Why are we born?

What is the purpose of existence – humans, insects, bacteria?

Why are there vast quantities of different species of living creatures in the world?

Why do I exist?

Why do you exist?

We know that long ago there were dinosaurs. They lasted on Earth for many millions of years. They multiplied, devoured each other, died, their place taken by others. For whom and why was their existence necessary?

What is the purpose of the life of the mosquito buzzing around my head, the spider climbing up a wall, the thousands of ants building an anthill outside my window?

For what purpose does grass grow, the trees and flowers?

Earth, after all, could have been as dead as the Moon.

Would anything change in the Universe if not a single flower and not a single tree had grown on Earth, if there was not even a single insect? Or human being?

No doubt each of us is convinced that there is a profound purpose to his or her existence. How could it be otherwise since each of us experiences life, profound emotions and sensations so intensely?

The question about the “profound meaning” of Life for us, rational beings seems unsettling when we observe other beings deprived of intelligence such as ours, be it a wasp which keeps on stubbornly hitting against a window pane in order to fly out when the other half of the window is wide open. What can be the reason for such “stupid” things to exist?

There is an opinion that the purpose of every living person is procreation, that we exist in order to produce descendants and ensure the survival of our species.

Ensuring the means of existence for our own families – especially our offspring – is, for the majority of us, after all, the most important reason for us making an effort, renouncing and sacrificing things.

After all, small “devices” have been built within each of us for procreation which function irrespective of whether we want them to or not, which switch on without the participation of our will. We have no influence over their production which begins in adolescence, or on their quantity. We cannot stop this “production” other than through self-mutilation.

These “devices” are able to “create” new persons.

Is procreation, assuring the survival of their species, truly the purpose of every person’s life?

And why do entire species continue to exist?

Why should Life as a whole continue?

Why, indeed, should any form of life exist on Earth?

What is the purpose?

I hear the priest in church say that the World was created for us. For human beings. All the trees and the fruit they bear, all the animals, beautiful beaches, sunny summers – has all this been created with us in mind?

What a beautiful idea explaining our existence! It removes all doubts. The message announced in the temple is comforting. No doubt that is why there are so many believers.

Has the World really been created for us? Or rather have not we, people, and other beings been created for the World?

The make up of organisms, their structure and the functions they play irrefutably bring to mind the machines we build using elements surrounding us.

It is enough to acquaint ourselves with man’s anatomy, with the structure of his skeleton, muscles or respiratory system in order to make such a comparison.

It is enough, too, to look at the development of each being.

The longest period each of these – men, insects and other living organisms – can exist has been strictly defined. Once reached, self-destruction steps in. Each individual “switches itself off” independently, something we call natural death.

Practically all species of living creatures have been identically programmed. First, each of them increases in size, growing to strictly defined dimensions (in the human being the average height is about 160-200 cm) and then, also after a designated amount of time (in the case of human beings 75-85 years on average), they succumb to self-destruction.

None of them has any influence over their shape, that is their appearance.

None of us, after all, decides about the colour of our eyes, about our height, how fat we are or about the shape of our hands. Each of us takes on a form irrespective of their will.

None of the machines (persons) can decide what sex they are going to be and how strong their sexual drive.

The possibility of making any changes is small although to most of us it probably seems otherwise.

Some people can, at most, darken the colour of their skin a little by sunbathing intensively, but only for a certain length of time. We can model a small part of our “body”, barely a few percent of its surface, according to our desire – and this is the hair on our heads.

With strenuous work and tedious cosmetic treatments we can make but a slight change in our appearance. In truth, none of us will grow taller however hard we try, but fat people can, with hard work and self-denial, acquire a slim figure. By exercising our muscles we can, for a while, increase their size and build them up. For an outside observer, a non-human, these differences are most likely imperceptible.

Our appearance is “bestowed” upon us.

Presumably it is the same with our feelings. Possibilities for a person to shape their personality are not great. After all, we do not have much influence over the way we react or feel even though by conscious choice we can somewhat curb our emotions or not manifest them. Some of us are calm, others explosive. Some are energetic and courageous, others apathetic and anxious. Many of us would like to be a “different” person, change their character and way of thinking; this proves impossible. No doubt some of us would like – at least for a while – to reason like A.Einstein. These are wishes which cannot be fulfilled.

Each of us has been equipped with a brain which sometimes prompts logical thoughts and sometimes less so, irrespective of how we nourish it or how many hours of sleep we have had. It does what it wants to do. Some people have more logical than illogical thoughts, in others the illogical predominate. The capacity of each person’s memory is also independent of their will. Some people find it easy to learn a large number of languages while others have difficulty remembering even one foreign language. None of us is able voluntarily to form the capacity of their memory, how quickly they think or how they reason; hence the common categorisation of people into “stupid” and “clever”. Although, with exercise it is possible to increase the efficiency of our minds, in actual fact, from the point of view of a representative of a different species, these changes are, in fact, merely “cosmetic”.

It is the same with our aesthetic preferences, the tastes or smells we find pleasing.

Some of us like sweet dishes, others like those which are spicy or salty.

Our tastes are also independent of our will. Even though with the use of our brain we might want to “force” ourselves to find attractive people who disgust us, we will not manage to feel sympathy towards them, to admire or love them. Most women prefer tall to short men. Both men and women associate old age with ugliness and youth with beauty.

Doubtlessly not many people are capable of admiring the face of an 80-year-old.

We have been determined.

Each of us has strictly defined qualities which differentiate us from others.

Of course, we can argue and conduct scientific research into how great an influence hereditary factors have on our likes and dislikes and how many of these preferences have been acquired through experience. This, however, does not alter the fact that none of us are in a position to change, through reason or will, their outward appearance. There are animals, of course, who have the ability to alter their colour but this is a trait which they have inherited along with other traits characteristic of their species. Although I may be convinced that on top of having two hands a third would be useful, in no way can I make this third hand grow. I have been equipped with two and that is that.

Each of us has to perform the same functions over and over again. We have to breath, eat and reproduce. None of us can live any other way – free ourselves from the programme imposed on us.

Like a machine.

Not only do we have no influence over our appearance, the length of our life or our character, we also have no influence over the time and place in which we live – after all, we cannot choose our place or date of birth. Whether we live right now or in the Middle Ages does not depend on us. Whether we were born in Europe or India or into a tribal society living in a jungle with no knowledge of letters, numbers or soap. We cannot choose our parents, grandparents, siblings or children. We are condemned to live with these people.

Since we cannot influence the date or place of our existence, we are subject to events caused by communities surrounding us. A person who lived during the Second World War was forced, in a way, to take part in it (e.g. as a soldier) although they did not have to agree with the way the international conflicts were being resolved at all.

The mechanisms at work which make each individual exist at a certain time and place in space remain a puzzle and a mystery.

Why don’t we have any influence on the time and place of our birth, on our appearance or characteristics?

Is the belief true that we and other beings too, are only a certain kind of machine?

Machines which themselves have to see to it that their “batteries are charged”, that is provide themselves with the energy necessary to function?

Mechanisms invented and built so as to perform actions defined by their creator?

We intentionally subjugate and manipulate other beings merely because we are more intelligent and know how to take advantage of them. We tell animals to obey our instructions. Training them, however, we use rather primitive methods like rewarding them with food which they cannot produce for themselves (sugar). But there are, after all, more refined methods. We can manipulate genes.

But maybe life is a form of slavery?

Have we been constrained on purpose?

Has each of us been “loaded” with genes so that they can control our behaviour?

Do the intellectual “possibilities” of the majority of living beings not confirm their deliberate enslavement?

None of them knows anything about how it was made.

Whereas each of them is an extraordinarily complicated machine. The body of a bird can perform and co-ordinate a large number of complicated actions. But the centre (the brain) which “governs” the system has no knowledge as to how the machine it orders has been created. It has no idea as to how its sense of sight or its muscular system works.

The brain of a crocodile, incapable of performing the simple mathematical task of adding numbers, “governs” an organism made up of an enormous number of elements (cells) working together. Even we, human beings, have not been able to examine and entirely understand how this organism works. It affords automatic breathing, digestion, temperature regulation, co-ordination of movement, etc. Furthermore, it consciously resolves questions necessary for survival. The skill to find food and a place with the appropriate temperature.

Why is such a complicated system as is every living being ruled by a centre (brain) whose powers of thought are so small?

Let me express it in another way. Firstly, why can’t any being influence the way its system and parts, such as the heart or liver, which function independently of its conscious mind, works? Secondly, why does such an extraordinarily complicated mechanism as every living being (for example, a spider, tortoise or horse) have such a primitive mind?

I use the word “primitive” since I am comparing what the minds of these beings are capable of to how they are constructed, whose design and rules of functioning are the product of an intellect far greater than our human intelligence. This also applies to man. Our intelligence compared to the products of the World surrounding us is not very brilliant either. People have observed birds or insects in flight for thousands of years but it is only recently, in the XX century, that we have managed to construct an aeroplane.

The brain with which we have been equipped allows us to adapt to the surrounding world. It has not, however, been equipped with knowledge of itself or how the system it governs has been constructed. It is merely of late that we have started to try to decipher the principles of how our body has been built. For thousands of years our ancestors were not interested in this. The dissection of corpses began several hundred years ago.

And how hard it is for us to discover the simple laws by which the world is built.

We are convinced, too, that intelligence is exceptional or “superior” to other characteristics and treat “stupidity” with disdain.

Perhaps this characteristic is simply just another characteristic like all others, like the ability to fly or live underwater or a plant’s ability to live for many hundreds of years?

Maybe development of the brain and the shaping of intelligence are no different to the shaping of wings which make it possible to fly or the shaping of a breathing apparatus which makes it possible to live under water?

Since the majority of living beings have fairly limited intellectual powers are these limitations not intentional?

Are living organisms not meant to be “stupid”?

Automatons and slaves, after all, do not need to know anything apart from what is needed to perform their programmed tasks.

They do not have to be intelligent.

If we indeed are like that then what is the purpose of us being made the way we are?

Everything that takes place on Earth, everything that livings beings do is undertaken to gain something. All our actions are geared towards obtaining food, ensuring sleep, satisfying the need for love or friendship or aesthetic needs.

If this law is universal we should assume that the Builders of the Universe undertook their task expecting it to be useful to them in some way, too, to benefit them in ways unknown to us.

Have the Builders of the Universe created Life because they have something to gain by it?

Perhaps, for the time being, we cannot see or understand what this benefit could be, just like animals reared by us cannot understand why man tells them to draw a heavy plough. They probably do not even think about it because, so we believe, they are not aware of their dependence. Human beings, however, have been equipped with a mind and this allows us to be aware.

What tasks (benefits) could these be?

The World surrounding us is a continuous movement of matter.

New objects, new elements and chemical compounds come into being. Transformation takes place incessantly. New elements are produced at the expense of the old.

The universe “behaves” like a gigantic oven or a conveyor belt. Every star unceasingly transforms matter. From one of its kind it creates another.

Human beings behave in a similar manner.

They too convert matter throughout their entire lives. They transform that part of the Universe which they inhabit.

Could it be that the only task living organisms are to accomplish is to transform matter?

We generally believe that every organism possesses limbs and organs which serve to procure nourishment in order to ensure as long a life as possible.

We can, however, look at this from aside and ask:

Is the compulsion to consume meals caused exclusively by the necessity of providing the organism with energy or is there perhaps another reason?

Is every organism nothing more than a “device” (machine) for absorbing food, processing and eliminating it?

This would mean that living organisms exist only in order to transform matter with the help of their digestive systems.

Such an assumption can appear absurd.

The digestive system would be the primary system? All other remaining limbs and organs are to have been formed only to enable it to procure food which it is to convert? The extremities, therefore, are to help enable it to move as it searches for food and the sensual organs help to locate it? While the mouth serves to grab it and the brain to steer these components?

Could it be, therefore, that the necessity for each of us to consume meals is in no way caused by the necessity of providing the organism with energy?

In observing animals it is not difficult to see that the greater part of their lives is spent looking for and consuming food. The remaining part is spent reproducing and sleeping.

