Us. Part 1.

Take a look at the image.

That’s us. You and me. That’s what we’re made of, where we came from and incredibly where we still are.

I know how strange it looks, It’s unbelievable – totally the opposite of our concept of ourselves.

We think we’re hard objects in a container called nature. No. We’re not solid objects and we are not contents in an enclosure called the universe. Far far from it.

The wavy lines in the illustration are vibrating quantum fields of energy. There are about 20 of them. They were formed in the stupendous force of the Big Bang and they fill the universe. Their vibrations cause the swirls you see emerging from them. They are knots of energy – what we call particles, matter – what we and the entire physical world are made of.

The swirls are not solid. They’re not little balls of matter. They’re intensely concentrated, congealed energy.

Everything is made of these forces and their swirls, which fill all of space. More to the point – we exist totally within the fields.

They fill the space between you and the hills miles away – between you and your living room walls – they fill all the vast billions of light years of the universe stretching into the unfathomable distance. The fields are the most enormous things in creation. Along with gravity they are the totality of the celestial realm we inhabit.

The field’s tangles of energy are called “particles.” But they’re not solid. Nothing is. If we look deeper and deeper into any object we do not find a hard base. We find concentrated energy. That’s what we are – concentrated energy, within the fields. Each particle – or energy knot – rises from but stays part of its corresponding field. The rulers of the cosmos never let us go.

It’s incredibly wild – it sounds impossible! But it’s true. This is long-established physics.

It shows dramatically that we are not in the universe. We are OF it. We are expressions of it. In everything that we do. We’re the universe having human experiences.

And there’s more that is incredible.

The fields are not objects – they are not matter. They’re invisible. They have no physical substance. But they generate the physical world! That is the astounding fundamental reality! The invisible creates the visible! Mind blowing. And it’s kind of spiritual – isn’t it?

But the fields aren’t caring spirits. No no. They don’t care a bit about us. They treat all matter the same. To them everything is atoms – whether those atoms are in mountains, trees, stars or us. They’re supremely indifferent. This is why if you and I and a rock go over a cliff at the same time we hit the ground together. It’s why humans are swept away by floodwaters like so much debris. To the universe, people are atoms. Like all other atoms.

But the fields also – remarkably – enable life.

Every process in our bodies – all the billions of neuron firing – every biochemical reaction in each of our 38 trillion cells – is run by these invisible entities – every moment. The electromagnetic field is one of four that are considered fundamental forces. It holds atoms together and is inside and active in every atom of our bodies every second of our lives. It and the other fields are our very essence.

The fields generate all of the universe’ actions. They are the source of everything physical. They generate all order and disorder – all conflict and cooperation – all love, hate, good and evil.

You’re likely thinking – wait – don’t we have something to do with those conditions of life? Don’t we have free will? That’s of the big questions.

We can only do what the universe enables us to do. We can only do what our capacities and abilities allow us to do and we had no part in setting them. Any free will we have is limited by our individual capabilities. My view is we have significantly fewer choices than we think.

The mighty indifference of the fields – the cosmic colossus – can be seen as the reason for the cruelty of the physical world and why some see life as hopeless, perpetual conflict.

But we are not just physical. We are permanent consciousness. And therein is liberation from the physical and true free will.

That in Part 2.