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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781398447868 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Austin Macauley Publishers |
| Publication date: | 10/31/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 142 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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THE GAME OF GOD
THE ULTIMATE SOLITAIRE!By PETER BUXTON
Balboa Press
Copyright © 2012 Peter BuxtonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-0821-4
Chapter One
THE BASICSThis first chapter presents the basic facts about the physical universe that are accepted by the majority of scientists and lay people. These are the fundamental facts we need to hold in Mind as we inquire into other domains.
Our View of the Universe
The first theory to consider is the Big Bang theory. This should be thought of not as an explosion but rather as an expansion of space carrying with it the material of the universe. A way to imagine this is to take a partially inflated balloon, paint spots over the balloon to represent galaxies, slowly inflate the balloon, and then as the surface expands the spots travel away from each other. This expansion is observed by astronomers viewing the light coming from distant galaxies. The light's wavelengths have moved from the blue to the red end of the spectrum (Doppler effect) which shows that the galaxies are receding from each other at great speed.
The Size and Composition of the Universe
The Siding Spring telescope in Australia has recorded objects the light from which travelled at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, and at that speed took ten billion years to reach Earth, but Earth did not exist when this light started out as the solar system was only just forming at that time. Astronomers have estimated that there are at least one hundred billion galaxies like ours in the universe.
Our Galaxy
Ours is probably just an average galaxy, spiralling through space and at the same time turning on its axis.
Our galaxy has approximately two hundred billion stars, and to travel across the diameter at the speed of light would take one hundred thousand years. If we wanted to visit our closest neighbour (Andromeda), at the speed of light it would take 2.5 million years
Our Solar System
This is very near the edge of our galaxy and is travelling around the centre at approximately one million miles per hour. Now, to get closer home, light from the sun reaches us in 8.5 minutes and the reflected light from the moon takes just 1.25 seconds.
Our Star
The sun is a rather insignificant dwarf red, low energy star, but it is very significant for Earth as it creates just the right environment for diverse evolution.
Our Earth
This is our spaceship hurtling through space. It is composed of elements that supernovas spewed into space in the distant past. It has a hot core with an extremely thin skin of cooled material which is on part of the surface (land), a liquid covering the majority of the surface (ocean), and a gaseous envelope around the outside (atmosphere).
Our Moon
This is a cooled satellite held in orbit by Earth's gravitational influence, but with sufficient gravitation of its own to affect the liquid surface of Earth.
Space/Time
We know that time is relative, that space/time are locked in each other's arms, warping and changing each other constantly, and that there are stars that have become so dense and their gravitational field so powerful that everything in their vicinity falls inwards so fast that not even light can escape. Space and time are changed dramatically by their influence. Space is warped around them and time slows down the closer it gets to the strong gravitational field.
A hypothetical scenario has been put forward in which a father and son living on a space station, and the father decides to take a space flight where he travels close to the speed of light (causing time to slow down). The flight passes close to a Black Hole, which has enormous mass (time slows down close to a massive body, increasing the time-slowing factor), and when he returns to the space station, the father finds himself to be younger than his son.
Let us go back to the light we received after its ten billion year journey through space/time. It didn't get here in a straight line, but was bent and curved in complex ways by every gravitational field it encountered, so that when the light entered our telescope, we had no idea where it originated and had to calculate what its light spectrum was before it was distorted.
Matter
Matter is basically made of atoms dancing in space, and these atoms consist of a nucleus with electrons orbiting around it, the simplest atom being hydrogen (one proton and one electron). Then there are various particles not in combination but dancing free (electrons, protons, neutrons, etc.) These, in turn, are made of quarks—just ghostly apparitions, faint quiverings in a world of space.
And so from what we thought of as a solid piece of rock, we find the particles occupy only a minute part of its volume. Where did our solid, dependable world go? It turned into a world of almost nothing!
Many strange and unexplained events take place in scientific experiments. For instance, a particle showing characteristics of a particle can change into a wave with all of a wave's characteristics (and vice versa), but cannot be observed as both a wave and particle at the same time. In daily life we do not observe, for instance, a chair change into a table and then back to a chair.
Also, electrons can materialise on the other side of a screen without appearing to go through it, and in quantum physics experiments, sometimes atomic particles materialise out of the blue. An electron has to rotate 720 degrees to get back to its original position, whereas we can do the same thing by rotating just 360 degrees.
Two particles travelling close to the speed of light and emanating from the same source have the ability to know what is happening to each other by what appears to be telepathic communication and to react instantaneously to each other's movements.
Scientists can observe and register the position of a particle but not its path, and they can observe and register the path of a particle but not its position, whereas in our "normal" world we can see both path and position of an object at the same time.
