One of the primary points that I have tried to make clear so far in this work is that everything in existence is an expression of Consciousness, varying only as a function of the vibration and the relationships of the firmaments from which the ‘thing’ is made. The basic structure of those firmaments constitutes the nature of a Being―the essential nature of your Being. This is fundamental in understanding how and why everything else plays out from here, especially when it comes to understanding your place and purpose as a human being in this vast arena of space-time.

The development of the Universe, and all events that occur within it, at every place great and small, is the result of Consciousness expressing and experimenting at varying levels of vibration. Remember that this vibration would possibly be better described as a pulsation, an in/out, expansion/contraction movement of energy at varying rates. Each level of Consciousness incorporates and controls all levels below or within it, and is included and controlled by all levels above or around it. This arrangement of control is natural and unavoidable as a function of vibration, which determines the power of influence at each level. The situation represents a hierarchical structure that is now reflected in many structures of order in our human experience.

It is not humans who invented systems of hierarchy. We are merely moved to work in this way because it reflects the way that Consciousness itself is organised. For example, any business organisation involving a group of people gathered to provide specific goods or services has a hierarchical structure throughout. Without this structure, there would be no clear purpose, direction or control in the business, nor indeed any opportunity for it to be something of true value that offers a contribution to the whole. This is an example, but it is also a clear analogy which shows how things work throughout the Universe, and one that we can all see and relate to in our own experience.

At the top, or head, of any organisation is some kind of controlling, directing, or informing authority. That may be a single person, or it may be something more like a board of directors, for example. No matter which, that entity is the controlling power of the organisation where the idea and purpose for its existence is held and managed. Under that authority is perhaps a Managing Director (MD), who is responsible for implementing the idea and keeping everything on track. He or she has certain power and opportunity to act creatively in that position, but is always answerable to the board. Similarly, the board may or may not be influenced by the creativity of the MD. By this I mean that although the board holds the idea, purpose and ultimate responsibility for the organisation, the various creative acts by individuals within it, if valuable to the whole, would be acknowledged and supported.

Under the position of MD there would be some Department Heads who are responsible for all the tasks assigned to them. Then there would be Team Leaders under them, who manage even more specific tasks. Finally, there are the workers who perform their tasks, but even within those groups there is hierarchical control as a function of seniority and skill. Control, of course, by way of recognition and respect for the knowledge any individual has, not by means of force through fear or manipulation.

Continuing this analogy―because it is the easiest, most accurate, and fastest way to communicate the idea of Universal hierarchical order―then we must now assume that this organisation is the most functional and intelligent example you could ever imagine. This is because I am analogising it with the perfect functioning of Universal intelligence itself. Later we will see why so many organisations on Earth don’t work, or become powerful structures that largely serve to exploit others, whilst contributing very little to the greater good. But for now, we are in a perfect world. Everybody is happy in our analogous organisation, doing what they love to do. Everybody is in their right place. There is cooperation and enthusiasm, but no selfish agenda or ambition within any of the people, simply because they are all acknowledged and fulfilled in everything they do in every moment, and therefore there is no need for any kind of self-gratifying behaviour. Every person is working and growing naturally, enjoying, learning, and contributing to the outcome of the whole. When the time is right, they will move on to a higher level. And every time a person rises to another level, their point of view changes. The higher they go, the more they can see. More is revealed to them about the organisation and its purpose and they also gain more power and responsibility.

Each level of control throughout the organisation is representative of a specific band of Consciousness. At the inside of this band is the entry of new and growing Consciousness, and at the outside is departing Consciousness going to the next level. In the middle is the majority, simply performing the tasks assigned to that level. This distribution would follow the well-known Bell curve graph that we discussed in the link to the overview of physics and the search for meaning. Each change of level represents a quantum leap, a leap to the next band or shell of Consciousness, in a similar way that energy moves within the atom, because that’s the way energy works.

In the context of the Universe, the controlling authority of the hierarchical structure that brings about our reality is the all-encompassing reality of Universal Consciousness itself. Within this reality are the Great Beings that hold the galaxies together, the MDs if you like, each exploring their own potential towards the greater expression of unlimited creative possibilities and as a contribution to Universal experience and knowledge. Within each galaxy are numerous focal points of Consciousness expressing as the stars. We could perhaps equate these with the Department Heads. Each star is informed by the galaxy it is within, evidenced simply by the gravitational control that the galaxy has on its matter. This gravitational control is the outer, measurable appearance of the inner reality of hierarchical Consciousness intending at every level. In many cases, there are further expressions of Consciousness appearing as planets that orbit the stars and form planetary systems. In addition to this there are the firmaments/Beings that support the appearance of any moons that are in orbit around a planet. And on and on it goes, all the way down from the highest, universal awareness and power, through to every single quantum expressing as the absolute potential to simply be and do something. What makes it all work brilliantly is the intelligent communication of Consciousness and mutual respect for, and as, itself at every level throughout the structure.

