The start of a new series by Shanti, titled Humans Are Still Young. “Every carbon atom in every living thing on the planet was produced in the heart of a dying star,” says Brian Cox in Wonders of the Universe.
Introduction
Humanity is still young.
In order to understand that, we better have a look at its long history, the background of its very recent appearance on planet Earth.
In this series of 19 articles we will travel through the wonders of time in order to discover how the epic stories of our universe and of our existence as human beings are intimately connected.
Holding on to the thread of time, we are going to make a journey from our origins in the mind-boggling void of the Big Bang, from the dazzling milestones of galaxy formation, from the birth, life and death of the generous stars, from the birth of our own planet and from the emergence of life in all its complex splendor, to who we are today and to our possible flowering as humans in particular.
It will be an enchanting journey through cosmic history, where each page marks a milestone in the evolution of our existence as human beings. The deeper our understanding of cosmic time and of life expressing itself in us, the more we will be able to feel ourselves at home in this cosmic tapestry.
This series is an invitation to embrace the mysteries of the cosmos and to understand how we, humans, have found our own place in this endless space so recently. It’s a journey which may change our perspective of the universe and of ourselves as well, which may make us think a little bit deeper about our connection to all-and-everything surrounding us. Most of all, it may be of some help in realizing how a recent expression of life we are, so utterly young that we had better not expect ourselves to be in full bloom already. We may even be completely unaware of our potential, of our ‘imprisoned splendour’ as human beings. I wondered, when I started to write this series, what that ‘potential’ might look like.
Where do we find, in our own lives, and in the lives of our more grown-up brothers and sisters as well, the very first buds of awareness, of creativity and loving care, of intimacy with the whole in which we participate, of ecstatic dance and of being captivated with wonder and curiosity, of trust and surrender to existence and of the passion to live the life of a daredevil?
We are on a quest now.
Here we go, step by step.
Children of the stars!
“We are made for change” is the slogan of my bank and, moreover, the right characterization of all and everything, including us, humans.
It’s a faraway echo of Heraclitus’ insight: πάντα ῥεῖ, all flows, all is constantly changing, and so are we, one of today’s millions expressions of life on the move.
Life had an early start, cooking building blocks to play with by a process called nucleosynthesis, the formation of heavier chemical elements from lighter ones by the fusion of atomic nuclei under influence of enormous pressure and very high temperatures, forming helium from hydrogen, carbon from helium, next oxygen and then the heavier elements.
Almost 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of six of these elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood and the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars,” Carl Sagan famously said in his 1980 series Cosmos, “We are made of starstuff.”
The stars themselves are also children of what we call the ‘Big Bang’, the start-up of a still expanding universe, 13.8 billion years, or its equivalent, 13,800 million years ago.
Much has been happening since then: Life building, preserving, destroying and renewing itself in a myriad of forms, a cycle personified in Hinduism as Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer.
A way to visualize this long history of happenings, of Leela or Life’s play, is to imagine an encyclopedia of 25 volumes, each volume containing 550 pages. Each page has 40 lines and each line has 70 letters. This gives us the following results: each volume describes 550 million years, each page 1 million years, each line 25.000 years and each letter 350 years.
Now, what is happening in each of our 25 volumes? Where do we find the landmarks of our common history?
When did the first stars shine? See page 100, dear, in the first volume.
Where do we find the genesis of our Milky Way? Volume 3, darling.
Where the birth of our Solar System, of our Earth and our Moon? Read all about it, son, in volume 17, page 350, 4,570 million years ago, at about 2/3 of the timeline between the Big Bang and today’s coffee.
And where do we find the first signs of Life on Earth? Next volume, friend, volume 18.
When came the first fishes into existence, the first terrestrial animals, the first trees, birds, horses, flowers, fruit trees, dinosaurs, horses, cows, monkeys and us, called homo sapiens, guys like you and me?
Well, to find these answers, we can put aside the first 24 volumes and open volume 25, because they are all happening in this last volume, where the Cambrian period starts, the follow-up of the Ediacaran period.
But before you do so, always remember: what’s happening in these 24 volumes is crucial to our existence as human beings! Because we aren’t outsiders: our intimacy with the universe is deep, because the universe has created us. We are made of star stuff. Neither you nor I would be here at all…
Without a universe expanding, due to the immensities of the energies involved, during the inflationary epoch…
Without stars taking their time to burn their hydrogen and helium and, provided that they are big enough, to cook the heavier elements necessary for human life, like oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus and a little bit of iron…
“Every carbon atom in every living thing on the planet was produced in the heart of a dying star,” says Brian Cox in Wonders of the Universe.
Without time, deep time, enough time for the stars to do their good work of creating the building blocks of life, anywhere in the universe…
Without a safe place for our Earth, not too close to the Sun – too hot! – and not too far away either – too cold! – but just right…
Without time again, 1.5 billion years, needed for the cyanobacteria to detoxify an atmosphere of methane, ammonia and other gases – toxic to most life on our planet today – and to continuously pump oxygen as waste in the Earth’s atmosphere… We can only be grateful to them!
Without plants, colonizing the land during the Silurian, spreading an early terrestrial vegetation…
Without animals, colonizing the land during the Devonian, taking all the trouble of learning how to live on dry land…
Without tetrapods, beginning to lay eggs on the land for the first time during the Carboniferous, allowing animal life to break away from an amphibious lifestyle, and…
Without apes, coming down from the trees and walking upright on two legs on the plains of Africa.
Thank you, thank you all!
Next time next step.
Related articles on Osho News
- All articles in the series, Humans Are Still Young
- All articles in the series, At Home in the Universe
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