34} tell us that the initial velocity must be specified to a

precision of 1/10(60). This requirement seems to overwhelm chance

and has been the impetus for creative alternatives, most recently

the new inflationary model of the Big Bang.

 

Even this newer model requires a high level of fine-tuning for it to

have occurred at all and to have yielded irregularities that are

neither too small nor too large for the formation of galaxies.

Astrophysicists originally estimated that two components of an

expansion-driving cosmological constant must cancel each other with

an accuracy of better than 1 part in 10(50). In the January 1999

issue of Scientific American, the required accuracy was sharpened to

the phenomenal exactitude of 1 part in 10(123).{35} Furthermore, the

ratio of the gravitational energy to the kinetic energy must be

equal to 1.00000 with a variation of less than 1 part in 100,000.

While such estimates are being actively researched at the moment and

may change over time, all possible models of the Big Bang will

contain boundary conditions of a remarkably specific nature that

cannot simply be described away as " fortuitous " .

 

The Uniqueness of our " Garden of Eden "

 

Astronomers F. D. Drake{36} and Carl Sagan{37} speculated during the

1960s and 1970s that Earth-like places in the universe were

abundant, at least one thousand but possibly as many as one hundred

million. This optimism in the ubiquity of life downplayed the

specialness of planet Earth. By the 1980s, University of Virginia

astronomers Trefil and Rood offered a more sober assessment in their

book, Are We Alone? The Possibility of Extraterrestrial

Civilizations.{38} They concluded that it is improbable that life

exists anywhere else in the universe. More recently, Peter Douglas

Ward and Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington have taken

the idea of the Earth's unique place in our vast universe to a much

higher level. In their recent blockbuster book, Rare Earth: Why

Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe,{39} they argue that the

more we learn about Earth, the more we realize how improbable is its

existence as a uniquely habitable place in our universe. Ward and

Brownlee state it well:

 

If some god-like being could be given the opportunity to plan a

sequence of events with the expressed goal of duplicating

our 'Garden of Eden', that power would face a formidable task. With

the best of intentions but limited by natural laws and materials it

is unlikely that Earth could ever be truly replicated. Too many

processes in its formation involve sheer luck. Earth-like planets

could certainly be made, but each would differ in critical ways.

This is well illustrated by the fantastic variety of planets and

satellites (moons) that formed in our solar system. They all started

with similar building materials, but the final products are vastly

different from each other . . . . The physical events that led to

the formation and evolution of the physical Earth required an

intricate set of nearly irreproducible circumstances.{40}

What are these remarkable coincidences that have precipitated the

emerging recognition of the uniqueness of Earth? Let us consider

just two representative examples, temperature control and plate

tectonics, both of which we have alluded to in our " needs statement "

for a habitat for complex life.

 

Temperature Control on Planet Earth

 

In a universe where water is the primary medium for the chemistry of

life, the temperature must be maintained between 0° C and 100° C

(32° F to 212° F) for at least some portion of the year. If the

temperature on earth were ever to stay below 0° C for an extended

period of time, the conversion of all of Earth's water to ice would

be an irreversible step. Because ice has a very high reflectivity

for sunlight, if the Earth ever becomes an ice ball, there is no

returning to the higher temperatures where water exists and life can

flourish. If the temperature on Earth were to exceed 100°C for an

extended period of time, all oceans would evaporate, creating a

vapor canopy. Again, such a step would be irreversible, since this

much water in the atmosphere would efficiently trap all of the

radiant heat from the sun in a " super-greenhouse effect, " preventing

the cooling that would be necessary to allow the steam to re-

condense to water.{41} This appears to be what happened on Venus.

 

Complex, conscious life requires an even more narrow temperature

range of approximately 5-50° C.{42} How does our portion of real

estate in the universe remain within such a narrow temperature

range, given that almost every other place in the universe is either

much hotter or much colder than planet Earth, and well outside the

allowable range for life? First, we need to be at the right distance

from the sun. In our solar system, there is a very narrow range that

might permit such a temperature range to be sustained, as seen in

Fig. 1. Mercury and Venus are too close to the sun, and Mars is too

far away. Earth must be within approximately 10% of its actual orbit

to maintain a suitable temperature range.{43}

 

Yet Earth's correct orbital distance from the sun is not the whole

story. Our moon has an average temperature of -18° C, while Earth

has an average temperature of 33° C; yet each is approximately the

same average distance from the sun. Earth's atmosphere, however,

efficiently traps the sun's radiant heat, maintaining the proper

planetary temperature range. Humans also require an atmosphere with

exactly the right proportion of tri-atomic molecules, or gases like

carbon dioxide and water vapor. Small temperature variations from

day to night make Earth more readily habitable. By contrast, the

moon takes twenty-nine days to effectively rotate one whole period

with respect to the sun, giving much larger temperature fluctuations

from day to night. Earth's rotational rate is ideal to maintain our

temperature within a narrow range.

 

Most remarkable of all, the sun's radiation has gradually increased

in intensity by 40 percent over time--a fact that should have made

it impossible to maintain Earth's temperature in its required range.

This increase, however, has been accompanied by a gradual decrease

in the Earth's concentration of carbon dioxide. Today although the

Earth receives more radiation, the atmosphere traps it less

efficiently, thus preserving approximately the same temperatures

that the Earth experienced four billion years ago. The change in the

concentration of carbon dioxide over four billion years has resulted

first from plate tectonics (by which carbon dioxide has been

converted to calcium carbonate in shallow waters), and more recently

through the development of plant life. Such good fortune on such a

grand scale must be considered a miracle in its own right. But there

is still more to the story.

