“The Will of the Universe”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

The collection of works by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, translated into English

1928

First published in the author’s edition: K. Tsiolkovsky. The Will of the Universe. Unknown reasonable forces. Kaluga, 1928.

It is as if everything depends on the will of an intelligent being like man. Our labor, thought defeat nature and direct it in the desired direction. For example, we cultivate the land and get abundant food, tame animals, transform them and plants, build houses, roads, cars, make our labor easier, make the forces of nature work, and they increase our strength 10, 100, 1000 times. If we were lazy, did not show our will, nothing would happen, and we would die of hunger, cold, disease, infertility, etc.

This is conditional will. It is there, and the manifestation of it is beneficent. Now it is not yet great, limited, but we can hope that it will grow and manifest itself much stronger. Conditional will is the realization of our thoughts and desires in life. For example, I want to build a house – and I build it, I want to invent some machine – and I invent it, I want to realize it – and I realize it. I want to marry such and such a woman – and I do. I want to have children and I do. Most of the time our designs fail, especially the difficult ones, but theoretically we can assume that there is a strong will that realizes all reasonable desires. If not now, then in the future, if not by us, then by other more perfect beings or even by our descendants. There is nothing higher than a strong and reasonable will. One mind without a will is nothing, and one will without a mind is also nothing. Every creature should live and think as if it can achieve everything, sooner or later. Whence comes the source of this beneficent will? The will depends on the structure of the brain. The higher brain came from the development of the brains of the lower animals. All animals and plants came from complex organic matter, such as bacteria, amoebas, protoplasm. The latter are from inorganic nature. The development of the organic world is impossible without some kind of energy, such as the energy of the Sun.

It is clear that life, reason and will were generated gradually by nature. Man was born by the Earth, the Earth by the Sun, the Sun came from the condensation of a rarefied gaseous mass. This one is from still more rarefied matter, such as ether.

So, everything is generated by the universe. It is the beginning of all things, and everything depends on it. Man, or another higher being, and his will is only a manifestation of the will of the universe.

No being can manifest absolute will, just as a watch or some complex automaton, such as a talking movie, cannot manifest it. The shadows of the movie speak, walk, do, fulfill their will, coordinate words with actions, but everyone knows that their will is only apparent, not absolute, all their movements and speeches depend on the film, in general, on the man who created the movie. In the same way, the most intelligent being fulfills only the will of the universe. It gave him a mind and a limited will. Limited because this will, which depends on reason, cannot be the only source of deeds: the vastness of the Universe can always intervene, distort, violate and fail to fulfill the will of reason alone. We say: everything depends on us, but we ourselves are the creatures of the universe. Therefore, it is more correct to think and say that everything depends on the Universe. We assume, and the Universe disposes as it wants, without ceremony destroying our plans and even destroying the whole planet with all its intelligent beings.

If we manage to fulfill our will, it is only because the Universe has allowed us to do so. It always has many ways and reasons to slow down our activity and manifest another, higher will, although our will is only the will of the Universe.

Take the events of this 28th year. It is clear that they are the consequence of the events of the 27th year, and the latter are the result of the events of the 26th year, etc. After all, everything that is not done has its source in times long past, when there was not even a trace of animals. Our will, our deeds – present and future – are the result of times long past. And these are born of times even earlier. Decillions of years ago, decillions of decillions of years, decillions to the decillionth degree – these are the times, this is the state of the world, which was the cause of present and future phenomena.

We are not so much interested in the manifestation of the will of man (although it is also produced by the cosmos) as in the general manifestation of the will of the universe.

Do we have the right to speak about the will of the Universe? We can speak about the will of a reasonable being, even about the will of a stupid animal, but can we speak about the will of the cosmos? Can we liken it even to a stupid animal? But since everything depends on the arrangement of the universe (at the present or long past moment), it means that it or its unknown cause has a will. This will conditions everything that we now see or to which our reason points us. The only question is what that will is. The quality of the will will also point us to the quality of the universe or its cause.

