Random Reflections on 'Reality'

What if when people go brain-dead their mind wakes up in a parallel universe. What if as they lay there in a vegetative state, seemingly devoid of any thought, they are living it up somewhere else. Somewhen else. Stephen Hawking is a pretty smart guy, and he suggests that our universe (or dimension) may be one of many. What if people could make the jump. It kind of reminds me of that TV show Life On Mars, where the guy gets hit by a car and wakes up in the 1970's. What if his body is lying there, in present time, completely vacant, while his soul takes on a new form to fight crime in the 'past'. I know we like to simplify life and creation, but who knows for real, right?

The other day while I was delivering food to dying businesses (thats an economy joke), I thought up a cure for cancer. In my mind I deciphered what was similar between all cancer cells and then I developed a specific protein compound that destroyed those cancer cells. It was obvious I'd been watching too much CSI, because I don't even know what a compound of protein looks like, or what it does exactly. When reading about famous scientists, though, I find that many of them weren't even that gifted. They were just creative and ingenious and were at the right place at the right time. I think most people, if given the right circumstances, can be very creative and ingenious. You just have to spend some time thinking.

What if time governs our entire reality. If you think about it, we are bound to it. We have a beginning and an end, as does everything in our universe. It's hard to imagine something that truly transcends time because from our point of view everything is born and everything dies. Everything. But what if there is this eternal realm outside of time. We can't see it because we are bound to time. Say heaven is eternal, not bound by time. What if when you die and you get to heaven its just as if everyone got there at the same time. Grandma, she just showed up, same time as you. Since there is no time, she wasn't waiting, even though she passed forty years back. She's probably confused as to why you died right when she did, but I think she'll figure it out soon enough and be happy you're there. And then there's St. Peter, he just got there too. He's been gone two thousand years from earth but thats nothing in heaven because there is no time. What if the Rapture is a metaphor for death, and we'll all be caught up in the sky at the 'same time' when we die. Me, Grandma, and St. Pete getting called home... separate from the timeline of Earth. I mean this is all speculation, but you never know, right?

They say the speed of light governs time. Thats the definition of a light-year: The distance that light travels in one year. That star you see twinkling at night, that actually twinkled fifty thousand light years ago, or more, and its just now caught your eye. The light from that twinkle took fifty thousand years to get to you, but there it is, showing you what happened in the past. Back before humans were around. They say if you could travel at the speed of light, you could go through time, forward or backwards, and you wouldn't even need a souped-up delorean.

Personally, I think our universe is just one big cosmic example of how small we are compared to God. I think He created it to show us that we will never fully comprehend it all. We are separated by billions of light years, just lingering in space so big we could never begin to comprehend it. If we were cartoons, we wouldn't have any light bulbs above our heads. Only question marks. Maybe God put a thousand billion trillion giant spheres of gas and minerals between us and Him, mindless but bound by gravity, as if to say, "See? You don't know jack, I control all of this." But at the same time, its just us who can witness the majesty of the universe, so its like God's saying, "See? This is my Glory for you to witness, because you are important." A supergiant (massive sun) can't see anything. However magnificent it is, its just mindless chemicals and gasses. It isn't aware. But we get to see it and study it and wonder how it got there. So as far as cognizance goes, in a way the universe does revolve around us.

If you want to get a big headache, look into molecular science. It's even crazier than space. Its all magic. None of the laws of physics apply. Apparently, we're all made up of trillions of atoms, tiny particles bound together to form very distinct and unique human beings, or animals, or carpet fiber. About a sugar cube of air at sea level contains 45 billion billion molecules. And they're in every single cubic centimeter around you. Talk about mind blowing. If you wanted to see an atom in a drop of water, you'd have to make the drop of water fifteen miles across. Thats how small it is, and it has a bunch of little buggers around its nucleus, all making sense to each other.

So why don't we fall apart? We're held together like magnets, with positive and negative charges. The reason I don't fall through this chair is because the make up of the chair is such that the molecules are charged to resist the molecules in my clothes and my body. Technically, I'm hovering above the chair at the width of one ten millionth of a millimeter (the width of one atom), the molecules like two positively charged magnets pushing apart. Crazy stuff. We've been around a long time, and we still don't know jack. The more we find out, the more we realize we don't know jack. Ironic, eh? Kind of like trying to get to know God.

Just as the scientists wont stop searching for purpose in their labs, neither should we stop searching for meaning in our lives. Everyone is searching for God in some way, through some avenue, to some extent. You'll never really know, at least not in this lifetime, right? Thats where faith comes in. Whether you believe that this is some big cosmic accident, or you believe its all artfully designed, you have to have significant faith.

When I'm in doubt, I look up. It restores my faith.