Section 7 - Part B:

 The Creation of Living-things 

In Part A we discovered the Creative Intelligence in the first acts of creation. We saw how it filled the universe with mental pictures of suns and planets. 

We observed how the Creative Intelligence created suns and planets out of the emptiness. of space. We are now about to turn our attention to the further changes that occurred in and upon our own little world after it was torn from the sun and became a vast ball of fiery gases, too hot for any part of it to be solid, and many millions of miles distant from any other similar fire-ball. Before we leave the larger aspect of the subject, however, let us give just a little time and thought to what the "end of the world" will be like, and when it is likely to occur. 

We have already seen that the sun is constantly consuming itself in order to radiate light and heat. The sun is so very large (866,000 miles in diameter) that this process of self-destruction is comparatively very slow. Under the Law of Gravitation, the sun will gradually lose its pull upon the earth, and the earth will tend more and more to fly off in its annual orbit around the sun. 

If the earth continues to move away from the sun at its present rate, then in about three billion years its average temperature could fall about ten degrees. In about six billion years its average temperature could fall about twenty degrees; this will mean that all present temperate zones would be ice-capped, and that the earth's only habitable area will be a rather broad band along the equator. Provided, always, that some wandering "dark star", or burned-out sun, does not plunge into our sun, thus enormously increasing its temperature and its gravitational pull, so that all the planets will be pulled closer to it and singed and seared as

though they had passed through an electric furnace. Or possibly events may take a middle course. It may be that some small "dark star" will eventually plunge into the sun, restoring its lost weight, its gravitational pull and its supply of energy. In that case the earth would gradually swing back closer to the sun, and the ice-caps would be melted from the poles. 

On the other-hand there are those who hold the view that instead of getting cooler the sun is actually getting hotter. The supporters of this theory maintain that atomic reactions going on in the interior of the sun are constantly replenishing its supply of light and heat. Basing their calculations on this theory, they predict that in less than another ten thousand million years the sun will have grown so hot that all life will have disappeared from the earth, unless in the meantime the human race has discovered some means of emigrating en masse to another star system with a cooler sun. 

 The Foundation for Knowledge, Happiness and Success 

None of these possibilities need give us any concern. The earth has been proceeding in an orderly way for many hundreds of millions of years, and every present indication is that it will continue to be about the same old world for many hundreds of millions of years to come. All these present conditions and future possibilities are cited merely for the purpose of getting your mind to work on the grand scale that will lay the foundation for the greater knowledge, happiness and successful life which you are seeking. As you come gradually to realise the splendid vastness of the great scheme of which you are such an important part,

the old fears and superstitions which have up to now held you back and limited you will begin to die out, and in their places will begin to spring up the conquering knowledge and assurance which are necessary in order to save you from the things and conditions that make you ill and bring disappointment and heartache. 

If it seems to you that this Part of the Course moves too slowly towards the practical things of life and the practical ways and means of getting the things and conditions you wish for, remember that these practical ways and means would not be fully effective unless you first laid the foundation by a consideration of the broader principles involved. There is still plenty of time for the practical things and the more practical ways and means; and they will all be treated in full detail before we come to the end of the Course. Furthermore, the very mental attitude that will come to you by a consideration of the great truths being presented here will soon begin to lift you up into a higher and better realm of life. One cannot learn great truths without becoming great; and as your mental range increases under the influence of these teachings, you will find yourself assuming a different attitude towards life and its affairs and relations; fear and worry will vanish; your judgment will become sounder; your words and actions will become wiser; opportunities will begin to come your way, and your life will begin to take definite shape and acquire a happy purpose. 

We have already seen how our earth was probably torn as a fiery cloud-ball from the sun. We have seen how and why it fell into its orbit around the sun, many millions of miles from any other planet from which life could have come to it, and so terribly hot that any form of life would have been instantly destroyed if it had even approached it. We will now narrow our consideration down to the earth alone, and consider the ways and means by which the Creative Intelligence changed it from a flaming furnace into the world we know today. 

