A. Do the laws regulating the formation of the heavenly bodies also preside over their destruction?
B. How was the moon formed?
C. What are comets?
Text for reading
347. The eternal succession of worlds – We have seen that a unique, primary and general law was bestowed on the universe, to ensure its eternal stability. This general law is perceptible to the senses through many particular actions, which we call the guiding forces of nature. The harmony of the world, considered from the point of eternity and space is guaranteed by the supreme law.
348. In fact, if we went back to the early origin of the early settlements of the cosmic substance, we would notice that since then under the rule of the law, matter undergoes the necessary transformations which lead it from the seed to the ripe fruit, and that, under the impulse of the various forces born this law, it traverses the scale of the periodic revolutions: first, a fluidic center motion; next a generator of worlds; later, a attractive central nucleus of the spheres that were born in its midst.
349. We already know that these laws govern the history of the cosmos. What is important to know is that they also preside over the destruction of the heavenly bodies, because death is not only a metamorphosis of the living being, but also a transformation of inanimate matter. And if it is accurate to say, in the literal sense that life is only accessible to the scythe of death, it is also correct to say that matter also has the necessity to undergo all transformations inherent in its constitution.
350. Suppose a world that, ever since its primitive cradle, ran the entire length of years that your particular organization allowed it go. Extinguished its inner focus of existence and its elements have lost their initial capacity. The phenomena of nature, demanding for their presence and the action of forces granted to this world, henceforth can no longer present themselves, because the lever of their activity no longer has the fulcrum that gave it all its power. Now, would one think that this extinct and lifeless world would continue to gravitate in the celestial spaces without a purpose and become a useless ash in the vortex of the heavens? Would one think that it would remain written in the book of universal life when it has become no more than a dead letter of all meaning? No. The same laws that raised it up from the darkness and chaos endowed it with the splendors of life, the same forces that ruled during the centuries its adolescence, which consolidated the first steps of its life and that led it to adulthood and old age, will also preside over the disintegration of its constituent elements in order to restore them to the laboratory where the creative power incessantly draws the conditions of general stability.
351. These elements will return to the common mass of ether to be assimilated into other bodies or to regenerate other suns. And death will not be a useless event for either this world or its siblings. In other regions it will renew other creations of different nature and there, where the systems of worlds have vanished, a new flowerbed of more brilliant fragrant flowers will soon be born.
352. Thus, the real and effective eternity of the universe is ensured by the same laws that direct the operations of the time. This way, worlds succeed worlds and suns succeed suns, without the immense mechanism of vast heavens being ever reached in its giant workings. There, where your eyes admire the splendid stars in the canopy of the night; there, where the mind contemplates magnificent radiances that shine in distant spaces, long finger of death has long extinguished many such splendors; the void has long succeeded such radiances and even received new creations yet unknown.
353. The immense distance of these heavenly bodies, over which the light they have sent has taken thousands of years to reach us, means that today we are only receiving rays that they sent along before the creation of the earth, and which we will still admire for thousands of years after their actual disappearance.
354. There is here an effect of time that light takes to traverse space. Being 300,000 miles per second its speed, it arrives at the sun in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. It means that if an event is happening on the surface of the sun, we will not perceive it until eight minutes later and on the same token, we'll observe its termination eight minutes later also. If, because of their remoteness, the light of a star consumes thousand years to reach us, only after one thousand years after its formation we will see that star.
355. Given this, it is worth asking: What are the six thousand years of human history compared with the eons? Like seconds in your centuries? What are your astronomical observations compared with the absolute state of the world? A shadow eclipsed by the sun. Hence, here as in our other studies, let us realize that the earth and humankind are nothing in comparison with what exists and that the most colossal efforts of our thought further extend only about an imperceptible field before the immensity and eternity of a universe that will never end.
356. Universal life - The immortality of souls, of which the system of the physical world is the foundation, has seemed fanciful to the eye of certain imaginary prejudiced thinkers. Ironically, they are classified as vagrant immortality and have not understood that it is true only in the light of the spectacle of creation. However, it may become comprehensible all its greatness, we would almost say: nearly all its perfection.
357. That the works of God are created for thought and intelligence; that the worlds are dwellings for beings who contemplate them and discover them, behind their veil the power and the wisdom of the One who forms them – this issue is no longer in doubt; however, that the souls who populate them are in solidarity with one another, this is what is important to understand.
358. Indeed, the human intelligence finds it difficult to consider those radiant globes that sparkle in the expanse as simple masses of inert and lifeless matter. It also finds it difficult to think that there are, in such distant regions, magnificent twilights and splendorous nights, fertile suns and days filled with light, and valleys and mountains, where the multiple productions of nature have unfolded in their entire luxurious splendor. It is hard for them to imagine, I would say, that the divine spectacle, wherein the soul can re-temper itself, may be deprived of any existence any thinking that would acknowledge it.
359. But to this eminently just idea of creation it is necessary to add that the solidarity of humanity and therein lies the mystery of future eternity. One and the same human family has been created in the universality of the worlds, and the ties of fraternity still inappreciable by you have been bestowed on these worlds.
360. If these heavenly bodies, which are harmonized in their vast systems, are inhabited by intelligent beings, it is not at all by some unknown beings to another, but rather, by beings marked in their foreheads by the same fate, which will temporarily meet one another according to their functions of life, and meet again according to their mutual affinities. It is the great family of spirits who inhabit the heavenly lands; it is the large irradiation of the divine Spirit that covers the extent of the heavens and that remain the first and ultimate archetype spiritual perfection.
361. By what odd aberration have we believed we should deny immortality to the vast regions of the ether, when enclosed within a boundary unacceptable and an absolute duality? Should not a true theory of the world therefore precede true dogmatic doctrine, and should not science precede theology? Will it deviate so much as to establish its basis on metaphysics? The answer is simple and shows us that the new philosophy will sit triumphantly upon the ruins of the old, because its foundation will be victorious erected upon ancient errors.
Answers to Proposed Questions
A. Do the laws regulating the formation of the heavenly bodies also preside over their destruction?
Yes. The same laws govern the formation and destruction of heavenly bodies, since death is not only a metamorphosis of the living but also a transformation of inert matter. And if it is accurate to say literally, that life is only accessible to the scythe of death, it is not least accurate is to say that matter also has the necessity to undergo all the transformations inherent in its constitution. (Genesis, Chapter VI, item 49)
B. How was the moon formed?
Before the planetary masses had reached a level of cooling sufficient for their solidification, smaller masses, veritable liquid globules, became detached from some at the equatorial plane, where the centrifugal force is the greatest, and by virtue of the same laws, acquired a movement of translation around their generating planet, as had happened with those planets around their generating central star. That's how the earth gave birth to its moon, whose less considerable mass underwent a more rapid cooling. Now then, the laws and forces that governed its detachment from earth’s equator and its movement of translation on the same plane acted in such a way that, instead of taking on a spheroid shape, it took on an the shape on an ovoid globe, i.e., the elongated shape of an egg with the center of gravity fixed at the lower part. (Genesis, Ch. VI, items 24 and 25)
C. What are comets?
Wandering heavenly bodies, comets are the guides that will help us overcome the limits of the system to which the earth belongs in order to carry us to distant regions of the sidereal expanse. These celestial bodies are very diverse thing of planetary bodies; and they do not have [like the planets] a purpose of serving as dwelling for humanities. They travel successively from sun to sun, enriching themselves, at times, with planetary fragments reduced to the state of vapor, drawing to them the life giving and renewing principles that they shed over terrestrial worlds. (Genesis, Ch. VI, items 28 to 31)
