Cloudscape

As everything is relative, so everything is in itself equal in value, equally beautiful and equally abominable — infinitely beautiful and infinitely abominable. Everything being equal in beauty, and having no real beauty of itself, the only thing that we should seek is the perception of beauty in itself, since that is the only real beauty we will find. Or rather, it is the closest to real beauty we can ever find — for no beauty is real. Beauty is but in our minds. It is something we imagine, and by imagining it, we make it real.

Outside our imagination, nothing is ever beautiful, and this is a curse we must bear; for whatever we may think to be beautiful, it is never beautiful in itself, and so no beauty we ever see will last outside ourselves; and it may be that when we think we have found beauty, it is only to find later that it no longer holds any beauty to us anymore. If beauty lies but in ourselves, it can never be certain, for nothing that lies in ourselves is. What lies in ourselves can always change.

The tragedy is that the perception of beauty, which is all that matters in the universe, is infinitely fragile, and it may shatter literally in a moment through the force of suffering, or worse, ignorance.

Because perception is so relative, so too is beauty, and beauty can be perceived in literally anything at all, no matter how ugly we tend to perceive it. Thus, to find beauty one must not only seek what one sees as beautiful, but also see the things you have already found as beautiful. The perception of beauty is called love, though love may also be many other things.

Things have no value of themselves whatsoever. Things can only have value to us when we give them that value, and one can only give something value through love. If life seems worthless, that is because you give it no value. If life seems precious, it is because you give it its value. Neither is an absolute truth. But why should we choose to give only certain things in life their value in the form of love, while not others?

In everything there is infinite beauty; in what things one sees beauty is but a matter of preference. To say that the beauty of something is greater than that of something else is prejudice, for if all beauty is infinite, there is none that is greater than any another. There is inexhaustible beauty in all things, and to be fully conscious of it would mean to be God.

Since everything is perception and so everything is but as we perceive it, everything is of infinite and therefore equal beauty. It is therefore impossible to do or create anything that is more or less beautiful than anything else, except to oneself or to a specific other person. There is beauty only in love, the appreciation of beauty.

As everything is equal in beauty, it is meaningless to seek beauty in anything but the perception of the beauty in all things in itself, which is love. To seek to love all things is the only thing we ever need to do, but unfortunately, since we are unable to love all things, we must often confine ourselves to the things we have already learned to love, lest, in trying to love the things that are still hurtful to us, we would destroy ourselves. Yet our task remains but to learn to love those things we cannot yet love, and to more fully love those things that we already do.

It is a question of balance, therefore, between loving what we find (yin), and finding what we love (yang), in order to find love, which is the only thing we should seek.

Ultimately, love itself is the only thing of value, that is to say, the only thing that gives value to our lives. Thus, everything is of infinite value, and yet nothing by itself is of any value whatsoever.

The love of man and woman is the same as that of all things hard and soft in the universe.

Everything we experience is no more than a connection with things that are already there in the universe. Therefore, ethical matters are more a concern of one's own connection with these things in the universe than those things themselves. Everything, being infinite, will always remain the same anyway. In an infinite universe, all things occur at an infinite frequency, and so their frequency always remains the same. Nothing we ever do can therefore change anything about the universe itself; it can only change the nature of our own connection with the universe.

Ethics, then, is not so much about not hurting others in the universe, but not hurting one's own connection with others in the universe. Others are part of our connection with the universe as is our ego, and so they are part of ourselves. Whoever hurts someone else will hurt themselves.

If there is or would be a God, then all things to God are of infinite and therefore equal value. With regards to its value, therefore, it does not matter what we do except to ourselves individually.

Messier registered hundreds of planetary nebula in order not to be distracted by them in his search for comets. Today, planetary nebula prove to be even more beautiful to us than any comet as yet observed.

Perhaps we can learn from this: anything can become beautiful, if only we look close enough.

Everything has unique aspects of beauty surpassed by nothing else in the universe.

There can be no ultimate limits in the universe, because those limits would themselves need to have a reason to be what they are. Everything has a cause, and therefore so do physical constants; if they had not, then why could they not just as well have another value? Why do physical constants have one value rather than another, if they are purely random? There is a reason, for instance, that the speed of light is 300.000 kilometers per second, rather than 400.000 or 200.000; the same counts for every other physical constant.
The fact that physical constants are fine-tuned to life means that they cannot have been predetermined before existence; they must have been determined by existing factors. If they do have a cause, however, then that cause must be changeable. We cannot assume constants to be fully constant without dispensing with causality.
Since it would be too coincidental that there would be only one universe which is fine-tuned to life, there must be many other universes, most of which are not fine-tuned; ours merely continued to evolve because of natural selection. Something must have fine-tuned its constants. If we can find out how this happened, we might change these constants within a closed system, and so even these may not pose ultimate limits.
If all things have causes, and those causes themselves have causes, then this must essentially go on in infinity; this means that causation occurs in an infinite series. Thus, throughout this series, as everything will have random causal connections with other things, it must follow that all things are causally connected in infinitely many ways, throughout the infinite series of causations.
This means that all causes can themselves be changed; this also means that with sufficient science, all things can be observed, and that with the right technology, all things can be influenced. There can simply be no one-way causation if all things are causally interconnected, and so all causes can themselves be changed.
If everything has a cause, including physical constants, this may also mean that the universe cannot be finite. If the universe would be finite, this would mean that it possesses a certain finite amount of energy.
As this amount of energy would be specific, however, it would again be the question why it would be the specific amount it is: why one amount rather than another? If there is any such finite amount, we can only suppose that this amount would be random. Even if there were a reason that it is this specific amount, that reason would itself have been determined by other specific parameters and so forth. However, if this amount is ultimately random, it follows that its determination is acausal.
All limits, like anything else, must have a cause. If a system is limited, there must be something that limits the system; but the Universe itself cannot be limited as there is nothing to limit it. There is nothing outside the Universe to limit it, neither was there anything before the Universe to limit it, as the Universe is all that exists.