How the Earth was Formed 

When the earth was first torn away from the sun it was just another and much smaller sun. Now it is just a little dead sun from the surface of which the light and heat have been exhausted, allowing its gases to form the liquids and solids of which the earth, the oceans, lakes and rivers are composed.

Because the earth was so much smaller than the sun from which it was torn by the too close passage of another sun, it cooled very much more rapidly than the sun. Hydrogen gas, being the lightest of all known gases, formed the outer layer of the white-hot gaseous earth. This outside layer of hydrogen gas cooled more rapidly than the heavier gases lying beneath it. As a gas cools its atoms draw nearer to each other, and the gas becomes heavier; so that very cool hydrogen gas became heavier than the very hot gases lying beneath it. This cooling and increase in weight of the outside hydrogen envelope produced a condition of "unstable equilibrium" such as sometimes occurs in our atmosphere,

and which produces tornadoes. Tornadoes occur in regions where the surface of the earth is so shaped that a layer of cool heavy air sometimes comes over a range of hill country and slips over a mass of warm light air lying on a valley or plain. The line of cleavage between the two kinds of air is almost as clear-cut as between oil and water in the same container; and if you can imagine the water as lying on top of the oil, you will have a fair idea of the exact condition. The warm thin air next to the

earth is compressed like a spiral spring. Sooner or later a slight gust of wind breaks the line of separation between the two layers of air, and the warm compressed air goes whirling upward, and soon develops into a destructive tornado. 

The same thing happened when the hydrogen gas on the outside of the hot and gaseous earth cooled and became heavier than the much hotter gases beneath it. The hotter gases broke through, and soon formed deep-seated tornadoes of fire which brought up the hot gases lying deep down in its mass. Among the hot gases brought up was white-hot oxygen; and when it contacted the hydrogen the tornado of fire was aggravated by great masses of hydrogen flames. This burning together of oxygen and hydrogen produced water vapour. That was the beginning of a long period in which one looking at the earth from a distance could have seen nothing but a mass of fleecy clouds and vapour. 

For countless ages the clouds forming in the surface gases of the earth poured increasing torrential rains into its flaming interior gases. The rain-drops did not fall for long before being converted into explosive volumes of steam. These explosions agitated the fiery mass further still, and brought up the deeper-lying heavier gases which solidified to form rocks and metals of different kinds. These rocks and metals fell back into the fiery mass where they were again reduced to gases, to be belched out by another explosion to form rocks and metals again, to again fall into the fiery mass, and again to be reduced to gases. 

So, the tedious grind continued for countless ages; but all the time the earth was losing heat as it swung on its five hundred and eighty-odd million-mile journey around the sun each year. At last, all the gases that would form rocks and metals had solidified into these substances, and many of the rocks had been ground and exploded into very fine powdery sand. The nitrogen gas had refused to combine with any other gas to form any kind of a solid or liquid substance, and much oxygen was left after it had combined with hydrogen gas to form water and with silicon gas to form rocks and sand. 

The free oxygen and nitrogen mixed together to form the earth's atmosphere. It was an atmosphere so loaded with poisonous carbon gases, however, that it would have been deadly to even the toughest and coarsest of animals. All the carbon now in our coal-beds and peat-beds, and in all the earth's trees and other vegetation, was then in the form of gases in the air. 

At last, the earth was reduced to a molten mass in its interior, with a thin solid crust on the outside; but the thin crust was as sizzling hot as the top of a hot stove. All the water now in the oceans, lakes and rivers, and elsewhere upon and in the earth, was then in the form of dense clouds lying hundreds of miles deep and pouring constant torrents of rain upon the sizzling earth. The planet Jupiter, being much larger than the earth and having cooled much slower, is now in a similar condition. Finally, however, the surface of the earth cooled to a temperature below boiling-point and a thin layer of water gathered all over its smooth surface. 

As the interior of the earth continued to cool and shrink, its surface wrinkled and cracked, throwing up continents and islands, sinking ocean-beds and lake-beds, and belching forth mountainous piles and ridges of rock. 

