A Universe hand-crafted for us all - Lent 2023: Day seven

This post should logically third in this series, as it is a continuation of my thoughts about the entire Universe, and again, the utter miracle that as a result of the Big Bang, galaxies and suns and planets have come to be, at least one of those planets hosting sentient life.

The odds against there being a Universe at all - rather than an inchoate cloud of random subatomic particles - or nothing at all, as matter and anti-matter destroy themselves mutually - are astronomical.

Yet there is life, and that life is sophisticated enough on our planet to have given rise to a technological civilisation. Looking at the barren rock that is our moon, or our (so far) unsuccessful attempts to find life on Mars or Venus, it's clear that when in the orbit of a star that's neither too small or too big or too unpredictable, there's only a narrow zone that favours life. And the same for any galaxy - there's a habitable zone, a sweet-spot, outside of which the evolution of life would be greatly limited.

So here we are in the right zone around the right sort of star in the right part of the galaxy. Yet there's more to the notion of a world fine-tuned for life than that. 

Just a small change in a handful of fundamental physical constants would make the entire universe quite different. The laws of science as currently understood, are underpinned by fundamental numbers, such as the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron which make it seem that they have been set precisely to make possible the development of life.

Let us look at one of these constants, the strength of the force binding protons and neutrons into nuclei, denoted by the symbol Epsilon, (ε). The value of ε is 0.007. If it were 0.006, no other atom other than hydrogen could possibly exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. Yet if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang; without hydrogen, life could not possible exist. 

All the other fundamental physical constants are similarly fine-tuned for life. Water freezes from the surface down rather than from the bottom up, unlike other liquids. That the energy state of the carbon atom allows for its abundance throughout the cosmos, a building-block of sentient life. Gravity is neither too strong nor too weak.

Had any one of these fundamental physical constants differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the Universe from its early state to where it is now would have proceeded quite differently and life as it is understood may not have been possible.

British astronomer, Fred Hoyle (famous for coining the term 'Big Bang' - ironically something in which he didn't believe) argued for a fine-tuned universe: "The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large and impressive".

So - you can either consider these many factors creating conditions to be mere chance, without all of which we would simply not be here to marvel at the fact - or we can begin to ask why the Universe has been set up in such a way. A miracle here, a one-in-a-billion chance there, a statistical improbability over there. [Some scientists posit that myriad Universes have failed to form because their fundamental constants were wrong.] But our Universe is here, because we are here to observe it. And the statistical improbability of the universe existing multiplied by the statistical improbability of you existing (see this post if you've not read it already)

Yet both are in place, the Universe, and you. Allowing life to exist here on our planet, at this particular time, and be observed by you.

This should raise the question of Purpose - why are we here, and why is the Universe unfolding the way it is. The odds that you are alive today, given the trillions of a misstep along the way, in a Universe that should not have arisen, leads me also to ask - would your consciousness still exist if your parents hadn't met?

Lent 2022: Day seven
Monism, dualism and non-dualism

Lent 2021: Day seven
How much spirituality do we need in our lives?

Lent 2020: Day seven
Build your own Religion - the Trappings of Faith

The role of consciousness in human spirituality - Lent 2023: Day six

Consciousness, the subjective experience of being aware of one's existence, is, I believe, fundamental to what it means to be alive. And indeed, being aware of being conscious is what it means to be human. But does consciousness transcend our brain and our body? And survive biological death?

All my life, I have had intimations that it can. Only weak hints; yet persistent and consistent, familiar over time, since childhood until today. 

But how to prove this? I don't think you can - nor can science disprove it. Try as science may to reduce consciousness to a phenomenon that arises from the physical structures within brains - it can't.

Perhaps it might - in 30 or 40 years. Perhaps artificial intelligence will go on to acquire not just a characteristic that resembles consciousness - but that would suggest consciousness is computational. Again, my intuition is that consciousness is not computational.

I cannot begin to posit in scientific terms how consciousness works. All I know is that it is the basis of me being me, sentient and aware. Consciousness is not the same as intellect; I am sure that a horse or cow, cat or dog or rat or mouse all possess consciousness without necessarily being aware that they are conscious. Is an ant or spider conscious, or just keratin-covered automata? Is a rosebush or pinetree conscious? A rock? A droplet of water?

Panpsychists believe that consciousness is everywhere. But is it a property of matter, along with mass and charge and spin? Or is consciousness just there in the background, a continuum, a field, between matter as well as within matter? Is consciousness present at the moment a subatomic particle pops into existence? I have no clue. I can merely intuit. The physics - the equations - are all too much for my intellect to grasp. But I do feel that there's something fundamentally special about the role of consciousness within our Universe. 

"If a tree falls over in a forest and there's no one there, does it make a sound?" The answer is clearly 'no', because the presence of an ear connected to a brain is needed to convert the effect of waves of displaced air into the phenomenon of sound. Similarly, without conscious observers to marvel at the night sky - would the Universe exist at all? This is without even running through all those amazing coincidences that were essential to the formation and expansion of the Universe in the first place.

The conscious observer is key to quantum physics, to observe the collapse (or not) of the wave function - is light a wave or a particle? And this suggests that consciousness is indeed fundamental to matter - and not a by-product or epiphenomenon of matter, as reductionist-materialists would have us believe.

Consciousness is different to thought, which is a process, a succession of neural interconnections. Thought powers the intellect, but intuition guides it. I shall be writing more about intuition as Lent goes on.

So if we can get a handle on consciousness, I'd then pose the question: Is consciousness the same as the soul, the immortal soul devised by theologians? [Worth having a read of my review of Are We Bodies Or Souls by Prof Richard Swinburne.

Lent 2022: Day six
Do you believe in life after death?

Lent 2021: Day six
How should we see God?

