Let's take antother look...

"There is a grandeur in this view of life, with it's several powers, having been originally breathed in by the creator into a few forms, or into one... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved" --Charles Darwin

It's pretty much proven by now that we're a product of millions of years of evolution. But does that prove that the process we've sprung from is a process based on purely random changes? Whenever we discuss evolution we often talk about survival and survival of the fittest. But do we really know what we talk about when we say survive? What is it that life does to survive and what do we mean with 'the fittest'?

What if we're part of a conscious process that has been busy surviving for all those millions of years? There are plenty of reasons why an animal not unlike us could be very beneficial for life to survive, you just have to think more holistic about surviving. It's not the survival of the individual, nor the survival of the species that's in the balance here. It's the survival of life itself we're a part of. It may not look pretty at first but when you delve into it, it all starts to make sense.

**

There are many verses in the Bible, especially in Revelations and many other references to disasters like asteroid impacts and global earthquakes in the Quran. Because they we're written in times before we knew about these global catastrophes, they tell of 'falling stars' instead of asteroid impacts. There is only one animal on this planet that has the potential to avert or prevent and survive this kind of mega-disaster.

-- This happened more than once in life's history, although not all as large as this one pictured here. But there are up to 180 impact structures found on earth ranging in diameter from 0.0015km to 300km. And because of plate tectonics this number probably is just the tip of the iceberg.

Bible, Revelations 8:10
"The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water"

**

What if some parts of the many different religious texts are in fact inspired by life and tell us more then we could know at the time they were written down. Like Ephesians 6,12. We are not supposed to struggle against each other, but we're here to struggle against the huge natural disasters like the asteroid impact 65 million years ago or even worse; the end Perm extinction.

Ephesians chapter 6, verse 12: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly
realms."
***Roughly 252 million years ago, life on the earth nearly ceased to exist--as much as 90 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life died out. At around the same time, a vast up swelling of magma covered between one million and four million cubic kilometres of what is now Siberia. The eruption continued off and on for about a million years, with basalt lava and poisonous gases seeping up through cracks in Siberia's mantle. Now rocks from Italy may have linked the two events.*** -- "The Scientific American - "The Great Dying".

Mass Extinctions and the Interrupted Equilibrium.

When you take a look at life’s reaction to mass extinctions, you will notice that some ‘rapid’ evolutionary changes take place. In scientific language it's called an Interrupted Equilibrium. This means relative short periods of major genetic evolution, followed by very long periods of keeping ‘the status quo’. This means that we didn't really evolve over billions of years but in 'short' bursts after which evolution becomes relative in-active. Most of these evolutionary bursts happened after a global catastrophe.

Now, evolutionists will deny that life reacts to an extinction, but that because of the changed environment and the lack of other life forms, this period of rapid evolution is explained. But another explanation might be that life ‘is doing it again’, only this time much quicker.

There are at least two global calamities that changed life’s behaviour so dramatically that I find it impossible to blame it on the process of purely random changes. These changes are: the start of sexual reproduction, 1.4 billion years ago and the introduction of the mammal, 210 million years ago. Both happened relatively short after a mass extinction or global catastrophe.

To explain these changes in behaviour I can only come up with 'the will to survive'.

I found that this will to survive is composed of the forces Charles Darwin talks about in his quote I posted above. When we define these forces we will be able to see what really happened.

According to the Darwinian theory (Darwin himself couldn't believe it!) we somehow were randomly equipped with opposable thumbs, an upright position so we could use our arms and hands for other things than moving around, a voice box so we could evolve language and communicate. And to top it all off a brain bigger than any other that has the capability to learn and create amazing things. But how random are these changes really?

Especially our ‘ability’ to believe in a ‘all powerful God’ somewhere ‘up there’ in the skies, is a major contribution to the creation of science and scientific thought. The fact that we now know about these mass extinctions and are already hovering in space, trying to define our universe has everything to do with our ‘irrational beliefs’ that time and time again clashes with reality.

Before we go on to define these forces Darwin speaks of, I'd like to share with you verse 42 from the Book of Tao. I found that within verse 42 lies the secret to our predicament. It goes something like this:

From the Tao came the One
From the One came the Two
The One and Two created the Three
All Three created the 10,000 things
To balance the life forces you create harmony


In this fragment of the verse lies the secret of why we are here, the origin of our consciousness, the essence of good and evil, the answer to the age old enigma of the Trinity and the life force(s).

But it is not only here that I found evidence for this theory. In many major and minor religions and many philosophical and mystical writings there are thoughts and theories that suggest that we are part of an evolving consciousness, that life itself is our creator -- not all powerful but vulnerable, like us. And like us life learns through experience.