 

Mercury, Venus, and Mars all spin on their axes, but their axis

angles vary chaotically from 0 to 90 degrees, giving corresponding

chaotic variations in their planetary climates. Earth owes its

relative climatic stability to its stable 23-degree axis of

rotation. This unique stability is somehow associated with the size

of Earth's large moon. Our moon is one-third the size of Earth--rare

for any planet. To have such a large moon is particularly rare for

planets in the inner regions of the solar system, where a habitable

temperature range can be sustained. The most current theories

explaining this proposition lead us again to the suspicion that such

a remarkable and " fortuitous accident " occurred specifically for our

benefit.{44}

 

 

Figure 4. In our solar system (drawn to scale), notice that the

habitable zone is the region within ~10 percent of the orbital

radius for planet earth, a very small part of our large, solar

system.{43}

 

Plate Tectonics - Continent Builder, Temperature Controller, Cosmic

Radiation Protecter

 

How does plate tectonics contribute to our planet's becoming

habitable for complex life? First, plate tectonics have produced a

landmass on an earth that would otherwise have remained a smooth

sphere covered by 4000 feet of water. Second, plate tectonics on

Earth formed regions of shallow water just beyond the landmass. In

these shallows, carbon dioxide chemically reacts with calcium

silicate to form calcium carbonate and silicon oxide (or sand). This

process removes sufficient carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to

avoid overheating as the sun's radiant energy increases. Third,

plate tectonics allows for sufficiently large thermal gradients to

develop the convective cells in the Earth's core that generate our

magnetic field, which in turn protects us from cosmic radiation.

 

It is reasonable to assume that without plate tectonics, no planet

could be habitable.{45} Of the 62 satellites in our solar systems,

only Earth has plate tectonic activity--a fact that reflects the

difficulty to meet the conditions required for this transformational

process. Plate tectonics requires just the right concentration of

heavy, radioactive elements in a planet or moon's core, in order to

produce the proper amount of heat through radioactive decay.

Furthermore, the core must be molten, with a solid, but viscous

crust. The viscosity of the crust must be carefully calibrated to

the heat generation in the core. The total volume of surface water

present on a planet is also critical (on Earth, it is 0.5 percent by

weight).{46} Too much water will yield a planet with only oceans.

Too little water or too much plate tectonic activity will produce a

planet with almost all land mass and very small oceans. This

imbalance would leave the Earth with a water cycle that could not

aerate the landmass adequately to sustain life. The oceans also

buffer temperature fluctuations, helping to keep the Earth's surface

temperature in a viable range. Earth's current proportion of 30

percent landmass to 70 percent oceans is biologically ideal.

However, this complex end result arises from a myriad of factors

that appear to be independent. Again, an explanatory model based

on " accidents of nature " seems insufficient to account for yet

another remarkable feature of our planet.

 

Blueprint for Life: Information and The Origin of Life

 

We have not yet touched on the greatest " miracle " in our terrestrial

narrative of origins. While we have noted the remarkable provision

of a suitable universe with a local habitat that is ideal for life,

the most remarkable artifact in our universe is life itself. While

biological evolution, including macroevolution, continues to have a

larger constituency than is justified by the evidence (in my

opinion), all major researchers in the field of chemical evolution

(i.e., the origin of life) acknowledge the fundamental mystery of

life's beginnings from inanimate matter. The enigma of the origin of

life comes in the difficulty of imagining a simply biological system

that is sufficiently complex to process energy, store information,

and replicate, and yet at the same time is sufficiently simple to

have just " happened " in a warm pond, as Darwin suggested, or

elsewhere.

 

Complex molecules, such as proteins, RNA, and DNA, provide for

essential biological functions. These biopolymers are actually long

chains of simpler molecular building blocks such as amino acids (of

which there are 20 different types--see Figure 5), sugars and bases.

Their biological function is intimately connected to their precise

chemical structure. How, then, were they assembled with such perfect

functionality before the origin of life itself? If I stand across

the street and throw paint at my curb, I am not very likely to

paint " 204, " which is my house number. On the other hand, if I first

place a template with the numbers " 204 " on my curb and then sling

paint, I can easily paint " 204 " on my curb. Living systems contain

their own templates. However, such templates did not guide the

process before life began (i.e., under prebiotic conditions). How,

then, did the templates and other molecular machinery originate?

 

To illustrate the staggering degree of complexity involved here, let

us consider a typical protein that is composed of 100 amino acids.

Amino acids are molecules that can have two mirror image structures,

usually referred to as " left-handed " and " right-handed " variants, as

seen in Figure 6. A functional protein requires the amino acids from

which it is built to be (1) all left-handed; (2) all linked together

with peptide bonds (Figure 7), and (3) all in just the right

sequence to fold up into the three-dimensional structure needed for

biological function, as seen in Figure 8. The probability of

correctly assembling a functional protein in one try in a prebiotic

pond, as seen in Figure 8, is 1/10(190).{48} If we took all of the

carbon in the universe, converted it into amino acids, and allowed

it to chemically react at the maximum permissible rate of 10(13)

interactions per second for five billion years, the probability of

making a single functioning protein increases to only 1/10(60). For

this reason, chance explanations for the origin of life have been

rejected. Some non-random process or intelligent designer must be

responsible. However, there are no apparent nonrandom processes

(such as natural selection is claimed to be in evolution) that would

seem to be capable of generating the required complexity and

information for the first living system.

 

Is There Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God? How the

Recent Discoveries Support a Designed Universe

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html

 

{35} Lawrence M. Krauss, " Cosmological Antigravity, " Scientific

American, 280 (January 1999): 53-59.

 

{36} F. D. Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There? (New York :

Delacorte Press, 1992) 62.

 

{37} I. S. Shklovskii and C. Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe

(New York: Dell, 1966).

 

{38} Robert Rood and James S. Trefil, Are We Alone? The Possibility

of Extraterrestrial Civilizations (New York: Scribner, 1981).

 

{39} Peter B. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life

is Uncommon in the Universe (New York: Copernicus, 2000).

 

{40} Ibid, 37.

 

{41} W. Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet (Palisades, NY:

Eldigio Press, 1985) , 197-229.

 

{42} Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, 19-20.

 

{43} Ibid, p. 15-33.

 

{44} J. Kasting, " Habitable Zones Around Stars: An Update, " in

Circumstellar Habitable Zones, ed. L. Doyle (Menlo Park, CA: Travis

House, 1996), 17-28.

 

{45} Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, 208.

 

{46} Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, 264-65.

 

{47} Walter L. Bradley and Charles B. Thaxton, " Information and the

Origin of Life " , in The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for

an Intelligent Designer, ed. J.P. Moreland (Downers Grove, Ill:

InterVarsity Press, 1994), 190.

 

{48} Kenneth R. Miller and Joseph Levine, Biology: The Living

Science (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall), 1998, p.406-

407.