The weight of a particle changes with its speed. For instance, a proton travelling at just under the speed of light would weigh twenty thousand times more than at rest.
Cosmic rays travelling from other parts of the universe take many millions of years to reach us and pass straight through our bodies at the rate of one hundred particles per second.
We have discovered four forces that hold our world together. These are the electro-magnetic, gravity (although this is not strictly a force), the weak, and the strong
It is estimated by modern cosmologists that all the matter known to us in the universe is between 1 per cent and 10 per cent of the whole. The rest of the universe is occupied by dark matter that we as yet cannot register on our instruments but which we know to exist by its gravitational effect. Mind boggling, isn't it, that between 90 and 99 per cent of the universe is unknown to science?
Living in the Past
All events we experience are events that happened in the past. This means that at sunrise, when the Earth revolves on its axis to reveal the sun, we are looking at what the sun looked like approximately 8.5 minutes previously. Its actual position is 8.5 minutes higher in the sky. If you want to see where the sun actually was, wait 8.5 minutes and that would have been its position at sunrise. At sunset, of course, the sun had already gone below the horizon 8.5 minutes earlier.
Events that happened in outer space ten thousand million years ago, events that happened to the nearest star outside our solar system four years ago, events that occurred on our sun 8.5 minutes ago, and the moon 1.25 seconds ago, down to happenings in our living room micro-seconds ago, all arrive at our location together, giving us a mixed bag of close and distant history at the same time.
If it were not for stars in the past exploding and becoming supernovas, spewing vast amounts of energy into space, and this energy changing into the elements, then life on Earth would not exist. These elements are what your body is composed of, which means your body originated in the stars.
My body is at rest, sitting in a chair, not moving. That seems a true statement of fact. But my body is travelling with the Earth's surface at approximately one thousand miles per hour around the axis. My body is travelling around the sun at approximately sixty seven thousand miles per hour, and around our galaxy at approximately half a million miles per hour. You can guess at what speed my body is travelling around the universe!
Here are some other theories that scientists have about the universe:
There are an infinite number of other universes parallel to ours.
Super-space exists, where there are many more dimensions than our three dimensional world.
The possibility of time going backwards.
The "superstring" theory is that all objects in the universe are composed of filaments (strings) and membranes (branes).
There are white holes—regions in space where matter is entering our universe.
The existence of wormholes connecting universes with one another.
The Chaos theory is that there is an apparent lack of order and so is unpredictable, but also obeys some laws or rules.
The Chaos theory is that there is an apparent lack of order and so is unpredictable, but also obeys some laws or rules.
The Hologram theory is that every point in space is also every other point in space.
These are just a few of many theories showing that we are constantly changing our view of the universe.
The conclusions we can draw from this chapter are that the world we experience is expanding at great speed, that time is not constant but is changed by gravity or speed of travel, and that space is not equal everywhere but is warped by gravity. We also know that space/time are interwoven, that we can never experience anything happening now, only events which happened in the distant or near past, and that the world is not solid at all but almost all space with just a ghostly "something". And we know that particles can materialise out of nothing, particles can appear on the other side of an obstacle without going through it, that at least 90 per cent of material is unknown to us, and that when we think we are stationary we are actually travelling at great speed.
Now, this is not the world we were brought up in. This is not the world we were programmed for. We were programmed for a nice, solid, dependable world where time ticked by "as regular as clockwork". We and our world were stationary, and the sun, moon and the stars went round and round. We were programmed for a world of make believe, where make believe is real and the real world is false. Now, there is nothing wrong with that if it works for you. But what is wrong is if you start to inquire into the real universe holding beliefs about yourself that have never been tested and are used as part of your observer's tool kit. It is dangerous to use untested beliefs, because the observer's belief changes the conclusion reached, and Mind will defend its beliefs to the very last degree. I believe many of our leaders in science are under the influence of untested beliefs when they come to their conclusions.
Chapter Two
PERCEPTION AND BELIEF
The greatest hindrance to our understanding of reality is the belief that:
1. "we" are human;
2. "we" are in a body;
3. "we" are a body;
4. "we" operate in time/space dimensions;
5. "we" are born, grow old and die, and
6. "we" are one of many individuals.
These beliefs about ourselves are of fundamental importance because they are built into the tools with which we probe the universe. However, the number of people believing something does not make it true—at one time people believed the Earth to be flat, but the belief could not alter the truth. The belief that "we" are a human body is universally held, and yet I can find no evidence for it. In this chapter I would like to show how and why I believe we got it wrong. Looking at the body and how we perceive the world will give us the clue to what is really happening.