Lent 2020: Day six
Build your own religion - the tenets

Reality - the New God - Lent 2023: Day five

“God is dead”, declared Nietzsche in 1885. What did he mean? Over the two preceding centuries, we had seen the emergence of Enlightenment and the scientific method, driven by practical men such as Newton and Leibniz, Faraday, Maxwell, Coulomb, Lavoisier. Between them, they had created the underpinnings of the technological world that by 1885 had all but replaced the superstition-based belief system of Western civilisation. 

God as an explanation of everything was giving way to our understanding of chemistry, electromagnetism, gravity, steam power, calculus, the motion of celestial bodies.

Every effect had a cause, which could be reduced right down to fundamental principles. There was no longer the need for a God to explain all the phenomena that created our day-to-day reality. Everything in the Universe is matter. There is nothing but matter. Everything is physical. There is no such thing as a soul. Our precious consciousness is nothing but an epiphenomenon - an emergent property that evolved to dwell within our skulls.

But one thing troubled still mankind. God gave an answer to the most fundamental problem of them all - what happens to us after we die? The late 19th century had its own answer - and it wasn't one that most people wanted to hear. "You die - that's it. Nothing more. Your body is snuffed out. Your brain ceases to function, and because that's where thought occurs, you stop thinking and that's it really. There is no such thing as a soul!"

Whilst the rituals, the rosary beads, the incense, the litanies to all the saints could all be dropped with ease, the notion of our life being temporal and finite, bounded at both ends by birth and death, was uncomfortable. The awareness, growing ever since childhood, of our own mortality is not a merry thought.

By 1885, the old God was giving way to the new god -  Reality. That which we can perceive, count, measure, hold. Physical matter. Of which everything is made.

**********

The old God had his flaws. For one, he was human ("So God created man in His own image" - Genesis, 1:27). He was male. How twee this seems in a Universe of 200 billion galaxies, each of a 100 billion stars, that the Supreme Being had adopted the heterogametic form of h.sapiens as a defining differentiator! And that old God was co-opted to serve the human hierarchy; religion became an arm of social control ('Behave as the Scriptures demand, and you shall be rewarded with Eternal Life').

The French revolution and the execution of King Louis XVI were turning points in religious history, as the notion of the Divine Right of rulers to rule came to an end in Europe. Superstition was replaced by reason and logic. A secular state was created, and though monarchy returned briefly to France, the old God didn't.

But which God would replace the old one?

Science, so sure of itself.

Science, which has benefited humankind greatly in areas from healthcare to IT to travel to domestic convenience and comfort. 

But science is no longer as certain of everything as it once was; the more we know, the more we know we don't know. Science doesn't know how the Universe came into being, nor where it's going. Rationalists, materialists, physicalists all claim that the Universe is an accident and that you and I are random accidents on a world that just happened to be right for conscious life.

I don't believe that all humans are necessarily spiritual beings. Many are entirely content with that reality at human scale, the day-to-day reality of working, earning, spending, relaxing. No room, no time for self-reflection. Człowiek, który się nie zastanawia - 'the person who contemplates not'. People excited and motivated by prospects of luxury; people who don't experience any feelings of gratitude for being privileged with health and wealth. 

For these people, the death of the old God has left a vacuum that has been filled with Reality - and Matter. The New God. Solid, attainable. And so many of us have become Materialists. "If there's no supernatural or metaphysical - then give me something that's tangible. Something I can look at and touch. Something that delights me - and makes those without envious of me."

This is all well and good, but materialism has its costs in environmental terms. Our desire to own, to possess and display objects (fine clothes, jewellry, cars, properties) to experience the world through air travel to exotic destinations, is depleting resources and leading to climate change, that if unchecked will have catastrophic consequences.

A better way is needed!

Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil

Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God

Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism

The Nature of Reality (Pt 3) - Lent 2023: Day four

Having been bandying around numbers big and small for the past two days, I'll run some more past you that are mind-blowing. 

The first and simplest forms of life on earth appeared somewhere around 3.8 billion years ago as the late heavy bombardment came to an end. The appearance of life is a miracle. How we got from 'non-life' to 'life' - the latter being able to reproduce, passing on information to the next generation - science still hasn't determined. It's one thing to pass electricity through a chemical soup to create amino acids, its quite another to make something that can spontaneously breed. Science merely makes educated guesses. But somehow living organisms did emerge, a mere 700,000 or so years after our Planet formed.

Between that earliest life and you are - and here's the mind-blowing fact - trillions of individual ancestors, each one of which must have reproduced successfully. Indeed, an unbroken chain of reproduction links you all the way back to the last universal common ancestor. 

Every one of your antecedents managed to dodge death long enough to reproduce. Your bloodline has survived five massive (and numerous smaller) extinction events that killed off most of life on earth - but somehow spared your ancestors. 

Evolution was slow - for a billion years there was no change. Then multicellular slowly evolved. A distinction emerged between animals and plant life. Then came the Cambrian Explosion. Over the subsequent aeons, your ancestors transitioned from aquatic to terrestrial life, made it into mammalian form - four-legged at first, then bipedal - with ever-bigger brains and opposing thumbs that could fashion and use simple tools. 

Intelligence begat greater intelligence. Once hominids had worked out how to control fire, they learned to cook food; no longer did they have to put in so much effort to chew raw meat. This led to the jaw muscles that girdled the skull becoming weaker and weaker, which in turn allowed the cranial cavity to expand along with an expanding brain. 

In time, hunter-gatherers turned into part-time gardeners and later full-time farmers - with agriculture came towns and cities - and with them, civilisation. 

Our reality is no longer mud and straw and dust and frequent hunger. Our reality is built - bricks and glass and plastic and steel. No longer do we hunt or farm - we shop. We exchange the fruit of our labour - money - for goods. Those with more money utilise the surplus to display their superior status in our mammalian hierarchy.

OK - so here we now are. Marvel at the miracles that have been present at every stage of your evolutionary path from protozoan life; you sit warm and comfortable (I hope!) and reading these words on a technology that our species has developed with the span of two generations.

But the real marvel - the one that biology - physics - philosophy even - have yet to grasp is central to your reality. Consciousness. I will return to this throughout my Lenten series, for this phenomenon is at the heart of the great mystery of life - and what comes after.