 

 

 

 

, " jagbir singh "

<adishakti_org wrote:

>

> The Sunday Times October 08, 2006

> Goldilocks and the riddle of the perfect universe

>

> Why is the cosmos ideally set up to support life? Physicist Paul

> Davies tells Stuart Wavell about the point where science meets

> religion

>

> Why is the universe, like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks

and the three bears, " just right " for life? Even cosmologists have

said it looks like a fix or a put-up job. Is it a fluke or providence

> that it appears set up expressly for the purpose of spawning

> sentient beings?

>

> Until recently the Goldilocks question was almost completely

ignored by scientists. But dramatic developments in our

understanding are propelling the issue to the forefront of the

agenda, according to the acclaimed British physicist and bestselling

author Paul Davies. To stoke the fire, he is to chair a debate

between advocates of alternative theories at Oxford on Friday.

>

> Anyone expecting Davies to recant his non-religious views and join

> the intelligent design lobby will be disappointed. " We can't dump

> all this in the lap of an arbitrary god and say we can't inquire

any further, " he says. " The universe looks ingenious, it looks like a

> fix, and words like meaning and purpose come to mind. But it

doesn't mean that we're going to have a miracle-working cosmic magician meddling

with events. "

>

> What concerns him in his new book The Goldilocks Enigma is science

> and the universe's stringent conditions for existence, so finely

> tuned that even the slightest twiddle of the dials would wreck any

> hope of life emerging in the universe. " No scientific explanation

of the universe can be deemed complete unless it accounts for this

> appearance of judicious design, " he says.

>

> Beyond the obvious prerequisites such as water, the sun's energy

and the various chemical elements (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc)

> needed to make biomass, there's the tricky stuff. If protons were a

> tiny bit heavier they would decay into neutrons, and atoms would

> disintegrate. No carbon would have been formed by nuclear reactions

> inside stars if the nuclear force varied by more than a scintilla.

>

> This is where the acrimony starts. Some cosmologists claim the

> bio-friendliness of the universe is explained by a multitude of

> universes, known as the " multiverse " . Lord Rees, a leading

proponent and president of the Royal Society, believes the laws of physics are

merely local bylaws that hold good for our universe but will be different among

our neighbours.

>

> Such speculation has infuriated some particle physicists,

> particularly adherents of string theory, who aspire to a final

> theory that will unify all physical laws and tie up the loose ends.

>

> Their scorn for the multiverse theory is echoed by Frank Close,

> professor of theoretical physics at Oxford and a participant in

> Friday's debate, although he is no string theorist: " It's a cop-

out. To my mind it's no different from the idea that God did it. If we cannot do

any scientific experiments to prove what one of these

> other universes would be like, it's beyond science. It's just

giving up. "

>

> Then there's the viewpoint of Richard Dawkins, the ardent Darwinist

> and recent author of The God Delusion, who holds that life is

> essentially pointless and came about by chance before natural

> selection took over. Close compares Dawkins to religious

fundamentalists, " who know they are right in their position, just as

> Richard knows he is right in his position " .

>

> Davies wants to rise above such bickering. " I want to get away from

> this notion that something has to be accepted on faith, " he

> says. " That just becomes a sterile argument. These people can argue

> all night, but you're never going to prove or disprove the other

> person's position. "

>

> He is fascinated by an alternative answer to the Goldilocks

question. " Somehow, " he writes, " the universe has engineered, not just its own

awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired

to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding. The evolving cosmos

has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the

plot. "

>

> What exactly is Davies saying? His starting point is the " highly

> significant " fact that the universe supports people who understand

> its laws. " I wanted to get away from the feeling in so many

> scientific quarters that life and human beings are a completely

> irrelevant embellishment, a side issue of no significance. I don't

> think we're the centre of the universe or the pinnacle of creation,

> but the fact that human beings have the ability to understand how

> the world is put together is something that cries out for

> explanation. "

>

> Davies's big idea goes back to the Big Bang. According to the

> standard picture, the laws of physics were already in place at the

> explosive origin of the universe. But he contends that perhaps the

> universe and its laws emerged together in malleable form: " We would

> expect that these laws were not infinitely precise mathematical

> statements, but they would have a certain sloppiness or ambiguity

> that could lead to observable effects from the earliest universe,

> when these laws were still congealing. "

>

> So how did compatible life and mind come into being? Davies's

> explanation, involving quantum mechanics and something called

> backwards causation, is impossible to compress without

> sounding " ludicrous " , he confesses. He's right: it's impenetrable.

>

> But this scenario requires an act of faith as great as that of any

> religious believer. So hasn't he sidestepped the God question?

> Science can meet religion on middle ground, he says, but a

> superbeing who intervenes in events is anathema to most

> scientists. " You have to understand that science deals with

> hypotheses that can be tested, and religion proceeds from acts of

> faith that can't be tested. "

>

> Davies has just left an academic job in Australia to delve further

into the origins of things at the provisionally named Blue Sky think

> tank in Phoenix, Arizona. One of his first projects is to

> investigate the possibility that life emerged not just once on

> Earth, but thousands of times. The accepted wisdom is that all the

> planet's life derives from a common ancestor, ranged on the tree of

> life.

>

> " The question is whether there's just one tree in the forest. If

> life is easy to get going, we might expect many trees of life but

> maybe only one tree survived. But maybe there are members of other

> trees under our noses, but we don't appreciate what they are. " He

> conjectures a fertile phase starting four billion years ago when

> ferocious cataclysms caused by comets and asteroids repeatedly

> zapped emerging life on Earth before the present " tree " took root

> 3.5 billion years ago.

>

> In writing his book, Davies was struck by how " ridiculous " all the

> theories and options seemed. Perhaps, he muses, we have evolved to

> think about the world in a certain way and we are posing the wrong

> questions. " I wonder if we're just stuck in certain patterns of

> thought and we're doomed to forever have these discussions and

> arguments. Perhaps the real answers lie utterly beyond our ken. "

>

>

> The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? by

> Paul Davies is published by Allen Lane, £22. A debate, Confronting

> the Goldilocks Enigma, will be held at the Oxford Playhouse at 5pm

> on Friday (www.oxfordplayhouse.com)

>

>

> >

> > What concerns him in his new book The Goldilocks Enigma is

science and the universe's stringent conditions for existence, so finely tuned

that even the slightest twiddle of the dials would wreck any hope of life

emerging in the universe. " No scientific explanation of the universe can be

deemed complete unless it accounts for this appearance of judicious design, " he

says.

