The Universe is Too Big To Be Real

Okay, bear with me here, or should I say indulge me here, as I wander into some idiosyncratic, unsubstantiated cosmology. First, the math. Galaxies contain as many as 1 trillion stars. Can you even wrap your mind around that? Now add in this factor. In our universe there are as many as 2 trillion galaxies. So, 2 trillion times 1 trillion. That's a lot. In fact, these numbers are so immense as to virtually signify infinity, right? Now consider the size of the universe: 93 billion light years. Mind you, one light year equals 6 trillion miles. That's a long ways. Again, from a human perspective these numbers are so immense as to be commensurate with infinity. 

When the topic of other life in the universe comes up, it is often remarked upon that the immense size of the universe alone must mean there is other life. That certainly makes sense. But no one has seen any of this life. Well, okay, we are hearing a lot about UFOs lately. Maybe they have come here, but where do they come from and where do they go? My guess would that they come from other dimensions. This is because what we call the universe isn't actually a really big place, but rather a sort of impossibly gigantic stage set for the physical world we inhabit, the world we incarnate or manifest in for a whole bunch of reasons. It's a really fancy three dimensional version of those painted backdrops they used to use in the theater.

But why? Well, since we are having a "physical" experience there has to be a something out there beyond us, because the irony or weird thing about life as we know it is that if there is something, then it is impossible for there to be nothing. (This is the one idea that gives me the existential willies!) So, the way around that in this mutually agreed-upon project called life is for there to be limitless, infinite space. Indeed, we are told that not only is the universe unimaginably immense, but it is also expanding. Which means that even if we were able to travel those billions of light years out to edge, you still would never arrive there. This is what infinity is. Always approaching a limit that isn't there. So we get enough space and matter to get around the nothingness problem, which is comforting in physical and existential terms; but the numbers and nature of it are such that we are actually talking about infinity, which is also the same thing as zero. I believe that what we know as life is to be suspended in infinity. Is this what Buddhist "emptiness" is? 

So: How do we get here? Well, the Aboriginals say we are dreamed into existence.* That fits with what I'm groping for here. Because where exactly does a dream take place? Along those lines I do think it is true that all the world's a stage and all of us just the players who have their exits and entrances. I mean, I think this is more reality than metaphor. And if backstage is oblivion, it is not oblivion as we might use it today as something destroyed or absent, but, rather, as the core dictionary definition tells us, something not remembered or something of which we are not conscious. So when we step off stage we don't enter nothingness but another distinct dimension, one with its own arbitrary but more real than real rules. Oh, and that would also be true of those UFOs. They appear from behind the painted backdrop and return there.

* Does "science" tell us the Aboriginals were wrong? Maybe not. Maybe all of our science is a way of substantiating ancient knowledge in terms that makes sense for our current phase of existence.