Watching cattle graze in pastures for hours on end or a snake as it devours an entire rabbit, it is easy to think that the aim of Life is to convert matter.

One huge digestive system. Nothing more.

Apparently hungry rats live longer than those which have eaten their fill.

Could it be that there is a “quota” of calories which every statistical living individual of a given species is maximally to “convert” throughout its life?

If the “quota” was fulfilled quickly because the individual ate a great deal, then immediately after fulfilling it he would die. Whereas if he dallied in fulfilling it and consumed little, he would live longer.

Of course, this sort of “meaning of life” of living organisms seems nonsensical.

But maybe it is a matter of transforming matter in a different way?

It is not hard to see that after we die not much of us remains. In fact all the products of our work undergo annihilation. Only pyramids and mummified corpses remain of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. After years, they too will disintegrate.

Of us, human beings, barely the carbon dioxide exhaled when we breathe will remain in the atmosphere.

Pit-coal, crude oil, natural gas and a few other chemical compounds will also be left after living organisms.

Apparently, in 24 hours one cow converts 3 kg of carbon into carbon dioxide while man converts 200 g in that time. If these calculations are correct then in 24 hours 6 billion people convert 1,200,000 tons of carbon. Simply by breathing. How much carbon then have all the cows converted ever since they appeared on earth? How much of that carbon have humans converted?

Could it be that we are merely devices made to “produce” carbon dioxide, crude oil, pit-coal or methane?

Or maybe it’s a question of something else entirely?

Perhaps the truth is that life on Earth is something like a farm, an experiment conducted by some unknown beings?

Perhaps the Universe is now at some stage in the development of husbandry (the beginning or the end) the aim and ultimate form of which is known only to its Creators?

Could life then be only an experiment similar to those conducted by scientists who, dressed in white coats, breed bacteria in laboratories?

Of course it might all be altogether otherwise.

If we really do exist merely to be of some sort of benefit to our Creators then this could be something entirely different.

A thought that occurred to me many years ago comes to mind when as a thirteen-year-old I pondered over the meaning of Life. At that time, I imagined Life was only a way of passing on information. With time, all information preserved in any way undergoes obliteration. Writing fades while stone and what is written on it wear away. The way to preserve information is to record it in the genes of living beings. It will be passed on from one generation to the next as long as Life exists. Genes as such, therefore, would perform a double function; they would decide the form of every living being and they would contain information which is unknown to us and passed on by the Creators of Life.

Have the Creators of Life – like people shipwrecked who slip a note about their location into a glass bottle – written information which is unknown to us into the genes that passed on to every subsequent generation?

Could the laws of natural selection, therefore, have been created simply so as to ensure that organisms adapt to changing external circumstances and that Life and this coded information exist eternally?

The puzzle, of course, would be to whom and why this information was to be passed.

What information?

Could it be information as to who built the Universe and for what purpose? The Universal “Plan”?

This is quite a fantastical supposition.

And then why is there this mechanism by which individuals are replaced by others? Why is there a necessity to die and be born?

What is the purpose of death?

Is this mechanism only to ensure that species adapt to changing circumstances?

Is the reason for this process really only to ensure the “law” of natural selection functions efficiently?

The law of organisms ageing and dying seems to confirm that they live only in order to perform defined tasks and that after fulfilling their mission they become unnecessary.

It looks as if the fact whether the dead organism is simple and uncomplicated or complex like man and what “loss” this involves, is not important to the Builders of the Universe.

How uneconomical this “law of transience” appears.

We see many individuals function perfectly in their environment. Nothing threatens their existence. Even so they die, unnecessarily it would seem. A great deal of effort is necessary for another individual to appear in their place and this does not necessarily have to happen. An adult crocodile dies even though, in principle, there are no other animals to endanger it. In order to ensure a “replacement” for itself it ought to lay a vast quantity of eggs. Because of their small size the majority of little crocodiles will not survive. Only a few will reach adulthood, and often none.

And let us look at human beings.

Each of us puts in an enormous effort in order to master a vast range of knowledge and skills which will enable us to function in society. We spend several years learning in primary school, then the next few years in secondary school, while some people spend even more in higher education.

At the moment of death all these acquired skills and knowledge are erased (“deleted”).

They are not inherited and so cannot be passed directly to our offspring. They cannot be “re-recorded” in the way IT specialists transfer recorded information from one data carrier medium to another. The offspring of even the best educated individual has to study everything laboriously from the beginning as once he did, every word, every letter and number, set school books, mathematical formulae, how to tie shoelaces and fasten buttons, and sacrifice nearly a third of their life to learning.

Their grandson, then their great grandson, will probably read the same books.

The law of every individual being replaced by a new one who has not inherited any knowledge or skill from their parents seems a great waste.

If all this could be inherited it would constitute enormous savings on the scale of the species. We would not have to learn how to tie our shoelaces or how to write and count. How many entities would survive. After all, every child would avoid fire and deep water knowing they are dangerous.

On the other hand, however, if the children of madmen were to inherit their knowledge – a warped view of the world construed by their parents’ minds – we ought to be pleased this law holds true to all of us. No doubt none of us would like anyone to have inherited Adolf Hitler’s philosophy of life.

In asking why there is Life we cannot but ask:

And why does all the inanimate matter, atoms, quarks, stones and stars exist?

One can ask not only that but also why do all these “function” so persistently?

Cells are constantly dividing. Electrons orbit the nuclei of atoms and planets the stars. While unceasingly converting hydrogen into helium. Galaxies, on the other hand, move with unimaginable speed across space.

Constant transformation!

Not a moment of respite or peace!

One reads in books that the dot above the letter “i” contains more protons than there are stars in the galaxy. A typical galaxy apparently contains about 100 billion stars. The amount of pure energy trapped in the ordinary objects we use is unimaginable. Galaxies are, on average, 10 million light years away from each other. This is hard to imagine knowing as we do that light needs less than a second to go round the Earth. These expanses and speeds, these quantities of energy and number of particles are beyond our comprehension.

What is the reason for the existence of this vast number of elements and of the space where they are, for their incessant motion?

What benefit can the Builders of the Universe reap from all these transformations? From the existence of matter we call inorganic?

It is hard to believe that all these laws and elements which constitute the Universe have been created with no goal in mind – just like that!

And why are there so many stars, planets and galaxies? Would one not suffice?

Why are there so many atoms?

Why, in the world we live, is the “principle of plurality” binding?

The simplest answer is so that there can be a large number of living individuals. The more there are the greater chance of some of them surviving in a world filled with multitudes of individuals belonging to other species.

But why are there so many species? Would not several be enough?

And why are there as many as billions of people? Would not a few or several hundred be enough?

Again the answer could be so that these species (and people) can adapt more effectively to the incessant changes in environment.

But why do all these elements in the Universe change form and we, living beings, try to keep up with this process?

What is the purpose of the environment changing?

What is the cause of this process?

Where is all this leading?

Could this ultimate result not be achieved immediately?

Why has it been spread out over time?

I look at a map of Wrocław with places which used to be cemeteries marked out on it. A park where adults and children take a walk on sunny afternoons used to be a cemetery a mere hundred years ago. For many years 300 people a year used to be buried there. The street I walk every day also used to be a cemetery. I march across the graves of soldiers buried over 200 years ago.

The place where both you and I will be put to rest may also become a playground where children run.

Is this not strange?

Asking questions as to who we are, we cannot but ask about the soul.

Do I (and you) have a soul?

Nobody dares question the usefulness of education. However, knowledge acquired while studying sometimes leads to sad conclusions and destroys ideals.

For what becomes evident? The organism of man is made up merely of bones, muscles and organs such as the heart, liver or stomach.

Do we have a soul?

But where is the soul? Where is it located?

Nobody has found it yet and there is a hypothesis that is does not exist.

I think that the less knowledge there was in the past about the make up of living organisms the greater was the belief in the existence of a soul.

Would the temporary shortage of oxygen or nourishment which leads to the destruction of a body also destroy emotions, memories, plans and dreams?

Despite having doubts, many people surely believe the soul exists since on monuments erected for the deceased, next to the dates of birth and death appear the words “may his/her soul rest in peace”. No doubt many of us also believe that apart from the material world which we are trying to know scientifically, an immaterial world also exists and the soul of every human being is a part of it.

Questions about the soul cannot be asked without questions about immortality.

Is there “life” after death?

Does the soul (if it exists) die together with the body or is it perhaps immortal and “exists” after death?

Does the soul perhaps exist in another world after death as an element of the Universe which does not remember its earlier life?

Or does the soul perhaps “remember” everything about its life on Earth?

These questions make some people anxious, to others they may appear strange or totally devoid of sense.

The anxiety usually comes from an apprehension as to what is going to happen to us after death and as to what kind of fate awaits us. Will things fare better for us or worse?

It is rarer for us to wonder as to what happened to us before we were born. Since the soul is supposed to be immortal it must also have existed before. Nobody knows anything at all about this time. It is as mysterious as the one which follows our death.

Scientists convince us that the Universe has existed for several billion years. Each of us lives a short time. What happened to us during this previous, very long period?

Many people are convinced death is the moment when the existence of each individual comes to an end forever. They believe that at the moment of death comes total annihilation of all knowledge of our members of the family, neighbours, society, of our fate, experiences and dreams. Consciousness disappears, is “deleted” just like information data on a computer. They believe that the “system” which made up the given individual disappears and will never be recreated. An individual with exactly the same appearance, psychological make-up and the same recollected experiences will never be born again.

After someone’s death we see that those close to him or her behave in a way as to “make” them happy. They try to make the funeral ceremony “satisfy” the deceased. They make an effort to give them their favourite flowers. As if they were convinced that the dead person was taking part in the ceremony, watching it in some way and as if it meant anything to them.

The loss of somebody close to us is painful also because it makes us realise that we are with other members of our family and friends for what is merely a short while. In no time at all none of these people will be there. Not us, our children, or our grandchildren. The concept that another world exists consoles us.

So we imagine that the soul exists.

Therefore another question should be asked:

Is it possible for us to meet those close to us after we die?

Is such a “meeting” possible after a hundred or maybe thousand years?

This is difficult to imagine because the situation becomes very complicated.

If three people were simultaneously to die a tragic death: a twenty-year-old mother together with her year-old child and eighty-year-old grandmother and then, sixty years later, at the age of 80, the husband of this mother died, whom would he meet in this other “world”?

Would he, an eighty-year-old man, meet his wife aged the day of her death (a 20-year-old) or would he meet a decrepit eighty-year-old? Would the grandmother still be only 80 at the time of the meeting or would she have aged another 60 years. Would she then be 140 years old? And the child? Would he, at this meeting, be a 61-year-old man who did not remember his father?

In this “other world” (if it exists) is there such a thing as time at all?

And do souls strive to be close to each other and in some way “attract” each other for millions of years after death?

Is the way our family, our descendants and siblings in this Earthly life made up fortuitously?

Is our influence on our choice of partner of the opposite sex an illusion?

An experiment conducted by physicists is often mentioned where they pass a laser beam through a semi-permeable mirror which causes the division of photons into two beams. The final conclusion of the experiment is as follows – it appears that in some inexplicable way the photons “communicated” with each other and were striving to reunite.

If “dead” particles of the Universe try to unite after being parted then do not souls also strive to be close to each other?

Pure fantasy!

But how would souls “recognise” people they knew before if they are deprived of their memory tool, of the brain?

Or maybe emotions and therefore the need to meet others are alien for souls deprived of a body? Perhaps souls of people who were close to each other in life never do meet since they are only “dead” elements of the Universe waiting for the possibility to exist once more? Some people believe in reincarnation but, so I reckon, do not admit the possibility of “existing” anew in primitive (for example, animal) form, preferring to imagine their next life as being in a form better than the one they have now.

Asking questions about the soul we should first define what we have in mind by it?

It is identified, so I believe, with the feeling of my own I. With the awareness of my separateness from the rest of the world. With the sense of the existence of two worlds. One of them is that which constitutes each of us, meaning the feeling of our own body, emotions and thoughts. The other is that which is outside the first one. Other people, animals, plants and material objects.