Lent 2022: Day four
The Ego: what is it good for?

Lent 2021: Day four
Would the Universe exist without God

Lent 2020: Day four
Conscious Life after Death

The Nature of Reality (Pt 2) - Lent 2023: Day three

Yesterday I wrote about the inner space within the atom, of the force holding the quarks that form the neutron together, the nature of reality at the subatomic level, billions of billions times smaller than anything our eyes can see. The fundamental building blocks of our universe.

Yesterday I was juggling extremely small numbers, such as the diameter of a hydrogen atom. And something ten billion times smaller than that - the smallest distance that's theoretically possible - the Planck length (1.616 x 10^-35 meters). 

Today, we will be zooming right out to the furthest fringes of the observable Universe. Today I write about outer space - our solar system, our galaxy, and the 200 billion or so galaxies that make up what we currently perceive as the observable universe.

Since last year's Lent, the James Webb Space telescope has been successfully deployed. It has been transmitting stunning images of distant galaxies, as well as discovering exoplanets and trawling through our own asteroid belt. It is expected that it will deliver as many cosmological discoveries as the Hubble space telescope did before it, expanding the size of our observable universe.

One thing I learnt this past year from the numerous astronomy talks I've watched on YouTube is that the Oort Cloud, a shell of icy particles lying beyond furthest fringes of our solar system, extends out to some 3.2 light years from the Sun. This is about three quarters of the way between us and the nearest star system to ours - Proxima Centauri. Now, Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star, one-eighth of the mass of our sun. If it has its own equivalent of an Oort Cloud, this should extend out to less than half a light year from Proxima Centauri. Near neighbour on our doorstep, in other words.

Proxima Centauri is located about four and a quarter light years from our sun. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 87,400 light years across, and contains up to 400 billion stars. The nearest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, 2.5 million light years away. We are seeing it today as it looked during the Early Pleistocene epoch on earth, before the emergence of the earliest hominids. Andromeda contains around a trillion stars. The Milky Way and Andromeda are just two galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster, our local supercluster, which contains around 100 galaxies. It's 110 million light years across.

The observable Universe stretches 41.5 billion light years in each direction from us and contains around 200 billion galaxies (each of around 100 million stars on average). Beyond the edge of the observable Universe? We just don't know; light from beyond that distance isn't observable. It could be bigger - much vaster, but finite - or else it could be infinite - or it could be one of a number of universes, an infinite number even. We don't know.

However, we do know that just under 5% of our observable Universe is made up of matter - the atoms I wrote about yesterday, protons and neutrons, each made up of three quarks, bound together by the strong atomic force in a nucleus, surrounded by an electron shell [remember, hydrogen has no neutron]. We can postulate that the rest of the matter and energy of the observable Universe consists of dark matter (holding galaxies together) and dark energy (pushing galaxies away from one another). Although no one has detected either dark matter or dark energy, they are calculated to make up around 27% (dark matter) and 63% (dark energy) of the contents of the Universe - the 95% that isn't ordinary matter.

We know that Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. So why is the observable universe more than 13.8 billion light years in radius? It suggests that spacetime has expanded three times faster than light...

Trying to work out how fast the Universe is expanding isn't easy. The Hubble Constant, used to determine the speed with which galaxies are flying apart, has been variously calculated as being between 63 and 73 kilometres per second per megaparsec, is proving hard to hammer down into a number which squares with all observations. Again, right now, we don't know.

The reality of the observable Universe remains unknown to science ('the crisis in cosmology'), yet it's the same science that works so well on our human scale, that brings us such civilisational advances as the laptop and internet on which I am currently writing.

To help me put the subatomic and the galactic into perspective, I asked ChatGPT how many cubes, with each side one Planck length long, would fit into the observable Universe. Here's its answer:

The Planck length is approximately 1.616 x 10^-35 meters, and is believed to be the smallest measurable length scale in the universe.

To calculate the number of cubes with each side being a Planck length that can fit into the volume of the observable universe, divide the volume of the observable universe by the volume of one cube. The volume of one cube with each side being a Planck length is (1.616 x 10^-35)³ = 4.224 x 10^-105 cubic meters.

Dividing the volume of the observable universe (4 x 10⁸⁰ cubic Planck lengths) by the volume of one cube (4.224 x 10^-105 cubic meters) gives: (4 x 10⁸⁰) / (4.224 x 10^-105) = 9.47 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes.

Therefore, you can fit approximately 9.47 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes, with each side being a Planck length, into the volume of the observable universe*.

That's the biggest meaningful number in our Universe - of course you could continue multiplying it by successive orders of magnitude - but so what?

***** ***

The reason that I have been in recent years fascinated by physics and cosmology boils down to my quest for a better understanding of God.

If we are to reconcile science and spirituality, we need to start with an understanding of the physical nature of our reality, at the smallest and largest levels imaginable. And then to look for purpose - why all this came into being - and why our consciousness is here to observe it?

* UPDATE 2024: I asked Google Gemini the same question. It came up with exactly the same order of magnitude, but preceded by the number 5.44 rather than 9.47, and with a more subtle answer: 

In reality, packing identical spheres (analogous to cubes here) efficiently into a larger space leads to wasted space. The best known packing efficiency for spheres is around 74%, achieved by the Kepler conjecture. Applying this factor reduces the number of cubes by 26%, resulting in about 3.96 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes.

Lent 2022: Day three
Gratitude and Consciousness

Lent 2021: Day three
Would the Universe exist without us?

Lent 2020: Day three
Define your Deity

The Nature of Reality (Pt 1) - Lent 2023: Day two

We are comfortable within our reality - it's the one we perceive through our five senses, the reality that's at our scale. We're familiar with it, intuitively we get it. From the smallest thing our eyes can see on the tabletop, right out to hills on the far horizon. At our human scale, our basic, high-school grasp of classical physics works just fine: 

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." "Any object, totally or partially immersed in a fluid, is held up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced." "Momentum equals mass times velocity." And so on. This we can get our heads around; we understand it perfectly.

