Since human beings first looked up and saw the stars twinkling above them, they have wondered what they are and how far away they are. Humans have always felt more secure thinking the stars were not so far away, perhaps encased within spheres encircling the earth, which is a flat disk, as Aristotle thought. When people began speculating about Earth being a ball spinning around the Sun in the middle of nowhere, they often paid with their lives. Their ideas not only dismissed Man as the center of the universe, but called into question God's position. There was no security in such irresponsible uncertainty. But the facts could not be denied, and finally science was forced to develop an orderly, unchanging, mechanistic view of the universe, to which the Church added, created and maintained by an all-powerful Being, in order to return peoples' security. The Church was satisfied, but Science wouldn't leave well-enough alone. Scientists kept at it until it became clear that even our enormous Milky Way Galaxy was no more than a tiny pinpoint of light-- one of billions and billions of pinpoints of light in an infinite, evolving universe, which obeys certain physical laws; therefore an all-powerful Creator is unnecessary. Uncertainty abounds. The Church was not amused, but could no longer control the spread of knowledge. Science still leaves off at the unanswered question religion has always left dangling and covered up with dogma. It is by combining physics and metaphysics that we can find the answers to why we're here.
It appears that the universe is the way it is because if it were any different, we wouldn't be here to observe it. So we must play a larger part in it than our physical size or sphere of influence would indicate. Since we are an integral part of an ecological system, it is important that we comprehend it because to know a thing relieves uncertainty and reveals truth. Through understanding the whole, we see ourselves as we really are and that there is nothing to fear. To know ourselves, both on our deepest levels and on our highest levels, is to know GOD, ALL THAT IS, and the god that we are-- the I AM THAT I AM.
The best way I've found to increase one's awareness of the Whole is to view the universe through the Powers of Ten. With each step, you increase or decrease your observation point ten times, or add another zero. For example: 101 = 10, 102 = 10 X 10 = 100, 103 = 10 X 10 X 10 = 1000, etc.)
NOTE: Powers should be written as superscripts to 10 but I can't figure out how to do that with this software so Powers will be italicized in red type.
You become the observer through all dimensions of the physical universe, moving beyond yourself, above the Earth, into outer space, as well as moving into yourself, to the cellular, all the way to the subatomic particle level. In the end, you are a quantum leap closer to knowing your Self and knowing that you are within GOD and that GOD is within you. The perspective of a God, the Father in Heaven, who watches over and protects and punishes us when we err, is limited by our concept of parenting and our penchant for anthropomorphizing everything. By limiting GOD to human form and characteristics, we limit ourselves to childlike behavior with no chance for growth. In order to see ourselves as all that we are, we must expand our perspective of GOD through the Powers of Ten to encompass all there is above us and all there is below us. The "god" of planet Earth and its beings is one of many planetary co-creator gods, but the Creator of All There Is is GOD, ALL THAT IS.
Your journey through the Powers of Ten begins at 100 meters by observing yourself from a distance of about six feet in a full length mirror.
100
You are at ground level where the atoms are compressed and appear to be solid and not moving. Look around the room you are in at this moment. Touch a solid object. Feel its weight. Closely observe its appearance, its texture, its coloring. Now look closely at a square inch section of the skin on the back of your hand.
10-1
Observe the wrinkles, the hairs, the patterns. You are now observing at 10-1 meters-- ten times closer than you observed yourself in the mirror. When you are closely observing the square inch of your hand, everything you observed before disappears. No, not physically, but to your field of consciousness.
Now get yourself a magnifying glass and observe again the same square inch on the back of your hand. You see creases which form geometric shapes which give your skin its elasticity.
10-2
You are now observing at 10-2 meters. One hundred times closer than the you in the mirror. At this scale, there is no evidence of a hand, much less a human body or a room with a full-length mirror. They still exist on another plane, but for you, they have seemingly disappeared.
10-3
At 10-3 meters, one thousand times closer than the mirror image, you seem to be looking into the Grand Canyon from a plane, but it is actually deep crevices in your skin.
10-4
As you move into a crevice at 10-4 meters, you pass through the layers of cracked, broken material that is your skin.
10-5
As you move in closer to 10-5 meters, you find yourself inside one of your blood vessels dodging flying disks of red blood cells and huge balls of white cells as they rush by in search of bacteria to kill.
Outside the blood vessel, you would see the cells that form the tissues and organs of your body, although from this perspective, there is no evidence that your body exists. Everything around you is moving, pulsating, rushing, busy, busy, busy.
10-6
You jump onto a white blood cell and observe it closely at 10-6 meters. It looks somewhat like the moon, full of craters and rather drab.
10-7
Next you move into the nucleus where you begin to see the dance of the DNA at 10-7 meters.