**

"What is needed is a profound collaboration with the creative impulse or Life Force whose purposes are being realized in the evolutionary process. Shaw regarded his doctrine of the Life Force as an evolutionary theology. In his plays, prefaces, and speeches he identified the Life Force with God who is striving to make himself. God is affirmed to be not an infinite, omnipotent, and perfect being, but a finite power, limited to working through the process of evolution" - George Bernard Shaw. From: The Dictionary of the History of Ideas -

*******************************************************

Now try to follow this logic...

The Life Force(s):

You probably have heard of this mysterious thing called the Life Force. Nobody has identified it, it’s shrouded in mystery and when you ask a scientist, at least one that adheres to the Darwinian theory, he or she will tell you there is no such thing as a life force. I beg to differ.

Let’s take this life force at face value. It’s a force and it’s responsible for the existence of life. Now take the scientific definition of a force and take the accepted, but not so scientific, definition of life.

Force:
“In physics, a force is a push or pull that can cause an object with mass to accelerate".
or.. A force is something that moves something else.

The commonly accepted definition of life, and I'm narrowing it down to life's activities:
Life has a metabolism,
Life reproduces itself
Life is prone to react to stimuli.
Again to simplify matters:
* life feeds itself,
* it reproduces
* and interacts with its environment.

To implement these two definitions we can redefine the life force as something that started to make life ‘move’.
Staying within the boundaries of scientific findings, life started 'to move' almost 4 billion years ago.

The question is: What did it do?

Here I have to start challenging the accepted version of our scientific community about how life began. Even though all scientists know that the origin of life is still a mystery, they do have an accepted and frequently used explanation for lay people like me and (probably) you:

'Life started out as spontaneous copying molecules'.

It seems logical, but it misses the point completely. There is a more logical and realistic answer. Simply this: Before the copying or reproduction started the feeding started.

It’s an (wide) open door, really. To reproduce and increase in mass you’ll have to feed, first. Just copying without feeding would lead to lots of tiny molecules with a combined mass equal to that at the start of the process.
To create a more complete picture of Life we will have to separate these two activities.


** Even though reproduction is a common activity in Life, feeding will always be No.1.

So life started out spontaneously feeding and then reproducing itself, hence the growth in mass. But even more importantly, it changes the idea that life started out wholly independent of it’s environment. To feed means to interact with your environment, which points to a form of consciousness.

Let’s try to define the life force based on logic and scientific definitions. Just answer this question: Is there anything you know of that we might call a force and causes life to eat?

The only thing we know and experience is that if we don’t eat we go hungry. And hunger means pain. But Hunger is only part of the experience. As we all know hunger doesn’t just pop up whenever you should eat, it takes time to grow. The revealing thing about hunger is that it actually starts out with a more pleasurable experience we call an appetite, which is a form of lust, in fact it is the original lust, lust for food.

Even though I cannot prove empirically Hunger(&Lust) is the Life Force, logically and based on scientific definition it does fit. It also happens to fit in a lot of religious and philosophical thought about the Life Force and its workings.

Now we have defined an activity that is universal in life, unlike reproduction (not all get to reproduce), and a perfectly acceptable force, Hunger that for all we know precedes all of our feeding habits.

Not only did we define a plausible life force, but it turns out to be dualistic in nature. It creates for life the experience of pleasure and pain. The appetite is a pleasurable invitation to concern yourself with food, while the hunger forces you, through pain, to feed. It's where the mind, our consciousness, is connected to our physical body.

Let’s return to the verse from the book of Tao which I quoted above. From the Tao came the One, from the one came the Two. We could say that first came the appetite, then the hunger. The Hunger started the feeding. From these two came the Three. So what could be this third force, to complete the Trinity?

Just imagine there is only eating and reproducing based on hunger and lust. Pretty soon, when there is enough food, the hunger will cease to bother us, because we will eat before we get hungry. That means we will live ‘in lust’. No pain, just pleasure. That’s how the first two billion years of life could be described; a period where-in nothing happened and life ate and reproduced itself until most coastal waters on this planet were filled with 'happily living sludge'. Hardly anything changed during the first 2 billion years.

But then, ‘all of a sudden’, 1.4 billion years ago life started the process of sexual reproduction. This is when evolution really started on earth. But why?

Now, I ask you, how would you feel when you are save and well fed all the time and suddenly something happens that takes away your food, leaving you hungry?