The chair on which I sit is solid. If it weren't, I'd fall right through it. I perceive my body and the chair to be solid; I can climb onto the chair and jump off - and then gravity brings me down to the kitchen floor at the rate of 9.8 metres per second squared. Gravity is a powerful force!

But let's get atomic. And then subatomic.

Our bodies are made out of around 7 x 10²⁸ atoms, 99% of which are hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. Each of them are very nearly empty. Let's take a hydrogen atom. Constituting around 9.5% of our mass, hydrogen atoms make up 63% of all the atoms within the body. Let's zoom right in on just one of those hydrogen atoms. One that's chemically bonded to another hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom, forming a molecule of water, which makes up 70% of our mass. 

Our lowly hydrogen atom is over 13.7 billion years old, having been formed, along with every other hydrogen atom in the universe, a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang - so it's three times as old as the Earth. 

Yet there's still has a lot of life left in it; particle physicists have calculated that it will decay in 9 x 10¹⁹ years' time. Yes, ninety billion billion years, so the 13.7 billion years is not even infancy. A good innings. And for the tiniest fraction of that time, it will have been a part of you.

Our hydrogen atom is 2.5 x 10^-24 meters across. A thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a millimetre.* Now, imagine blowing that up to the size of a cathedral dome. In its centre at this scale, we'll see a pea-sized nucleus consisting of a single neutron, made up of two 'up' quarks and one 'down' quark. The neutron is surrounded by a single electron the size of a grain of salt, whizzing around that neutron, somewhere within the radius of that dome. This electron is travelling at 2,200 kilometres per second, around 150th of the speed of light. Where is it? It is but a cloud of probabilities. And that electron has been in motion around that neutron ever since it was formed, less than 400,000 years after the Big Bang. Other than the pea and the grain of salt, the structure is empty.

And now back to our everyday reality. We consider that we are solid. We have mass. I have mass. My kitchen floor, my chair, have mass, and they are solid. And that mass of mine ensures that when I jump off my kitchen chair, I will be attracted by my kitchen floor, towards which I will inexorably fall. Because gravity is a powerful force! 

Well - it's nowhere near as powerful as the force that holds the quarks together within the neutron, which despite all of that subatomic emptiness maintains you as a solid object. Comparatively, gravity is extremely weak. It's six thousand trillion trillion trillion (6 x 10³⁹) times weaker than the strong nuclear interaction within the neutron.

We cannot easily get our heads around the inner workings of the atom - the stuff of which all things are made. 

So how then can we get our heads around the existence and nature of God?

[* To put the atomic scale into another perspective, let us consider the Planck Length, the shortest distance that can possibly exist, namely 1.616 x 10^-35 meters. Ten billion times smaller than the diameter of a hydrogen atom.]

Lent 2022: Day two
Objective/Subjective, Ego and Consciousness.

Lent 2021: Day two  
Your life: a miracle? Or something that just happened?

Lent 2020: Day two
The Physical and the Metaphysical; the Natural and the Supernatural

Lent 2023, Day One - Ash Wednesday

And so it begins, my 32nd Lent in a row; increasingly a time of contemplation rather than just self-denial. Giving up alcohol and meat for six and half weeks has become easy; a matter of routine. My practice of publishing daily blog posts throughout Lent began in 2020 with the Build Your Own Religion series; a demanding discipline, which I intend to continue this year.

The overarching theme of much of my writing on the subject of human spirituality is about reconciling the scientific with the spiritual - physics with metaphysics; our everyday reality on our human scale with the fundamental reality of the subatomic and the Cosmic.

And key to this is the nature of Consciousness, that underlies the essence of human existence. We all feel it; neither biology, physics nor philosophy, however, can pin it down with any degree of precision.

This year, I intend to look at some specific themes that I have puzzled over since last Lent. 

One is spirituality and neurodiversity. How many of us are truly 'neurotypical'? And how many of us display mild behavioural symptoms of one type or another of psychiatric disorders - and what relationship does that have with the way we consider matters spiritual or metaphysical? Does our neurodiversity as a species mean diverse ways to define and find God?

Going further afield, beyond our Solar System - beyond, indeed, the Milky Way: are we alone? If so, what does that fact mean for our understanding of why the Universe came into being? And if not - and there are indeed alien civilisations across our galaxy and beyond - how do they define God and purpose in a spiritual cosmos? 

I also want to take a close look at human intuition, how it differs from instinct, and how it could serve as a conduit to the future, a portal of causality - the role of intuition in guiding our thoughts and actions.

Another is the question relating to religious practice vs religious belief; indeed - to what extent should we anchor ourselves to any one religion, rather than seeking answers across the wisdom of all religions, looking for a highest common factor? How important is practice in terms of conscious experience that renders us more open to communion with the Eternal and Infinite? Becoming calm and metaphysically alert - can practices, such as meditation, help us optimise the state of consciousness in which we find ourselves?

A recurring theme on this blog is the role of gratitude and will when it comes to forestalling misfortune, staving off illness and moving forward on one's spiritual path.

These questions and random others that might pop up along the way will appear on my blog each day in the run-up to Easter Sunday.

Over the years, I've written a fair body of Lent-related texts (over 300), and outside of Lent, another couple of hundred more texts on human spirituality. I have yet to index these in any systematic way, other than applying simple labels (see panel to the left); each Lent builds on the previous ones, and so the next 45 blog posts should also act as an updated synthesis of my current thinking upon these areas.

Lent 2022 Day 1

Lent 2021 Day 1

Lent 2020 Day 1

Lent approaches

For me, Lent is the spiritual high-point of the year - on so many levels. 