> >

>

> Ancient Light

>

> " . . . the universe began in a sort of explosion, starting from

> infinite density and temperature, and has been expanding, thinning

> out and cooling ever since. The beginning was not like an ordinary

> explosion, in which debris flies out into a surrounding region of

> nonmoving space. Instead the big bang explosion began everywhere.

> There was no surrounding space for the universe to move into, since

> any such space would be part of the universe. The concept boggles

> the imagination . . .

>

> . . . the universe was about 10(-8) seconds old (0.000,000,000,1)

> when its material was as a temperature of 10(+14) degrees

> (1,000,000,000,000,000). Any further extrapolation back in time

> toward the big bang, towards higher temperatures, enters the realm

of speculation. Yet cosmologists have been forced to speculate. Many

> of the properties of the universe may have been determined in the

first 10(-8) seconds and much earlier. If the grand unified theories

> are correct, then their most interesting effects would have

happened when the universe was about 10(-35) seconds old. . . .

>

> The essential feature of the inflationary universe model is that,

shortly after the big bang, the infant universe went through a brief

> and extremely rapid expansion, after which it returned to the more

> leisurely rate of expansion of the standard big bang model. By the

time the universe was a tiny fraction (perhaps 10[-32]) of a second,

> the period of rapid expansion, or inflation, was over . . . The

> epoch of rapid expansion could have taken a patch of space so tiny

> that it had already homogenized and quickly stretched it to a size

larger than today's entire observable universe . . . For the purpose

> of illustration, we will assume that the inflationary epoch began

> when the universe was 10(-35) seconds old and ended when it was 10

(-

> 32) seconds old. At the beginning of the inflationary epoch, the

> largest region of space that could have homogenized would have been

> about 10(-35) light seconds in size, or about 10(-25) centimeters,

> much smaller than the nucleus of an atom. At the end of the

> inflationary epoch, this tiny homogenized region would have been

> stretched to something like 10(+400) light years. . . .

>

> Numerically the Planck density is about 10(+93) grams per cubic

> centimeter. The infant universe had this enormous density when it

> was about 10(-43) seconds old. "

>

> Allan Lightman, Ancient Light

> Harvard University Press 1991, p. 33-154.

>

>

> The universe began as an explosion from an infinite density and

temperature; expanding, thinning and cooling since. It was an extra-

> extraordinary explosion. Unlike normal blasts, where debris fly

into the surrounding nonmoving space, this was totally different. In

fact it's conception staggers the imagination: there was no surrounding space

for it to move into as all the universe was compressed into the subatomic sized

origin — all existing space being part of it. Nothing existed before the Big

Bang!

>

> The universe was only about 0.000,000,001 seconds old when its

> material temperature was 100,000,000,000,000 degrees. Most of the

> properties of this universe was determined during this period and

> earlier still. Any attempt to go back into time would entail

speculation. However, if the grand unified theories are correct then

> their most fascinating effects would have taken place when the

> universe was .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001

> seconds old!

>

> The essence of the inflationary universe model is that, immediately

> after the big bang, the newly born universe underwent a very brief

> and extremely rapid expansion, before slowing down to the pace of

> the standard big bang model. By the time the universe was

> about .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old,

> expansion was over. Within this extremely short period it had

> already expanded and stretched from an infinitesimal small pinpoint

> to a size much larger than today's observable universe.

>

To illuminate this fact we will assume that the expansion began when

> the universe was exactly .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,

> 000,001 seconds old, and ended when it was only .000,000,000, 000,

> 000,000,000,000,000,000,001 seconds old. At the beginning of

> expansion the largest area was about .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

> 000,01 centimeters, a size far smaller than the nucleus of an atom.

> Within that nano-second it had expanded to something like

1,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,

0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000

0000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000

0000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000000

0,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000000,00

0000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,000000

0000,0000000000,0000000000 light years!

>

And one light year covers about 6,000,000,000,000 miles! And this is

> just a fraction of the area that the most advanced telescopes can

> detect from ancient light still coming from the initial Big Bang.

> The universe is infinitely larger than is visible. In fact humans

> will never know the actual size of the universe as it is still

> expanding 15,000,000,000,000 years later!

>

> The Planck density, a measure of weight, is about 10000000000,

> 0000000000,0000000000,0000000000,0000000000, 0000000000,0000000000,

> 0000000000 kilos per cubic centimeter. Our universe had this

> enormous density when it was precisely .0000000000,0000000000,

0000000000,0000000 000,0001 seconds old! It should be noted that the

> maximum size of the universe at this time was .000,000,000,000,

> 000,000,000,000,01 centimeters. This tiny fraction of an atom was

> already weighing billions of trillions of quadrillions of

quintillions of tons! It takes a while for the sheer enormousness of

> this astounding Truth to sink in. It defies logic and eludes

> comprehension. The more the mind ponders the less it comprehends.

> The brilliant scientists, whom the civilized world cherished for

their hair-splitting, or we could say, atom-splitting accuracy, have

> hit a colossal cosmic Reality. They have now to prove how did the

> pinpoint produce a universe that is now found to be vastly larger.

The ubiquitous questions of this century: How, why and what was that

> primeval atom that formed an entire universe within a split second?

> The question of the next millennium: " Who made this awesome atom? "

>

> The more the human mind visualizes this brain-boggling nature and

> awesome grandeur of creation the more humble it will become. There

> will never be any scientific explanation to the origin of the

> universe and if there is going to any at all, it will be

> preposterous, to say the least. Science's finest atheist minds are

> already beginning to whisper ever so softly that there is something

> else — the Almighty Creator!

>

> Others are beginning to believe that humanity's quest for Truth

> through science is over. John Horgan, a 43-year-old senior writer

> with Scientific American magazine is one of them. His book The End

> of Science caused a commotion among scientists for its essence

> that " pure science, the quest for knowledge about what we are and

> where we came from, has already entered an area of diminishing

> returns. "

>

> For those who have depended on science to disprove the myths of the

> scriptures it is time to turn back at these very early stages of

> admission that science cannot enlighten anymore. It has reached its

> natural limits. Now only the Spirit can take Homo sapiens beyond —

> far, far beyond — the limitations of their minds. And it has begun

> to do so!

