“Do Spirits Exist?”
1932
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
The collection of works by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, translated into English
The word spirit is often mentioned here. In order not to cause any misunderstanding among the readers who glimpse this work, I will inform them in advance of the following.
I recognize only such a spirit as is composed of matter more rarefied and elementary than that known to us. This notion is relative. So the animals known to us will be spiritual in relation to those that will be formed after decillions of years, from more complex and dense matter.
My spirits are the same as animals: perfect or imperfect, mortal or immortal.
In the old days, air and odor were also considered spirits in relation to dense bodies. In the same sense I use the word spirit or the word immateriality. Our ancestors also considered air and odor to be immaterial. This is a simplification of terminology, using common language, correcting vague and unscientific premonitions, primitive folk wisdom, intuitive knowledge.
If we mean by the word spirit something immaterial, having nothing to do with matter, then there is no such spirit. Indeed, this would constitute a duality (dualism) in reflection. Then we must recognize two beginnings in the universe: material and spiritual. Since they have nothing in common, they cannot influence each other. So the spiritual world, if it exists, does not exist for us. It turns out that dualism contains contradictions in itself. And why the complexity, when you can do with simplicity.
Spirit, as the basis of the animal, as a force revitalizing the dead body also does not exist. Indeed, we find nothing in organic beings but dead matter. As the automaton sets its mechanism in motion, so man or other animal manifests all its vital actions in consequence of its device. As in an automaton a spoiled lever or a broken wheel stops the whole machine, so the spoiling of any one or more parts of an animal stops life.
But in man, in all organisms and all dead bodies, there is something permanent that not only does not disappear, but does not fall apart for many billions of years. This is the atom, or a part of it. In a word, indestructible is the basis of matter, its unknown beginning, the true, indivisible, last, simplest element of matter. It is immortal, eternal, and unchangeable.
If it is called a spirit, such a spirit really exists. It never dies, it is characterized by a primitive ability to feel. But this sensation should not be understood as the sensation of man, or similar complex animals: it is infinitely simpler and therefore unimaginable that it cannot even be compared with the sensation of a bacterium or plant cell – to that extent it is simple. It is only when the atom enters into complex aggregates, such as organisms, that a sensation is conceived in it, corresponding to the complexity of that animal or part of it of which it is a part.
This spirit is the primary atom. It gives assurance to every conscious higher animal of continuous existence. Only this existence, in its strength, varies from zero to a considerable amount the sensation of man and higher beings.
(It is clear that every being is a union of such spirits, whose life and senses are highly varied and correspond to the properties of the cells of which these spirits are composed.)
My reasoning in “The Monism of the Universe” explains this in detail and leads to the conclusion that there is nothing in the cosmos but higher, conscious, infinite and happy life. The rest, in smallness, is imperceptible.
But let us leave that. And let us return to the conventional complex spirit, i.e., to the likeness of the animals known to us.
The universe has neither beginning nor end. Matter has continuously become more complex, i.e., from its simplest elements it has made more and more complex combinations. We are talking about hydrogen, the 92 atoms that comprise it, molecules of different chemical compounds, more complex organic and living molecules, cells, plants, animals, humans and mature creatures of the planets. However, we will find neither the beginning nor the end of this chain. There is no beginning because the past is infinite, and there is no end because the future is infinite.
Hydrogen and its combinations are the result of the infinite work of the cosmos. It is one link in an infinite chain, but of different combinations. Hydrogen itself is complex.
There is also an atom of ether, whose mass is a thousand billion times less than that of hydrogen. The latter confirms the infinite complexity of matter, the infinite complexity of known combinations of unknown elements.
The real matter, the real world, the cognizable universe is the product of infinite time.
If we take the universe as it was decillions of years ago, we can mentally see a different cosmos made of simpler atoms. There are other suns, other planets and other organisms. They are simpler, etheric and hardly accessible to our gross senses.
Conventionally, they can be considered immaterial in relation to us. Conventionally, we can also call them spirits. Such spirits undoubtedly exist.
Let’s go back another decillion years. We will meet even more rarefied simple world, inaccessible even for (senses of) spirits of the 1st kind. The latter will be grossly material in relation to the spirits of the 2nd kind.
Going back in this way through the terrifying leaps of time, we will meet with our imagination innumerable images of beings, more and more rarefied, which (all) in relation to us (conditionally) can be called spirits, although their beginning is the same as ours, i.e. matter more or less simple.
If we have not enough intervals of decillions of years, let us take decillions to the decillionth degree, or still more. Infinity can be divided into infinities of the same kind, and the number of the latter will be without limit. Therefore, in any case we will meet these countless frames of organisms that are not accessible to each other (rough example: a man cannot talk to a worm, and a worm to a bacterium).
In this chain, each frame is conditionally immaterial (sparse) with respect to all subsequent frames, and conditionally equally material with respect to all previous frames.