The most basic is the Observation of the Returning Sun. Although Easter is a moveable feast and can occur as early as 22 March and as late as 25 April, the Lenten period that precedes it correlates with the coming of spring. As I write, plant life is wintering; there are no flowers and no deciduous leaves. Easter Sunday this year falls on 9 April; by then, spring in Poland should be getting under way. My orchard, full of apples in September, is now full of dead twigs, and though blossom can't be expected until early May, by Easter, the miraculous rebirth will have started. Between now and then, each day can bring intimations of spring to revel in. The sun much higher in the sky will bringing more warmth and evening daylight, life will feel brighter, more joyous. I will be able to go out unburdened by the weight of my heavy, hooded, quilt-lined winter parka. Please - Observe the Miracle.

Lent is traditionally a time for self-denial - which really is more about self-control and restraint; for the 32nd year in a row, I shall give up drinking alcohol, and as for many of those 32 years, I shall give up eating meat. Good habits that I initiated during Lent have tended to stay on and become part of my year-round lifestyle. Having given up confectionary, cakes and biscuits over successive Lents, they have disappeared from my diet entirely. And in general - reining in consumption, making do and being satisfied with what one has is also beneficial.

But above all, Lent should be a time of reflection on matters spiritual, a chance to step back from daily routines and consider the most important questions concerning our existence. What is life - how did it come into existence? What is it for? What is its purpose? We are more than meat-covered skeletons that accidentally came into being on this spherical rock hurtling around the sun as it makes its way around the centre of our galaxy. We have our scientific explanations and equations that reduce our reality into mere matter and energy, cause and effect. 

But is there more to life than that? I am certain that there is. And the knowledge that there is - the conviction that there is - makes life joyous, makes it worth living, giving thanks and savouring each moment.

So join me then from Ash Wednesday, 22 February, for my daily reflections and meditations, right through to Easter.

This time last year:
A blustery day

This time two years ago:
Would the Universe exist if you were not there?

This time seven years ago:
Dreams and visions of past lives

This time eight years ago:
Monist or dualist: which are you?

This time nine years ago:
Grim prospects for Ukraine

This time ten years ago:
Wrocław's new airport terminal

This time 11 years ago:
A study in symmetry: Kabaty Metro station

This time 12 years ago:
To the Devil with it all - a short story

This time 13 years ago:
Waiting for the meltdown

This time 15 years ago:
Flat tyre

Hipolitów

Villages are there to be discovered; here's one that's easy to miss being off the main roads - the tiny village of Hipolitów (population in 2018: a mere 38 souls); bordered to the west and north by forests, to the south by orchards and to the east by the Czarna river, which has a tendency to burst its banks and spill over into the marshy meadows alongside it. To the east of the Czarna is the much larger village of Sułkowice, home to the famous police-dog training centre.

I called by last weekend and again today, to approach it from different angles and get a feel for the spirit of the place.

Below: a small farm in Hipolitów, as seen from the road running into Sułkowice, ulica Ogrodowa ('garden street').

Below: track running through the significant tracts of forest to the west of Hipolitów; sandy soil - birch, aspen and fir predominate. These are state-owned forests - Lasy Państwowe. Here and there, patches of heathland, where no trees grow, only low scrub.

Below: a homage to Ansel Adams' Aspens.

Below: descending from the forest into Hipolitów from the west. Unlike my local forest above Jakubowizna, there's no sign of recent tree-felling activity around here. Lasy Państwowe has felled as much timber in 2022 as in the past five preceding years.

Below: houses begin to appear, new ones at that - it's quite likely that the population has grown since 2018, with newcomers' cars bearing Warsaw or Piaseczno plates. The current online map of the local authority shows 24 individual plots - a mixture of brand new energy-efficient houses and tumbledown wooden cottages.

Below: altared states. Traditional wayside chapel, Hipolitów. Most villages around here will have one.

Below: view from the bridge, looking down the road towards Sułkowice. Note the yellow post by the side of the road, indicating the presence of a recently laid gas pipeline to Hipolitów.

Below: view from the bridge II - looking south towards Chynów beyond the treeline. The river Czarna flows north, eventually reaching the Vistula near Czersk.

Below: just across the bridge, around the corner, the border.

Below: if this were England, the building at the top of the lane would be a pub - the Royal Oak, the Fox and Hounds, the Crown - something like that; a place to rest my legs and sup back a frothy pint of ale before continuing my journey. A tin of insipid beer from a village shop isn't something I'd pause for - even if there were a shop here. Which there isn't, but then everyone has a car. I even spotted some electric cars!

Left: looking north from the edge of Hipolitów, towards the settlement's furthest-flung house. I am getting a strong vibe around here, that rural-USA-1940's feel.

Below: a bit more of that same vibe... a row of medium-tension pylons bringing electrical power to rural communities. The police-dog training school is behind the trees to the right of this picture.

Below: hard to believe that this is a river valley - the Czarna is down there somewhere... well before the treeline... Such flat lands flood easily.

Below: blink and you'll miss it - the roadsign to Hipolitów from  ulica Ogrodowa. The one way in by car.

One by one, I am visiting all settlements surrounding Jakubowizna to a radius of 5km on foot; still a few to go. Quiet, peaceful and pleasant.

This time two years ago:
Your life: a miracle - or just something that happened?

This time five years ago:
The evolution of the biosphere cannot be predicted

This time six years ago:
Jeziorki meltdown in the fog

This time seven years ago:
Health, happiness and wholeness

This time eight years ago:
Kicking off Lent again 

This time nine years ago:
Improving the procurement of Poland's infrastructure 

This time ten years ago:
Wait to spend or save lives now? An infrastructure quandary

This time 14 years ago:
It's not rich countries that build roads, its roads that build rich countries

This time 15 years ago:
Snow that was doomed to melt

"Bloody reductionist-materialist vandals!"

Exiting Ratusz-Arsenał Metro station by Aleja Solidarności yesterday, I came across this thought-provoking piece of street art featuring Prof Stephen Hawking (below), which has prompted me to write a blog post about it.

The quote, attributed to him, reads: Fundamentalna zasada rządząca wszechświatem: przyczyny występują przed skutkami, nigdy odwrotnie. ("The fundamental principle ruling the Universe: causes appear before the effects, not vice versa.")