During the first 2 billion years of life on earth our solar system was quite busy with flying objects that would occasionally hit our planet. Luckily for us we have a 'big brother' in the heavens above who more than once protected us against major impacts, this is brother Jupiter. Because of it’s size most of the 'planet destroyers' heading towards earth would be pulled into the gravitational pull of Jupiter. But not all…

**

That’s what happened 1.8 billion years ago; a major hit of an asteroid threw life’s 'cushy' existence in disarray. After 2 billion years of relative pleasurable living, life went hungry for the first time since a long time. The sun was probably blacked out, which was life’s primal source of nourishment.

This is when the process of ‘survival of the fittest’ really started, based on the now ancient principle of 'eat your neighbour'. To rid the hunger life was forced into a cannibalistic habit. With this process diversification became necessary. Eventually this resulted in the process of sexual reproduction. To create ever more food supplies for an ever more expanding and diverse existence. Life had experienced both sides of her existence; the pleasure comes with the pain.

HIstory of Life. I added the mass extinctions. Click to enhance.

The Cambrian Explosion

"The Cambrian explosion has generated extensive scientific debate. The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils in the “Primordial Strata” was noted as early as the mid 19th century, and Charles Darwin saw it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection." - Wikipedia

**
“The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the seemingly rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals around 530 million years ago, as evidenced by the fossil record.” - Wikipedia

All the life forms we see today have their origins in the Cambrian Explosion. What happened was in effect the ‘throwing of the dice’ by life to see what would work and what wouldn’t. Out of all these different life forms only a few were able to survive, and from these every other life form sprouted…

This, again, is not a part of a dumb process but of a calculated process based on survival. This ‘throwing of the dice’, although seemingly ‘dumb’ was in actual fact the best way for life to ‘try out’ and prosper.

We too live in a Cambrian Explosion of sorts, one based on consciousness and the life force that underlies it. We have the ‘freedom’ to do, think, believe whatever we want to and of all those believes, thoughts and actions life is weeding out the good from the bad… all based on how to survive without a home planet.
**
**
Back to the life force(s)

To define the third force mentioned in verse 42 from the book of Tao, just look around you, and the time we live in.

Animal behaviourists define four main activities they call (tongue-in-cheek) the four F’s, they are: Feeding, Fornicating, Fleeing and Fighting. We pinpointed the cause of the first two, now define the original cause for the last two; Fear. And 'the mother of all fears': the fear of hunger (pain).

************The Four F's*************


So here is my proposition: Hunger, Lust & Fear are the three forces mentioned in the Tao tse Tung. They contain the Life Force: Hunger, Lust and are accompanied by a moderator; Fear. They reveal the basis of our consciousness, the real reasons we experience pleasure and pain. Furthermore verse 42 tells us that by balancing the life forces, hunger & lust, we'll create harmony.
***

From these three life forces came all other feelings and emotions we experience. Imagine from fear emanating aggression, envy, jealousy, hate and if all that fails, love.
***

"19) The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath." - The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene - THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY

“From it, there appeared a force, presiding over the darkness. And the forces that came into being subsequent to them called the shadow 'the limitless chaos'…”

“Then shadow perceived there was something mightier than it, and felt envy; and when it had become pregnant of its own accord, suddenly it engendered jealousy. Since that day, the principle of jealousy amongst all the eternal realms and their worlds has been apparent. Now as for that jealousy, it was found to be an abortion without any spirit in it. Like a shadow, it came into existence in a vast watery substance.”

-- From "On the Origin of the World" -The Nag Hammadi Library

*

This text, in my opinion, explains the first contact of Life with God (Something mightier than it, life). Of course God is an unknown and has to be defined...

Competition.

I learned at school that the only way you can truly compete is to know what your competitor is doing. If you haven't got a clue what it is you are competing with you're NOT in competition with anyone or anything. You are just doing what you are doing. Of course it might happen that you come across somebody else that is doing the same thing.. Then you might talk about having a conflict. Because of this I hardly see any competition on the primary level of life: feeding.

Now I ask you. When you sit down in the middle of a forest and you look around you, what do you experience? Is it an immense struggle for survival by ruthless individuals or do you experience a balancing act, something that’s trying to create harmony. I for one experience the latter. Off course it all depends on the availability of enough food for everyone. When scarcity hits, the struggle begins.

Let’s recap.

Even though the term Life Force is a mysterious one, always seen as something magical, an enigma, when we take the term at face value and apply the ‘scientific' definitions to the terms life and force, we can make a pretty good case for Hunger being the life force.

Not only does it make sense within scientific boundaries, it actually fits quite well into quite a few religious and philosophical thoughts, that the life force and thereby the way we perceive the world is dualistic in nature; positive/negative, pain/pleasure; like Yin/Yang.