If we speak of the present condition of the earth, the will of the cosmos is precisely manifested as the will of an unreasonable being. Indeed, in the affairs of the Earth, in the affairs of mankind, we see a mixture of the reasonable with the stupid, the good with the cruel. Why poverty, disease, prisons, wickedness, wars, death, stupidity, ignorance, limited science, earthquakes, hurricanes, crop failures, droughts, floods, noxious insects and animals, horrible climate, etc.? Looking only at the Earth, we should compare the will of the cosmos with the will of a limited being. But will the Earth and man always be in this state? The universe gave birth to man, his weak mind and will. But they were even weaker before, they then developed to their present strength, and hopefully they will continue their development. What degree it will reach, what fruits it will produce – it is now even difficult to imagine (see my book “The Future of the Earth and Mankind”). So, there is a full probability that the will of the cosmos will also manifest itself on Earth in all the splendor of the highest intelligence. The perfect state of the Earth will continue for a very long time in comparison with its miserable situation, which is the present. And then in happiness, in bliss, the highest descendant of man will say: the will of the cosmos is manifested as the will of the wisest and most omnipotent being. Our descendant can only accuse this will of a certain slowness: why the cosmos did not create happiness at once, but made a part of matter experience before the sumptuousness of torments and passions. Though the torments were not long comparatively, yet they were. In no case will they constitute more than a thousandth of the happy state of men. We shall see later that this accusation also falls away.

There are more than a thousand planets in our solar system and at least one of them is in conditions favorable for the development of higher conscious life. In our Milky Way there are more than a billion solar systems like ours. There are about a million Milky Ways in our Etheric Island. We could go on like this ad infinitum, but we will limit ourselves to our Etheric Island. In it we count a million billion solar systems and at least as many planets suitable for the development of perfect life. On all planets life has originated, but on these it should flourish lushly. It is asked, were these million billion planets equal? No doubt on some the blossoming was earlier than on others, and quite extraordinary in its beautiful results. There life has outstripped everything possible, everything the best that man can imagine.

He dreams not only of conquering his own solar system, but also of visiting others. The goal is to eliminate painlessly all imperfect (rudimentary) life and repopulate the planets with its perfect generation.

The man of the future thinks: what a hard way the organic life of the Earth has traveled, how much suffering its creatures have endured. Now we have none. Apart from the intelligent, nothing dawns on our planet. But what is the horror of the past? Wouldn’t it have been better if the Earth had been directly inhabited by conscious beings. Then there would not be this tail of misery and madness.

If a human being can think so, then all the more so did a higher being on a higher planet think so. And not only thought, but found a thousand possibilities to realize his reasonable desires.

So, the reason and power of the higher beings, who originated on the higher planets, eliminate the embryonic life on other planets and populate them with their offspring. Similarly, a gardener weeds his vegetable garden and plants useful vegetables on it.

It turns out that the universe is filled only with perfect beings. On the infinite majority of planets, perfect life is directly on its feet, without long millennia of preliminary agonies of self-generation. Of the millions of billions of billions of planets, only a few have suffered the cup of suffering because life on them began by self-generation.

If you agonized for only one second during your entire happy life, can your life be considered unlucky. So also the universe cannot be considered unhappy on the ground that any planet out of billions of them should undergo a comparatively negligible time of the agony of self-begetting.
If the cosmos has given in general only happiness to its creatures, then you can consider its will to be impeccable.

The cosmos did not give birth to evil and delusion, but to the reason and happiness of all things.

To realize this, we need only to take the highest point of view: to imagine the future of the Earth and to embrace with our minds the infinity of the universe or even our Milky Way. Then we will see that the cosmos is like the kindest and most intelligent animal.

You may say: well, well, happiness and reason are everywhere, but are there not natural disasters that sweep away this happiness in a moment, as a broom sweeps away bad garbage.

Planets and suns explode like bombs. What life can resist it! The suns cool down and deprive the planets of their life-giving light. Where will their inhabitants go then? Many catastrophes always befall intelligent beings.

The fact is that we have a very wrong notion about the intelligence of higher beings. If people already now foresee some disasters and take measures against them and sometimes successfully fight against them, what kind of resistance power can the higher beings of the Universe show.