Having done a bit of Googling, I can see this is a popular quote in Polish, though it's not one that appears in Hawking's own language, English. Googling further, the source of this quote is an article Hawking allegedly wrote for the Daily Mail, which was translated into Polish and appeared in the weekly Forum* in May 2010. Except - fishing out all the pieces by Hawking that appeared in the Daily Mail between 2009 and 2011, there's nothing remotely like this quote in any of them. I've scrolled through reams of Hawking quotes from various sources; again, this doesn't figure.

I suspect some creative journalist or 'translator' just made it up, using Hawking's name to lend respectability to the idea. In any case, Hawking's mind was way too sharp to line up cause and effect in such a simplistic manner. Time's arrow does indeed appear to use to fly in the direction of increasing entropy, but in a block universe, cause and effect could be simultaneous. String theory, 30 years old and neither proved nor disproved, suggests something similar. Some metaphysicists like Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake even posit that the mind can 'pull' effect out of a future, thus predating its cause.

The notion that causes appear before the effects and not vice versa is pure Newton; the classical physics of billiard balls and planets orbiting stars; "every action has an equal and opposite reaction". The discovery of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle - and gaping holes in our understanding of what led up to the Big Bang, or the nature of dark matter and dark energy, suggest that our understanding of the Universe isn't up to the task of linking cause and effect in such a simplistic way. 

A brief acquaintance with retrocausality would disabuse the interested reader of the notion that cause must always precede effect, especially at the subatomic level. Feynman diagrams can run both ways, from left to right as well as right to left - implying a future that can take place before the past.

Even so, Hawking was definitely not a metaphysicist; for him, "heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark". (And yes, this is a pukka Hawking quote.) Yet today, an ever-growing body of scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is not merely an emergent phenomenon that evolved as neuronal activity in animals reached a critical mass, but a property fundamental to the Universe, manifesting itself to us in our minds, which are located for the duration of our biological lives in our brains. After which, the Return to Forever.

If you have ten minutes to spare, do watch this short interview with Prof Bernard Carr, mathematician and astronomer (who studied under Hawking at Cambridge, where he did his doctorate).

The notion that consciousness pervades the Universe, that there is something far deeper at work which our perceptions, wedded to realism on the human scale, have yet to fully fathom.

Reductionist-materialists often take pops at those whose worldview has room for the metaphysical and the supernatural with the same dogmatic zeal as the religious fundamentalists who state that the written word of God is All. The truth surely lies somewhere in between.

I am grateful, however, for 3fala.art for this mini-mural which at least raises some interesting questions.

* Forum appears every two weeks since 2013.

This time last year:
Viaduct at Węzeł Zamienie opens

This time two years ago:
Future, past

This time three years ago:
Birds return to the frozen ponds

This time five years ago:
Bending the forces of physics with your will

This time seven years ago:
Giving it up for Lent

This time nine years ago:
North-east of Warsaw West revisited

This time ten years ago:
Looking for answers

This time 11 years ago:
Fresh powder in Warsaw's parks

This time 13 years ago:
Another Lent starts

This time 15 years ago:
Okęcie dusk

Right-of-way cobble*

Over the past two weeks or so, a new sign has appeared at the bottom end of ulica Dworcowa in Nowe Grobice. This thoroughfare (literally 'station street') runs parallel to the railway line, from Sułkowice station to the DK50, Warsaw's southern ring-road. The last 400m or so of the 1.2km-long road is unasphalted (the asphalt stretches only to the last house along ul. Dworcowa). And this part of the road rises along with the embankment built up on either side of the tracks as it approaches the road bridge. Over the past year, the embankment has been properly shored up against erosion, with geogrid and rock. The work was completed in the autumn.

Below: ATTENTION PRIVATE PROPERTY ENTRY PROHIBITED HIGH EMBANKMENT

I call bullshit on that. This isn't private property - it's a right of way (see further down). And numerous footprints and bicycle tracks in the soft ground suggests that local folk are ignoring this.

The word wstęp - as opposed to wjazd - means all forms of entry. Wjazd would only be a prohibition on vehicular access.

Below: here's ul. Dworcowa, Sułkowice in the distance (and you can just about make out where the asphalt starts). You can also see the embankment to the left.

Left: update from one week later (Saturday 18 Feb) - this sign has appeared at the other end of this stretch, by the asphalt. Taken literally, it would prohibit access to homes. But note - this is a warning triangle, not a prohibiting circular 'no entry' sign. One for the lawyers.

Below: this is as official a map as you can get in Poland - from the gmina (municipality or commune) of Chynów. The DK50, here named ul. Grójecka, cuts through this section, the railway cuts under it, to the right of the railway runs ul. Dworcowa. All the way down to the main road. Right of way is evident - clear and unambiguous. 

Click to enlarge (the red circle marks the location of the offending sign).

I am assuming that PKP PLK (the railway infrastructure operator) has placed the sign, as a bit of dupokrycie ('arse-covering') and spychotechnika ('buck-passing') measure - should someone fall down the embankment, it's not their fault. So rather in their bureaucratic mind-set, the fact that the alternative for local pedestrians and cyclists are sent on a detour that involves an extra kilometre is not something they've considered. It's not just the distance - it's the fact that it's bloody dangerous. The alternative involves a kilometre of main road (up to the traffic lights) with no pavement, below. Photo taken on a Sunday where heavy-goods vehicle movement is (technically) prohibited. This stretch of road is infinitely more dangerous for a pedestrian than the trackside path.

Below: same stretch of road on a Saturday; truck after truck after truck. How can walking alongside such traffic be less dangerous than using the path by the railway embankment? PKP PLK doesn't care - it's somebody else's issue. It has ever been thus. Safety is not a joined-up issue.

