This may appear to be a beautiful inanimate piece of jade embedded with chips of gold, but it is the chrysalis of a Monarch butterfly. Within it, a universe of events is generating a most amazing metamorphosis, a metamorphosis that will change the way this organism disperses matter and energy.
The metamorphosis will change this:
to this.
So what is going on in this jade-and-gold jewel, and why should we call it cosmic? Consider this dynamic from the point of view of the dispersal of matter and energy. Monarch caterpillars eat leaves and disperse the once solid leaf matter and energy. The light of life in this sense is the same as the light of a candle flame that disperses the solid matter of the candle into a dispersed mix of gases, light and heat. The candle dissappears, and in this case, soe does the caterpillar!
As the leaf becomes part of the caterpillar's life force and being, a portion of the organized matter that was once "leaf" becomes dispersed as heat, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and a few other waste products.
But the youngster is also storing some of that leafy matter and energy, everything it will need to morph into a form that will consume an entirely different diet of matter and energy—an adult butterfly.
Within the jewel, the caterpillar is literally dissolving, and patches of tissue that lay dormant in the jeuvinile, are developing into a new head, a new body, new wings, new muscles, and an entirely new apparatus for dispersing matter and energy. The butterfly, unlike its "other self," will consume nectar from flowers, not leaves— a new self!
The universe has designed a creature with a double-dispersal life! That's the way it is in the cosmos. Nature finds as many ways as possible to disperse matter and energy—many of them quite beautiful to look at.
Does the Cosmos have a sense of humor?
(c) R. E. Morel 2009 All rights reserved
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