Quasars are some of the most powerful objects in the universe. They’re the immensely bright cores of certain galaxies, powered by actively feeding supermassive black holes.
We typically spot quasars many billions of light-years away. And because their light has taken many billions of years to reach us, that means we usually see quasars in the universe’s early years, when there was abundant material for the black holes to feast on.
About 9 billion years ago, during one of the busiest periods in cosmic history, many massive galaxies were still building stars at a furious pace. Yet a smaller group had already slammed on the brakes. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that, in many cases, those sudden shutdowns were not gentle. Instead, they may have followed violent collisions. These collisions left behind compact, disturbed remnants.
“Man has the powers of reason and decision. A wise father delegates responsibility to his children, and God does not unduly interfere in the affairs of men.
“Man is the lord of creation and the heir to godhood. He can soar to the greatest heights, but also fall to the lowest depths. No man is wholly good, and no man is wholly evil. The scales are never completely weighed down.
“No man can hold any desirable thing on Earth or attain it in the Regions of Light without the expenditure of effort. No man can foresee the future or know what test the Wise God has placed there for him.
“O man, mark this well. Never forget your goal of godhood, but vaunt not your godlikeness, for the beast dogs your footsteps, and an animal clothes your soul. You dwell beneath the dark shadow of the cloud of mortal ignorance. You live in a twilit dream state; you are deceived by your senses; you dream and say this is reality; you reason and are afraid. But know that all things real reside in God, and His wisdom stands beyond the bounds of reason. He has established the foundations of Truth and Reality for eternity.”
-the Kolbrin Bible (MPR:5:11-14)
Man has a variety of abilities (I like that word better than powers). Some abilities are physical in nature and come from the Demiurge who created all things physical. Others are spiritual and come from God. There is nothing wrong with using our physical abilities, as long as we use them in a way that benefits mankind and doesn’t violate the Laws of God. Some people think that we can only use physical abilities while on earth and must save the spiritual ones for the afterlife, but that isn’t true. Some spiritual abilities can and should be awakened, developed, and used while we are still physical.
Some wonder why God doesn’t simply change the world back into the original spiritual form He always intended it to be. He doesn’t do that partly because He has given us some degree of free will and wants us to decide that is what we want. He also wants us to participate in the process just as fathers used to have their offspring participate in their business.
It may be an exaggeration to say that man is heir to godhood, but good does want us to develop our spiritual faculties to their fullest until we reach that level of consciousness and spiritual knowledge that allows us to be in Heaven with God and the Angels of Light. The quote says none of us is wholly good or wholly evil. It is up to us to decide which side we want to nurture. As some Native Americans say, we have two wolves within us: one is good, and one is evil. It is up to us to decide which one we want to nurture.
As the quote says, we cannot hold anything desirable on earth or in the regions of Light without making an effort. In one of the prayers used in some Cosolargy services, it says that we must labor in this world as well as the next, and that is true. Nothing comes from simply sitting around and wishing for it.
It is true that the Beast and his minions are after us all the time. It is also true, in a certain sense, that our spirit is trapped in a mortal body. But, as the quote also says, God has established the foundations of truth and reality. So if we want to know right from wrong, good from evil, we must turn to God, not to human leaders.
Far beyond Pluto, where sunlight is faint and the planets are long behind, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is moving through a region where the Sun’s outflow begins to lose its grip. There, a stream of charged particles called the solar wind is gradually slowing down. The new measurements help show why. The answer lies in a quiet, persistent encounter with material drifting in from interstellar space.
The vast space between galaxies is mostly empty, just a few atoms in every cubic meter, but it’s not totally empty. Now, astronomers have discovered a galaxy plowing through the intergalactic medium so quickly that it’s leaving a wake behind, stretching 1.8 million light-years long. Astronomers think the galaxy is falling into a huge cluster, traveling faster than sound can move through the hot gas, so it piles up in front like a bow wave.
Most large stars are found in binary and multiple star systems. Some of these stars are so close together; they’re orbiting one another in just a few hours. They couldn’t have formed this close together; instead, they must have formed farther apart and then migrated closer to one another. What mechanism caused this migration? A new study shows how magnetic fields can be the force that drives the inward migration in binary stars.
“Consider yourselves, my children, and meditate on the reason for your existence and the purpose, for which you were brought into being. Contemplate your powers, ponder your circumstances, discover your inescapable duties and face your earthly obligations.
“Assume your burdens cheerfully, for they are not imposed capriciously. The One God has set a hard task, but it is not beyond your capabilities. Remember that every affliction, however grievous and
seemingly unnecessary, serves a purpose and end.
“O man, you are the delight and sorrow of your God; you have been set apart with peculiar favor and exalted above all other creatures. He has endowed you with reason, to maintain your dominion. He has bestowed upon you the faculty of speech, that wisdom may accumulate throughout your generations. He has exalted your mind, so that it may be perceptive of beauty and grandeur. He has ordained the Law, which circumscribes your life, and adjusted your nature to accord with your duties and destiny.”
-he Kolbrin Bible (MPR:5:1-3)
There are actually at least two reasons for our existence. Our Spirit and Soul exist because God wishes it. Our physical body exists because of the Great Fall from Heaven symbolized in the story of Adam and Eve. That is the basic reasons, but there are deeper ones. Our Spirit exists so that we can awaken and develop it until we reach the highest level of consciousness possible. And while the physical body is not from God, we are still obligated to life a life of service to others, a life of love and truth. E are also obligated to help others do the same.
This is not referring to powers like those of politicians and despots. It is referring to the spiritual powers that God has given us. Remember that Jesus said that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed (a tiny seed), we could move mountains. That should not be taken literally. It means that if we have a little faith in our God-given abilities, we can do great things.
Here I must disagree with the quote. God does not put burdens on us. Burdens come from the devils and demons who wish to keep us trapped forever in the realm of matter, so when they find people trying to develop their Spiritual Self, they burden them with illness, financial problems, or other burdens to discourage such development.
The faculty of speech is indeed a very helpful ability. In the ancient mystery schools, advanced spiritual knowledge was also shared verbally. It was never put in writing. Even Jesus taught his apostles and disciples verbally. The various writing that forms the New Testament of the Bible were written hundreds of years after the physical death of Jesus.
God has given us the ability to appreciate beauty. Not just the physical beauty of other people, but the beauty found in arts such as music and sculpture, as well as the beauty found in nature. The beauty of flowers. The beauty of birds and butterflies. Appreciation of true beauty is a spiritual gift that we should do our best to develop.
There’s a time early on in the Universe known as Cosmic Dawn. This is within the first few billion years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were blazing, clearing out the cosmic fog. A new survey with Webb has looked at thousands of objects in a region that’s about three times bigger than the Moon, revealing a collection of galaxies forming within the first billion years of the Universe’s history.
In November last year, the scientific community was rocked by an extraordinary study. Opposing the widely held view that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, this paper claimed it was actually slowing down.
If true, astronomers need to rethink much of what they know about the structure of the universe, particularly the mysterious force we call dark energy.
A quasar from the universe’s first 850 million years has started to look less like a distant pinprick and more like a real physical system. By catching it flickering over time, astronomers have traced the structure of matter swirling around one of the earliest known supermassive black holes. What they found deepens one of cosmology’s biggest puzzles.