Left: Pedestrians cross over the Warsaw-Radom line along the DK50 viaduct, rebuilt last year. There's a proper barrier to protect them against road traffic on one side and a barrier to stop them falling onto the tracks on the other. But before the barrier begins, there's that embankment entirely exposed. But again, if a pedestrian comes off the footpath and tumbles down here - it's not PKP PLK's responsibility.

I can only imagine that the people responsible for placing that sign know damn well that it will be roundly ignored by the locals. It cannot be enforced - unless the railway authorities place SOKist patrols here. Should I accost one, I'll give them an earful.

What PKP PLK should do of course is to extend a footpath/cyclepath along the last 400m of ul. Dworcowa (pavement or asphalt, with a barrier along one side if they don't think users are careful enough not to go over the edge). A sign banning people from walking or cycling along an existing road has no place here and is unacceptable.

* Cobble - cobblestone = moan. "Havin' a cobble about something." Cockney rhyming slang.

This time last year:
Sunshine, I need the sunshine

This time seven years ago:
Consciousness outside the body

This time nine years ago:
Sustainability and the feminisation of business

This time ten years ago:
Lent kicks off (somewhat earlier than this year)

This time 11 years ago:
Feeling at home on the ice

This time 12 years ago:
Wetlands in (a milder) winter

This time 15 years ago:
Railway miscellany

Wetlands between Sułkowice and Gabryelin

Between Sułkowice and Gabryelin with its misnamed station lies swampy land lying alongside the Czarna ('black') river. A small part of this wetland is owned by Polish state forestry operator, Lasy Państwowe - the rest is unclaimed marsh. You can see this clearly from the train as it rushes past; recent track modernisation has focused on proper drainage to ensure the rail bed won't be washed away from underneath. The village that lies to the west of the tracks is called Ławki (ława = bench, ławka, diminutive of ława, therefore 'little bench', ławki, plural =little benches).

Below: the Czarna river demarcating the border between Sułkowice and Ławki, a Warsaw-bound Koleje Mazowieckie train heading north. I like the colour of the land at this time of year - burnt umber, yellow ochre, black, grey and white.

Below: across the Czarna, across the tracks, and into Little Benches from the north side. This is ulica Południowa ('South Street'); no asphalt.

I have long intended to explore this wetland when it ices over - sadly, the past week, which saw night-time temperatures reach lows of -9C, ended with a thaw, and there weren't enough consecutive days of deep frost for the whole area to freeze over. But I did manage to walk alongside the track on the dirt road restored (for access to the new pumping station) during the modernisation of the Warsaw-Radom railway line. Below: this is what I'm talking about - it would be brilliant to have ice thick enough to stroll out into these wetlands. Only deep in mid-winter can one have a nose around this submerged terrain. I'd be interested to see what wildlife I'd spot, even at this time of year.

Below: this is an extensive - some 30 hectares - area of no-man's land, too wet for trees, too wet to farm, between the railway line and the houses of Ławki.

Below: Ławki from the north. This is ul. Główna ('Main Street'), which received asphalt and a (very narrow) pavement around the time the railway modernisation reached these parts. Note the bus stop; from here, you can catch the L19 local service to Pieczyska. The next stop along, Ławki, is the nearest bus stop to my działka (5km as the crow flies); going the other way, the L19 runs all the way to Piaseczno. 'Gimbus', by the way, is the school bus to the local gimnazjum ('junior high').

Below: approaching Czachówek Południowy station, a southbound InterCity train on its way to Kraków. For some reason, around here, I'm getting a consistent flashback vibe to a day in the early 1960s when my parents and I visited friends of theirs who lived in Leytonstone, East London. I'm not sure what triggered this, but I could feel the klimat of that journey, right across London and back, quite clearly; I remember being struck by how comparatively poor the East End felt compared to West London.

Below: roadsign in Gabryelin; is it not time to change the icon for 'station' to something more modern than a steam loco? I associate this pictogram with a heritage railway site... Anyway, the building on the left in the distance is the local Carrefour Express. Last time I was here, in the summer, it was a Sunday, so it was closed. Today, I shall pop in to do a small shop. My hopes are for a decent sélection of French fromages and charcuterie...

But no. Another disappointing rural retail experience - Gabryelin's Carrefour Express has far more modest fare than Chynów's Top Market and is slightly more expensive. Small-format Żabka stores in Warsaw have a more varied and interesting range. So I buy some fruit and veg (no cheese - no choice!) then back to Czachówek Południowy station for the train back to Chynów. With over 60s discount, I pay 4.87zł (90p) for the 6km journey.

Below: stepping from a cold platform into a warm carriage for a short ride meant that the lens of my Nikon Coolpix A was fogged over as the train headed back past the lands I'd just walked over, yielding a pleasant Impressionist image. Everything between the tracks in the foreground to the distant treeline is boggy ground.

I hope there will yet be winters to come when these wetlands freeze over sufficiently for a full exploration deep into the reeds. I doubt such an opportunity will come before this spring.

This time three years ago:
Dark, wet, gloomy February - but no winter.

This time four years ago:
The filth and the fury

This time seven years ago:
Defining the human experience

This time nine years ago:
The City of Warsaw wants you to complain

This time ten years ago:
Czachówek's wild woods in winter

This time 11 years ago:
Vistula freezes over downstream of Warsaw 

This time 12 years ago:
Twilight of the Ikars

This time 13 year ago:
Polish TV adverts for parapharmaceuticals

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki wetlands in winter

This time 15 years ago:
A week into Lent

On-spectrum asks

If there's one thing I dread doing, it's asking someone I don't know to do something for me. I could never have been a salesman. "Can I ask a favour of you?" is something I don't remember asking anyone.

I don't mind asking colleagues at work to do something for me, because I know they know that I'll do something for them - we work together as a team. Reciprocity, win-win. 

But strangers? Always difficult. 'Refusal often offends'. Indeed. I can take it personally if I'm refused or misunderstood. Arranging meetings, for example with someone I've never met is challenging. But if a colleague does it for me, and asks me to join - I will join and I'll give 100% at that meeting. 

