Astronomers have discovered evidence to suggest that the universe came into
existence fifteen billion years ago in a gigantic explosion and has been expanding ever since.
Not only has it been expanding,
but it is also growing in complexity and becoming more and more differentiated. Astronomers 天文学者 existence 存在 fifteen billion 150億
gigantic 巨大 expanding 拡大中 complexity 複雑
differentiated 差別化された 天文学者たちは、宇宙が150億年前の巨大な爆発によって誕生し、
それ以来膨張し続けていることを示唆する証拠を発見しました。
宇宙は膨張しているだけでなく、
複雑さを増し、ますます分化しています。
Some scientists also postulate that this movement from unity to multiplicity
will eventually become reversed.
The universe will then stop expanding and begin to contract again
and finally return to the unmanifested,
the inconceivable nothingness out of which it came –
and perhaps repeat the cycles of birth, expansion, contraction,
and death again and again. postulate 公準(科学的または実践的理論にとって、基本的前提として必要とされる命題)
unity 団結 multiplicity 多重性 reversed 逆転した unmanifested 顕現していない
inconceivable 考えられない nothingness 無 expansion 拡大
contraction 収縮 また、一部の科学者達は、この統一から多様性、多重性への動きは
(ビッグバンからの膨張の時)
最終的に逆転すると仮定しています。
宇宙は膨張をやがて停止し、再び収縮を始め、
最終的には宇宙が誕生した時の、顕現していない、
想像を絶する無へと回帰するでしょう。
そしておそらく、誕生、膨張、収縮、そして死のサイクルを何度も何度も
(ビッグバン、ビッグクランチ)
繰り返すことになるでしょう。 ――あまりにも想像しがたい、宇宙のストーリーですので、
考えても、へえ、としか頭には浮かばない――
For what purpose?
“Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
asks physicist Stephen Hawking,
realizing at the same time that no mathematical model could ever supply the answer. bother わざわざ realizing 実現する supply 供給 一体何のために?
「なぜ宇宙はわざわざ存在するのか?」
と物理学者スティーブン・ホーキングは問いかけます。
同時に、いかなる数学モデルも、
その答えを出すことはできないと悟っています。
If you look within rather than only without,
however, you discover that you have an inner and an outer purpose,
and since you are a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm,
it follows that the universe too has an inner and outer purpose inseparable from yours. reflection 反射 inseparable 切り離せない
The ultimate purpose of that transformation goes far beyond anything the human mind can imagine or comprehend. And yet, on this planet at this time, that transformation is the task allotted us.
That is the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose, the reconciliation of the world and God. Before we look at what relevance the expansion and contraction of the universe has to your own life, we need to bear in mind here that nothing we say about the nature of the universe should be taken as an absolute truth.
Neither concepts nor mathematical formulae can explain the infinite. No thought can encapsulate the vastness of the totality. Reality is a unified whole, but thought cuts it up into fragments. This gives rise to fundamental misperceptions., for example, that there are separate things and events, or that this is the cause of that.
Every thought implies a perspective, and every perspective, by its very nature, implies limitation, which ultimately means that it is not true, at least not absolutely.
Only the whole is true, but the whole cannot be spoken or thought. Seen from beyond the limitations of thinking and therefore incomprehensible to the human mind, everything is happening now.
All that ever has been or will be is now, outside of time, which is a mental construct. As an illustration of relative and absolute truth, consider the sunrise and sunset. when we say the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, that is true but only relatively. In absolute terms, it is false.
Only from the limited perspective of an observer on or near the planet's surface does the sun rise and set. If you were far out in space, you would see that the sun neither rises nor sets, but that it shines continuously.
And yet, even after realizing that, we can continue to speak of the sunrise or sunset, still see its beauty paint it, write poems about it, even though we now know that it is a relative rather than an absolute truth.
So let us continue to speak for a moment of another relative truth: the coming into form of the universe and its return to the formless, which implies the limited perspective of time, and see what relevance this has to your own life.
The notion of “my own life” is, of course, another limited perspective created by thought, another relative truth. There is ultimately no such thing as “your” life, since you and life are not two, but one.