When we talk about our consciousness and where it comes from, Hunger makes a great candidate. The common and workable definition of consciousness is quite simple: how you perceive yourself within your environment. The feeling of hunger created the first distinction between 'me' and 'not me', i.e. food.

Now let’s take a look at how we are built around these life forces.

Coming Down To Earth

I"It is I who am the part of my mother; and it is I who am the mother.
It is I who am the wife; it is I who am the virgin.
It is I who am pregnant; it is I who am the midwife.
It is I who am the one that comforts pains of travail.
It is my husband who bore me; and it is I who am his mother.
And it is he who is my father and my lord.
It is he who is my force; What he desires, he says with reason.
I am in the process of becoming; yet I have borne a man as lord."
**From: "On the origin of the world" - Gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi Library
*
Another pearl from the Gnostic texts. Here again is Life telling us Her plight. She is actually the one that created God, not literally but as an experience. It is She who is His mother and it is He who is Her Lord.

The last sentence tells us again that we have to do with the process of life and evolution: I am in the process of becoming.
**
The amazing Mammal.

When we take an in-depth look at life all around us we can truly say that the evolutionary path of the mammal is very special. In contrast to other animals the mammal evolved in an ever more fragile and helpless form which culminated in the most ‘successful’ of our species; Human kind.

We are the most fragile and helpless creature ever to have been born on earth. According to prevailing scientific wisdom this should be the outcome of a blind process based on who is best able to feed him or her self. And not only that, it also means that a random process is responsible for the co-evolution of a ever more caring parent.

And all this while we were staple food for the dinosaurs...

When we compare our evolutionary path with that of most other and far more ancient life forms and put that against our scientific and cultural prevailing wisdom of survival of the fittest, it oddly looks like the opposite has happened. The process actually evolved into a form of 'survival of the weakest' as we wouldn't stand a chance, even when you put us next to the cat's milk.

We mammals arrived 210 million years ago, we are relatively new. We arrived shortly after the dinosaur, who had established itself firmly after the most catastrophic event that ever befell life; The Permian extinction that killed 95% of all species.

It took life about 20 million years to repopulate the earth. This is in evolutionary terms a very short period. When life climbed out of the water, 400 million years ago, it took her another 150 million years to populate the (dry) earth. You see this kind of accelerated evolution after every major mass extinction, the next one always quicker then the one before. I for one believe that this points to a process that has the capability to learn and remember.

For the next 150 million years we mammals and dinosaurs would evolve together. From 190 million years ago, 20 million years into our mammalian existence, the dinosaur took a turn for the worse.

Over the next 100 million years the population of the dinosaur slowly but steadily decreased. No one is quite sure why this extinction in slow motion took place. But before this process could come to its 'natural' end, 'God' intervened, by throwing a big, bad comet. We all know about the comet, but did you know that the dinosaur was already on the brink of extinction? I didn't.

Could this mean that the now thriving mammals were 'willed' to take the dinosaurs place as the dominant species? I think so.

But we didn’t lose the dinosaur entirely. We lost a monster, but gained a bird. And the funny thing about birds is that they need caring and instructing parents, like us.

This one is from the Bible, The book of Wisdom, chapter 19, verse 18: --

"For the things of the land were turned into things of the water: and the things before swam in the water passed upon the land."

Even here we can see a reference to evolution, in the Bible of all places!

Here you can find a reference to the Big Bang in the Qur'an:

"21:30 ARE, THEN, they who are bent on denying the truth not aware that the heavens and the earth were [once] one single entity, which We then parted asunder? –"
**
This is from the biblical text of Job, chapter 40: It talks of big brute beasts of the past that lived among us (by us I mean the mammalian lineage)

15. "Look at the behemoth,
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.
16. What strength he has in his loins
what power in the muscles of his belly!
17. His tail sways like a cedar;
the sinews of his thighs are close-knit
18. His bones are tubes of bronze,
his limbs like rods of iron.
19. He ranks first among the works of God,
yet his Maker can approach him with his sword.

--"His maker" *God* "can approach him with His sword". And so He did, 65 million years ago. --
-- Not the physical appearance lies at the heart of these biblical creatures, but how they behave.

Job 41 goes on to show us that behemoths or leviathans are not like mammals and birds, with which we do have very special mutual relationships and cooperation:

3. Will he keep begging you for mercy?
Will he speak to you with gentle words?
4. Will he make an agreement with you
for you to take him as your slave for life?
5. Can you make a pet of him like a bird
or put him on a leash for your girls?

**
War: late O.E. (c.1050), wyrre, werre, from O.N.Fr. werre "war" (Fr. guerre), from Frank. *werra, from P.Gmc. *werso (cf. O.S. werran, O.H.G. werran, Ger. verwirren "to confuse, perplex"). Cognates suggest the original sense was "to bring into confusion."