I wrote recently about my self-diagnosis of being slightly on the Asperger's spectrum. Ever so slightly. I have some but not all of the traits associated with this personality disorder.

I was reminded the other day of the time when, as a five-year old, my father took me to a Christmas party organised by his firm for employees' children. Once he'd seen that I had settled in and was getting on OK, he went off for a short walk. On his return, he was amazed to see me on stage, alone, singing Away in a Manger. To a roomful of strangers, you will understand. Neither am I fazed by appearing on TV or radio, nor by public speaking. One-to-many is not a problem for me.

Yet one-to-one, picking up the phone, cold-calling, even if it's to ask a craftsman for a quote or to a call centre to sort out some issue - is something I feel very uncomfortable about. 

And for some reason, having to do so in Polish makes it even worse. Załatwiać sprawę - 'to sort something out', 'to simplify the case' isn't easy - I feel awkward, I feel I'm imposing, even if I have every right to do so. I do find, however, in Polish, the formulation "Niech mi Pan powie..." helps to achieve this goal. Untranslatable directly into English (niech means 'let'), this is not an imperative command like powiedz mi or powie mi Pan/Pani, but an arms-length request that is nevertheless direct.

The internet makes things easier, chatbots in particular. A chatbot can never reciprocate by asking me to do something for it. Even when chatting with ChatGPT, I find myself couching my questions politely, and then thanking it for giving me the answer.

I could never have become a salesman - nor the manager of a large team where I'd be asking people I don't personally know to do things that I'm not happy doing myself, like selling things to people whom I know neither want nor need them. However, I grudgingly admire those with the personality to expect others to do as they say - the Ladder of Authority. This suggests an evolutionary disadvantage to being on-spectrum, but then our modern world confers social rewards to those who can focus productively.

In hunter-gatherer days, the flint-knapper who sat silently sharpening the best arrowheads and knife blades was a valued member of the tribe. It was the onset of agriculture that first created hierarchy, with the Big Man ordering everybody else about. The industrial revolution created a need for engineers, to whom the Big Man had to defer - and so it is in our information age. The Big Man (or indeed Woman) is no one without a team of assorted tech geeks on side. Getting them and keeping them on side is hard work! Certainly thumping fists and yelling no longer works.

The slow realisation of late-onset Asperger's is also affecting my thinking on matters spiritual. We are all different, we have our behavioural traits that align with one personality disorder spectrum or another. How does this affect the way we perceive life and reality? Does this neurodiversity mean there cannot be one pathway to God (however we want to see God)? Do our diverse personality disorders give rise to myriad forms of cognitive bias that preclude any objective truth?

This time last year:
Ego, Consciousness and the Ladder of Authority

This time two years ago:
Trains and snowy days

This time three years ago:
"I wake up at five and queue for bread and soup"

This time four years ago:
Getting over this year's flu

This time five years ago:
War and the absence of war

This time seven years ago:
Sensitivity to spiritual evolution

This time eight years ago:
75th anniversary of Stalin's deportations of Poles

This time nine years ago:
Peak Car (in western Europe at least)

This time ten years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska NOW!
[I still have to walk through mud or snow dodge speeding drivers!]

This time 11 years ago:
Until the Vistula freezes over 

This time 12 years ago:
Of sunshine, birdsong and wet socks

Intensity of Consciousness

You are aware of your own existence - but then so is a cat or a dog. You can see that - feel that, you can intuit it clearly. But then are spiders and flies aware of their own existence? This is harder to prove. My intuition is that they are - just about. However, I wouldn't say that they are aware of being aware of their own existence, as we are.

And the next question - are we humans all equally aware of being aware - or are some of us more aware than others, in the same way that some are more intelligent than others and some are taller than others?

Difficult to say. In a deep conversation with another person, you can generally get a measure of the intensity of their consciousness, as they come to describe their outlook on life, what they see as the purpose of the Cosmos, for example.

As a child, lying in bed, aware of my heartbeat and breathing, I felt clearly that my consciousness was inhabiting a living biological organism - again. As a child I was acutely aware of being aware, and that awareness was something different that doing maths sums at school or mentally translating something from Polish into English.

This morning over coffee, my question regarding the intensity of the subjective experience of feeling conscious suddenly meshed with another question I have often asked myself over the years - how much spirituality do we need?

Are these two questions related? If so - how? 

A benchmark (for me, anyway) of human vacuity is Trump, a meat-covered zombie, a brain taken over by narcissism, unfeeling, utterly lacking in introspective faculty, driven only by ego. The fruit fly warming itself on my kitchen lampshade shows more signs of consciousness than Trump. At the other end of the spectrum is the pure consciousness experienced by a religious mystic, who has overcome the earthly blandishments of the ego. Most of us, however, inhabit the space between the two extremes.

With Lent approaching (Ash Wednesday is two weeks away), tying together the notions of experiencing consciousness and seeking out spiritual meaning will come into focus. What is the role of intuition in advancing our path of understanding? The role of ritual, religious practice - spiritual exercise, as it were, requires greater study. I can never return to Roman Catholicism, particularly in its nativist Polish version, nor can I dip into the practices of religions into which I haven't grown up with. I can certainly read about them, seeking a highest common factor, seeking those areas in which all agree. 

When it comes to practice, for me, it is my daily walk - especially on sunny days - during which I am lost in the wonder of it all, and when I feel gratitude for the experience of being alive and conscious. It is at times like that, when past and present telescope into a oneness, that the intensity of consciousness is at its greatest. But there's also the sense of not wanting to 'over-think it' - of being too intellectual about something that should just... flow.

This time last year:
I have measured out my life in coffee spoons

This time seven years ago:
Make do and mend

This time nine years ago:
The A-Z of my online world

This time 11 years ago:
Life and Death in the Shadow of the El - A short story, part I

This time 12 years ago:
Transwersalka in midwinter

This time 13 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 (completed autumn 2013)

This time 15 years ago:
Crazy customised Skoda