The Seven Mysteries of Life

by Guy Murchie

  If you doubt that Earth is in essence a Soul School, I suggest you just test the idea as a hypothesis. I mean: try to imagine that you are God. This may not come naturally to you. To be God of course you have to be a creator. And a creator, by definition, must create. So you, the creator, now find yourself creating creatures (a word meaning created beings) who have to have a world to live in. But what kind of a world should they live in? Or, specifically, what kind of a world will you decide to create for them?

  This is a deeper question than at first you may have thought. For a mortal human it is certainly full of pitfalls and complexities. And you hardly can have ever devoted much time to pondering it. But what about checking into some known and already existing worlds around here? The moon, for a starter, is interesting, but airless, waterless, sterile and clearly unsuited at present for much life. Venus, on the other hand, is choked with clouds and hot as a stove at her solid surface. Mars is more promising, but seems mostly an endless, dusty, arctic desert with an oxygen-deficient atmosphere as vacuous as is air twenty miles above the earth. Jupiter and the giant planets are deathly cold on their visible surfaces of ammonic supertyphoons two thousand miles deep descending to probable oceans of methane. If there are any watery layers below the methane, it is hard to imagine them being an ideal abode for life, particularly the life of the mind and the spirit.

  But now take a good look at Earth. Compared to those other worlds, she looks wonderful. Of course I'll admit I can't help having some bias in favor of this little third planet, seeing as I am human and not God, though I try mightily to overcome it. But all the same, even allowing for my humanness, I cannot help thinking that the virtues of Earth represent more than local vanity. In the first place, Earth's surface is extraordinarily varied and educational, not all ocean, not all desert, all lava, all cloudy nor all any one thing, like most other planets. Instead it is part sea, part land and part ice. Not only that, but the more habitable of the three, the land, is full of contrast, being part forest, part open plain, part desert, part mountains and part swamp or tundra with lots of lakes and rivers thrown in. And the sky, instead of being totally empty as on the moon and Mercury or completely cloud-blanketed like Venus, is almost exactly half clear and half cloud, so you can see the sun, moon and stars, yet also in your turn partake of rain, snow, hail, thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, even rainbows.

  As for life and adventure, Earth is literally teeming with it. Creatures are not only walking, creeping and slithering all over the land, but burrowing under it, climbing the trees above it, swimming in the seas around it, flying through the air, even dwelling invisibly within each other, trying out, as we have seen, every imaginable mode of locomotion, of communication, of preying, eating, sheltering and propagating their kind. Earth is a place full of conflicts, surprises and surmises, multiple and bewildering revelations, evolving morals and heartrending struggles with adversity, of growing complexity, social uncertainty, political compromise, economic feedback and philosophical paradox. Earth provides the optimum, if not the maximum, in prolonged stimulation of body and mind and, most particularly, she excels in educating the spirit. In short, in the tiny portion of the universe thus far revealed to man, she is far and away the top-ranking Soul School available.

  Honestly now, if you were God, could you possibly dream up any more educational, contrasty, thrilling, beautiful, tantalizing world than Earth to develop spirit in? If you think you could, do you imagine you would be outdoing Earth if you designed a world free of germs, diseases, poisons, pain, malice, explosives and conflicts so its people could relax and enjoy it? Would you, in other words, try to make the world nice and safe - or would you let it be provocative, dangerous and exciting? In actual fact, if it ever came to that, I'm sure you would find it impossible to make a better world than God has already created. Or even to free it from any basic limitation it has without doing more harm than good.

  I know it seems almost blasphemous to associate pollution with spiritual beauty, yet overcoming such a prejudice is one of the first lessons of the Soul School, where decay is as much a part of life as growth and to be found in many of its loveliest features, from the smell of the rose to the flame of the maple. A rotting log, for example, may exhibit the graceful arboreal designs of bark beetles who tunneled blindly before the bark was shed. Even discarded tin cans on an unswept city street may be pressed into the abstract pose of blight. And, by mystic law, no depth of earthly imperfection but harbors as great a potential height of perfection. Even into the disciplined laboratories of science. In fact, I'm told, crystallographers see proof of this under the microscope, where a molecular imperfection must be present to initiate what they term a self-perpetuating, spiral dislocation (page 450), which alone permits the accretion of ions, layer upon layer, so they can grow into a single, whole gem-perfect crystal. Similar imperfection steers crystal growth in bones, aligns fibrils in muscles and seems to be a mysterious factor in the construction of everything from microdust to giant stars.