>

> Humans have done enormous damage to Nature in this blind pursuit of

> materialism. Science bears a disappropriately larger responsibility

> in trying to establish the superiority and dominance of humans over

> all Nature, and placed a premium on mastering matter. This

scientific search began when Copernicus peered through his telescope

> and found that the Earth was not the center of the universe, in

stark contrast to the holy, perfect symmetry that the Church had, in

its ignorance, infallibly asserted. Ever since then there has been a

> relentless rape of the divine origin of creation and Western

> civilization has been wandering in the maze of mathematics and

> matter.

>

> The cold, calculating core of science (not scientists) lacks the

> human qualities of love, compassion, tenderness, and emotion.

> Science is all mental, mathematical, material, logic and

> tangibility. Science cannot detect Spirit, vibrations, chakras,

> consciousness, thoughtless awareness, the Kingdom of Sadashiva. All

the laws of matter, physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics are

> devoid of divinity and lead humankind further and further from the

> Absolute Truth. For decades they have stripped away the masks of

> this mysterious universe, expecting to find the mathematical mantra

that would have etched their names in atheist eternity. Instead they

have hit a colossal celestial Truth. Some of the greatest scientific

> minds on Earth are now beginning to hint that the answer to the

> origin of the universe will never ever be found or proven by their

> grandest theories. They are also admitting that there has to be a

> Creator!

>

The search for the origin of the universe has ended for science: the

> Truth lies elsewhere. As more and more theories flounder and crash

in their quest to prove an atheist origin, the Ultimate Truth of the

Almighty Creator will slowly but surely be recognized by His atheist

> adversaries. Even Stephen Hawkings, probably the most eminent

> theoretical physicist in the world today, while recalling his

> childhood fantasy on why the universe came into being, could only

> say, " But I still do not understand why. " As long as he denies that

> he lives in His creation there will be no answer.

>

> Humans have probed and peered far enough into the universe. For

> millennia they have projected all their senses outwards and yet

> found no answer to the fundamental mysteries of life. Isn't it time

> to separate scientific facts from spiritual Reality, and try a new

> approach by seeking from within? Simple logic and the law of

> averages point to that direction.

>

> " Atoms are so small that the full-stop at the end of this sentence

> contains more than one billion of them. Tiny as it is, an atom is

> entirely made up of empty space. The rest consists of protons,

> neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons are found clustered

> together in a minute, extremely dense nucleus at the very centre of

the atom. Little bundles of energy called electrons whiz around this

> nucleus at the speed of light. It is the presence of electrons that

> make the atom behave like a solid, in the same way that a fan blade

> spinning rapidly looks and behaves as if it were solid. "

>

> Dr. Trevor Day, Nicholas Harris, The Incredible Journey to the

> Centre of the Atom, Orpheus Books Ltd., 1996.

>

>

> " Most of the atomic mass is concentrated in a tiny nucleus, only a

> thousand-billionth of a centimeter in size. The nucleus is

> surrounded by a cloud of lighter particles — the electrons —

> extending out to a distance of perhaps a hundred-millionth of a

> centimeter. Thus, by far the greater part of the atom is empty

> space. "

>

> Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

> Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 146.)

>

>

> " The exponential factor implies that the odds against randomly-

> generated order increase astronomically. For example, the

> probability of a litre of air rushing spontaneously to one end of a

> box is of the order 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 zeros to one! Such

figures indicate the extreme care with which low-entropy states must

> be selected from the vast array of possible states.

>

> Translated into a cosmological context, the conundrum is this. If

> the universe is simply an accident, the odds against it containing

> any appreciable order are ludicrously small. If the big bang was

> just a random event, then the probability seems overwhelming that

> the emerging cosmic material would be in thermodynamic equilibrium

> at maximum entropy with zero order. As this was clearly not the

case, it appears hard to escape the conclusion that the actual state

> of the universe has been `chosen' or selected somehow from the huge

> number of available states, all but an infinitesimal fraction of

> which are totally disordered. And if such an exceedingly improbable

> initial state was selected, there sure had to be a selector or

> designer to `choose' it. "

>

> Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

> Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 167-68.)

>

>

> " The accumulated gravity of the universe operates to restrain the

expansion, causing it to decelerate with time. In the primeval phase

the expansion was much faster than it is today. The universe is thus

the product of a competition between the explosive vigour of the big

> bang, and the force of gravity which tries to pull the pieces back

> together again. In recent years, astrophysicists have come to

> realize just how delicately this competition has been balanced. Had

> the big bang been weaker, the cosmos would have fallen back on

itself in a big crunch. On the other hand, had it been stronger, the

> cosmic material would have dispersed so rapidly that galaxies would

> not have formed. Either way, the observed structure of the universe

> seems to depend very sensitively on the precise matching of

> explosive vigour to gravitating power.

>

> Just how sensitively is revealed by calculation. At the so-called

Planck time 10-43 seconds (which is the earliest moment at which the

> concept of space and time has meaning) the matching was accurate to

> a staggering one part in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,

> 000,000,000,000,000,000. That is to say, had the explosion differed

> in strength at the outset by only one part in 10 (-60)

> (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000, 000, 000,

> 000,000,000,000,000) the universe we now perceive would not exist. "

> Professor Paul Davies, God and the New Physic,

> Simon and Schuster, 1983, p. 179.)

>

>

> " Adi

> In the beginning, to be sure, nothing existed, neither the heaven

> nor the earth nor space in between.

> So Nonbeing, having decided to be, became spirit and said: " Let me

> be!''

> He warmed himself further and from this heating was born fire.

> He warmed himself still further and from this heating was born

> light. TB II, 2, 9, 1-2

>

> Numerous texts are to be found in the Vedic scriptures, of

> extraordinary diversity and incomparable richness, which seek

> unweariedly to penetrate the mystery of the beginnings and to

> explain the immensity and the amazing harmony of the universe. We

> find a proliferation of speculations, doubts, and descriptions, an

> atmosphere charged with solemnity, a sense of life lived to the

full — all of which spontaneously bring to mind the landscape of the

> Himalayas. These texts seem to burst forth impetuously like streams

> issuing from glaciers. Within this rushing torrent may be discerned

> a certain life view, deep and basic, an evolving life view that can

> yet be traced unbroken from the Rig Veda, through the Atharva Veda

> and the Brahmanas, to the Upanishads.