10-8
At 10-8 meters, you can clearly see the double-helix, which is the written description of your physical body and all the instructions to keep it running. You can observe the helix split and recombine exactly as the original during cell duplication.
10-9
Closer still, at 10-9 meters, you can read the molecules of the DNA, the very building blocks of your genetic code.
10-10
At 10-10 meters, you are observing charged electrons buzzing around atoms in quantum motion. Their movement is so rapid and unpredictable that their orbits around their nucleus cannot be traced. They don't orbit the nucleus like planets around the sun, but appear more like a cloud of charged energy bound together by mutual gravity. To give you an idea of what it would look like, go outside on a dark night (far from city lights) and look at the sky. Those billions of stars you see on the grand scale look like a field of electrons on the micro-scale, except that on the physical level, the electrons appear to move more rapidly than galaxies on the macro-scale. It is still a long way from the electrons to the nucleus.
10-11
At 10-11 meters, you still haven't reached it, which explains why scientists, even with their powerful microscopes, have never actually seen an atom (the same scientists who say the spirit world doesn't exist because it can't be seen).
10-12
At 10-12 meters, the core of the carbon atom finally begins to appear in the darkness. It is carbon atoms that determine the material universe. At your innermost core, you are a carbon atom. On this journey from the micro to the macro, the nucleus at the core of this carbon atom is at the center of every picture, whether seen or not.
10-13
At 10-13 meters, you see the six protons and six neutrons of the nucleus of the atom in vigorous, but fluid-like (quantum) motion.
10-14
A closer look at the nucleus at 10-14 meters shows that the protons and neutrons are composed of still smaller particles in rapid motion.
10-15
Quarks, hadrons, leptons, mesons, muons, gluons, neutrinos are found, in high-speed, seemingly chaotic motion, at 10-15 meters and beyond.
This is the subatomic particle level where the new physics is concentrating its efforts. Scientists are working to understand the ultimate micro-particle in order to comprehend the ultimate of the macrocosm.
While your imagination is observing black space with occasional neutrinos sparking and jumping about here, there and every where, open your mind to some of the information concerning subatomic particles that the new physics has uncovered.
All particles are self-organizing through attraction and repulsion, and this principle transfers upwards to atoms, molecules, tissues, organisms, all the way to galaxies. This indicates that events occur randomly and implies that once set in motion, the universe, as we know it, self-organized. None of this, however, negates GOD as First Cause.
Electrons scatter here, there and everywhere with unpredictability. Even atomic decay is unpredictable. There appears to be complete and utter chaos at the subatomic level and yet we and the world exist, even if it is on shaky ground. Electrons exist in pairs, with one a ghost-image of the other. Even solid objects move in space as electrons shift back and forth in quantum motion from A to B. On the physical level, our eyes have the power to fix electrons, at either A or B— at the instant of observation, one ghost disappears. This posits a multidimensional universe with only one reality observable at a time.
Subatomic particles also have the ability to transfer information quickly through vibrations to adapt to new information and changes. Once a certain number of particles get the new information, the vibratory pattern of all similar particles change. A quantum leap occurs. This works at the evolutionary level, causing mutations that can adapt to change. It also relates to the Hundredth Monkey Theory which claims that after the one hundredth monkey on one island started washing his sweet potatoes before eating them, monkeys on another island, miles away, started washing theirs— or more scientifically, offspring of rats taught to run through mazes are easier to train than their parents were. It is also the basis for the theory that when enough people are resonating love-vibrations, there will be a quantum shift in all of humanity to Christ-Consciousness.
Finally, photons of light are both waves and particles. For one thing, this throws out the theory that a thing is either one thing or another, never both. So much for either-or, back and white thinking. More importantly, it tells us there is no empty space in the universe. That energy is matter, just in another form. The universe is all one living breathing thing. It is GOD. From the smallest particle to the largest galaxy is ALL THAT IS.
Now that you have explored the microcosm, let us return from the nucleus of the atom, which remains at the center of your observations, back out through the square inch of skin on the back of your hand to the you in the mirror at 100 meters and explore the macrocosm.
100
Imagine that you are drifting up, out of your body, floating above your house. You are 101 meters above the room you were in.
101
One hundred times higher at 102 meters, you can see your house and several blocks surrounding it. Cars looks like miniature models, people like ants scurrying about their daily activities.
102
At 103 meters, you can observe most of the city, but only large structures are discernible.
103
Details continue to disappear, though they do not cease to exist, as you drift higher to 104 meters. You are observing an area where millions of people are going about their daily lives, as invisible to your view, as you are invisible to them.
104
At 105 meters, you can see large metropolitan areas where little evidence of life exists.