The sense of my own I is the distinct feeling of boundaries between these two worlds and the awareness of their separateness.

The moment when this feeling of separateness first appears remains a mystery.

Do people deprived of memory, mentally retarded or unconscious have a sense of their own separateness?

Does a newborn baby guided only by reflexes have it? Maybe only some of it?

Or perhaps these people, even though they are not aware of their own separateness, possess a soul since it exists regardless of the organism’s condition?

We can mass produce machines which work identically. Some of them are equipped with programmes which enable them to perform certain defined tasks on their own. The machines appear to be the same but they are not identical. Each of them is a little different. Some expire after a shorter period of time, others after longer. Some break down, others do not. The thought that these machines possess a soul would not occur to anyone.

We dream of robots which could perform our daily chores such as the laundry, cleaning and cooking. Something like a servant or a slave whom, in the past, wealthy and free men used to possess. A robot will remain “dead” until we, its creators, provide it with energy. It will be dependent on us. This is where it differs from living beings which, supplying themselves with energy contained in food, function independently.

The most difficult task for those building a robot, apparently, is to programme it in such as way as to enable it to differentiate its own elements from its environment. When programmed to destroy objects, it apparently starts by destroying parts of its own self.

What would happen if we managed to construct a machine which could supply its own self with energy? Would we create a monster something like a shark which would devour everything?

Would such a monster possess a soul? Would it be aware of its separateness? Would it sense its own “I”?

Since there is one world which is me and another external world, then does this other one really exist?

Or maybe I (writing these words) am the only one in this world and there is nobody else?

Perhaps there is only one soul in the Universe which only I possess and everything that is happening around me is an illusion, a show conjured up and played out for me for reasons unknown to me by “puppets” without a soul since the entire Universe was created only for me?

Personally I feel that I possess “my own” soul but I know that other people also possess “their own” souls only because they tell me so. This is evidence which cannot be proved just like are statements made by witnesses in court. Witnesses sometimes lie – it does happen.

If, however, we give credence to what others say then we have to take it that there are as many souls on earth as there are people.

Do only human beings possess souls (if they exist) or do other beings do so, too?

Do animals have them?

Do plants have them, too?

It is generally believed that only human beings are conscious and that animals are not. Of course this cannot be confirmed or denied. One cannot communicate with a spider or bacteria.

Only a few people admit that the remaining beings, especially animals, do not differ greatly from humans. We, just like they (crocodiles, wasps or ants) strive to provide for our offspring.

They and we reproduce.

They and we have to eat.

They and we are born.

They and we die.

We look at a chicken and it seems extremely far removed from man. Whereas scientists claim that its genes differ from those of man by barely 1.5%.

A spider preying on a victim caught in its web probably experiences the same feeling of hunger as I do when I make myself a sandwich. Perhaps a snake mating with another, experiences the same feeling of pleasure as each of us.

We watch, with interest, fantastic films showing life on our planet millions of years ago when mighty dinosaurs reigned. Terror and repulsion overcome us when we see their huge mouths equipped with enormous teeth devour their victims. We instinctively take them as being cruel monsters.

Do animals living on our planet which go to make our food or which we kill as a pastime (called sport) – such as tuna, mackerel or hare – see us as cruel monsters, too?

Most people rule out other beings, apart from men, possessing a soul.

If, however, we were simply to remove the functions with which our brains are equipped and, for example, limited our recollections to the previous day only and eliminated our abilities of imagination, we would become like “simple” animals. Like a lizard, we would not remember our ancestors. We would not be able to learn anything apart from such simple activities as, for example, walking. We would live only the “present” moment guided solely by our instincts, the need to satisfy hunger and the sexual urge. In no way different to other animals why should it be us who possess a soul while they were deprived of it?

All complex organisms (like man) developed by evolving from simple organisms. If man possesses a soul then, of course, all those simple organisms making up his (man’s) ancestral species should also have possessed one.

One can call to mind another example. At the beginning of every complex organism is a single cell. I (as well as you) and every other organism (animal or plant) began our existence from this little being. Why, then, should a cell from which I am formed possess a soul but one from which a mosquito developed be deprived of one? Unless – defending the view that only human beings possess a soul – we take it that man “receives” a soul not the moment he comes into existence but much later.

Therefore, if all living beings possess a soul, one ought consequently to accept that not only every animal and plant but also every individual cell of every living organism has one, too. After all, every cell in some way distinguishes “itself” (its “body”) from the external World which surrounds it. After all, it feeds only on the components of that World and does not devour its own “body” when hungry. It is an organism living its own life.

Biologists claim that man is made up of a vast number of such “animalcules”.

A “new” man, a child, is nothing other than one of those cells which “decides” to live independently. It leaves the organisms in which it dwelt up until then so as to live outside of it.

Could it be that there are as many souls in each of us as there are cells?

If we were to answer this question in the affirmative it would mean that the first cell from which a complicated organism such as man starts to be built, constructs this organism from other cells subjugating them in such a way as to make them “work” for it, for instance as part of the nervous or muscular systems. It would be a hierarchical arrangement similar to that of slavery. The “first” primary cell would be the centre of every organism which would steer others to do what it commanded. All experiences, feelings and thoughts would converge within it. Cells subordinate to it would also possess “their” slave cells which, in turn, would control still others.

And all of them would possess souls!

Thanks to this genus all the cells which make up the organism would have food assured – which they would not have to provide independently for themselves – and a stable environment. In return for services rendered. Such a pattern would be similar to rules binding in many societies.

Of course the description “first” cell is a simplification. The cell from which an organism develops divides again and again. The role of “primary” cell could be assumed by a cell which came into existence from a much later cell division.

What is interesting, so scientists studying human embryos hold, is that in the initial phase of its development, the embryo is a cluster of independent cells and then organs. The arms, legs, heart and brain exist separately. The heart beats for “itself”. Only later do nerve cells form which link these separately existing organs with the brain and unite them into one organism.

There are organisms (the earthworm, for example) which do not die when they are severed but live on as two separate organisms. As if some of their cells took “command” over the newly created organisms.

We know that most cells are mortal. An exchange takes place in the organs, dead ones being replaced by others. Apparently all the bones in each of us undergo an “exchange” about every 7 years. This means that after that time everybody’s bones are made up of different cells. They are, therefore, somewhat different bones than before. That is why the bones of elderly people are smaller than those which they “owned” before. However, the cells which constitute the brain (neurones) do not undergo an exchange. They cease to be formed immediately after birth and, furthermore, tens of thousands dies every day. Those that live, then, are constantly creating new connections with each other.

Is this hypothetical “central” cell also mortal? Does it die and has its place taken by a different one?

If this were the case it would mean that it only seems to us that we are in possession of one, unchanging soul throughout our entire life, and that a constant unnoticeable exchange of them is taking place.

In a situation such as this, each of us would be becoming a different person all the time and the belief that from the moment we are born to the moment we die we are the same person is only a delusion.

It would resemble a library full of books (considering each book to be a sort of store of information or memory) where there was a different reader every day.

But are we definitely the same person every day?

When would such an exchange of souls take place?

And what is sleep? Why do organisms experience such a state and cannot function without it? Could this hypothetical exchange of souls take place precisely during this sleeping torpor?

Once again pure fantasy!

Going back to the earlier question of whether those mentally retarded or mentally ill are aware of their own separateness, one could wonder whether these persons might be “guided” by several centres.

Whether instead of one “central” cell “governing” their organism they are guided by many such cells simultaneously?

Would they, then, experience several states of consciousness simultaneously?

Going further and taking it that every cell possesses a soul and that there are billions of organisms in which they live, we should ask:

Where do the immense quantities (billions of billions) of souls come from?

Where do souls wait for the moment when they can come into existence?

Is the number (of souls) able to live limited and constant? Can there be an infinite number of them?

I once heard an elderly person say that they did not truly believe Heaven exists. Where would all the dead fit? There would not be enough room for them there. This, surely, is not a convincing argument. If all the people living on Earth were to be gathered in one place so that they stood next to each other touching on all sides, they would probably take up a little more room than the territory of France, therefore a small patch of the globe. If they were all to be buried in one communal grave they would take up even less space. In Russia, near St Petersburg, lies Lake Ładoga measuring about 18 thousand square kilometres (that is the size of Sicily in the Mediterranean) and whose average depth is 50 metres. All the people living at this moment would fit into it. Space, in which Earth and the stars (Sky) orbit, is incomparably larger.

We can quite clearly separate inanimate matter (Earth, stones, furnishings) from animate matter (apples, butterflies, dogs). We know that all matter is made up of atoms and that these are made up of protons and neutrons. These, in turn, are made up of quarks.

Is it possible that the particles which make up the Universe are no more than elements “dead” for ever?

Are the particles of the same kind, like atoms, protons or neutrons, identical? Or do individual specimens differ from each other in size or appearance except we can’t perceive it?

Could each of them be identified like we differentiate people?

But how can we do this? Sometimes we can’t distinguish twins from each other, and members of their family find it a problem, too. And all of them act within one size scale. What then can we say about such a large object like man observing such a small object like an atom?

Asking these questions, I wonder about the issue of identity.

There is a belief in our conscious minds which has been written down in law. Lawyers separate things described according to “kind” or “identity”. Things described according to identity are specific animals or structures, whereas those determined according to kind are, for example, ears of grain, apples, chickens or man-made products such as televisions or cars. According to this classification not many objects possess an identity. The rest are treated as a mass of dull objects of little significance.

This classification is only a simplification.

In reality every orange is different although they all look alike and are seemingly “the same”. Each one possesses an “identity” which only we can’t or do not want to see. The same applies to other objects.

Water seems to be one mass even though we know that it is composed of particles which, according to general belief, have no identity.

The smallest particles studied by physicists behave like living beings.

After all, physicists cannot predict how any of these small things are going to “behave” but they can predict “statistically” how they behave in a large group. It’s the same with living beings.

Is every particle different and unique? Does it have an identity?

Is the Universe made up of nothing but souls and each of these is a fundamental particle which goes to make up matter?

The primary particle physicists are searching for?

Does not every particle by any chance possess a “potential” (latent) soul? In the sense that, as a particle of inorganic matter which unites with other particles under certain conditions, it creates first atoms then elements and chemical compounds so as to then, in different conducive circumstances, create organic compounds?

Of course each one, while it remained a part of inorganic matter, had no elements of consciousness whatsoever. Only after converting into organic forms would it acquire a certain limited range of consciousness.

As it expanded the organism which it was creating along with other cells, it would acquire increasingly greater consciousness – from first experiencing basic stimuli right up to building a memory and apparatus enabling the thinking process, a brain. In such a scenario probably only chance would determine which of the countless elementary particles were lucky enough to become the primary one around which and for which, other particles would work.

And why, in certain circumstances, do particles unite? Why do they possess such properties that under the influence of temperature or pressure they “behave” in a particular manner? Why do protons unite with neutrons and why is every one of them made up of three but not four hundred quarks?

Could it be that the structure of each kind of particle and its properties was defined by a “programme” recorded in them?

In uniting with another one, does each of them create a new, richer “programme”?

Would, then, the search for the basic particle then be a search for the simplest “programme”?

If that is the case then a particle which is not only and exclusively a “programme” cannot be an indivisible elementary particle. It has also to contain at least one other particle, which is the “programme”, in order to “know” how to behave. Just like a cell containing DNA is made up of two parts – itself and the said DNA.

Following this line of thought, if each elementary particle of matter were only and exclusively a “programme” yet simultaneously a “potential” soul able to acquire consciousness, it would mean that the soul was also the “programme”.

Is each of us nothing more than a “programme”?

If that were the case would only chance decide what kind of “object” each of us was to become? What form the elementary particle which constitutes the beginning of every organism is to take?

If it found itself in a human organism it could become a new human being (child) or one of its cells. If it dwelt in a mouse’s organism it could become a little mouse or one of its cells.

Is it possible that each of us could have been a dinosaur, tree, virus or spider?

Is it only by chance that each of us is a human being?

This would be rather a gloomy perspective!

I don’t think news that they acquired the form of an intelligent and sensitive being merely by chance, and that they had almost incidentally been deprived of these abilities, would put anyone in a good mood.

