NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 19:
Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 12, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.
Fine-Tuned Universe 12:
[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]
Astronomical Anthropism:
Just like Universe age, so is Universe size a pertinent parameter since a micro-Universe only as large as our Milky Way Galaxy with its thinly spread bundle of 100 Billion stars would only be a month-old baby universe with not near enough Time to evolve Carbon, never mind Intelligent Life. Nor would the intensely high Temperature of such a young Universe be hospitable, for more than radiative warming matter, the tremendous later cooling accompanied what Thermodynamics calls adiabatic expansion.
Too young, and the Universe has too few radioactive atoms, too old and they have decayed. Yet our Earth’s depends on radioactive heat to melt magma, creating spouts and volcanoes where Life could start, sliding continental tectonic plates, and various other geophysical and geological phenomena so much a part the history of Life on Earth. The same timing and resulting radioactive heat keeps the liquid outer core of molten iron in the motion that creates the Earth’s magnetic field (deflecting Life destructive and atmosphere stripping ions from the Sun; Mars lacking same, lost its atmosphere). Similar protection from comets and asteroids is afforded by the Atmosphere (check out the Moon’s craters) that early Life oxygenated, thanks again to volcanic spewing of Oxygen and Hydrogen (for which we can also thank for Oceans and fresh water). Life threatening (ask the dinosaurs) comets and asteroids (but an Armageddon-movie asteroid only every Billion years, though a Civilization-killer every 10 millennia, mass starvation from small-nuke-like impact every millennium on average) are even more so deflected by another Anthropic parameter in itself, the god of heaven, Jupiter (plane that is) whose gravitational well (far more than its cross-section) shield Earth from these impacts. \
There are many other Astrophysical Anthropic coincidences, but to name just one for now, consider the single large satellite Moon (almost a double planet pair). The Moon’s Gravity not only provides possibly necessary Tide Pools for Evolution, but more arcanely moderates Climate Change (until the Industril Revolution fossil fuel burn–off, that is). There are necessarily Resonances between the Earth-axis Precession rates and Gravitational tweaking we feel from other masses in the Solar System. Normally this common-enough situation for Earth-like planets would produce chaotic evolution of the Tilt of the planet’s Rotation Axis with respect to the orbital plane of the planets, (This is the orbital plane we see here except for Pluto which correspondingly was demoted to more like a comet). But erratic Tilt changes would result in Temperature and Ocean level swings (like the one we fear we have anthropogenically initiated at this point). Our GHG’s & Global Warming aside, we have been Anthropically spared oscillating Climate chaos by the dampening effect of the unusually large Moon’s Gravity (for Earth’s size that is, since comparable moons of Jupiter and Saturn are small relative to those great planet sizes).
While poets may have wondered at Life within a vast, cold, dark Universe, Life actually could only evolve in a vast, cold, dark Universe. John Barrows in his Constants of Nature compares the best lab-vacuum (a Trillion atoms per cubic meter) to that of Space if across the 10 Billion cubic light-year Universe, we spread out the Galaxies evenly, then spread the Stars, then the Planets, and then the Atoms. There would only be a single Atom per cubic meter (as compared to a lab-vac Trillion). Now there are a Quintillion cubic meters in a cubic light-year and there would only be a single 100-billion Star Galaxy per 10 Million cubic light-years. Considering on the other end of the scale, the incredible emptiness of Atoms, and even of Nucleons (relative to quark “size”), the World is very empty indeed (never mind General Relativity and Quantum Theory that rob such sparse Matter of all the rest of its apparent “substantial-ness”).
And yet the Holderness Number from Neuro-anatomy suggests a physical interconnection possibility which is said to “count” the number of possible “thoughts” (in a Physicalist brain anatomy). This dwarfing Cosmological Numbers becomes:
1070,000,000,000,000 (or a 1 with 70 Trillion zeroes after it)
Even outside Physicalist boundaries, Mind by any description reveals a “vastness” of its own. Then again QND sees Mind as the faintest reflection of pure Consciousness, whereas UQND admits if neither Mind nor Universe but leaves all the vastness in Consciousness itself. Through various degrees from Objectivity to Subjectivity, the Universe is cast as a projected Analog of Consciousness.
Some more selected verses from the other Maharshi disciple:
You should trust the Guru because his interest is in showing you the Truth. He may occasionally say things that are not true, but he will say them only because he knows his words will push you in the right direction.
I once heard a story that illustrates this. A rich man used to meditate once in a while. He had a Guru, an enlightened man, who used to tell him, “You are not the Mind or the Body. You are the Self. Always abide as the Self.” The man would listen attentively, but neither his meditation nor his Guru’s words had much of an effect on him. One day he approached his teacher and said, “You have been telling me for years that I am not the Mind and the Body, and that I am the Self. I believe it and I meditate on this, but I don’t see any changes in myself. This must be a very difficult technique because I don’t seem to be making any progress with it.”
The Guru said, “Let me look at your palm. I may be able to see something that is more suitable for you.” After examining the disciple’s palm, the Guru’s face dropped. “This is very bad. You should have put in more effort earlier in your life. I can see that you only have about one week to live. There’s not much that can help you now.”
The disciple was shocked. He went home thinking, “All my wealth and businesses are useless to me now. I put too much time into them, and not enough into my spiritual practice. There’s nothing I can do now, but I can at least spend my last few days meditating.” He went home and told his wife, “My life is coming to an end. My Guru has warned me that this is my final week. I am going to spend my last few days meditating alone. Please tell my friends and relatives that I don’t want to be disturbed.” After a few days his Guru came to see how he was getting on.
“How’s the meditation going ?” he asked. “Your wife tells me that you have done nothing else for days.” “Gurudev, there is no one left to meditate. I have found the Peace you have been talking about all these years.”
The Guru knew that this man would never focus full-time on realizing the Self because he was too caught up with his family and his business affairs. By making him think that his Death was imminent, he made him concentrate on what was real and important. And it worked. This is not just a story; it is a tactic that will work for anyone. If you can withdraw energy from your worldly attachments and instead focus full-time on the Self, you will soon get results. If you are having trouble with your enthusiasm for sadhana, just tell yourself, “I may be dead in 7 days.” Let go of all the things that you pretend are important in your daily life and instead focus on the Self for 24 hours a day. Do it and see what happens.
The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:
http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/
or with Caps-sensitive:
Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:
http://www.blogger.com as “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:
http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/
[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]
Nonduality and Science 