They foresee the explosions of planets many hundreds of years before this phenomenon and withdraw from them to safe places in space. They foresee the explosions of suns, also their extinguishing and leave in time from the weakened ones.

You will still say: sooner or later all the suns will be extinguished, life will cease, here is a favor of the cosmos for you. It can’t be. The suns are continually burning up, and this is even more frequent than their extinction. In short, there are as many dark suns rising as there are brilliant ones fading away. The universe has always been and will always be on the average as we observe it now. The life of each luminary is periodic and repeats itself many times. So too is the life of a group of luminaries, such as the Milky Way.

– And death and its agonies,” you will say. – Can it ever disappear?

Life has no definite size and can be lengthened to thousands of years. Death can be as painless as the death of a tree or an insect.

Besides, I have proved many times that, just as the life of a luminary is periodic and is restored innumerable times, so the life of a being or of the atoms composing it arises many times, or rather has always arisen and will arise without end. No atom of the universe escapes the sensation of a higher intelligent life. Not only that, only such life is possible.

Death is one of the illusions of the weak human mind. It does not exist because the existence of an atom in inorganic matter is not marked by memory and time, the latter does not exist. The many existences of the atom in organic form merge into one subjectively continuous and happy life – happy because there is no other. It is not allowed by the reason and power of the higher animals.

The universe is so arranged that not only is it itself immortal, but its parts in the form of living blissful beings are also immortal. There is no beginning and no end to the universe, no beginning and no end also to life and its bliss.

We prove that the will of the universe is beautiful because in the general picture of the cosmos we see nothing but goodness, reason, perfection and their subjective continuity, beginninglessness and infinity.

If the cosmos has a cause, we must attribute to that cause the same properties of universal love.

We are sure that the mature beings of the universe have the means of being carried from planet to planet, of intervening in the life of backward planets, and of being brought together with those as mature as they are. The people of Earth will one day unite, and all of them will be governed by one elected council, under the leadership of a president elected by the council.

This will happen relatively soon. After a longer period of time, our entire solar system will be abundantly populated. It will also be governed by an elected council with its own president. It cannot be otherwise, because reason demands it.

All other planets and solar systems will also unite. The only difference is that most of them are quickly populated by a mature, ready generation and immediately establish their governance. The Earth and our solar system, on the other hand, have had a long path of gradual suffering development.

There must be unification, for the benefits of beings demand it. If they are mature, they are reasonable, and if they are reasonable, they will not do evil to themselves. Anarchy is imperfection and evil.

The presidents and groups of suns (star clumps) and the entire Milky Way are united. Let’s stop here.

What a powerful and wise organization this must be.

We are talking about beings similar to humans, only more perfect. Between them there may be all sorts of breeds adapted to life on all sorts of planets, such as Earth. But most of them are monotonous and adapted to life in the ether. But there is a need for those who could bring order to all planets. This order consists in the elimination of all suffering on the celestial bodies.

So we can expect that this powerful organization can penetrate any planet, for example, the Earth.

Why have we not noticed any traces of its activity so far?

Science is accurate, at least no branch of the mind is so sober, but our imagination is weak. It has deceived men so many times that at present its credit has fallen greatly. The “sobriety” of science has hitherto precluded interplanetary intercourse. Now this opinion has been shaken even by scientists, but most of them are not yet affected by the new ideas and are either indifferent to them or hostile to them. A few years earlier, except for the obvious dreamers, no one admitted the possibility of celestial intercourse, especially of travel outside the earth. Hence the opinion was established that they were impossible. And if so, all the facts proving these communications, if there were any, were ruthlessly denied by men of science. They also denied the falling of heavenly stones to the Earth (meteors), nor did they see sunspots for a long time. Such is the power of prejudice.

Meanwhile, there are many unexplained phenomena noted in history and literature. Most of them, no doubt, can be attributed to hallucinations and other kinds of delusions, but are they all? Now, in view of the proven possibility of interplanetary communications, we should treat such “incomprehensible” phenomena more carefully. We have nothing reliable in this respect and therefore we are silent.