>

> What is fascinating about the experience of the Vedic seers is not

> only that they have dared to explore the outer space of being and

> existence, piercing the outskirts of reality, exploring the

boundaries of the universe, describing being and its universal laws,

> but that they have also undertaken the risky and intriguing

> adventure of going beyond and piercing the being barrier so as to

> float in utter nothingness, so to speak, and discover that Nonbeing

> is only the outer atmosphere of Being, its protective veil. They

> plunge thus into a darkness enwrapped by darkness, into the Beyond

> from which there is no return, into that Prelude of Existence in

which there is neither Being nor Nonbeing, neither God nor Gods, nor

> creature of any type; the traveler himself is volatilized, has

> disappeared. Creation is the act by which God, or whatever name we

> may choose to express the Ultimate, affirms himself not only vis-à-

> vis the world, thus created, but also vis-à-vis himself, for he

> certainly was neither creator before creation nor God for himself.

> The Vedic seers make the staggering claim of entering into that

> enclosure where God is not yet God, where God is thus unknown to

> himself, and, not being creator, is " nothing. " "

>

> Professor Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience,

> www.cybrlink.com/vedtoc.htm

>

>

> " Mr. Horgan contends that science is a victim of its own success.

> Astronomers have seen as much of the universe as they ever will.

> Physicists have probed as deeply into the nature of matter as

> practical experiments will allow. And biologists have been finished

> since Darwin conceived of evolution in the 1850s . . . Mr. Horgan

> says scientists are just fooling themselves . . . We'll never know

> what existed before the universe began, what processes give rise to

> consciousness, or what physical rules lie beyond the ones that are

> currently understood, he argues. Those things simply lie beyond the

> reach of scientific investigation, so any theorizing or speculating

> about them is what he labels " ironic " science. " It's ironic in the

> sense that real science can be taken as literally true, " Mr. Horgan

> said. " They have gone beyond what science can do . . . It is

> meaningless in human terms . . . It doesn't tell us about the

> purpose of the universe and our place in it, and all those sorts of

> things. "

>

> The Globe and Mail, August 13, 1996

>

>

> " In recent times there has been a proliferation of literature

> drawing parallels between holonomis theories of light, quantum

> physics, and the mystics' view of integral wholeness. As a culture

> we have looked primarily to Western science to alleviate human

suffering and to understand our purpose in the scheme of things. But

> is science capable of freeing us from all suffering? Can science

> guide us to a direct mystical experience through the bliss of

> integrating with the One Light? Is there a parallel between modern

physics and the yoga of sacred art regarding the nature of light and

> consciousness? . . .

>

> The mechanistic parameters of Western science have permeated our

> perceptions, our thinking, our emotions, and even our ways of

> relating to one another. The result had been nothing less than a

> total fragmentation of our collective consciousness. The scientific

> worldview has led to the neglect of our intuitive spiritual

> perceptions and the creative developments of our souls — which,

> according to the sages of the East, are there to lead to greater

> understanding and release us from ignorance, laws of duality, and

> suffering. Because it is constrained within the laws of polarities,

> science by itself cannot help us to achieve wholeness. As Yogananda

> says:

>

> " The entire phenomenal world is under the inexorable sway of

polarity; no law of physics, chemistry, or any other science is ever

> found free from inherent opposite or contrasted principles.

>

> Physical science, then, cannot formulate laws outside of maya: the

very fabric and structure of creation . . . Future scientists can do

> no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied

> infinitude. Science thus remains in a perpetual flux, unable to

> reach finality . . . " "

>

> Judith Cornell, PH. D. Mandala: Luminous Symbols for Healing,

> Theosophical Publishing, 1994 p. 27-29.

>

>

> " We are all literally made up of stardust, " said astronomer George

> Smoot of the University of California's Space Sciences Laboratory

> and author of Wrinkles in Time. This much we know. But where that

> first pinpoint of intense energy came from — what unleashed its

force to explode outward over billions of light-years of space; what

set that power loose to evolve over the billions of years since into

> the intricately interconnected system of planets and stars; what

> brilliant design could set forth the pattern of development that

> could bring as complex a structure as humans into being — the

scientists cannot explain or are uncomfortable explaining because it

> requires them to suddenly trade their theories and facts for the

> possibility that a supreme force beyond their explanations set it

> all in motion for a purpose.

>

> " Facing this, the ultimate question challenges our faith in the

> power of science to find explanations of nature, " Smoot wrote. " Is

> this then where scientific explanation breaks down and God takes

> over? " "

>

> Walter Mercado, Beyond The Horizon,

> A Time Warner Company, 1997 p. 51-2.

>

>

> " The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is

> the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science.

> He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and

> stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

>

> To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifests

> itself as the highest wisdom, and the most radiant beauty which our

dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive form — this

knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness. The

> Cosmic religious experience is the strongest and oldest mainspring

> of scientific research.

>

> My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable

> superior spirit who reveals himself in the slightest details we are

> able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply

> emotional conviction of the presence of the superior reasoning

> power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my

> idea of God.

>

> Religion without science is blind and science without religion is

> lame . . . The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can

> experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all

> true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no

> longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know

that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as

> the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull

> faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms — this

> knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness. "

>

> Albert Einstein

>

>

" We must first know what is Absolute Truth. We have human awareness.

> We also have freedom to form our own mental ideas. But Truth cannot

be known through human awareness . . . Any type of mental projection

> or ideology ultimately will recoil back because it has to be

> substantiated by Reality. "

>

> Shri Nirmama Devi

> Moscow, Soviet Union — June 25, 1990

> Nirmama (164th): Without selfishness.

>

>

> " What has gone wrong with the West is that they have never worried

> about their Spirit. They have negated all that is Spirit, all that

> is subtler life and have thought that it is better to master the

matter, master all these things which they master . . . Whatever you

> master is lower than you, is not higher than you . . . If you want

to be higher then you have to be useful to that higher goal . . . we

> should allow the Higher thing to rule us.

>

So in ancient times so many people, we can call as seers and saints,

> went into the forest to find out what is the basis of human beings?

> What is the meaning of human life? What is the ultimate goal of

> human beings. And they found out that it is the Spirit. And they

> based all the Indian laws and Indian philosophies, music, art,

> dance, drama — every aspect of life — on the basis that we have to

> become the Spirit. But when we have the western influence and

> western education put on to us, everyone decided that give up

> whatever was traditional, whatever was old, and take to this. "

>

> Shri Sanakadi-samaradhya Devi

> Importance Of Self-Realization, Delhi, India — February 8, 1983

> Sanakadi-samaradhya (726th): Worshipped by sages like Sanaka. . .