Our Body
The composition of the physical body is material which has been re-arranged in the physical world to form a very complex, independent instrument for sensing a specific, small range of electro-magnetic wave lengths (sight), a small range of wavelengths which are transmitted through gas (hearing), and a sensing of material that is of similar density to the instrument (touch, taste and smell), plus built-in mobility to explore its environment, and information channels.
Our Sense of Sight
Because sight is of such importance, we will examine how this sense works first. An enormous range of wavelengths bombards the environment in which our body moves, but only a narrow band of these wavelengths is registered by our sense of sight. Visible light (visible to humans, that is, for some other creatures have the ability to see a different part of the range from us) travels from the source, reflects off the surface of an object into our eye, the lens focuses the light as an inverted image on to the sensitive retina, and specialised rods and cones of the retina react to the light by producing an electrical/ chemical code.
Thus, we are no longer dealing with light. This code is duplicated by the next nerve cell, and the next, and the next, etc., until it has travelled relay fashion up the optic nerve and finally reaches the visual region of the brain where it is assessed by, Mind. Mind is running a constant decoding department.
Knowing that this particular code is from the visual area, a system has been devised over millions of years of evolution to change these codes into an understandable picture concept that approximates to what is going on in the world where these codes originated. A picture is built up by Mind using memory banks of the past, plus the current information, and Mind then comes to a final decision as to the picture's meaning.
Our Sense of Hearing
Our appreciation of sound waves is brought about in a similar way to sight. The sound enters our ear, vibrates the ear drum, passes to the inner ear where it is sent as a code to the brain, and Mind processes the information. It turns the code into a sound concept, and, with the help of past experience, this concept when complete is acted upon.
Other Senses
Our senses of smell, taste and touch all make their way to the brain in the same way as codes which have to be interpreted by Mind. All five senses are being processed at the same time and a conclusion based on all five occurs so quickly that, by our standards, we could say it is instantaneous.
This programme is running constantly and is being continually updated. The conclusion we can draw from this Mind function is that we have never, nor can we ever, directly experience the physical world. The only experience we can have is a composed facsimile of the world, a composition Mind has made for us. I can never touch the world. The only effect I can have is by proxy. From my conscious position of Mind I can direct messages along nerve paths to various muscles, and by this method move the body about in the physical world. I am consciously indulging in Mind patterns. I have never done anything else. I have certainly never entered a body, never been born, grown old or died, nor have I been limited by space/time or dimensions.
The World of Colour
Whilst we are investigating our perception of the world, another illusion we hold is that the physical world is full of colour. This is perfectly O.K. for everyday life, but not for understanding the real world.
When we buy a tin of red paint and take off the lid we actually believe the paint to be red. This, of course, is an illusion because nothing in the physical world has any colour at all. What is actually happening is that the limited range of light we see strikes the surface of the paint and is then either absorbed or reflected. The reflected waves pass through the eye and on to the retina. If all the waves are reflected we interpret it as white paint, but in the case of our tin of paint most of the shorter wavelengths have been absorbed, leaving us with the longer wavelengths which we call red. Of course, the light source must be pure to see true white, but, unfortunately, our sun has a slight fault in its range of light which makes it impossible to experience true white in our world.
When the light is focused on to the retina, the various sensitive cells where the image falls react by sending a coded message to the brain along the optic nerve. The system devised by Mind is that if all visible codes are received then white is what you experience, and if some of the codes are missing then one of the colours of the spectrum is experienced. That's right! Colour is just a deciphering of codes—the material of the physical world has no colour whatsoever!
Mind continually builds a picture which approximates to the physical world. It makes the picture, and it colours the picture. The rose you held, marvelling at its colour and perfume, was actually a representation in Mind and not the actual rose. Knowing this may make you feel uncomfortable at first because you feel your cherished beliefs are being violated, but please stay with it because for every cherished belief you lose, you will be compensated in many other ways.
In order to give us a clear picture, the facts about the universe which we have so far discovered and tested have to be assessed, and we will not get that clear picture if we contaminate each discovery with unscientific beliefs which have never been held up to scrutiny, and yet have been accepted as true.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE GAME OF GOD by PETER BUXTON Copyright © 2012 by Peter Buxton. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface....................ixIntroduction....................xiii
1. The Basics....................1
2. Perception and Belief....................15
3. Mistaken Identity....................23
4. The Bodybuilding Process....................27
5. Belief Versus Proof....................35
6. Looking Out for Yourself....................43
7. The Bare Bones of the Fantasy....................47
8. The Fantasy Game....................53
9. Bodies In The Fantasy....................61
10. Random Jottings....................67
11. The Game of Life....................113
12. The Practical Bit....................121
13. Don't Do This, Do Do That!....................139
14. Words and Thoughts Can Be Our Best Friends....................145
Afterword....................155