How Life was Created 

So, at last, the earth came to assume its present form, with oceans, continents, islands and mountains. Nowhere upon it or in it, however, or in any of its waters, was there the tiniest bit of life. Upon the land not even a blade of grass. In the ocean not the smallest creeping thing. In the air no tiny insect. And it was millions of miles through the dark and cold of empty space to any other world from which life might come! 

When the earth had passed through this long period of preparation, the Creative Intelligence projected into it a mental picture of abundant life. Then the continents, islands and the beds of the shallow waters began to be covered with a greenish scum which soon began to put out blades and leaves. These tiny blades and leaves breathed in some of the carbon-dioxide gas from the suffocating air and grew luxuriant, soon entangling the whole earth with the giant ferns and mosses of which our coal-beds were formed. Thousands of billions of tons of suffocating

carbon-dioxide gas were absorbed from the air by this vegetation. As the earth's atmosphere was slowly cleared of most of its carbon, and as its soil was enriched by the rotting of the dense vegetation, finer forms of vegetation began to appear, and the giant ferns and mosses were dwarfed into the smaller specimens we know today. 

Probably it is not too early in our consideration of the general scheme of individual creation to note that it was a part of the scheme, even from the beginning, to divide each species into male and female. In most cases the male and female blossoms were evolved upon the same plant or tree, but in some cases, there were male and female plants and trees. In no case, however, could there be reproduction unless the pollen from

the male blossom was carried to the female blossom. This division into male and female in the vegetable kingdom, and the requirement that both sexes take part in reproduction, guaranteed a level uniformity in the development of each species, and was also the method by which an ever-rising scale of refinement and evolution was assured. There were no cauliflowers nor roses among the first crude vegetation, but among that crude vegetation were the forms from which cauliflowers and roses were eventually produced through the refining influence of co-operative reproduction by the vegetable sexes. In this way the first few and coarse forms of trees and plants have been evolved into the many and finer forms that are in the world today. 

Mental Picture of the Creative Mind 

Coming once more to the beginning of vegetable creation, when the mineral earth had been ground and refined through creation, destruction and re-creation, by successive cooling, heating, explosions, terrific electrical discharges, and chemical reactions, running through a long chain of ages, some parts of it reached the stage at which it was psycho-plastic - brain not only heals itself, but regenerates new connections within itself - to the Creative Mind, in somewhat the same way that the carbon-dioxide gas and water vapour are psycho-plastic to the  mental pictures of the sitter in the photographic studio previously described. Then it was that the Creative Mind focused on the earth the mental pictures of the forms it wished its vegetation to have; and the vegetation appeared according to the mental pictures — not all at once nor suddenly, but in due course and order over a period running into millions of years. 

Even after the earth was covered with dense vegetation, extending over the bottom of all shallow waters, there was still no form of animal life either on land or in the waters of the earth. No fish swam in the sea. No reptile crawled in the slimy water of the warm lagoons. No living thing walked upon the earth. No bird sang in the tree-tops. No insect chirped in the grass. There was no life but vegetable life. There was no sound except the flash of lightning, the roar of thunder, the crash of falling trees, and the singing of wind among the dense foliage. The air and water were still too polluted by carbon-dioxide gas for animal lungs or fish gills. In fact, the atmosphere is unfit for breathing until the concentration of carbon dioxide in it falls below six parts in 10,000. 

The carbon-dioxide gas disappeared from the water more rapidly than from the air. If a glass of aerated table water, which is a solution of the gas, is allowed to stand for any length of time, it goes "flat", i.e., it loses its carbon dioxide, which escapes into the atmosphere. Then the Creative Mind filled the water with mental pictures of animal forms, and in ooze beds and slimy pools there began to be small and crude single-cell animal life. These single-cell forms of life multiplied rapidly, developed into male and female, became multiple-celled life, gradually grew larger, and by cross-breeding between forms that were somewhat alike soon evolved into many different species. Some became molluscs, such as oysters, snails and mussels. Some became fish. Some became sharks, porpoises and whales. Some became reptiles, such as turtles, alligators, snakes, lizards, crocodiles and so forth. So that after a few million years from the first appearance of the single-cell animal life the waters of the earth were teeming with many different kinds of animal life.  

