EXERCISE 34: Size – The infinitely large
This is an exercise requiring the use of imagination.
Begin by stilling yourself.
Now, imagine that we are sitting in a circle and wish to imagine the number of stars in the universe.
I pour a thimbleful of sand in the middle of our circle. This represents the number of stars we typically see on a clear night away from city lights. Look at this little pile of grains of sand… Remember the stars you typically see in the sky from where you live…
Now we want to represent the number of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. I would need a truckload of sand, dumped in our midst. A truckload… That’s a lot of sand… and each represents a star. And that’s only our Milky Way…
Next, we want to represent to number of stars in the universe. We would need a freight-car load dumped here every second, night and day, for three years!
Try to grasp to magnitude… Each grain of sand is a star… Freight-car after freight-car…
A hundred billion galaxies in the universe, each with a hundred billion stars…
If only a tiny fraction of these stars have planetary systems and if only a tiny fraction of these planets could support carbon-based life, there could theoretically be hundreds of thousands of worlds with sentient (thinking, self-aware) life-forms…
But they are all so far away that it is probable that we will never encounter any other sentient life-form…
What is this universe for? What’s its purpose? Can there be a Being ‘behind’ it all? ‘Where’ would this Being be, since there is literally ‘nothing’ beyond the universe?
Just let these questions float up in your mind, in awe and wonder…
If this stuff fascinates you, read some more, and allow feelings of awe and wonder to fill you…
Document your reactions.