Starlight in the night is how the star appeared years ago, thousands of years ago. We stare into history examining its roots as far as we can see. The Caged Jungle, our society of skewed reactions also has roots. We can focus on them. We can stare deep into life and let history unfold.
Before today’s Caged Jungle and before yesterday’s recent history. Before settlers landed in the Americas and before our world took form. Before the universe spread and before the concept of time. There was nothing.
Nothingness. Nothing exists. An empty void exists nowhere. Where are we? Certainly not here. And then there was the hopeful one. A random swirl through this sea of nothingness. But I am here. I exist! Nothing else exists, but I do. This is where we start.
An empty cold dark vacuum filled with nothing but a single point. The point symbolizes existence. The point can be an atom, a sub-atomic particle, its building block. The center or the corner.
Vast nothing reaches further than the eye can see. A search for something hopefully similar to me. I don’t want to be alone in this place which doesn’t exist. I reach out, agony, but feel no texture, no warmth.
All I have is hope, I am not alone. Hope turns belief. I am not alone. Others like me exist. They must. I am unique, but not alone. Vast nothing somehow shrinks, and a troubled soul like myself yearns for another in the distance.
The partner. Another point. Another center or corner.
A search, a desire for another, yet unaware of others. The empty landscape engulfs these wanderers until fate, or chance encounter. Sparks erupt mercilessly in every possible direction filling the hollow depths of nothingness. A Big Bang, a universe, something is alive!
But how, and even more important, why? Who or what is this hopeful wanderer? Centuries of frustration and scientists define the physical world through the vocabulary of math.
Proofs and formulas explain how natural phenomena function. The universe’s structure with each star, planet, and distant galaxy. How they affect each other’s motion. How current runs along electric wires, affected by resistors and capacitors. Since we live in a physical world, it seems fitting to let math guide us from nothing to something.
Math defines a point as the first dimension. A single piece of existence, our hopeful wanderer floats alone without a care in the world. Mainly because the world doesn’t yet exist, but it soon will. Within the realm of nothing, a single point, not in any way dissimilar from other single points, exists.
Two points find each other in the overwhelming nothingness. They intersect creating the second dimension. Elements of the first dimension are the building blocks for the second dimension.
The second dimension could not exist within nothingness if it weren’t for its first-dimensional building blocks. The first dimension’s purpose is to construct the second dimension. A fundamental relationship of mutual need.
Almost as though without a choice, the two-dimensional building blocks react with each other as well creating a third dimension. Second dimensional elements build the third dimension, while the third dimension gives purpose and function to the second dimension.
The entire physical world resides within the third dimension experience. A kitchen table is a three-dimensional object constructed of two-dimensional components, which in turn is an assemblage of first-dimensional ingredients afloat in nothing.
However, the intersection of multiple two-dimensional elements within the space of the second dimension only produces more complicated two-dimensional elements. Two drawings on a piece of paper are each two-dimensional. If we lay the two papers flat and combine them, we’ll create a larger drawing, a more complex two-dimensional entity.
But if the intersection of these very same two-dimensional elements occurs within third dimension space, three-dimensional objects will form. It doesn’t matter how many lines intersect a sketch on a piece of paper, they will never produce a three-dimensional entity. But if we fold the paper or cut a slit and slide another paper perpendicular to the first, we create a three-dimensional entity. The context of the intersection is as critical as the intersection itself.
Now we have a physical world, defined by the third dimension. A leaf, a tree, a park, city, country, the world, the solar system, galaxy, universe, our bodies. Everything we define and name.
What differentiates the events of today from the events of yesterday? I could have played basketball yesterday and read a book today. Or the book yesterday and basketball today. In the end, both activities occurred regardless of when.
Time is a state of mind, a location. We enhanced our vocabulary to help explain the third dimension. Time is an intersection of three-dimensional elements within three-dimensional space!
Everything we define is in the third dimension. Time is one of the many terms we use to explain the third dimension. I can use the same definition to describe the physical world right now, as I used five seconds ago. The only difference is when. Nothing else changes. Just like adding a second piece of paper in two-dimensional space, I can elaborate on the same definition in five seconds. Time is simply another piece of paper, another third dimension, another aspect of the third dimension.
If time is the intersections of three-dimensional elements in third dimension space, what is the intersection of three-dimensional elements in fourth dimension space? Three-dimensional elements build the fourth dimension, while the fourth dimension provides purpose to the third dimension. The third dimension is the physical world and all of us living in it. The third dimension is how life exists. Therefore, the fourth dimension is why life exists.
Three-dimensional elements intersect over and over in fourth-dimensional space to build the fourth dimension. The concept of infinity arises. Similarly, infinite two-dimensional objects intersect each other infinitely in three-dimensional space to build the third dimension.
What looks like infinity to one dimension, is an entity in the higher dimension. The higher dimension is incommensurable with the lower dimension and forms infinity for it. Infinite first-dimensional intersections create the vast second dimension. Infinite two-dimensional intersections build the third dimension, the shape of life. Infinite three-dimensional entities intertwine the answer, the purpose of life, the fourth dimension.
The first dimension is a point, existence. The second dimension is a line, connection. The third dimension is life. The fourth dimension is the subconscious process we refer to as thought. Thought is the intersection of life within the fourth dimension.
The fourth dimension is not a produced thought, for this is where fourth-dimensional subconscious unfolds into third-dimensional conscious. All of a sudden, the answer to a question comes to mind on a mountain hike or a park bench near a tree. We can’t define or explain the thinking. The fourth dimension doesn’t carry labels or definitions. However, life unfolds under the guidance of the fourth dimension, thought.
An artist creates a masterpiece, as our active mind creates our bodies and everything around us. The collective thought of every living being in the universe is why life exists. For thought to exist, life is necessary, hence life is the building blocks of thought.
Why doesn’t a thought manifest in the physical world instantaneously? The physical world is experience. We need to actually do it. The physical world requires physical effort. We must engage in the challenges of physical life, thereby providing meaning and reality to thought.
The eternal question. What is the meaning of life?
Thought is the meaning of life; it’s why life exists. Effort is the structure of life; it’s how life exists. Effort and Thought, the How and Why of Life.