Monstrous Forms of Animal Life  

When the earth's vegetation had finally trapped and absorbed enough carbon-dioxide gas to make the air fit for breathing, some of the animal forms gradually came out of the water and developed lungs. These early land forms were coarse and hideous beyond the imagination of the human mind; the gigantic lizard-like dinosaur and diplodocus, between 60 and 80 feet long; the massive flying dragons, flapping their leathery wings through the hot and murky air and pouncing down mercilessly upon their victims; and so on through a long list of hideous things that crept upon the earth or flew through the air. 

The Creative Intelligence was not experimenting when it created and evolved these immense and hideous monsters. They were the only forms of life that could have withstood the harsh conditions with which they were surrounded. It was necessary to cover the earth with great numbers of their huge bodies in order to pick up and run through the refining mill of Life large quantities of coarse physical matter, so preparing it to be used by finer and more delicate forms that were to come after them. On the spot where the huge body of a dinosaur rotted there would spring up

tender and succulent vegetation. This would support a finer and better form of animal than could have been supported by vegetation which had not been so ground through the mill of Life. The Creative Intelligence did not act on physical matter and mould it into delicate living things until it had passed through long stages of refining processes. It is a long, long journey from forming a sun to the creation of a modern refined man or woman. It is a journey which had to be made in successive steps, and one of these steps was that of covering the earth with a mass of huge and grotesque animal forms. 

Let the Universal Mind Flow Through You  

If you are inclined to think little of yourself, or to consider yourself of no particular importance in the great scheme of things, pause here and look back over the tedious millions of years through which the Creative Intelligence has been working in order to produce you. If you are poisoning your body with alcohol or narcotics, or through the excessive eating of meat and sugar, pause and think twice. Lift your nose up for a moment out of the petty things of life, throw your shoulders back and your chest out, and try to feel the pulsing power of the refining and liberating Universal Mind flowing through you in the form of cosmic rays. Resolve that from now on you will be worthy of all that lies behind you, and that you will prove your worthiness by being somebody, and having and accomplishing something.  

Man was not here when the dinosaur and diplodocus were here. All these cruder forms of life had passed across the stage of creation, played their parts and passed on before Man, the stage director, came on to the scene.  

Man was the final creative act of the Creative Intelligence, and he was not created until the stage was all set for him. He was the purpose of all the tedious processes of creation and evolution that had preceded him — the purpose of the Universal Creative Intelligence being to give itself individual human expression and to undergo the experiences of individual human life. Never before had it experienced individual existence in human form. Never before had it experienced individual human life. In man it intended to personify itself by creating a receiving set which could respond to its broadcast. Being itself both male and female, and having divided all other forms of both vegetable and animal life into two sexes, it so created man.  

Like all other forms of animal life, the human body came up through a series of cruder and smaller forms; but the progress was comparatively rapid, and its present form was reached in much less time than was required to develop the forms that had preceded it.  

So, at last the process of creation on this earth was complete. The Creative Intelligence had at last created a physical form equipped with a brain and nervous system through which it could express itself better than through any other form. The process of evolving that physical form and bringing it to perfection is still in progress. The human race has probably not been on the earth much more than a few hundred thousand years. When we consider the progress that has been made in that relatively short time, we cannot even imagine the heights of improvement to which men and women may ascend in all the hundreds

of millions of years that lie ahead. We can only glimpse the beauty and grandeur of the great scheme, and even the humblest of us should be proud of the wonderful part in it that has been given to us. Later on in this Course we will go into more detail as to the marvellous powers that the Creative Intelligence has stored within each human being. We will also go into the ways and means of thinking the things and living the life that will set all these marvellous powers to work for your welfare and happiness. At present we are merely getting a broad general view of the whole wonderful scheme of creation, so as to let you know that you are not a mere fluke of chance, doomed to worry, defeat and disappointment, but that you are a special creation designed for success, love and happiness.