The relationship between the nucleus and the orbiting entities in any elemental system―which includes any and every planetary system―is representative of coupling-style relationships; the complexity of the system being represented by the mass and number of shells (orbits) in the expression. The structure of a planetary system is essentially the same as the way that energy arranges itself and interacts within the atom, except to say that it is obviously now a matter of scale and, as such, each shell around the star (nucleus) becomes materialised as a planet through the focus of another firmament that supports its existence.

Our Solar System is a creative, elemental system, that has evolved over time to become what it is today. It is a system that began in the way that anything begins―there was an intention that was met with the focus of attention to appear as a firmament. This firmament began to express as a star from which the planetary system then evolved. Although we must remember that there was a whole Universe evolving simultaneously, so information from other Universal experimentation could have been introduced immediately rather than being re-discovered in our Solar System (to avoid the ‘reinventing the wheel’ syndrome).

To help make this idea of shared information from experimentation throughout the Universe a bit clearer, we can once again make the analogy with a group of people (representative of the controlling Consciousness) who develop something specific that performs a valuable function―let’s say a microchip. That microchip is the product of a lot of creative input and experimentation. It took a very long time to ‘evolve’ it. But now that it is a known, functional device, it is something that can simply be more or less reproduced at will, to perform wherever and whenever it is required. And in this same way, valuable elements with specific properties that had developed throughout the Universe over time could manifest where and when required, if they were necessary to the creative undertaking at hand. This, as we learned previously, would occur as an emergence from the group spirit of that element that existed beyond space and time as knowledge in the Universal mind.

Applying this information to the development of our Solar System, the description and explanation is as follows: the first firmament appeared and then reproduced itself, or attracted another to itself of equal size. A relationship between them formed as a coupling, to appear as something that is often observed by astronomers today―a binary star system; two firmaments tumbling around each other in the same way that the first two firmaments of dimensionless size did when they formed as the basic structure of Protium.

More energy gathered to support the coupling, and this began to stabilise the expression as a centre (the Sun) with a charged shell around it (again, not unlike the way the neutron began to stabilise the protium atom to form as the more distinct structure of a nucleus with an opposite charged shell around it). A firmament focused in that shell now gathered the energy together to become a material body representative of the experimentation occurring within the System. That body now appears to us and remains as a symbol of what was discovered, and its name is Mercury, the first planet in orbit around the Sun.

Energy continued to gather, being drawn in by the growing nucleus. Other coupling arrangements were captured, or formed of their own accord, and another energy shell then emerged as an equal and opposite reaction to the positive charge of the coupling held in the nucleus. The field of this new shell was lighter, due to the less dense and slower vibration of energy in the field of the Sun’s full expression (which, incidentally, now extends out to the ‘Oort Cloud’, a hypothesised cloud of small rocky and icy bodies in orbit up to 1.5 light years from the Sun). Accordingly, different experiments could be performed and the lighter energy field enabled a thick dense atmosphere to form. It is Venus that now stands as a symbol of that experimentation.

As the Solar expression continued to evolve, another shell appeared and the focus of a firmament there became the next planet in the System; Earth. Given the knowledge we now have of Universal creative power, it is entirely possible to conceive that the body of the Earth may have materialised immediately as a version of all that had been discovered in the Venus experiment. From this basic form, experimentation then continued. New and different events were now possible due to the lighter energetic density of this planet. Among many other things, a larger, more gaseous atmosphere emerged, and this would eventually facilitate the emergence of various life-forms.

Similarly, Mars came into existence when more energy gathered to support the next shell in the System, and because of the increasingly lighter density in this region, Mars expresses a thinner atmosphere than that of the Earth.

This gradation of density that influences the appearance of the planets continues through to the Oort Cloud. In terms of the planets that are manifest and under the control of our Sun, we can see how the further out they are, the lighter and freer they can become. This explains why the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune express as ‘gas giants’.

The fact that this variation of planetary composition and appearance occurs is reasonable evidence to support the basic idea of the firmament and its structure. However, it must be remembered that each planet has its own unique vibration and intention, and so there will be variation of size and composition depending on how the planetary vibration interacts with the Solar vibration.

Further evidence indicating the structural nature of the firmament can be found in the ratio of the nucleus diameter to the periphery of any elemental system. In the atom, this ratio is approximately 1/100,000; meaning that the diameter of the electron shell is about 100,000 times greater than the diameter of the nucleus. A similar ratio can be found in the Solar System whereby the diameter of the Oort cloud is also (estimated to be) about 100,000 times greater than the diameter of the Sun. This ratio shows us that the physical appearance (measurable part) of any celestial body of spheroid proportions is only a tiny speck of the whole expression that supports its existence. It is Consciousness itself that accounts for the rest and explains the mysterious and hypothetical concept of ‘dark energy and matter’ that continues to perplex scientists today.

In the next section we begin to explore the development of the Earth and life that led to the appearance of complex forms and early humans.