  Mental and spiritual aspects of all protoplasm and organisms, including the Soul School's own special product, the soul, are even more mysterious. Essentially independent of space and time, the soul of course exists and reaches far beyond matter. Which explains Baha'u'llah's comment that "it is still, and yet it soareth; it moveth, and yet is still." Also his further description of the soul as "a sign of God, a heavenly gem ... whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel - even while, among all created things, it is the very first to realize something of the excellence of its Creator."

  There are many people on Earth still of a mind to follow blindly the ancient superstition that all misfortune in life is meted out by God in His anger over the sins of man. But that is an error, says Baha'u'llah, for "tests in life are not punishment but rather serve to reveal the soul to itself. ... Neither need we dread the disasters that come to each individual life ... according to station. For the earth in essence is a workshop, a crucible for the molding and refining of character." It is definitely not a global art gallery, nor a playground nor a torture chamber, though it may show temporary elements of all of these. Instead it is a Soul School, the perfection of which paradoxically is hidden within its imperfection.

  I've heard it said that man's body needs the pig, as does his soul the eagle. If so, the Soul School is where he will find out how to reconcile the two. For this is a serious establishment in a venerable cosmos where we learn by trying and doing. Despite local appearances, ours is not a world composed entirely of neat three-acre lots, each sheltering a contented, well-fed, well-adjusted family that has never experienced mud, cancer, bugs, accidents, poverty, wars or rumors of wars. No, this is the place where a step is taken every day from thinking, "Someone ought to do it but why should I?" to "Someone ought to do it so why not I?" This is the planet where the bowel that issues entropy shares blood and nourishment with its neighbor, the womb, that issues negentropy. It is Saint Augustine's epic meeting ground between "Brother ass, the body, and his rider, the soul." It is where many a good man persists in denying his soul by telling himself it would be inhuman to deny his body - all because he has not yet discovered it is actually only his outdated animal body that is holding back the vast potential of his evolving human soul.

  As spirit thus distributes itself through the world, obviously it will not treat all souls alike. For, in the service of justice, the Soul School must deal with us as individuals, making full allowance for the fact that the trials and lessons of one soul are rarely exactly appropriate for another. Thus arise the familiar and often puzzling disparities in life's fortunes, like the exploding bombshell in a battlefield that inflicts cruel suffering upon one soldier, bestows heavenly relief in a hospital on another and grants a third his mystic release from life altogether. In a similar way Earth's approaching catastrophe of adjustment to germination may, for some souls, turn out instead to be a metastrophe of hope, a sort of musical beyond-beat or spiritual purge that will clear the way for general
and joyous recognition of spiritual values, an aspect of the Soul School that I cannot hope to explain in any reasonable way because, quite simply, it is a matter of faith.

  Faith of course is mystical and often a key in the struggles of mind and spirit - as when Jesus said to the father of the epileptic, "If thou canst believe: all things are possible to him that believeth." To which, paradoxically, the tearful man replied, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9: 23-24).

  For faith means more than holding something to be true. It requires action. It says: "I decide to do it. I stake my existence on it." Columbus did not just think he was right. He laid his life on the line. So did Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong.

  Faith is likewise a spiritual form of vision. The Arabs said as much in their ancient proverb: "The eye is blind to what the mind does not see." Which really means: "Believing is seeing."

  THE AXIOMATIC PROOF

  We hear a lot from scientists and others who maintain that the criterion of experience (say, a physical experiment) is superior to what they call the dogma of religion, but I wonder whether they remember or were ever made aware that science can experience only what it measures while religion may tune in on the even wider experience of things beyond measure.