> She appears as Guru to the seekers because She is the source of all

> Knowledge.

>

>

> " The other type of people are who think no end of their

> intelligence. They have denied God. They say, " Where is God? There

is no God. We don't believe in God. This is all nonsense. Science is

> everything. " What has science done so far, let's see that? Science

has done nothing so far. It has only done all dead work. It has only

> made you ego-oriented. "

>

> Shri Panca-tanmatra-sayaka Devi

> Kundalini And Kalki Shakti, Bombay, India — September 28, 1979

> Panca-tanmatra-sayaka (11th): She has in the fourth hand an arrow symbolic of

the sense elements. By shooting with the mind as bow the

> arrow of the five sense elements, She creates the Universe, a

> projection of the mind through the senses.

>

>

> " There are three questions which science cannot answer — How are we

here? what are we here for? and what are we going to do? These three

> questions can be answered in Sahaja Yoga after Self-Realization . .

> Science is not conclusive. It does not give you Absolute Truth. It

> goes on changing from this to that . . . we don't know the Absolute

> Truth. "

>

> Shri Manorupeksu-kodanda Devi

> United Nations Public Program, New York, USA — September 9, 1992

Manorupeksu-kodanda (10th): In the left lower hand She has the sugar-

cane bow which symbolises the Samkalpa (power of desire) of the mind

> which creates the phenomenal Universe.

>

>

> " The only thing we can enjoy is the Play of the Spirit . . . Till

> the Knowledge of this Science does not come within us, the outside

> science is absolutely useless because there is very little of

science that can explain about the material things outside. There is

> no comparison of this outside science — no collectivity, no

> humanity, no love, no art, no poem, no respect. There is nothing

> alive in it. It becomes like a machine. "

>

> Shri Sadasad-rupadharini Devi

> Shivaratri Puja, Pune, India — February 23, 1990

> Sadasad-rupadharini (661st): She assumes the form of existence and

> non-existence. She is the source of this universe of name and form

> and the unseen cause behind it. `Satyam Canrtam Ca, Satyamabhavat'

> (Taittiriya Upanishad) Both Reality and unreality emanated from the

Ultimate reality. The power of illusion i.e. Maya-Saktii who creates

> the illusion of the Universe.

>

>

> " And He can do anything that He feels like and we are nothing. We

> are nothing. There should be no rationality about it; about

> understanding God's miracles. How can it be? How could it be? You

> can't explain . . . we are limited people. We have limited powers.

> We cannot understand how God could be All Powerful because we

haven't got the capacity. So this God who is our Creator, who is our

> Preserver, the One who desired that we should exist, who is our

> existence itself, is All-Powerful God. "

>

> Shri Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala Devi

> Mahashivaratri Puja, Pandarpur, India — February 29, 1984

> Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala (12th): Her red

> brilliance engulfs all the Universes. It means all the created

> Universe is only Her radiance.

>

>

" Thus this mind is created like bubbles on the Ocean of Reality, but

> that's not Reality. With this mind whatever we decide we know its

very limited, illusive and sometimes shocking. The mind always moves

> in a linear direction and because there is no Reality in it, it

> recoils and boomerangs. Thus all the enterprises, all the

> projections so far we have done it seems come back to us. Whatever

> they discover comes back to us as a big destructive Power or a very

> big shock. So one has to decide what to do, how to be out of this

> trap of our mind — Kundalini is the solution . . . With the

> awakening She takes you beyond your mind. "

>

> Shri Pada-dvaya-prabha-jala-parakrta-sororuha Devi

> The Witnessing State: To Know God, Shivaratri Puja, Sydney,

> Australia — March 3, 1996

>

>

> " It was such a solace and such a hope that people who apparently

appear to be in the charge of helm-of-affairs, are also in charge of

> the helm-of-affairs of God. A day will come when they will take up

> their new roles, when they will become aware that it is God who

> rules them. It is He who does it, it is He who has created

> everything, and it is He who enjoys everything.

>

For this awareness . . . the seeking ultimately has to come to human

> beings because all that is done through mental projections and

conceptions has one good point — that it is always exposed and comes

> to an end. Every set enterprise of human beings only moves in a

> linear way and at a point it drops down. That is why all our

> conceptions and all our ideas are challenged after some time. "

>

> Shri Ksetra-Svarupa Devi

> Ksetra-Svarupa (341st): The highest consciousness to the grossest

> matter and space consists of Ksetra. It is Her form.

>

>

>

> Nirmama (164th): Without selfishness.

>

> Sanakadi-samaradhya (726th): Worshipped by sages like Sanaka. . .

> She appears as Guru to the seekers because She is the source of all

> Knowledge.

>

> Panca-tanmatra-sayaka (11th): She has in the fourth hand an arrow

symbolic of the sense elements. By shooting with the mind as bow the

> arrow of the five sense elements, She creates the Universe, a

> projection of the mind through the senses.

>

Manorupeksu-kodanda (10th): In the left lower hand She has the sugar-

cane bow which symbolises the Samkalpa (power of desire) of the mind

> which creates the phenomenal Universe.

>

> Sadasad-rupadharini (661st): She assumes the form of existence and

> non-existence. She is the source of this universe of name and form

> and the unseen cause behind it. `Satyam Canrtam Ca, Satyamabhavat'

> (Taittiriya Upanishad) Both Reality and unreality emanated from the

Ultimate reality. The power of illusion i.e. Maya-Saktii who creates

> the illusion of the Universe.

>

> Nijaruna-prabha-pura-majjad-brahmanda-mandala (12th): Her red

> brilliance engulfs all the Universes. It means all the created

> Universe is only Her radiance.

>

> Ksetra-Svarupa (341st): The highest consciousness to the grossest

> matter and space consists of Ksetra. It is Her form.

>

>

>

> , " jagbir singh "

> <adishakti_org@> wrote:

> >

> >

> > " The follower of Sakthism, the worshipper of Shakti, is called

> > Shakta. His conception of the Goddess is described in the Shakti

>Tantra Shastras, i.e., the holy scriptures of Sakthism, often in a

> > very poetical way. Whereas we speak of Mother Nature only in a

> > comparative manner, for the Shakta it is absolute reality. Nature

> > is Her body. Her presence is personally felt by him, when he is

standing on the fertile ground of the earth; he touches Her life in

> > the blossoms of the pure lotus-flower. She animates all living

> > creatures. His own body is a part of Her great body. Worshipping

> > Her in all Her different forms, he will find Her light, too,

> > within his mind and consciousness. Thus, to the Shakta the whole

> > universe of mind and matter reveals itself in its unity; he see

> > before him Her great body which he adores; Her sacred feet, Her

> > heart, Her mind.

