Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

A Pause for Beauty

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
       - Albert Einstein

The mystery of the universe and the mystery of the human mind are inextricably intertwined. Human consciousness, human thought, a chemical reaction of some kind of the human brain, which has evolved out of reworked stardust, reflects back on the nature of the universe.

We are indeed reworked stardust. Scientists first got an inkling of this shimmering fact in the 1950s. We now know that every element on Earth and in our bodies that is heavier than hydrogen and helium was created in the bowels of a supernova that blew up in this sector of the galaxy some five billion years ago. (Actually, our star system was probably born of colliding outwash of several exploding stars.
  - Connie Barlow, Green Space, Green Time

The human activates the most profound dimension of the universe itself, its capacity to reflect on and celebrate itself in conscious self-awareness. 
- Thomas Berry, author, Dream of the Earth, (Heron Dance interview, Issue 21, June 1999)

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
     - Carl Sagan, astronomer.

Martin Rees wrote a fascinating book (Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe) about the precise mathematical tuning of the universe. If just six mathematical relationships were slightly different, planets, stars and life would not be possible. Here’s an excerpt:

If, for instance, gravity was 20% more powerful, and the attraction of positively charged protons to negatively charged electrons was constant, even insects would need large legs to support themselves and no animals could get any larger in size. And the number of atoms needed to make a star or planet would be a billion times less. Galaxies would form much more quickly and be much more densely packed. The orbits of planets would thus be unstable—they would be constantly pulled hither and yon by passing stars. Stars would exist for periods of time a million times shorter. Instead of living for 10 billion years, a star would live about 10,000 years. 

The fact that the universe yields to the laws of mathematics is mysterious and suggestive of an underlying harmony or logic.

I know this world is ruled by Infinite Intelligence. It required Infinite Intelligence to create it and it requires Infinite Intelligence to keep it on course. Everything that surrounds us -- everything that exists -- proves that there are Infinite Laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.
    - Thomas Edison

. . .

We have somehow ended up here at this point in time, on this beautiful planet, due to a mysterious combination of events. The precise why of it all is not knowable. 

How do we express gratitude for that?

More here.

. . .

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