  "Is there any real evidence to support this suggestion?" you may ask. "No," I must reply. "I know of nothing likely to convince a skeptical modern scientist. Certainly there is no proof through logic." For religious experiences are spiritual truths, if they are anything, and beyond the reach of the thinking mind. You cannot get to them with common sense or by any deductive reasoning. You must go deeper, using what I would call the axiomatic proof.

  Do you remember how you learned Euclidean geometry in school? You were presented first with an axiom such as: "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points." This was self-evident. It needed no logic. You didn't have to prove it but would simply accept it as true because it felt right in your bones. Matter of fact: being unprovable is the first criterion for an axiom. If it can be proved, it isn't an axiom but a theorem. If it cannot be proved, it may be an axiom and significantly may convey a feeling of absolute conviction through a knowledge deeper than thought. At the very least, an axiom is mysterious because it is made essentially of heart, not mind.

  So hold fast to your axioms, brother man. Pay no money, pay only heed. For the axiomatic proof I am offering you knows no price. If it be overlooked by thinkers, it will be understood by seers. It is the realization that a profound, irrational quality in a concept, such as the timbre of its beauty, should be enough, unsupported and unpondered, to establish its truth. And who would doubt that John Keats fathomed as much when he wrote of his Grecian Urn, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"?

  For my part, I just cannot imagine anything being false if only it be beautiful enough. For beauty is its own proof, and it pertains very much to the world. I mean I don't think my dreams capable of portraying anything more beautiful than this world and universe - certainly not while I am in my current state of soul. Reason tells me that higher spiritual developments almost surely exist elsewhere in the firmament, but that does not necessarily place them in more beautiful worlds. Perhaps too my rhapsody with Earth is merely my personal limitation, though I suspect that those who think they can imagine greater beauty must be missing much of what is here. Of course I concede there is ugliness on Earth and misery and ignorance and hate, while peace often seems far away. But to me, beauty does not require tranquillity, nor even happiness, though it helps create both.

  Contrast and struggle, as I've suggested, far from diluting beauty, only etch it deeper. For spiritual beauty of the highest order seems dependent on contrast most of all. By nature, it needs something to rise above, some darkness to illume, a negation to turn positive, a void to punctuate with islands, with lakes, with trees, with stars... Certainly supreme beauty needs more than a province, a sea or a species to dwell in. It needs a world!

  And by such means I see the abstraction we have called Polarity transcending toward ultimate Divinity, which is thus revealed as the Mystery of mysteries, the great Mystery that embraces all our other mysteries of life, the unknowable Essence that many call by the name of God. But what matters it what we call It? It is abstruse, even bewilderingly abstruse, and remains so whether or no we accept that somehow by Its agency, out of utter nothingness is arisen everything in the Universe. Its station plainly implies intelligence, indeed Intelligence so far beyond the human as to justify the adjective "divine."

  This, however, need not leave you or anyone behind for, as Ali told a bewildered humanity in the seventh century, "Within thee the universe is folded." So be assured, dear earthling, that you are parcel of all mankind, of all life, of all matter, of all mind, of all spirit in the Universe. Even though the Mystery includes a veil to hide its awesome Glory from our feeble understanding, console yourself that your skin and senses are really less the boundary they always seemed than a bridge joining you to the world. And, as truly, the Universe is more than the pattern of matter we sense, for it is literally the greater aspect of one's own self. With profound confidence then, and lovingly, may we pray: "Thy will be done, O Universe!"

  And as we drift wonderingly into transcendence, discarding at last our mundane selves to the tomb of Earth, gratefully receptive to the beauty of mysteries still hidden beyond the horizon of mystery, let us try not to forget that only God's Eye has the capacity to see God - yet, by His grace, that the stars can really smile, if we only knew. And that the veil of Glory, for all its blindingness, is woven of light.