But, after all, the gender of each of us is a result of chance. You, if you are a man, could just as easily have been a woman and had the possibility of giving birth. If you are a woman you could have been a man and your partner could have been a woman you now hate.

Our lives would have been different.

Imagining one could have been a tadpole “thinking” only about eating and reproducing and devouring everything in its vicinity including smaller siblings, is not encouraging.

Even more disturbing is the thought that although I may not be such a primitive being now I could become such a one in a hundred or a million years. Because, after all, something is going to have to happen to me or, to be precise, to the matter of which I’m made, when I’m dead. It is not going to disappear. It is going to wander around in the Universe and create new objects including plants and animals. Tadpoles, too. “Somebody” is going to have to be them.

This is going to happen regardless of whether the imagined vision of a “programme” – soul – as elementary particle is true or not.

Could life only come down to every living being maintaining the form it has assumed? To remaining the objects we are?

And since each of us would be only a programme, another question – preposterous, it would seem – arises:

Are the Builders of the Universe copying “programmes” they have created? Every single being? Or do they file them?

Such copying and filing would, after all, be rendering each of us immortal!

All this fantasising is based on the one premise that the hypothetical elementary particle is an imperishable and unchangeable building block of the Universe. Scientists, however, suspect that atoms are not imperishable at all. Maybe it is the same with elementary particles? If that were the case then, of course, souls being these particles could not be immortal.

And did Life spring up in only one spot of the Earth or the Universe or did it spring up in many places? Of course Life could have appeared in many places just like a fire which bursts out in several places at once where spontaneous combustion is possible due to a rise in temperature. Similarly Life could have burst out in several fires of which only one is smouldering to this day.

Why am I asking this? If the beginning of Life was only one organism from which during the process of evolution all other organisms living now were formed, it would mean that we were all great grandchildren of this organism.

And maybe you and I are one and the same Person?

Maybe I am you and you are Me?

Maybe it only seems to us that each of us is a separate subject but really we are, all at the same time, one and the same Person in different forms?

Is not the belief that each of us has an independent existence (and therefore that Life consists of a multitude of beings) only a delusion?

These are not new questions. All of them, however, point in one direction and boil down to only one question – who am I and who are you, who is each of us? Only an accumulation of dead elements? Is this accumulation really a separate world (object)?

Every instant, both you and I clearly experience our own I. Both you and I see a fragment of the World which surrounds us, hear its sounds and sense its smells.

At one and the same moment several billions of people also see the World, think and hear.

But why am I myself and you yourself – and not the other way round?

Along with us human beings a further several billions of other beings, animals, experience the World.

Perhaps there aren’t billions of I’s?

Perhaps only one “identity” exists, one I under various forms?

One Soul of which each of us is only a fragment? One Life? One Person?

The situation would be such: I would look at the World through my eyes while at the same time look at it through yours. And vice-versa. Without knowing it you would be me and at the same time be every other creature (frog, tree, bacteria). One Person copied many times over, like a photograph which we duplicate making multiple prints.

Every print represents the same thing but each one is different because it is a different object (two prints constitute two objects).

Each is made up of the same kind of building material but of different – because not the same – particles.

We often say that there are a number of different people in each us. One minute we are noble, another cruel. So why can’t each of us be a different facet of one Person?

If we look at the Big Bang which, according to scientists, is supposed to have been the beginning of our Universe, in a different way then it could be seen as “proof” supporting the concept of there being one Soul. Since it is made up of elements which once used to form one point then each of its parts (each of us, each atom) is part of one primeval beginning. Constitutes a fragment of the initial unity.

Should we consider the Big Bang not as the beginning of anything whatsoever but as a catastrophe during which what used to exist was torn apart?

If that were the case, then from that moment to this day, the Universe would be trying to unite, “gather” the dispersed pieces. Recreate what used to be.

There are organisms on Earth which behave in such as way as to divide and unite. The way the organism called slime-mould looks depends on the phase of its life cycle. One such phase is the zoospore . When unsuitable conditions appear in the environment, tens of thousands of these organisms unite to form one organism. If we are to take it that not only human beings but also other organisms possess a soul then does the zoospore possess one of them or tens of thousands? If one then can it divide into numerous forms?

This seems improbable.

Let us, however, look at a cell. Is its division not strange?

It divides into two new cells. But one isn’t the “earlier” and the other “later”, there is no parent and child. Both halves are equivalent. It is as if we, human beings, were to reproduce by dividing into two equal halves where each half would have only one eye, one ear, half a head, one arm and one leg as though someone had cut us down the middle. Then each of these halves would complete the missing parts of its body. A second leg, second arm and ear would grow.

With such division where would I (and you) be?

In which half?

In both at once?

If we were all one Person it would mean that both you and I have always existed or at least existed from the moment the first living organism appeared. Continuously only in different forms.

It would mean we are immortal! Without knowing it.

Did one Person divide into numerous people and undergo further transformations for “a moment” only in order to finally unite into one whole?

I am now sitting on a chair. At the same moment in time and in millions of other places other people are resting in “their” chairs. If one Soul were to exist in millions of places at the same time then the annihilation (death) of any single one of the organisms would not affect its existence since parts of it would be experiencing the World in all the remaining places.

Perhaps death and the eating of organisms by other organisms serves to help this one Person change form or adapt to external circumstances?

Or perhaps all organisms constitute a part of a greater whole, another huge organism like the cells which make up man?

Perhaps it is, indeed, this enormous organism which is the only one to possess a Soul – Soul being understood as complete awareness – and each of us has barely a piece of it, some fragment?

Perhaps this “organism” is the whole Universe or Earth?

It is hard to imagine every planet being such an “organism” although some do hold such an opinion these days, and numerous people were convinced of this in the past. It goes against what we learned at school, that is, that Earth is nothing but soulless matter inside which smoulders iron. The idea that instead of this sphere within the Earth there is a living centre, fragments of which make up living beings on its surface – trees and other plants rooted in the earth would only be projections of it – seems at least absurdly fantastical. It is probably easier to imagine the Universe being such an organism. If indeed it did arise from one expanding point then it is behaving like a living organism which also originated from a point (a cell) and expands at the cost of others.

Does not the Universe behave like a living organism?

Has it come about at the cost of other Worlds?

We know only two forms of matter: inanimate matter (stones, water or air) and animate matter (human beings, animals, plants).

Can there be yet another, third form of matter unknown to us? A higher degree inaccessible to us? One which cannot ever be known?

Every cell of which we are built could ask a similar question if it were able think and ask.

None of them has any idea it is merely a tiny part of a large, independent organism, and they will never know.

Trying to look at our existence as if “from aside”, we can state in all certainty that every being is an observer registering events which take place in some small fragment of space or during but a short period of the Universe’s existence, that is the period of its life. This observation boils down to registering only those events which we perceive with our senses. Some animals do not possess a sense of sight so, of course, will not see rays of light. Man is not in a position to see electrical waves of a certain wavelength.

One can, therefore, risk saying that every being is a certain kind of “sensor” like some cells in a man’s body, for instance cells of taste or smell.

To this day, however, nobody has yet managed to ascertain that living beings, apart from registering events, in some way pass on these registered facts to this third, unknown form in which matter exists, like television cameras pass images on to the viewer.

Scientists state that the Universe is mainly filled with “dark matter” which constitutes its largest component. They say that there is 5 to 10 times more of it than what we see on a daily basis and of what we are built. They even say that the matter known to us may make up barely 4% of the Universe’s mass and that the fundamental building matter of the Universe’s mass may be something entirely different. They do not know what it is. It is as if next to us, simultaneously to our World, there was another, 10-20 times larger. A reality unknown to us.

And can we rule out the possibility that souls exist in this other World and “dress up” as the matter we know for just a moment, taking on the form of human beings, animals and plants?

Leaving that other place they put on an overcoat, a bodily coating made up of atoms and electrons which enables them to be here in the atomic world familiar to us.

Not so long ago in China, archaeologists dug up many thousands of figurines of the soldiers of one of the Chinese ruler’s army. Each one is apparently a faithful copy of a soldier living at the time. Like that buried, mute army do our souls not also dwell in that other World after death?

Of course this kind of supposition is very close to the belief in ghosts ridiculed by intelligent people. It is interesting where this belief sprung from since there is no proof whatsoever of their existence.

But can we be amazed? I take a hen’s egg and boil it. I eat a meal and a thought occurs to me – how little it would have taken for it to have lived, been transformed into a object which moved, emitted sounds, had eyes, moved independently, sometimes frightened, thirsty or hungry. Like Me. When does this fluid (the white and the yolk) become a living being? At which moment does Life “enter” it? When does Life put on its “coat” which is the content of the egg?

And where does this conviction that souls exist come from?

We clearly sense the difference between our own corporality and our “identity”. It is enough to look at a man deprived of some part of his corporality. Without an arm, eye or leg an invalid still remains a human being with the same individuality as before. At the same time none of us would give the part of his body which was severed from him the attributes of a soul. A man who cannot see or hear, deprived of arms or legs, breathing with the help of a machine, whose blood is being circulated by medical equipment, too, remains the same person to us as before the events which caused the injuries. Even damage to the brain, like memory loss or changes in personality, do not make us change our belief. We are sure that we are in the presence of the same person for whom its body is only a tool (apparatus) enabling it to function.

Our feeling of identity is not limited when we have a tooth removed. As long as it was part of my organism, it is only me it caused pain. After extraction it becomes nobody’s, ceases to be “my” tooth. A kidney given to someone else ceases to be the donor’s kidney.

Or perhaps the belief in the existence of a soul is not the product of human minds, the result of thinking about life and death?

Is the feeling that a soul exists not given to us together with our corporality?

Is it not programmed in us?

Perhaps it is information recorded in our genes just like that which decides how large our liver or kidneys are to grow?

Perhaps every being possesses it in the form of a particular “feeling” or instinct?

Is this sort of “feeling” not necessary for the correct functioning of every organism, enabling it to differentiate between itself and other individuals?

If that were the case it would mean that the notion of a soul is not the product of thinking while to doubt its existence is.

And what if those who doubt in its existence are right?

Perhaps, even if the claim that the “feeling” of the soul’s existence is encoded in us is correct, it does not really exist and the “feeling” dies along with other instincts?

Could each of us be only a chunk of meat, food for other beings?

Nothing more?

How difficult to believe this.

Each of us thinks we are the centre of the World and our affairs are the most important.

And that, no doubt, is how things are. They are the most important for each of us except that there are several billion of us and every event which seems unique to us is but one of several billion. We have grown accustomed to numbers. They don’t impress us because we cannot imagine the boundlessness which they denote. There are a billion letters in 40,000 books, in other words, in a large library (taking it that every book of 100 pages is made up of 25,000 letters).

I imagine not many people have more than a hundred books at home. There are a billion letters in books found in 1,000 libraries.

Our notion of size and sense of figures is limited. This, after all, comes from the number of fingers on our hands.

We operate in a decimal system.

Perhaps there are beings in the Universe who use a million system because they have a million fingers and in addition use a computer?

Figures approaching billions seem immense.

Human beings still overvalue their own significance. After all, we initially thought that the whole World turned around Earth. Not so long ago all feelings were taken to lie within the organ called the heart.

Scientists claim that in every complex organism there are a large number of centres governing its functions. A separate centre is responsible for breathing, another for digestion and still another for maintaining balance or the working of the circulatory system.

No doubt many of us have had the impression that a number of different “people” “dwell” in us making us behave the way we do, according to the situation. The centre responsible for breathing immediately takes over once the organism finds itself underwater. It co-ordinates the movement of limbs so the organism can swim to the surface as quickly as possible, and retunes the brain to think of ways of avoiding danger, not allowing it to think about other things, a favourite film or shopping to be done. It’s the same with hunger. We can think about all sorts of things up until the moment we start feeling hungry. Then the centre responsible for satisfying hunger takes possession of the brain and tells us to think of where and how to satisfy it.

