It all started with a bang. The Big Bang! And after fourteen billion years, give or take a few million either way, here we are firmly ensconced on a small planet circling a medium-sized star. Our star is one of a hundred billion other stars in the Milky Way galaxy that, in turn, is one of another hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Living on an isolated planet, surrounded by limitless space, and floating somewhere in a seemingly infinite universe, we are unsure of our origin and are yet to understand our destiny. We find ourselves constrained by the unrelenting weight of gravity and tied to an unstoppable, one-way march of time. There are those who tell us we are here by accident, while others say our presence is intentional. John Wheeler, the physicist, asserts that we are a cogent part of this universe looking back at itself. The one compensation that graces our existence is a modicum of intelligence and an ever-so-slowly expanding consciousness.

Before the Big Bang there was neither space nor time. We have no knowledge of the circumstances or conditions prior to the Big Bang. With the Big Bang, time as we know it commenced, space opened, and tiny bits of matter began to churn and join with other bits of matter. So began the unrelenting process of development that has eventuated in life and culminated in the most phenomenal event of all, mind and consciousness. Today this same developmental process continues.

After eons of slow, fitful development in the water, muck and mud, a rare event took place on an obscure planet called Earth. A few very simple molecules joined together. Aided and abetted by the suns ultraviolet energy and perhaps a few bolts of lightning, the process of life began. Science is not sure exactly how life began. Perhaps it started in a tidal pool where complex elements were deposited by a meteorite shower and somehow sparked a chain reaction. In whatever manner it originally happened, this energized molecular material commenced its frenetic dance, combining and then recombining, until finally a single-celled entity appeared with the rudimentary characteristics of life.

Perhaps the finest example of the evolutionary process is how it has moved insentient matter to sentient mind. The material and the immaterial aspects of nature in their fundamental reality are merely different manifestations of the same unitary Process. Because of its workings, matter can be converted to energy and energy is captured in matter (E=MC2). Each is the same entity in different states and both are results of the same evolutionary process. In like manner, material body and nonmaterial consciousness have resulted from a common evolutionary action, a process that organizes the energy pervading the universe and governing its development. It brought together the original particles of gaseous matter issued by the Big Bang. It then formed not only the stars, the elements, Earth, and human bodies, but also created the immaterial world of mind, intelligence, and consciousness. Like the wind, the process is invisible; only its effects are observable. To the extent the observer understands it, however, the process is an awe-inspiring phenomenon, sublime in nature, superb in accomplishment, and ennobling to the spirit of those who seek to know it. Upon the realization that we are a result of this process, it becomes possible to accept ourselves as integral parts of a larger picture, as players in an unfolding universe, and as beings with a purpose.

Creative Energy has used the cosmos as a workplace for evolution to bring about self-aware, soul-seeking beings capable not only of knowing themselves and the universe they inhabit but who can aspire to knowing its creative nature. This creative process has compounded matter into the most dense and intensively interactive globule of material known, the human brain. Once a certain threshold of organized complexity in the brain was reached, consciousness emerged. Brain and consciousness are the window not only to operations of the body and whisperings of soul but to the entire universe. When the human aura is better understood, this window will widen to include the invisible realm from whence the rules of the Process issue. This process has come to be known by many names: Creator, God, Great Spirit, Superconsciousness, the Force, Evolution, etc.

The process organizes and unifies matter in complex ways so that Spirit can emerge through the vehicle of life and its consciousness. The process continues today both in the physical universe and in the life that has appeared in it. It will continue until full recombination, or Oneness, is achieved. Because Spirit is inherent in the design of each particle of matter, its energy has been the engine driving the process of evolution. Today in the awesome organization of the human brain, one-hundred billion tiny cells are integrated in three-and-a-half pounds of hi-tech gray matter. Their immense capabilities still overshadow anything that Silicon Valley has produced.

By forming more complex neuronal firing patterns through the acquisition of experience and knowledge, the organizational process continues in the human brain today, thereby enabling higher levels of consciousness and spiritual awareness to emerge. From the earliest of human times, this organizational process has pursued development in the brain. It slowly formed neuronal pathways until at some point in the history of human evolution, consciousness moved beyond its dim beginnings and humanity achieved an awareness of its spiritual nature. Ever so slowly, we have recognized that through the interplay of body, mind, and soul the goals of the Spirit that pervades us can be realized. Unfortunately, for the past couple of centuries, it has been fashionable not to discuss soul or spirit in the context of academic science. Only recently with the demise of behaviorism and the birth of cognitive studies have mind and consciousness reentered the field of psychology. Now, even in the hard science of physics, particularly in quantum mechanics, consciousness is becoming a factor in theoretical research. Many physicists are recognizing the spiritual aspect as integral to the operation of the universe and indispensable to its full comprehension.