Michael Nielson

“Our Universe is seemingly endless in every direction and in all ways. Astronomers have discovered that there are celestial events so unimaginably rare that they are destined to be seen perhaps only once in any galaxies billions of years of existence. But the Universe is, itself, so incomprehensibly vast that even the rarest conceivable celestial event is made common. If an event occurs, on average, only once in any given galaxies billions of years of existence, it will nevertheless be seen to occur hundreds of billions of times throughout the ALL of time because the Universe is home to hundreds of billions of galaxies. It is so inconceivably vast that even the rarest imaginable event, when measured across the totality of the Cosmos, is a rarity therefore of immense abundance; an abundance so enormous that we cannot even comprehend it. There will occur hundreds of billions of Quasars and neutron stars and hundreds of billions of pulsars and dwarf stars and red giants. There will exist billions upon billions of life forms and millions and millions of civilizations. Everything is a rarity measured in the millions and billions, with but a single exception; a single amazingly rare thing. The rarest gem possible is not a diamond or a material found in the core of a neutron star or even the most subtle fleeting flashing wisp of the rarest element. The rarest of all events and occurrences emerges from the cosmic fugue only once throughout the All of time and space, appears for only a brief moment, and when it is gone it vanishes forever, irreproducible. This "event"... is YOU…and me and each one of us. We are the gems of the cosmos, each of us are the only diamond of consciousness that will ever be cut in precisely the same way that are we. We are the “reason for” and the rarest of the MOST rare of all things to ever be found or known. In fact, it could be reasonably argued that the Universe evolved to reach this almost limitless enormity merely to allow for the inconceivably improbable mathematical rarity that is represented by each one of us. We are the treasure of the Universe; each of us a gemstone that shall never be seen again. We are astonishing.” © 2009 Michael Nielson "A Novel Thought and the Art of Lucid Dreaming" Consciousness and Quantum Physics