> >

It might be useful to describe this poetical view, which is at once

> > physical and transcendental, by means of another diagram. We may

> > for this purpose represent matter and mind by two circles , which

> > intersect each other.

> >

> Where they intersect, there is Shakti, so to speak, in Herself. But

> Her influence, Her being spreads into the whole realm of matter as

> > well as that of mind. Nowhere is She absent, but Her presence is

> less distinct, is somehow veiled in those parts, which are further

> > from the centre, where She is in Herself. Thus, for the sake of

>linear explanation, the mineral world--the solid matter--would have

> > to be situated the furthest from Her, because there, as for

> > instance in stone, she--Life Herself--is, much veiled, stone to

>the ordinary human view appearing to be dead. Nearer to Her is the

> > realm of plants, where, with their growing and blossoming, She

> > already becomes more apparent. I need hardly remind you of the

> > well-known researches by Sir Jagadish Bhose of the University of

> Calcutta, who is endeavouring to make visible the actual heartbeat

> > of plant life. Then, in due order with regard to Her would come

> the world of animals, which being animated have within their life--

> > although perhaps still unconsciously--some access to Her. Lastly,

> > within the highly developed organism of man She, for the first

> > time, is inherent in her essential being. There She finds the

> > possibility of being consciously awakened, so that she appears to

> > him, who is looking and striving for her, in Her true nature as

> > Shakti herself. The other side--the mind circle--comprises the

> > mental faculties of man such as consciousness, will, feeling and

> > logical perception, which, with regard to their aptitude for Her

> > realisation, may be put in such order. The directions of

>development therefore go in the matter-circle from left to right--

> > from stone, vegetable, animal to man, where Shakti will be

> > realised; in the mind-circle, from right to left--from mere

> > logical thinking to feeling, will-power, consciousness to man--

> > where Shakti may be realised. Thus, as you can see from this

> diagram, everywhere there is Shakti. She is inherent in everything

> > and at the same time transcends every thing; by meditation and

> > religious ceremonies She may be realized everywhere, being

> inherent in the whole physical universe as it is given to us. And,

> moreover, above this we may touch Her in Her transcendental aspect

> > as well. When She appears in Her true nature, then there is no

> > more mind or matter, but only She Herself, in no sense bounded by

> > such limitations. As such a one She may well be represented by a

> > circle, the universe in its true aspect.

> >

> > To the European it may perhaps at first sight appear to be a mere

> > poetical presentment and but little different from the theory of

> > vitalism of modern natural science or from ancient animism in the

> > religious aspect. But with regard to Vitalism, even if there be

> > similarities the essential difference seems to me, that the

> > Vitalism of the natural sciences is based principally upon the

> conception of a material world which is regarded as being animated

> > by, for instance, the " lan vitale " of Bergson. But Sakthism holds

> > its standpoint entirely on the spiritual side. She, the great

> > mother, exists, and what in the material world is vitalised or

> > animated, certainly comes from Her, but is only a veiled

> > appearance of Her, who in Her true being can be experienced

> > spiritually. And Sakthism is also not animism, if by animism may

> > be understood the primitive idea of everything being ghost-like,

> > being animated by " Phi " or spirits, resulting in as many ghostly

> > spirits as there are different things. Sakthism represents a

> > spiritual unity, all different things being united within Her

> > always-greater aspect.

> >

> > The principal doctrine of " Sakthism " , that the whole Universe of

> mind and matter is created by Her, the Powerful Goddess Shakti, is

> > described in full detail, with Indian accuracy in spiritual

> > matters, in the Cosmogony of Sakthism. It must be understood that

> every great Indian philosophical system has its own Cosmo-Genesis,

> > that is, its special conception of the evolution of the world and

> > its beginning. As a matter of fact, every conception of life and

> > the Universe requires such a foundation to give it the necessary

> > firm hold. For Sakthism this source, out of which the Universe as

> > mind and matter has evolved, is the female spiritual Power,

> > Shakti, who is the Great Mother of the Universe. In Her most

> > concentrated form, when Her Power is just ready to expand, She is

> > represented by a point called Bindu. This Bindu Point is mere

> > Spirit. Everything manifested and created in this Universe has

> > Spirit. Everything manifested and created in this Universe has

> > Spirit as its source and essence. In the Christian Cosmo-Genesis

> > of the Gospel of St. John it is called " logos " or " the word " . By

> > expansion the Spiritual Power Shakti becomes, going through many

> > different stages, Mind, Life, and Matter. She--the Goddess--is

> > contained, in all the manifestations of the universe, but She

> > remains, so to speak, unexhausted by being the material cause of

> > the Universe. She in Her essence remains unaffected and greater

> > than all the created world.

> >

> > In a diagrammatic way this cosmogenetic evolution can be

> > represented like this. The active, most concentrated Point Bindu

> > is red, the colour of activity. From this point the lines of

> > evolution expand through the stages of mind and life towards

> > matter, the mineral world. So the material world stands not first

> > but last in the evolution of the Universe.

> >

> According to the general doctrine of Indian metaphysics, this whole

> created universe is not everlasting but will one day be dissolved.

> The life or appearance of the universe lasts, as it is figuratively

> > expressed, one day of Brahma, the Almighty, that is, millions and

> > millions of years. After that the whole expansion contracts again

> > in the opposite direction; first, matter will be dissolved, then

> > life and mind will disappear till it reaches the state of the

> > beginning, the spiritual Point, Bindu, where it will find its

> > rest; until the dawn of a new day of Brahma, when a new creation

> > will start. This Bindu Point is the great Goddess, the universal

> > mother--womb--yoni--the creator and receiver of the Universe,

> > which, as Shakti, is worshipped by the followers of Sakthism.

> >

> > The Indian Religion of the Goddess Shakti

> > DR. HANS KOESTER

> > THE JOURNAL OF THE SIAM SOCIETY

> > Vol.23, part 1

> > 1929 July

> >

>