Maybe the intervention of other beings in the life of the Earth is not yet prepared by the development of most people. Or maybe it would be detrimental to mankind at the present time. Most humans are completely ignorant and look at the universe in much the same way as animals do. Religiously his views are sheer superstition. If they saw other beings intervening in earthly affairs, they would now understand it in terms of their faith. It would be fanaticism with its crimes and nothing else.

Suppose the forces of other worlds had stopped the war of ’14. There would have been no war. Many people would have been spared suffering and death. But humanity is so crude that only these sufferings could excite in them an aversion to war. Only they proved to be the “science” that made people think differently, contributed to the movement of their thought. What to do, people are such that only severe suffering can remake them and lead them to better things. So, maybe a hooligan can’t be restrained by anything but harsh punishment. A drunken rowdy has to be tied up, a madman has to be put on a hot shirt.

There are a number of other phenomena, however, in most cases as dubious as the previous ones. They tell us about the penetration of some intelligent forces into our brains and their interference in human affairs.

I myself have witnessed such phenomena twice in my life, and therefore I cannot deny them. If they were with me, why could they not be with others. On this basis I admit that some part of this kind of phenomena is not an illusion, but a real proof of the presence in the cosmos of unknown intelligent forces, of some beings arranged differently from us, at least of incomparably thinner matter. Perhaps it is the legacy of the escaped decillions of years of past time that created these beings. The latter appear to have survived to this day.

They also manifest themselves by acts of kindness. This is understandable, because the reason and benefit of all beings of the cosmos and of all time is that there should be nothing imperfect, no suffering. After all, if there is suffering, there will be no avoiding it and no atom. There is no suffering – the atom (or a smaller part of it, an unknown essence of matter in general) will not be tormented either.

The past is limitless. What does this mean? Do not think that it is easy to imagine. An example can be given. Here are the numbers 2², 3^{3^3}, etc., or conventionally X^(x). If (x) is equal to two, this number is only 4. If it is 3, we already have more than 7.5 billion (10¹²). If x=4, then we will get more than a number expressed by a unit with such a set of zeros that the entire known Universe will not accommodate, even if these zeros are less than 1 cubic micron.

Indeed, the volume of the entire known Universe (assuming an Etheric Island containing a million milky ways, extending 100 million light years) is less than 10⁹⁰ cubic microns, while our number is expressed as 10 with an exponent of not 90, but as a unit with 100 zeros and more. Obviously, the known volume of space is a perfect zero in comparison with this number. I must confess that with great difficulty I could imagine the magnitude of this number (when x=4). If x=5, I resolutely refuse to imagine it. What if x=10 and more!!!

If (x) is equal to a decillion, even then our function will express a number equal to zero with respect to actual infinity.

So what is it?

Let’s add our functions as many times as we like and still total up to zero in relation to true infinity.

What could these infinite times (elapsed years) have produced? If time creates intelligence and other wonders in a short time, then what could it create in said times (X^(x))!

The world has always existed. Real matter and its atoms are the infinitely complex product of other simpler matter. There were past times when matter was decillions of times lighter than the lightest matter now. There have been epochs when it was still decillions of decillions of times lighter, etc. And all these worlds were and have produced beings intelligent, but almost immaterial by their low density. What I am saying I theorized long ago, but there was no actual confirmation that I could believe. When I saw the confirmation myself, I became inclined to believe others as well.

Notes

Decillion – 10³⁰ или 10⁶⁰. Count as follows: 10³ – a thousand, 10⁶ – a million, 10⁹ – a billion = 10⁶ (million) x 10³ (thousand), etc. Then decillion is – 10⁶ x 10²⁴ = 10³⁰. On a different scale: 10⁶ – million, 10^6×2 – billion, 10^6×3 – trillion, 10^6×4 – quadrillion, 10^6×5 – quintillion, 10^6×6 – sextillion, …, 10^6×10 = 10⁶⁰ – decillion. Tsiolkovsky apparently did not have in mind the exact meaning of decillion, but used it as a synonym for a very large number: many, darkness, decillion decillion.

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