105
Depending on where you are, you might see mountain ranges and large bodies of water. At 106 meters, you can make out several states or a large section of a continent.
106
You are still standing there in your room in front of the mirror, but at 107 meters, where you can see the entire globe of the Earth, your physical body only exists as part of the planet.
107
At 108 meters, the Earth is a small blue jewel hanging in space against a black backdrop filled with distant stars.
108
At 109 meters, you observe the tiny moon racing around the earth, which itself is nearly lost amongst the stars.
109
At 1010 meters, you can observe the Earth with its orbiting moon traveling in its orbit through space.
1010
At 1011 meters, you are able to observe sections of the orbital paths of Venus, Earth and Mars.
1011
The brightest star in space at 1012 meters is our sun with the inner planets traveling in their orbits and Jupiter just visible at the outer edge.
1012
At 1013 meters, you see the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and part of Pluto's larger orbit ellipsing the sun. The inner planets appear to have been absorbed by the sun.
1013
As you move away from our tiny solar system at 1014 meters, you see our solar system as the brightest star among millions of stars set against the black of space.
1014
From 1015 to 1018 meters, our solar system becomes fainter and less discernible from other stars-- our sun becomes like the nucleus of the atom, the unseen core of the invisible whole.
1015-18
At 1019 meters, it becomes evident that our solar system is only a tiny part of a greater system. You begin to observe many other faint solar systems through the cloudy disk of the Milky Way Galaxy.
1019
At 1020 meters, you see the clouds of stars and gases that make up the arm of the Galaxy where our solar system floats amongst the stars.
1020
At 1021 meters, you can see most of the spiral of the Milky Way rotating slowly in space.
1021
You are seeing a hundred billion stars circling the central region and one tiny solar system lost among them in one of the outer arms is ours. It takes our sun three hundred million years to travel around the galactic center.
At 1022 meters, the Galaxy recedes to a small spiral with two neighboring galaxies, the Clouds of Magellan, traveling along side it through space.
1022
From Earth, we can observe these Clouds (each containing hundreds of millions of stars) in the southern sky, as tiny splashes of light. The deepest the eye alone can penetrate into space is ten times farther than the Clouds to the Andromeda Galaxy, which can be seen high in the northern sky. At 1023 meters, our Galaxy becomes just one of many bright points in space, each the sum total of billions and billions of stars, some like our sun system, bound together by mutual gravity.
1023
Everything moves, rotates, vibrates, as it travels through space. You can see enormous gaseous clouds, the remnants of exploded suns-- supernovas, as the cycle of life, death and rebirth continues up the scale.
At 1024 meters, you observe a cluster of thousands of galaxies, called the Virgo Cluster circling around each other.
1024
They are surrounded by vast distances of apparently empty space. At 1025 meters, the clusters of clusters are so far apart that there appears to be nothing at all. Just black space with a few faint pinpoints of light here and there-- the realm of the quasars and mysteries science has yet to uncover.
1025
A recent theory hypothesizes that everything from the macro to the micro is connected by strings that whip through space and anchor at the core of the carbon atom-- SuperString Theory. Thus, science is beginning to understand, if not yet admit to, the connection between human beings and ALL THAT IS. Issac Newton gave us laws of motion in the physical universe that could be applied to the laws of karma on the spiritual planes and Einstein's equation, E=mc2, may explain the transformation from spirit to body and back again-- all it takes is a shift in consciousness to see the symbiotic relationship between the physical and spiritual dimensions. Also, these clever men of science have weighed galaxies and found that there is more mass around a galaxy than in it. What is this invisible mass? There are forces in Nature, known by the Ancients, which are actually phenomenal manifestations of realities for which modern science has not yet come up with objective explanations. If energy is matter and matter is another form of energy, then everything is one thing on a continuum. Is the invisible mass the spirit at work?
Man's eternal quest is the search for the Holy Grail. He spends his many lifetimes on Earth to finally learn that he must go inside his self to find it. The more we know about the macrocosm, the more we know about the microcosm; and vice versa. And the more we know about ourselves, the more we know about God; and vice versa. As it is above, so it is below.
Meditate on this journey through the Powers of Ten and apply it to yourself to learn about All That You Are-- from the carbon atom at the core to your spirit that exists beyond the galaxies.
Visualize yourself on planes above and below the physical level, and see yourself existing on every level of a multidimensional universe. Feel yourself more dense, more compressed than you are on the physical plane. Imagine what it would be like to be a white blood cell rushing through your body to attack and devour an invading virus in your system. Feel yourself less dense, more diffuse than you are on the physical level. Imagine what it would be like to be a cloud floating gently above the oceans or a comet streaking through cold, dark space. Begin to know all that you are.
©1989,2001 Diane Goble