Mr G: A Novel About the Creation by Alan Lightman

Author:Alan Lightman [Lightman, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307907042
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 2012-01-24T08:00:00+00:00

Goodness in Every Atom

I did not tell my aunt and uncle about Belhor et al.’s latest visit, as I knew their hostility towards him. Nonetheless, Uncle Deva seemed uncannily aware of the conversation. Or, if not the conversation itself, at least the issues surrounding life in the new universe. During one of my recreational strolls through the Void, Uncle cornered me. Aunt Penelope was napping, he said, and it would give us a chance to chat “without impediments.”

So, Uncle said cheerfully, I gather that we will soon have animate creatures hopping about in our universe. A very good development, if I may say so. I hope that you have not been thinking otherwise. He made this last remark in a casual tone, but I knew that he was slyly probing me. The easiest thing would be to let it happen, I said. But I have not completely decided on the matter. Oh dear me, said Uncle. Uncle Deva never chastised me in the manner that Aunt P did, but from eons of living with him I knew what “Oh dear me” meant. He was vexed with me. You have done such a masterful job, said my uncle. The galaxies. The stars. The what-you-may-call-its. Even the solitary little hydrogen atoms floating around. But surely the grandest accomplishment of all would be the creation of intelligent life. There are problems, I said. Yes, of course there will be problems, said Uncle. But doesn’t everything have problems? Nephew, what meaning does your universe have without other minds in it? It has beauty, I said. Yes, it has beauty, said my uncle. But who is there to appreciate the beauty, aside from you and me and your aunt? Wouldn’t the beauty have more meaning with other minds to admire it? Wouldn’t it be transformed by other minds? I’m not talking about a passive admiration of beauty, but a participation in that beauty, in which everyone is enlarged. We three are not of the same essence as the universe. But living creatures born into that universe, made of the same material, are of that essence. You have told me yourself that the life-forms are made of the same atoms as everything else in the universe. The beauty you speak of—the stars and the oceans and so forth—is part of their beauty, those living things. And so much enhanced by their participation, by their absorption of that beauty and then the responsive outflowing of their own beauty. It is a spiritual thing, don’t you see?

I so loved Uncle Deva. He was sincere in his beliefs, and sweet. Don’t you want your universe to have some recognition of itself? continued my uncle. I mean, the minds within it? As beautiful as it is, a mountain cannot have recognition of itself. Don’t you want some bits of your universe to know that they are part of a whole, part of a pattern, that some glorious act created time and space and matter and set the whole thing in motion? It was not so glorious, I said.

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