Animated Stardust

Perhaps the universe, at the moment of the big bang, 'crossed its fingers' - in the hope that somewhere, somehow - the right forces would have the opportunity to spring into action as part of a master plan, spanning billions of years: the dream of entities constructed from its own flesh and bone, through which it could do what it could never do on its own - discover itself, study itself, understand itself. This is accomplished in part by life as a whole, but in full by man - God's highest expression of himself.

Your body - as you may know - is made up of the same material (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, iron) that the rest of the universe is made up of. In a very real sense, it could be said that your body, and the matter surrounding it, are one and the same! It is the very animating force of the universe that gives your body the essence that sets it apart from ordinary 'lifeless' matter. It is this very driving motive that fuels the laws of physics. The source and sustainer of all order, it is invisible but at the same time very real. What shall we call it? God? Law? Mind? Will?

THAT is not born, neither does it die; it sprang from nothing, nothing sprang from it. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient, THAT is not killed though the body is killed. If one thinks he causes death, if one thinks he dies, both are deluded; THAT kills not nor is it killed. Smaller than small, greater that great, in the heart of all creatures THAT resides, seen only by one who is free from desires and from grief.

Sitting, THAT walks far; lying down, THAT goes everywhere; bodiless within bodies, unchanging among changes.

How can one who is not tranquil or subdued, whose mind is not at rest, understand THAT through mere knowledge? How shall an ordinary man conceive THAT being, for whom existence is a meal, and death a seasoning?