The Universe IS Infinite and Alien Intelligences Understand Our Threat

 

"As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall be; world without end. Amen. Amen." 

As a kid in the Methodist Church, this benediction was a routine chant during the sermon. I never grasped the significance until decades later when I would come to realize this is one of the wisest prayers ever. 

In fact, it may well be the secret to the universe!

Whether you are a religious person, a spiritual person, or even an agnostic or atheist, it humbles us to listen to sources of knowledge, be it religious, ancient, native, or elders because each has a truth embedded in their insights. 

As an adult, I may not bark out a benediction on-call in a church, but I carry that exposure throughout life, tucking it away like a photo in an album of memories. From time to time, I reflect back on it and find inspiration, like an artist gets inspiration from a sunset. 

As I lay this post out, you can see why we cannot get to the furthest reaches of the universe or the smallest components of the universe because they are continuous in both directions! 

When I worked in the oil and gas industry, my mentor reminded me that oil is an interesting commodity, as you cannot look at oil and tell where it came from or how many sources were pooled together. It becomes one thing made up of many contributions from various regions and at no point can you separate where it began or ended.

Just when we think we've found the smallest element of the universe, oh, wait! There's a quark and a gluon! (making up the parts that become the parts of an atom; the protons and neutrons)

Let's look at the bigger picture of the universe - 

The more and more we trek out with telescopes and Voyager craft, and the James Webb Space Telescope, the more we realize our galaxy is just one of unlimited others, and the vastness never ever ends. 

In fact, watching a simple astronomy documentary, it is impossible to conceive of the distances, the size, and the, well, unending aspect of the giant size of the universe. In fact, there is no way to tell if the universe we see through the telescope isn't just the cells in something even larger! 

That's the bigger picture that we can see and even that is too vast to see all of it, as scientists realize. It has no wall, no dead end, no exit. The framework is so vast, so big, we cannot possibly conceive that, well, it has no end.

Then, let's look at the smaller picture of the universe - 

Hundreds of years ago there was a black plague that confused the population dying in masses. What caused it? 

Well, it wouldn't be hundreds of years later that a telescope was able to look at this and realize there was something called bacteria and we just realized a microbial level of life. 

That microbe you couldn't see with your eyes had the ability to fell a human being. 

Later, we came to know other levels of the tiniest elements of the universe - atomic, subatomic, quarks, into quantum levels, and we can continue to try to gaze into smaller and smaller elements, but it won't end, just like the outer universe has no end. 

A microbe could kill a person. 

Go smaller yet and an atom split could kill millions of people. 

The smaller we go - the more power it has to build or to destroy larger creations.

That one clue might explain the greater picture of the universe, that the bigger we get, the further in distance we get, the more vast our universe is, the more it depends on the smaller components to exist. Of course, that makes sense when you consider atoms and the physicality of our world. 

Let's use this example:

You have a person standing in front of you. That person has components that create the being we see. There is skin, bone, muscle, cartilage, tendons, joints, organs, hair, blood, cells, DNA, coming from an egg and a sperm, an embryo, a fetus: All a part of an endless loop of creation. 

But, that person also is an environment, such as a city street, a town, a state, a country, a continent, a planet, a solar system, a galaxy.... Well, you get the point. 

Why might an alien race come to earth and study what we are up to? 

Maybe because, we are a smaller component of a vast network that reaches out with cascading effect. We are the quarks and gluons in the scheme of the universe, capable of making up components (like the protons and neutrons that make up atoms) that could build or destroy much bigger components of the universe. 

When that alien asked, "do you know what you are?" the answer might have been - an infiniesimal, but critical component to the bigger universe. Why would they monitor us, but try not to upset us or cause us to build more weaponry? Perhaps because you can't have your quarks and gluons warring. 

We hear this often from near-death experiencers, but everything is connected; separation is an illusion. That streaming flow that creates life ties it all together into infinity. No beginning, no end. 

And, those smallest components we search for to understand what ties it all together (in the quantum realm) is the most powerful force, more powerful than a split atom by manifold. 

That base source is more an energy or action we call "life" and it can create and destroy. 

In fact, whatever that stream is that we search for, it is the Creator in action. It builds, it tears apart. In doing that, the universe is not only never-ending, but constantly renewing, just like the cells in our body turn over periodically.

When I was a child in that church Sunday school, i was asked to draw a picture of God. I stared out the window and contemplated it and drew the ground, the trees, the sky, the stars, the birds, the people.... 

God may not be a man sitting in a robe on a throne, but God is the very energy and ambition that keeps the neverending, well, neverending. We may not see wind, but we see its affect on the trees and debris outside. It is an action, a force that needs no identity.

Like the wind, everywhere you look, there is the Creator in action. You can see that by the reaction, even if you can't see the action.

And we can see only a part of that eternity by gazing through a telescope or a microscope because the vastness in both directions is not only impossible to comprehend, but has no actual beginning or end. 

We seek it and we seek it and yet, we ARE it. 

And that thoughtful drawing of God as a child takes on a precognitive insight as I have matured and not only better understand my place in the universe, but how important even the tiny component such as myself affects the bigger aspects of the universe. 

As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, Amen.