The situation is similar to one where there is only one computer in one office in the headquarters of a factory. In this office sit several experts specialising in different fields responsible for the smooth running of production. Depending on the situation they take turns in front of the computer and take over the running of the factory. It’s the same with our brain. If hunger threatens the efficiency of the organism, the centre responsible for satisfying it takes over the leadership and moves the one who was listening to music a moment ago, away from the “computer”.

Our aim to satisfy the basic needs of life is independent of our will. Of course there are individual people who are able to master the forces (urges) which steer them but, statistically, it is impossible to neglect eating meals or suppress the sexual urge. If it were possible to do so, species would probably die either from hunger or a lack of offspring.

Does it follow that there are a large number of centres in us which make us think that a superior soul exists?

Let us leave the soul aside. Can a living organism be immortal in the literal, physical sense of the word?

Can life be prolonged in such a way as to enable every individual to live several hundred or million years?

There are various hypotheses as to the reason we die. Some claim that, like in the case of machines, it is caused by irremovable defects accumulating in cells which “grow” old as a result of the processes – like oxidation – which take place in them.

Others say that a “death gene” exists which is responsible for “switching off” vital functions in each of us. We would, therefore, have the “necessity” of dying programmed in us.

If indeed, after a cell divided a given number of times, it were annihilated, does this principle apply also to entire species?

Are entire species condemned to become extinct after giving birth to a given number of generations? And human beings, too?

Do species not undergo phases in development, maturity and decline, just like individual specimens?

We know that large numbers of plant and animal species lived on Earth. Are, therefore, entire species not programmed so as to last only a certain period of time (unless their total extinction is not caused prior to this by other, merely external factors such as disease, changes in environment or cataclysms, etc.)?

If this were true it would overturn the principles proclaimed by C. Darwin according to which species best able to adapt to changing conditions reproduce in greater numbers so as to supplant other species. Their expansion should be continuous and they should not be annihilated.

Returning then to the question of the possibility of eternal life, we could ask:

Can human life be prolonged for a significant, noticeable length of time?

The press announces puzzling facts. By manipulating genes, scientists have managed to extend a mouse’s life by over twice its length. Perhaps they will manage to extend it many times over.

Will we manage to breed an animal which could live for as long as the Universe exists?

Scientists claim there are organisms which can live eternally such as certain cells or viruses but surely this cannot be verified. These organisms, after all, might die not long after us.

Would such an achievement not “break” the fundamental principles on which our Universe is based, say, for example the speed of light?

Does the rule that organisms die belong to fundamental laws binding in our World?

Humanity’s aim to prolong human life and its dreams of immortality is a form or manifestation of rebellion against the laws which oblige in this World in which we live.

Human beings, subconsciously, do not accept this law and probably do not think a great deal about death.

Perhaps this comes from the belief that death is not going to be the end of them and that life is only a phase?

And how would an awareness of their own immortality influence people’s minds and behaviour?

Not being afraid of death, convinced of their “eternity” would such people live according to the principles and laws which oblige in every society? Or would they not rather give vent to the instincts, they now hold back, and not take others into consideration?

Would immortality not be synonymous to chaos?

Bookshops and libraries are filled with shelves full of books. A significant number of them are serious scientific works. Not many of them are speculations on time – a phenomenon we experience at every moment. If an author writes about it, I believe he only touches on the problem. On the surface, it seems that time is a notion well known to everyone – we have, after all, adapted to life in time and in space, and we manage perfectly well. When trying to define it, we stand helpless. It is as much a mystery as are life, space, the Universe.

What is time?

The newest scientific theories state that time probably began in parallel with the Universe and will most probably end with it.

No doubt these theories are true. For each of us time has a different beginning and a different end.

For every specimen time began at birth. The end of time is the moment of death.

It is generally understood that we divide time into three phases, the past, the present and the future.

What is the present?

It cannot be pinned down.

Every moment becomes the past although we think that we are immersed in the present. The writer of this text sees a computer screen and hears the tapping of his keyboard as each key is pressed. Simultaneously to the tapping, a new letter appears on screen. Over a second, he hears more than one tap and sees more than one letter.

Every letter and ever tap becomes a letter written and a tap heard in the past.

If someone were to ask me what I am doing I would reply that I am writing, extending the concept of the present to the whole activity of writing from the moment it started to the moment it ended, something which could last for even a few hours. Replying thus I would be simplifying, using a formula. Truly, however, every letter of every word written by me, immediately after being written or, in fact, already while being written, becomes the past.

Even such an apparently mundane activity as sitting in an armchair and looking out of the window only gives our minds the impression of stopping time – for in actual fact every moment of looking out of the window becomes a moment in the past.

How long does the moment called the present last?

My senses register every tap of my finger on the keyboard and it seems to me to be the shortest stretch of time I can call the present. But there are, after all, devices which register this action more accurately. It is doubtlessly possible to reproduce this action in slow motion on a film and break it up into a series of stretches lasting a fraction of a second. Thus the present could be narrowed down to every one of these stretches and, breaking up these stretches into even smaller ones, could ever shorten the duration of the present to an ever smaller fraction of a second (1/4 of a second, 1/8 of a second, 1/1,000 of a second, 1/billionth of a second) – endlessly right up to infinity!

It turns out that the present cannot be measured and we, using this description, have in mind various time-spans encroaching on the past and the future. It is like smoke rising from a fire – we smell the smoke, see it, but cannot catch hold of it.

We clearly experience it although we cannot hold it back.

We can mark out a spot in space by, for example, hammering a nail into a tree. The spot will be solid. We cannot, however, “hammer” such a nail in time.

Since the present cannot be measured because it shrinks to infinity, maybe it does not exist at all?

Is it not only an illusion?

Is not everything the past?

Since all information reaches our brain through our senses, it is registered with some delay. We see distant galaxies as they were many millions of years ago since light (their image) travels to us at a given speed. Everybody knows this. Perhaps, as we observe them they no longer exist. Looking at my fingers tapping on the computer keyboard, too, I see them with some delay. The delay is imperceptible. The distance between the eye and the hand is small and the speed of light carrying the image to my eye is enormous. My foot hitting the edge of a chair is also registered by my brain with some delay. The information about this event in the form of a signal transmitted by my nerve cells must, after all, travel from my foot to the brain, and that takes time.

We live in a world of signals coming from the past.

We think we exist in the present but really we live that which has already passed.

Throughout our lives we strive to get near to the present but we are always a little behind it.

We exist in a world which also has been created in the past. Roads, pavements, plates, books – all these were made yesterday, the day before yesterday, a year ago. Many of these things were produced by people no longer here, who have died. Entire continents, seas and landmasses were formed in the past.

What is the past?

It is those events which have passed, have disappeared. But if something has passed, it no longer is. In a physical sense the past does not exist.

So what is this phenomenon?

Nobody can stop the past or touch it like one touches a material object.

It is only information recorded on various carriers, in the brain, a book, on photographs.

A mass of information at least some of which we try to segregate according to the sequence of events with the help of “measures” invented by us. In order to make moving around in the past easier we use devices recording the chronology of events – the calendar and the clock. Without them, it would be difficult to establish which events took place earlier which later. All would merge into one mass called the past. They would exist in our minds simultaneously. These tools arrange the past into one line running backwards although the entire past could also just as easily be classified as a one-dimensional refuse basket into which only we, human beings, try to arrange refuse in the order in which we throw it away. Maybe comparing the past to refuse is not in good taste because, for emotional reasons, many events are very meaningful to a large number of people. No doubt each of us would like some events never to have happened while others could by repeated. Without a calendar we would probably mix the earlier ones up with the later. All would make up one past. Even now, despite having a calendar, many people find it hard to indicate what came first and what later.

Events from the past exist only in our memories. If we had no memories or had not remembered or fixed them in some way (in a piece of writing, a drawing, a photograph) nobody would know anything about them. Earlier, before human beings appeared on Earth, there were beings similar to us on Earth – we know nothing about them. We surmise their lives only through excavation. Other communities (ants, bees) probably do not know anything about what happened last summer. Besides, their knowledge of the world does not go beyond the boundaries of the forest they inhabit. Their knowledge of time and space is very small.

The past exists only insofar as we can recreate it. It is, therefore, a creation (a product). This image might differ when described by different people, depending on the state or capability of their mind. Furthermore, it is also subject to change for each of these individuals, depending on when it is being recreated. Describing an event which took place a moment ago is, in essence, describing the past in the past because as soon as each letter has been written the action of writing it becomes the past (a recollection of a recollection).

Probably nobody has managed to remember what has happened in all detail, including smells, temperature of the air, the way each speck of dust lay on the floor, every sound coming from the window and every thought.

If one managed to recreate whatever moment from the past as faithfully as it really happened, it would mean the person who managed to do this was in the same present twice.

Since the past is entirely a product of our minds, we can wonder – did all these recollected events really happen?

Does not the mind of each and every one of us create some sort of fable, fantasy?

Fortunately accounts of events from the past on the whole overlap when related by various people; photographs and films back them up.

Is it possible to “watch” the past at different speeds?

To watch the past is to register the light which reaches us. Scientists claim its speed is constant and unchanging at about 300,000 km/s. If we managed to chase at 200,000 km/s. a fleeing ray of light speed, it will continue to escape us at a speed of 300,000 km/s. and not 100,000 km/s. anyway. This seems absurd yet the explanation is surely simple. Along with the increase in speed of an object, time passes more slowly – on a rocket speeding at 200,000 km/s. every second lasts longer, which is why, during it, a ray of light manages to travel as far as 300,000 km and not barely 1/3 of that distance as it would during a shorter “normal” second. Measuring the speed of a rocket and the speed of light from Earth, people, of course, claim the rocket is travelling at 2/3 the speed of light while the light is travelling at its constant speed of 300,000 km/s. It is only a question from where the measurements are being taken.

A star which lies at a distance of one light year from Earth is seen by us as it was a year ago because that is how much time light requires to get from the star to us. If we managed to travel at the speed of light (although scientists claim that this is impossible) then moving in its direction we would reach its surface in a year’s time. In our imagination, of course, because landing on such a hot surface would be impossible. During the year’s voyage we would observe the image of the star in accelerated time and should be able to see what happened to it over two years (the year of our travelling and the year preceding the rocket’s launch because at the moment of launching we saw the star with a delay of one year).

Moving away from Earth, on the other hand, we would, no doubt, see only a still image (as on a photograph) throughout our journey, watching the same ray of light coming from the Earth to us and travelling with us to our goal – the star a light year’s distance from us. Earth would look as if time had stood still on it. After a year’s journey – being on the surface of the star – we would see Earth as it was a year previously. If we decided to return to Earth, we would probably see its image in accelerated time and the star as a still object.

Scientists claim no object can move at a speed greater than light. If, however, we managed to exceed this speed, an observer travelling towards a star at one light year’s distance from Earth would see it not as a still object (like a photograph) but would probably see its past. He would see it as in a film running “backwards” because during his journey he would be “catching up” with the light reflected by the Earth before the rocket’s launch.

Since the present is intangible and the past is only a recollection of it then:

What is the future?

Each of us takes it that the sun will rise tomorrow, the trams and buses will leave the bus-stop at a given time, that we will hear our favourite programme on the radio. Next year we will go on holiday, in a couple or a few year’s time we will retire. All this will happen with time. We cannot move from the present to the future and take part in an event which, according to the calendar is to take place in a month’s time, as we see fit. We have to wait out (live through) those 30 days in order to take part in it. This is obvious.

The future is a mystery because it is uncertain whether it will come to be.

There is no guarantee that the next moment will arrive. For some unknown reason the World could, after all, cease to exist this evening.

Does the future “exist”?

Does the future objectively exist?

Stating this is so, would be the same as stating that the future has been strictly defined and is unchangeable and all facts and events which are to take place are known to the Builders of the Universe.

In such a world we would be nothing more than actors playing in something like a film to a script which has already been written. The scenes and the end of the film would be perfectly well known to the Builders of the Universe and it is only we, actors, who would think that we were taking part in creating a work whose form depended on our invention and ingenuity.

If that were the case, it would, indeed, mean that each of us only thinks we have some sort of influence over our fate and life but in actual fact everything that has happened and is going to happen has already been directed long ago, including all the thoughts that arise in our minds.