It is asked, do these countless frames of conditional spirits exist now? Let us confine ourselves to an analogy. On the Earth the beginning of life comes from inorganic matter. As a matter of fact, every atom of it is a primary being. This primary being, combining with the same, gave unicellular and multicellular organisms, i.e. all plants and all animals. We see both dead matter and living matter of all ranks at the same time. The times are the same for all of them, but some creatures have reached the highest development, others – the lowest, and others remained dead molecules.
So, perhaps, it was also during the evolution of the universe: the time passed the same, but one matter grew to the 1st rank spirits, another to the 2nd rank spirits, etc., and the most part of the substance remained in the primitive form, i.e. in the form of raw unorganized material.
So, it is possible that there are simultaneously (now) inaccessible to us beings of all kinds of ranks.
What is the complexity of each rank, what is its relative perfection? Is it as it is in the organic world of the earth (of equal degrees of development), or is it, in its own way, each perfect?
Let us turn again to our planet, to its future. Man is continuously multiplying and improving. He is becoming crowded on the Earth. His reason and knowledge of nature tell him that there should be nothing imperfect anywhere, because imperfection is evil – suffering and it is certainly undesirable for him. Animals and criminals are miserable, not only because they are cruel to each other, but also because they are not conscious. As a consequence, man little by little himself closely populates the whole Earth and eliminates everything imperfect as painlessly as possible. But the Earth will have nothing left but him and the plants useful to him. The whole organic world will become one breed of comparatively perfect beings.
A similar thing may happen in each of the enormous passages of time under consideration: each frame of “spirits” reaches its possible perfection, leaving no room for beings of weakness, doomed to mutual torment.
Still we may think them, in general, elementary both in complexity of structure and in the functions of life – the more so the farther back one goes.
It seems, what is all this for, i.e. what is this speech of mine? Well there are countless spirits, but after all their interaction on each other is impossible. No spirit can influence the higher or lower cadres, hence us. They are neither warm nor cold to us. They are inaccessible to our senses. In our matter they cannot make a transformation. But, firstly, this independence of “spirits” from each other can still be doubted (they are all material, but matter affects matter, hence they can affect us and each other), secondly, let us say the following.
An animal dies, i.e. disintegrates into simpler beings. After some time its parts emerge in more complex aggregates, e.g., as an animal, a human being, or an even more conscious being. On earth, under present conditions, and it takes a few millions of years or less to do this: the less the simpler and more widespread the combinations in which it comes to life.
If much more time be taken, the very atoms of the creature disintegrate into simpler parts, and the dead animal gets the probability of arising in the form of one of the spirits.
The more infinities of time have passed, the deeper can be the decomposition of the atoms known to us, the simpler and more rarefied will be the matter and elementary spirits made of it.
Thus we may arise in the form of innumerable ranks of spirits, depending on the vastness of time that has passed.
Consequently, this treatise concerns our infinite future, points to its possibilities, and cannot fail to be significant. We do not know what this life is like in spirits of different categories. We think only one thing, that it is in its kind perfect, i.e. conscious, reasonable and without torment. It will hopefully be the same with our comparatively very short organic life on earth (i.e. it will also reach the best).
The picture of the first period of time for any presently known complex atom is as follows.
It arises many times for life ordinary, known to you, only perfect. Each incarnation is made into dense, familiar matter. But then an unknown but enormous period of time, a kind of infinity, passes, and the animal (or the known atom) begins to arise many times in the image of a spirit of the first category. Another infinite period of time passes and the same animal appears in the form of the spirit of the second category. And so without end.
Here by infinities I mean only unknown enormous times necessary for deep decomposition of matter and emergence of beings from it.
We have so far looked only at the disintegration of our complex atoms into simpler ones. The complication of atoms is just as perfectly possible. Let us look into future times from this point of view. The first passing stage of infinity gives a complex atom and an equally complex living and dead world, in comparison with which our world appears to be etheric, conditionally immaterial, i.e. extremely rarefied.
Another similar stage of time produces a more massive atom, a dense world and dense organisms, in comparison with which the dense world of the 1st rank will turn out to be airy, conditionally immaterial. And so on without end.
Thus, we will get another equally possible panorama of the future existence of any aggregate of the present moment.
Here we should get beings more and more dense, more and more complex and probably with richer life, according to the density of the animal. The selection of each frame should eventually form a perfect breed, eliminating all that is weak and suffering.
Summarizing what has been said, we shall find that a stage of time of any order gives the probability of entering a world of the same order, positive or negative.
The first gives a complication of matter, a compacting of it into richer life. The second promises the decomposition of the atom, more elementary matter, lighter and more elastic, and life composed upon it. It is possible that it is simpler. Everything depends on chance, on the play of atoms. Not only higher category life is possible, but also lower category life, for example, not only tenth category life, but also first, second, etc. category life.
© Translated into English by Mykola Krasnostup
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