  POSTLUDE

  The Meaning and the Melody

  * * *

  AS WE HAVE JUST CONCLUDED our main theme of the Seven Mysteries of Life, I shall briefly summarize them here with their meanings, so you may synthesize or digest the full philosophical message before tuning in to our final essay on the music of nature. The first mystery, Abstraction, shows our world to be basically intangible behind the seeming solidity of matter and life. Second is the Interrelatedness of all things, including animals, vegetables, minerals and stars. Third, the Omnipresence of life everywhere in every kingdom, even in the supersuperorganism of the Universe itself. Fourth, Polarity, the principle of symmetry expressed in polar opposites that interact and counterbalance throughout the worlds. Fifth, Transcendence through the natural law of progression from finitude toward Infinitude, using the tools of time, space and self. Sixth, the Germination of worlds, which happens once to every celestial organism and significantly is occurring now on Earth. And seventh, the greatest and ultimate mystery of Divinity, which includes all mysteries and remains the unknowable Essence behind Creation everywhere and forever.

  Having now been in mental orbit through these many pages, scrutinizing Earth with one eye and Universe with the other, pondering their life and lives inside and out and between, there comes the time to call it a book. So let us hearken to what we have learned by this venture and see what melody it plays.

  MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

  First we'll attend the seldom-heard lullaby of mellowing Earth, whom I behold hanging gourdlike upon the sparkling vine of space. On second glance though, the gourd looks more like a lute, that lilting contrivance first fashioned in Persia by stretching a sheepskin across a cut gourd and stringing it with silk. But what is our symbolic superlute singing as she spins? Such a question was only fit for poets or seers before this century, but now any competent geophysicist can answer it. The earth, as a musical instrument, knows two fundamental notes to which her body naturally oscillates: one with a vibration period of 53.1 minutes, the other of 54.7 minutes. Thus she sings a rather dissonant chord, like striking two adjacent keys on the piano. To be explicit, of course I should say Earth rather rings than sings, for solid planets are really more like gongs than lutes, and her ringing is sundered by her spinning, which perforce concentrates its energy around her swift equator while leaving her poles idling. She even dings forth
a third and torsional note of higher pitch (42.3 minutes), not to mention a flight of girlish overtones all the way to a giddy 3.7 minutes.

  Of course none of these planetary chimes can be heard by naked ears in their original slow frequency, since they are about twenty octaves lower in pitch than the tones we know and therefore, unless transposed, resemble silent periodic earthquakes. Yet they actually play the music of the spheres as divined by Pythagoras, and every living world in the heavens pours forth a comparable profundo harmony - even some pretty dead worlds like our barren moon. Do you remember the Apollo 12 astronauts who startled academe in 1970 by literally ringing the moon like a silver bell, hitting it with their discarded module so hard it reverberated for many minutes and probably (though unheard) for days?

  The electronic ears "listening" to this celestial music are very sensitive seismographs that record both horizontal and vertical waves traveling outward as expanding spheres of compression through rock and magma. One of them was subtle enough, I'm told, to detect a squeeze of one sixteenth of an inch in the earth's crust between New York and California. But it was the violent Chilean earthquake of 1960 that provided the first clearly "heard" ringing of Earth, when scientists excitedly observed that the volume of the oscillations from each blow of the Andean "clapper" upon the Pacific "bell" diminished by almost half every two days, while continuing to fade more and more slowly for weeks, particularly in the very dense planetary core. Out beyond the earth and moon a different and even more majestic kind of music is played by gravity and known to astronomers as interplanetary harmonics, also smaller resonances such as perturbations between the moons and rings of Saturn and newer-discovered relations involving scores of asteroids, like Alinda, Amor and Toro. Toro is an interesting example because it makes five orbits around the sun in the same time the earth makes eight and, being hardly a cubic mile in bulk, one would have thought it hopelessly dominated by our planet, yet its changing, lissajous, resonant orbit is so complex (and just dissonant enough) that every few millenniums it slips away from Earth and drifts into the gravitational clutches of Venus for a millennium or two before being tossed back to Earth in the first well-documented celestial game of catch.