Therefore, we would be dreading and worrying unnecessarily about many things.

Are we not, all of us living creatures, therefore, taking part in a journey towards events unknown to us, which, in fact, are known?

Could it be that we are passengers in a train looking out of the window with amazement at new landscapes although those would all have existed the same as the towns where, according to the timetable, the train was going?

I suspect most of us do not believe that a future, in such a sense, exists, and we think its form is a converging result of random events, unpredictable decisions and actions of other individuals, that it comes about spontaneously.

How can I believe the future exists objectively (so that we have no influence on its form) since I, for example, have not yet decided what I am going to eat in a minute?

How is it really?

If there is no future, its form is not “recorded” anywhere, so:

Can future events be predicted?

Knowing only some of nature’s laws so far and having increasingly fast computers at our disposal, we try to predict some fragments of the future, say, those such as temperature.

Scientists state, however, that it is not possible to say what the distant future will be like since it depends on an extremely large number of factors which are subject to constant change, and every change, even the smallest, may bring about an unpredictable effect. An avalanche in the mountains causing great damage may be brought on by one small snowflake slipping.

If, however, as years go buy, we managed to enter data into our computers about every particle in the Universe and the laws governing them, will we be able to predict all future events?

Theories supporting such a possibility (determinism) are not generally accepted since they lead to the ultimate conclusion that it is possible to predict the future and that this depends entirely on having the appropriate technical possibilities. How is it really?

And if we, human beings, cannot predict the future because of the enormous amount of data which it would be necessary to enter into our counting machines, then can the Builders of the Universe not perform (or have not already performed) such a task?

If they had, it would mean the future exists!

Every event, after all, has a cause and is the result of laws governing our World. It is only because of our lack of knowledge that many of them seem mysterious to us. A car can, at most, “accidentally” veer off the road and drive into a ditch but it certainly will not go against the law of gravity, rise into the air and fly towards the Moon. The accident is always precipitated by a specific cause, for example a tyre bursting. After the accident, an expert states that the tyre burst because of a fault in its manufacture. The fault was caused by the negligent work of a factory worker who, a year ago, had not screwed in a certain valve properly. He had not done so because he had not had enough sleep because . . . The sequence of events goes back many years but every event was caused by the one before it. This chain of events can be extended back into the past infinitely. It can also be extended the other way, that is, into the future.

And maybe it is only living beings who introduce the unpredictable elements which make the World fortuitous?

Maybe knowing all the laws of nature and the arrangement in time and space of all the elements in the Universe, it is possible to state how they will behave in the future, but only as regards inanimate matter?

For an outside observer (if such a one exists) the sight of a particle tearing itself from Earth and flying towards the Moon would probably seem completely fortuitous and incomprehensible. Its movement would be going against known laws of physics. And living beings do cause such events – in this case humans travelling to the Moon.

Every living being is an object inaccessible from the outside whose behaviour can be predicted only with a certain degree of accuracy but which, at any moment in its life, can act otherwise.

We are often astounded when we learn that somebody we know well has behaved in a manner in which – according to our knowledge of them – they should not have. We often amaze ourselves by the way we act. There are also people whose behaviour is totally unpredictable – people who are mentally ill.

We can only determine the average length of a person’s life, the average number of offspring they will have or the statistical (average) way in which they will behave in moments of crises (most soldiers fight but only some become heroes while a small number desert).

Asking questions about time I realise they may seem completely devoid of any sense – are, indeed, stupid – and that contemplating this is probably entirely pointless since the World has been functioning for billions of years without answers to such questions.

The next question in those grouped “stupid” is – which way does time run?

Does time run towards the future?

No doubt most of us believe it runs forward, towards the future. Just as in space. The roads, trees or shops we pass remain behind us, in the back. Walking on, we make towards new places and things. We walk forwards.

But during our journey in time we do not see what lies in front of us, every moment is unknown and surprising. Because in front of us there is an invisible wall separating the present from the future.

A wall hiding the future.

Of course, there is another possibility.

If the future did exist objectively and it only seemed to us that we are creating it, then maybe we simply do not possess a sense which enables us to penetrate this invisible wall and look into the future like we look into the space in front of us? Could it be that Nature has endowed us with sight which allows us to look into space but has not endowed us with a sense allowing us to look at the future?

Going back to the earlier question, we could put it another way and ask whether the wall which hides the future definitely does move forward?

Does not time rather flow backwards, towards the past?

Perhaps this impenetrable plane stands still and the present “flows out” of it steadily, like a stream running into the past?

Perhaps time pours out like a stream of water flowing from a turned-on tap?

According to such a model, the present would be a plane located at the spot where the tap ends and the stream of water begins. This plane, a thin membrane, would be an arena called the present. Every movement of matter and every event would take place only and exclusively within the narrow dimension of the membrane. The water running (flowing) from it could be figuratively compared to the stream of time running backwards towards the past.

According to such a model there would be no place for the future. Flowing out of every point in space, there would only be the present turning into the past.

The passing of time takes place at a determined speed.

Sometimes it seems to go faster, sometimes slower, and we look up at the clock amazed to see that it is already (or only) “this” hour.

Is there a speed at which the present slips into the past?

Has the speed in which the present turns into the past been the same for as long as the Universe existed?

We know at what speed Earth moves and the speed at which atoms move. If all the things in the Universe (atoms, photons, planets, plants and animals etc.) suddenly started to move faster but kept the same speed ratio (the object moving twice as fast as another would, after increasing its speed of movement still move twice as fast as it) probably nobody would notice the change. The scale according to which time is measured would also have changed. In our Universe the speed ratios of specific objects have been established. We know, after all, that in a vacuum light travels such and such a number of times faster than sound. We can also say that the speed at which Earth travels around the Sun is such and such a number of times faster than the speed, let us say, at which a horse can move.

If it is true that the entire Universe came about as a result of the Big Bang expanding in a split second from a small point then did not more “events” take place during that small period of time (split second) than during the subsequent millions of years? Would it not take millions of years to play back that split second recorded on film or another visual transmitter?

And nowadays is the speed, at which the present becomes the past, different in various areas of space?

Going back to the earlier example of a stream of water running from a tap, we could say that the water pours at a specific speed which can be accurately measured using a water-meter, and state that so and so many cubic metres of liquid poured out in a minute. Turning the tap, we can either increase or decrease this speed making the water run from the tap at a greater or lesser speed. This will be only the average speed. At the sides, smaller streams will form which flow faster. Others will flow slower as drops of water. Within the limits of a given speed, some of the water will run at different speeds.

Is it the same with time¸ with the speed at which it runs?

Scientists have no doubts that it can run at a faster or slower rate depending on how fast an object moves. They claim that at speeds close to that of light time flows slower, and that clocks moving at various speeds will show a different time of day.

This is, I believe, somewhat of a simplification. The differences in the times indicated by clocks moving at different speeds only shows that their mechanisms do not work at the same speed, that the mechanism of a clock moving at a speed close to that of light has slowed down.

If there were two identical Solar Systems and within these, on both the Earths, lived people who measured the passage of time in relation to the speed at which Earth spins around its axis (day and night) and Earth orbits the Sun (year), and if one of these Systems accelerated to a speed close to that of light, then an outside observer (if there was somebody like that) would most probably only see that in the speeding System, Earth spun around its axis and orbited the Sun at a slower speed than in the System which moved at a slower rate. People within the speeding Solar System, however, would probably not notice the fact. Both night and day and the year would last the same length as before. The metabolic rate of these people and the rate at which cells divide would slow down. At speeds close to that of light only the internal movements of objects slow down.

If we were to take it that time elapses at different speeds in different parts of the Universe, it would mean there were different present moments in different areas of the Universe!

Here on Earth, we would experience the present right now while beings living on other planets would not experience it at the same moment as us but “earlier” or “later”.

This would go completely against our concept of the world. We are all used to the fact that the present is the same for all of us. When we watch a football match, we all – ten thousand spectators at the stadium – simultaneously see the ball being kicked into the goal. This precisely is the present. If we look at a star in the sky right now, seeing it as it was a million years ago (because that is how long the light needed to reach us), then the animals living on Earth a million years ago experienced the present at the very moment that the events on the star were taking place a million years ago. Today, a million years later, we, living right now, all experience the present simultaneously – both you and I and all other beings (insects, bacteria, viruses).

Does the present always take place at the same moment in all areas of the Universe?

Can there be various present moments?

Is there not only one such moment but billions just as there are billions of particles and objects in the Universe?

Can a large number of present moments exist simultaneously?

If a large number of presents existed this would mean there was a large number of Worlds (shapes) overlapping each other! A large number of simultaneous realities.

It is easy to imagine a World consisting of a large number of presents, but in a somewhat different sense. Our lives – in such a case – would be made up of leaps from one present to the next, like leaping from one stone to another. These presents, however, would not overlap – they would exist adjacent to each other.

Let us imagine once more two Solar Systems where one system travels at a speed close to that of light and time passes at a slower rate. If the tracks of both these Systems were to cross and if moments of the present on both planets Earth were simultaneous, a catastrophe should take place. The collusion of two systems.

Whereas if the presents did not overlap would none of the inhabitants of one System notice the other System? Would both of them pass through each other like two shadows? Without colliding into each other?

Would they exist as two separate realities, as two Worlds?

The existence of many presents would allow “going back” in time (travelling into the past).

We are convinced that our childhood has gone by and that that reality no longer exists.

If somebody could meet me at a moment which has already passed for me it would mean I exist at several moments (presents) simultaneously or at least at two – in the present which I am experiencing right now (be it writing these words), and in the present which has already gone by for me. This would mean, moreover, that such a state (my being simultaneously in several presents) could be brought on by other people (and not Myself) who were able to “go back” in time.

But the state of matter is connected with the present!

At every moment inanimate material objects as well as living beings are in a given state (have a shape and energy state) and hold a place in space. Changes take place in line with the present. At this moment the Sun is in a certain place in space and is of a given size, shape and temperature. Tomorrow it will be somewhere else and somewhat different. This can be put more forcefully. Not only is the shape of matter connected to the present but so is its very existence.

It is, therefore, quite improbable that there are many presents.

Does our World exist only NOW – at this one and only moment which we describe as the present?

Is there nothing apart from this one moment?

With our experience (registering of) the present, I believe, comes the sense we all have of our own “I” (our separateness from the rest of the world), of our soul. This sense of being separate is felt only at the moment we call the present.

If time did not exist, the entire Universe would be inert.

But can inertness be identified with an absence of time?

Does time stand still for an object which is motionless?

Does time exist at all?

We say that photographs stop time because moments which have already gone by are reproduced on them.

But if every element in the Universe halted for a moment, stood still, like in a photograph – the stars, planets, photons, electrons, living beings – would that mean that time had stopped flowing?

If after a period of stillness, all the objects began to move again, it would not be possible to ascertain how long they had been still anyway, because there would be no point of reference to measure this by. All the objects whose movement marks time (watches, atoms) would, after all, have been still!

But, if in such an imagined state where the entire Universe is inert, somewhere at its very edge only one tiny particle moved, one atom by which time could be measured (one clock)?

Should we then acknowledge that time elapses in the whole Universe or that it elapses in this corner of the Universe only and has stopped in the rest, or that it does not exist?

Could an inert Universe exist?

If movement did not exist living beings would not need any organs whatsoever. Or limbs, because there would be no need to move from place to place. Or digestive system, because there would be no need to digest. Or brain, because there would be no need to think, plan or remember. So would inertia, then, be synonymous with there being no possibility of life existing? Would inertia also be synonymous to there being no possibility of anything existing? Since there would be no movement there would also be no need for the energy which propels it.

So can the Universe exist only when there is movement?

An affirmative answer would suggest that time is identical to movement. It is difficult to imagine a non-existent (because of the lack of movement) Universe in an existent time.

Is time only a movement? The movement of certain objects in relation to others and their speed ratio relative to each other?

This question is not new. Many people have wondered whether time and movement are identical or whether they exist independently, side by side.

Is the present not merely the smallest fraction of a movement where every fragment of the Universe can be found?