In an infinite universe there will always be infinite suffering, and nothing we ever do can ever change that. For an infinite universe as a whole can never be changed, for that would otherwise have been done by others before us. While its parts may be changed, on the whole it always remains as it has always been.
The only thing that matters to us, then, is the beauty of our own experiences.

If the universe is infinitely complex, it must involve infinitely many levels both below the quantum level as above the astronomical level. All of these would have varying degrees of complexity, some of them as high as our own level. Some levels, like our own, would be able to support life. Such level could be called a "habitable level." In habitable levels below the quantum level, time would go much faster from our perspective, while in habitable levels above the cosmic level, time would go much slower from our perspective.
There is no reason why such levels would be impossible; however, if these levels exist at all, it may not be possible to connect with them. In fact, perhaps it is natural to assume that there are habitable levels beside our own just as it is natural to assume that there are habitable planets beside our own. Science has already shown us that we are far from unique; why should our level, then, be unique? Would it not be too much of a coincidence if there were only one level at which life is possible, that of chemistry? In no way we appear to live in the center of the universe; why should this aspect be an exception? Such chauvinism has betrayed us too often before to be closed to this possibility altogether.

Infinite levels of complexity below the quantum level ("subquantum levels") would mean that there are also infinitely diverse systems below it, some of which would be able to sustain higher degrees of complexity than others. Each level below the quantum level would affect the higher levels, but would do so in such chaotic ways that their effect would appear to be random.
We might never be able to observe those worlds, but although the Planck length may be the smallest size that we can observe, and therefore the smallest size that matters to us, that does not mean that there could not exist anything smaller; we simply can never connect to whatever exists at such level, at least so it seems for now.
Infinite levels of complexity above the cosmic level ("supercosmic levels") would mean the same thing. In an infinitely complex Universe (with capital U, referring to all of existence) there could be forces of infinite speed, although they might not occur except at an infinitesimal frequency; this could, for instance, bridge the distances between separate universes (which would in turn be but particles!) so that they could interact at faster-than-light speed. This would not have to be necessary for there to other levels above the cosmic level, however; suppose that nothing goes faster than light (which would, however, be very unlikely if the universe is indeed infinite in complexity), then this would merely make the interactions in supercosmic levels much slower; they could still, in effect, take place, even if there are no other forces than the ones we know already.
Since our universe expands so rapidly, it could not take part in any interactions because it would dissolve before it could do so. However, if again we assume that the Universe (with capital U) is infinite, there must be infinitely other universes (small u), and some would have density parameters which would make them stable for a long term. Most subatomic particles are very unstable, lasting only a fraction of a second; but the few that are stable are enough to form a viable level.
There are two ways in which stable universes might interact with one another: one is through forces which to us are still unknown. In that case, it is possible that our own universe has a charge we are not aware of; after all, since it does not manifest to ourselves, we cannot detect it. Indeed, if there are habitable subquantum levels, then the hypothetical inhabitants of an electron who have come to discover that they live on an electron might think it to be neutral, not seeing that there are particles beyond their own and calling their particle "the universe."
The other possibility is that stable universes interact with one another through the same forces present in our own universe. Some universes might be electromagnetically charged; even if none have a very great charge, then still, either how every universe is likely charged to some extent, even if that charge comprises only a few elementary charges. Though this is small on our level, this may have an entirely different meaning at supercosmic level. Given enough time, even the slightest force, no matter how small, will have an affect. The only thing that can prevent this is that it would be countered by another force, but those would not or barely occur in the space between universes.
Just how long this would take does not matter at all, as time is relative; on supercosmic levels, a billion years might be a very short time, just like a femtosecond is a very short time to us. In contrast, on quantum level a femtosecond is a very long time, and most subatomic particles do not survive that long.
The effects of a force depend on time as well as space. This is testified by the gravity that keeps superclusters together; certainly that force is not relevant to us, that is to say, not on our level. Time and space are relative, and what to us is a very long time may be but a very brief instant on supercosmic levels, while what to us are very vast distances may be but very short intervals on those levels.
Thus, regardless in what way or at what speed, if there are universes beyond our own then they will interact. Very slowly to us, they will move to form greater structures which in a higher level might be similar, for instance, to stars on the astronomical level — which will then again form greater levels and so on. If the speed of light is an absolute limit, the only difference this makes is that the greater levels will move slower, but even so, in that frame of reference it is not slow in itself. It must also be noted that, should there be an inhabitable supercosmic level, this slowness would also affect consciousness, so that it would not perceive its world as slow at all.