In the end, measurement of time is, in essence, measurement of movement. In order to measure it we refer to space and the location in it of another object or the state of the object. If we speak of somebody walking for 12 hours all we are saying is that he was doing so for half of the Earth’s rotation around its axis. We do not see this movement which is why we have invented the clock to follow its rhythm.

We have learned to exist in a world of ceaseless movement and ceaseless changes. We adapt the tempo of our lives, that is the speed at which processes take place within our body (periods to digest, periods of activity and rest, periods of procreation), to the tempo at which other things move.

We compare movement to movement. We do this instinctively. Knowing that we are soon going to be hungry, we store food whose period of conversion, that is, loss of nutritive value, will be slower than our basal metabolic rate. In order to build a house we choose materials which have a rate of movement (period of decomposition) longer than our lives. Foreseeing winter, we choose such textiles for our clothes whose movement (conversion leading to its disintegration) will be longer than the cold spell.

Is the phenomenon called time merely the state of objects in space (their location, temperature, energy state)?

If that were the case, the phenomenon called time would only be the chronology – invented for our use and registered by us – of energy changes taking place in objects and in space (movement broadly understood).

Is time only connected to our Universe or does it also exist beyond it?

If anything does exist beyond “our” Universe, of course.

We cannot exclude (something many have already contemplated) that every particle discovered by us and which we consider to be the smallest, might consist of a Universe similar to the one we inhabit – with billions of stars, billions of living beings, including intelligent beings full of emotions, thoughts and questions.

None of us can exclude the converse situation where the whole Universe in which we live is only a part of another, larger Universe and only one of a billion indivisible (elemental) particles of which that larger one is built.

Is it possible for our Universe to be only a particle of another “immense” Universe ( Multiuniverse)?

If time is a self-contained phenomenon, independent of movement, then:

Is it possible to turn the direction of time?

Scientists claim that such a process is quite probable. Since the Universe began from a small point which is expanding, it might possibly start shrinking again and return to that point. They imply that during the period when the Universe shrinks, time could run in the opposite direction.

Would time, in such a case, start running towards the past? Would that mean that each of us would experience their whole life in every detail once again but in the opposite direction?

Would each of us start to exist once more after many billions of years?

Such a model of returning to the past would be probable if we took it that time is running towards the future. If, on the other hand, it appeared that it was running in the opposite direction (backwards), “pouring” like water from a tap flowing from the present towards the past, then reversing its direction would mean something entirely different. The present, in such a pattern of things, would become not the past but the future. We are accustomed to the fact that the future is unknown. How then could the present change into something which is not known?

Living in such a world, would we know everything that was in store for us yet not know what we had already experienced?

It is hard to imagine a world where every one of us knows everything about their future – about their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, knowing their exact dates of birth and death – but has no knowledge of their grandparents or great-grandparents. The person writing these words would know when he died. From what those burying him describe, he would know what his funeral was like and how many people took part, whereas he would not know anything about his birth. Instead of growing old every one of us would grow younger. Life would begin with an old man getting out of his grave and would end with his birth and return to his mother’s body.

Like in a film running backwards.

Such a reversal of time would be synonymous with a reversal in the direction of movement. It would confirm the fact that movement and time are one and the same thing.

We believe that time flows at a constant pace and that its passing can be marked out on a straight line stretching a long way backwards. A million years, on a scale where one centimetre represents one year, would equal a million centimetres (10 kilometres).

No doubt many of us have experienced the feeling that earlier (according to the calendar) events seem to be less distant than those which took place recently. The calendar arranges events in the order they took place but not necessarily according to how we feel it.

Are these feelings not somehow justifiable?

Does time recede in a straight line?

Drawing a straight line requires a long surface. If the line was to be rolled into a spiral then all the information contained in a time line 10 kilometres long could fit into a small space. If instead of arranging it on a flat surface a figure shaped like a sphere was created, then such a line would become a small object, something like a ball of wool. All events would then run next to each other. A line of time from the past going back a million years would run next to the line of the present. The whole of the past would not be far away but right next to us.

Time understood in such a way would spin around one point or, to put it another way, time would be a spinning point.

Does it not only seem to us that events that happened a long time ago are distant whereas in reality they are all happening practically at the same time, in a small point of time?

It is the same with us, after all. Some of us live in high-rise buildings with many flights of stairs. A tenant sleeping on a bed pressed up against the wall knows nothing about the neighbour sleeping on the other side of the same wall. Even though they have been sleeping next to each other for 50 years, they may never have seen each other and, therefore, know nothing about each other’s existence even though only 20 cm. separate them. Many lives are going on close by which we fail to see. Could it be the same with time?

Abandoning the idea of imagining time as a line we could try to imagine it in yet another way – as a surface on which events are laid down one on top of the other. If the line drawn on a piece of paper by a pencil held in a hand were the present then all the lines drawn before would be the past. Since there is only one sheet of paper all the lines would have been drawn on top of previous lines, in sequence, covering each other. Scribbles, like those of a child, would appear. Previous lines (those underneath) would not be distinguished from later ones.

In such a scheme of things, time would be completely “flat” and lacking in depth. The whole of the past, all the events which had taken place over billions of years, would be “stored” under the tip of the drawing pencil. Subsequent events would obscure previous events.

I asked earlier if, perhaps, the Universe is not being observed, for example, by its Builders. We can expand this question and ask whether the observers are watching in a time which flows for them like it does for us?

And is such observation possible where all events are seen simultaneously and, moreover, everywhere, in every point of space?

Is it possible that all events, those of the past as well as those in the present and those which will take place in the future, happen simultaneously? Except that we are unable to perceive this?

If all events took place simultaneously it would be equivalent to the existence of many millions of presents.

The supposition that all events take place exactly at the same time, however, seems absurd.

After all, how could it be possible for Me to be the person I am right now and at the same moment be the little child I once was while simultaneously being the old man whom I might be?

Would I, therefore, be several individuals all at once?

This sort of fantastical possibility would confirm the existence of “flat” time.

The feeling that all event are happening simultaneously or close to each other probably comes from the everyday world in which we live, from the necessity to constantly repeat the same tasks. During their life every individual monotonously performs a few actions not so different from each other. Every one of us wakes up every day, meaning that during an 80-year-long life we repeat this action almost 300 thousand times. We eat breakfast the same number of times, clean our teeth, do our hair, put the comb aside, leave for work, close the front door, open the door where we work, say “good morning” and so on. For somebody looking on from the outside watching us perform these same actions all the time would no doubt be very tedious.

Let us look at our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, at our children and grandchildren. Every one of them has performed, is performing or is going to perform the same actions as us. First they will play in the sandpit, then at Red Indians, policemen and thieves. They will grow up thinking about members of the opposite sex so as to later work in order to provide for their family, and in the end will grow old.

This monotonous movement takes place with a repetitive rhythm.

As though we were bound by a cyclical rule. Earth orbits the Sun repeating this same pattern for millions of years. Electrons orbit the nuclei of atoms. Living beings are born then die – one generation follows another which follows another and so on, endlessly it would seem. Our lives are all based on repetition. The differences between each successive cycle are small, practically imperceptible.

Now and again this monotonous rhythm is broken. Two stars collide, a ship sinks, a human being dies.

We call events such as these (the interruption of a cycle) catastrophes.

Why do we have to keep on performing the same actions?

Could there be a World not based on the cyclical?

It is quite difficult to imagine a Solar System where the Earth would make a different orbit around the Sun (longer or shorter) every time or spin around its own axis (faster or slower), so that we would never know how long the next day and year would be and what the climate would be like. Every human being would experience puberty at a different age – some at two others at fifty.

The World would then be completely unpredictable.

Nothing could be planned. Planning came about as a result of the predictability of events. This predictability, in turn, results from an observation of their cyclical occurrence.

Such a World (non-cyclical) could exist probably in only two cases. If the laws of physics were not constant (and kept on changing) or if each particle had different (other) “properties”. In the second case, apart from there being no cyclical rhythm there would also probably be no “repeatability” of individuals and things. We have grown used to a school of herring being made up of a certain number of specimens resembling each other both in appearance and behaviour. All the trees we call oaks have the same kind of leaves, the same hard wood as well as the same climatic needs. It is difficult, therefore, to imagine a world in which no two specimens would be identical, in which there would be no species or races, in which every specimen would be different, in which there were no human beings. There would be one human being but another being, similar to them would be of an altogether different “species”. Living in such a world we would keep on meeting a new being every time and we would never know whether it was a herbivore or a carnivore. Every plant would have a different taste and different needs. The moment we got to know the properties of a new plant we had come across, this knowledge would become useless since every subsequent plant would have different properties unknown to us. Animal husbandry, therefore, would not be possible and every single meal would carry a threat of potential food-poisoning.

Could such a world, therefore, exist?

Could Life come into existence if the law of a cyclical rhythm of events, and the repeatability of objects did not bind?

Fortunately, we do not live in such a world. The world in which we live has been ordered. Somebody made the effort to make it predictable and for events to occur cyclically, for all objects belonging to one class (kind) to be the same (repeatable). We can joke and say that this Somebody (Builder of the Universe) did not “allow” for anarchy and chaos.

And how long has the Universe lasted?

We answer, (for so we have been taught), that it has lasted billions of years and, saying this, we imagine this to be a long stretch full of contents, or a glass filled to the brim with time.

In reality, the Universe lasts barely a short instant which we call the present – an elusive moment, barely some fraction of a second.

It is not a glass full of thick time but something like a soap-bubble. The glass is, after all, empty because there is no past!

It is the same with your life or mine. If you say you have the age of a 30-year-old, it isn’t true. The description “have” suggests possession. I can have one bottle of drink or a whole crateful. I will feel the difference between them. The crate is larger and heavier than a bottle. Whereas these 30 years are not there. You only “have” the moment called the present. You only have a fraction of a second. The remaining moments which make up those 30 years are only recollections (the ability to awaken nerve cells in the brain which will “recreate” one of those passed moments).

Do we really exist only for that one short moment called the present? Barely a fraction of a second?

If the Universe lasts only for that moment, where then does movement, where does change fit in?

Maybe only two moments exist in our World and we call them time?

Does everything, perhaps, happen in only double rhythm?

Can there be two moments only merely to make movement possible?

Like two little lights next to each other switching on in turn?

Does everything happen in merely double rhythm (there and back like windscreen wipers) except that each of these two moments which exist in turn differs somewhat, the moment it appears, from the one which went before? Like two little bulbs turning on in turn and burning a different colour each time. The first shines red for a moment and immediately afterwards the other shines green. Then the first turns on again but this time it is yellow (“pendular” time).

Energy, just like time and space, cannot be observed.

Or touched.

Since we cannot grip it, we take on our way not energy itself but the products which have picked it up from the environment and have stored it – and our digestive tract is able to retrieve it from them.

The Universe can be compared to a “magician’s” hat into which things disappear or are changed into something else. Or to a bucket full of water. Sometimes there is hard ice in it, at others liquid on which ships made of ice can float, and yet at others nothing that we can see – there is vapour.

It is energy which is the cause of all movement and change.

The prevailing opinion is that it was “given” to the Universe once and for all when the Universe was created. From that time, the quantity of energy in the Universe is unchangeable. It looks as if, at the beginning, “somebody” “pushed” (or set moving) one element, or all those existing at the time, and these, in turn, “pushed” others. This initial quantity of energy is transferred by particles to other particles, like touching someone in a game of tag.

If this is the case, we ought to take it that the Universe is a closed system and behaves like a machine which nobody has constructed to this day and which, so scientists say, cannot be constructed on Earth. I have in mind the perpetuum mobile. In an insulated system (closed system), according to the laws of energy, no energy is lost, only changes form. The Universe would, therefore, behave like a self-powering machine in which there would be eternal movement.

But the Universe is expanding.

Is the expansion of the Universe caused by the energy stored in it?

Or is the Universe not “powered” by energy coming from without?

Surely there is no-one who can “calculate” the amount of energy in the Universe now and in the past, and say that it has not grown.

Of course, the thought of “how” this additional energy should have been supplied immediately comes to mind. From without the system of the Universe or perhaps “from within” (if such internal boundaries of space exist, a question I asked before)?

What would happen to this additional energy?

Of course, it could be used to speed up the movement of every particle, something we would not notice since our clocks would also be moving faster.

It could also be “assigned” for further constructing the Universe, increasing its volume. For the expansion of space.

If, however, we were to take it that the Universe is not a closed system at all, the explanation of what happens to the additional energy would doubtlessly be easier. The energy could be emitted to the outside.

The concept of a Universe “powered” by energy from without would be disturbing if it turned out that the particles which go to make up atoms need a constant influx of energy in order to survive. This would mean that, if this powering up stopped, the Universe could “be extinguished”.

Could the Universe be “turned off” like a television set or a computer by its user?

The life which existed on this screen would cease to exist?

Could all the elements of the Universe go out in one moment?

Deprived of energy, electrons would cease to circulate the atoms’ nuclei, particles would stop interacting with each other (the forces unifying atoms would not operate, the force of gravity would not exist), and matter would, therefore, probably “disperse” into space.

If it is, however, true that matter is a form of energy, it would “wither” and be obliterated. If it is true that space, too, is a form of energy, it also would be obliterated.

What is energy?

What are the forces operating in the Universe?

We construct various appliances. We equip them with a plan of action called a programme. For such a programme to start these appliances also need power, a supply of energy.

The particles making up the Universe have similar properties; they constitute a plan of action (programme) which is also set into motion by energy. It is enough to change the energy a little and the programme can start running.

I questioned this earlier but it looks as if every little particle “knows” when and how to “behave”.

Once more I use water as an example. Every one of its particles “remembers” at what temperature it is to “change” from a liquid to a solid substance, ice. If the temperature falls to 0°C each particle will reveal a physical and calculable force in order to realise this “knowledge” (programme), destroying obstacles which stand in the way of the transformation. If this obstacle is a hard vessel, the freezing water will burst it. The glass will crack. The particles which make up water are probably “passive” and the changes in its structure are caused by other particles bringing in or taking energy from them.

Is the transfer of energy only the starting up of one programme by another?

What is the “cause” of energy transfer?

I am asking here whether the energy is given over by one object to another, or whether it is “taken” by the second object from the first?

Is the transfer of energy not a form of one object “taking” energy from another?

Does every particle not strive to “take” energy from others in order to realise “its own” programme?

On the one hand, energy coming from without the particle is able to start up a programme within it; yet, on the other hand, we know that particles possessing mass can be converted into energy (A. Einsteins’s famous formula E = mc²). They are, therefore, as though stored energy.

Since energy can be converted into mass, is it possible for all the energy which exists to be converted into mass? Or all existing mass into energy?

Could a Universe exist where there is only energy (without mass) or only mass (without energy)?

A Universe where only mass existed would be still. But could such a “formation” exist at all since no forces (e.g. that of gravity), which, after all, are produced by energy, would be unifying it?

And could only energy exist, since there would be no objects in which it could be “stored”?

Is, therefore, this famous formula merely a simplification? Or, could energy also be stored in other elements of the reality surrounding us, for instance space?

And since mass can be converted into energy and each of us is made of particles which possess mass then, in fact, isn’t each of us just a form of energy?

But what is energy?

Is energy only a sort of signal?

Could particles which, in our opinion, carry energy only be carrying signals? Particles possessing mass, therefore, would only be swellings of such signals, a tangle of which would create a new quality, a programme?

But what would such a signal be? Only an induction?

Would then the signal only be a wave?

From our human point of view forces released by energy are destructive.

Everything is subject to destruction!

Whatever we create is subject to disintegration. From a castle built by a child on a sandy beach to any edifice whatsoever erected by adults. Sand castles fall apart first, castles made of stone much later. Throughout our lives we are constantly repairing and refurbishing objects which are falling apart. We paint and straighten fences, change the slates on roofs, remove dirt from furniture, cars and clothes. Even so, rust eats away at the bodywork of our cars, plaster crumbles from the facades of buildings, mechanisms break.

This is annoying.

We devote an enormous part of our lives in recreating and preserving what “used to be”. What we once constructed.

Is this belief of destruction, however, not only a subjective feeling humans have?

Or maybe it is us, all living beings, who bring destruction into the existing World and the forces of nature are only trying to bring it back to its previous state? Bring it to order?

Every town built by us is an ordered structure only in our own point of view. From “nature’s point of view” it is an alien structure like a boil on a body which needs to be removed.

Dust on a table and leaves on the road are natural elements of a landscape and it only seems to us that the table is “dirty” and the road “littered” and that the litter has to be removed. That is indeed how they are supposed to be!

Are we, all living beings, not the objects which introduce a state of disorder into the Universe?

Is Life not an element which leads to the destruction of the Universe?

Not a creative element of it at all?

Living organisms can exist only in a defined range of temperature and pressure, after other additional conditions such as, for instance, the presence of water, have been fulfilled. Man, I believe, would not survive if he permanently had to function in temperatures over 50°C or below minus 50°C.

This is a very narrow margin of conditions. In many regions of the Universe, temperature rises many times above these conditions.

Why is there so little Life in the expanse of Universe known to us? Why does Nature not create conditions for it to exist elsewhere? Earth is only a tiny area of the entire Solar System and most of it is devoid of Life. Its duration is short compared to the length of time the System has existed.

Why can Life exist only within such a narrow range (margin) of conditions such as temperature and pressure?

Why does this narrow margin of conditions appear only in such a small area of our Solar System?

Is Nature reducing to a minimum the conditions in which Life can exist?

And that’s not all. Observing the history of our planet up until now, we learn that most of the species of living organisms have become extinct. Scientists say that a comet might hit the Earth at any moment or a meteorite capable of exterminating Earth, and if this doesn’t happen then after the Sun has “burnt out”, Life will certainly die anyway.

Does Nature care in the least whether any form of Life whatsoever exists?

Are we an undesirable form of energy?

We have achieved a great deal in learning about the mechanisms of the world surrounding us. As we get to know them, they turn out to be simple, constant and logical. On the basis of this, we presume that all the other as yet undiscovered mysteries of the Universe will be disclosed. Our, human way of thinking turns out to be very effective in describing a world made up of matter. Three phenomena remain entirely unknown. Faced with them, our mind is helpless. Intuition prompts that in order to understand the Universe we ought to discover what is time, space and awareness (soul).

Each of us (both you and I) has been “crammed” into a defined time and place (space), where their awareness (soul) flashes for an instant. Each of us has come to exist precisely here and now. Why not in the Middle Ages? Why not on the other side of the ocean?

The time and place we have come to exist sets the quality of our lives which are created along with other people who surround us (aggressive or compliant, wise or not so wise). People living in Europe today do not suffer from hunger and their medical care is assured. Those living on other continents or in other ages did not always enjoy the benefits of such blessings.

Each of us has been “crammed” into conditions and systems over which we have no influence just like animals shut up in cages. They can rebel and show discontent but they have no other choice.

Why has this happened?

I am not going to be very inventive when I use the example of a chicken in front of which we spread a newspaper with the latest news. It will never understand what this object is or what the letters are. We could take forever teaching the chicken to read but our effort will always end with its pecking away at the paper. Its mind is limited.

We are proud of our intelligence and ability to think in the abstract, and we emphasise the fact that these are qualities which distinguish us from other living beings. Many of us look down with indulgence at animals executing what we think to be senseless (silly) tasks which will never achieve the desired effect.

Speaking about human achievements and intelligence, every one of us proudly identifies with the things which we use on a daily basis like a car, television or telephone. As if we had had invented them ourselves. I suspect, however, that if the combustive engine had not been constructed to date, out of the billions of people living today barely a handful would come across the idea; and many of us would not even suspect that the wheel could be used as a means of transport – if it had not yet been discovered.

There are also a large number of examples of aimless human behaviour. The society of ancient Egypt was engaged for many years in the construction of pyramids and mummification of corpses so as to secure eternity for their rulers. Today, archaeologists dig up their remains. It turns out that the entire effort put in by the Egyptians was futile. They put in an enormous amount of work into an undertaking which did not have the desired effect – immortality.

Among living beings it is only humans who endeavour to guess how the surrounding Universe is built, slowly discovering the laws which govern it. No other creatures do so. For millions of years they have lived as they do, only eating and reproducing with no interest in why they are doing so and why they are they way they are.

Why does the process of discovering the World by us, human beings take so long? Why is so much effort needed to discover its mysteries little by little? Could it be that originally these mysteries were never to be discovered and that only some accident (evolution?) caused human beings to appear and try to fathom them?

Are there limits to what can be learnt?

Are we, human beings (or other beings which during the process of evolution might surpass us) in a position to learn the whole truth about the world which surrounds us, to know all the laws according to which it is built?

If this were so, it would mean that we could become equal to the Builders of the Universe since we would know as much as they. Could we, therefore, be equal to God?

Is that possible?

There are several billions of us. Would there then be several billion beings equal to the Creator?

Or maybe we, human beings, are also limited in some way just like animals and the chicken pecking the newspaper to which I referred?

Maybe there are phenomena and processes which our mind, because of the way it is constructed, is not capable of understanding?

Are we, human beings, in a position to discover and comprehend everything, to understand the entire Universe?

Are there, perhaps, some limitations as to our cognitive capabilities?

Is there another kind of understanding, inaccessible to us, human beings, which is entirely different from abstract thought?

Each of us lives in the “real” world, which boils down to thinking about daily matters, about breakfast, shopping, sleep, our next meeting, about a clean shirt, or the hairdresser. It is hardly surprising. We react only to that which affects us directly; the temperature of the room we are in, therefore, and not to the temperature several years ago or many kilometres away. We react to what our eyes are seeing and our ears hearing right now and not to sights and sounds which resonated hundreds of years ago. We are occupied with our daily lives like players on a field who, engrossed in the rules of the game, are occupied with nothing but the ball on the pitch and see nothing apart from it.

It is like that with us as, occupied with our daily lives, we fix on one moment after another without paying attention to the passing days and not noticing as time and souls go by.

Magic is a frequent subject of children’s fairy tales.

It is based on beings transformed into something else, on sudden changes of place or time travel.

These themes were not just imagined; they were drawn from an observation of life. The transformation of an ugly insect into a butterfly which takes place in great numbers every season is, indeed, a kind of magic. The transformation of grass into meat (a good-looking cow) has an element of magic. The transformation of a little child into an adult equipped with the “power” to create other beings (with the participation of a partner of the opposite sex) and the subsequent withering of that person which ends in death, also has something magical about it.

We have grown used to the world in which we live and do not notice that there is something in it of the fairy tales read to us in childhood. I believe that if any one of us were brought up in seclusion, with no television or books, right up to adulthood, and then one day saw reality surrounding us, we would suffer a shock on seeing that we were surrounded by a swarm of monsters, hairy and hungry spiders, writhing snakes, merciless crocodiles, greedy insects. Throughout our entire childhood we grow accustomed to them. They grow accustomed to us.

Does the surrounding world and we, ourselves, really exist?

Scientists claim that the World is material. But, after all, all our emotions – that which is most important to us – belong to the immaterial. Pain and hunger are experiences. It is the same with thoughts which appear in our brains. They exist in only the one person experiencing them at that moment. They are, therefore, subjective although their occurrence can be registered by observing the brain. Observation is something entirely different from the real experience of pain or awareness of a thought.

I look at the cover of a magazine. I see on it the face of a man and a woman. They are not, however, real faces. The bit of the world which I am looking at in the photograph is, in reality, a flat piece of paper covered with paint, little points of colour. It is only an illusion created by patches of colour. My mind creates human faces and landscapes from these patches. Is the reality in which we live not merely an illusion?

Or maybe it is a form of sleep?

Maybe each of us will wake up soon and hear somebody’s voice say, amused – you let yourself be taken in! You didn’t have to worry! Of course, there is nothing like death and disease.

Nobody dies!

How could you believe such nonsense! Of course, we all live eternally. Did you take it seriously that you’re made up of some cells and that there’s some sort of programme in them (DNA)?

Did you believe the table was made up of atoms and people depart forever?