Ørlog: From the old Norse language means “war”. Still used in modern Dutch as oorlog, the first part of this word oor means “breaking of a treaty”, while the second part log means “fate”. The Scandinavian word lag also means “order”. So war and Oorlog mean “the breaking down of order”.

"16. Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war." - Gospel of Thomas - Nag Hammadi Library.
**
Bible, Matthew:
34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn " 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her motherinlaw—

Qur'an:
"5.14: And with those who say, We are Christians, We made a covenant, but they neglected a portion of what they were reminded of, therefore We excited among them enmity and hatred to the day of resurrection; and Allah will inform them of what they did."

When we acknowledge that the process of life and evolution is based on creating and retaining harmony between the different life forms (i.e. surviving of life as an ongoing process) we can also acknowledge that there are some horrendous events in history where order broke down and chaos ensued. After a while life was able to pick herself up and repopulate the planet. And over time she got better and better at picking herself up, you can see it in the fossil record.

Our wars were a necessary evil. Let me explain.

The End Perm Extinction was the first extinction life experienced on a global scale, simply because this was the time she actually lived all over the planet. It’s also the first time she experienced that her surroundings were limited to this planet. She was ‘alone’ and ‘confined’ to this planet. This planet seemed to be suspended in a sea of stars at night and one big one during the day. There is no way she could just take wing (which she did) and fly away. But simply staying and living out her time here is no option either, it could be over tomorrow. To survive this planet she had to expand beyond this planet. And to expand this planet she needs to know far more about herself and about where she lives.

To create life forms that will work together and can learn abstract things (i.e. the things not directly related to the basics of survival: feeding & reproducing) she had to use the life forces to make us do ‘other’ things. Like getting exited about trees, or about art, music, rocks, flowers etc. But ‘the getting exited part’ still has its roots in the original form of lust (the appetite for eating, later sex). But far more important is that she wanted to create ‘individuals’ so that the more ‘individuals’ the more they could ‘get exited’ about, the faster would be the learning process. But original life, lizards fish etc, only get exited about their own food, their own lust and their own fears. How do you start creating a group individuals who carry their ‘own’ life forces and still get them to work together? What is needed is interdependence.

To create interdependence you need two things: The other (interdependence) and ignorance. Unlike original life, this new life form should not be able to survive on its own. Even though original life forms like the crocodile seem to have some parenting duties, they are limited to mostly protecting the nest and helping their off spring into the water. But as soon as the little ones are free from egg and nest they feed themselves and know exactly how to. Even the most complicated survival techniques like building fortresses or webs, there is no need for any instruction by others whatsoever, this isn’t simply ‘instinct’ it’s knowledge of cause and effect. This in effect is why original life does ‘live forever’ and we ‘die’.

For us to learn from each other we needed ignorance, but we also need ignorance because of the reasons we were created by life; where are we? What is out there? What threatens us from within and beyond our planet? To learn you need to know that what you don’t know. The other had to be created by making sure we would survive without knowing how to; our parent(s). This time a new process with a brand new species started 225 million years ago relatively short after the end Perm extinction: the Mammal.

Now fast forward to our human existence and war. To recreate an experience that resembles life’s own chequered history, life couldn’t depend on regular mass extinctions in our short life times and the risk of a catastrophe that would kill of our planets life support system. So we need to be vulnerable and experience terrible things. So we will become wise and protect ourselves against these evils. To be protected we first need our parents and later on in life others, or ‘the other’. So we are manipulated into starting wars while our common purpose is not to start wars and protect and innovate so we will survive this planet. It’s one of the more bloody paradoxes in life, one which she obviously regrets. Without WWI no League of Nations and without WWII no Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is one of the most outstanding examples work humankind did in unity that is actually rooted in the supreme law of God: Love your Neighbour.


Abrahamic Religion and Wisdom

--- The Trinity. The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost (depicted as a white dove).

The Western religions come from the time when we still worshipped the sun (Astrotheology). The whole idea of western religious tradition is to focus on what’s above and out of reach. This worshipping of the sun morphed into a more personal form of worship, personifying the sun into God and giving mankind a central place (Anthropomorphism).


Quran Sura 24, verse 35:
"Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth; a likeness of His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, (and) the glass is as it were a brightly shining star, lit from a blessed olive-tree, neither eastern nor western, the oil whereof almost gives light though fire touch it not-- light upon light-- Allah guides to His light whom He pleases, and Allah sets forth parables for men, and Allah is Cognizant of all things."

This personification of sun worship gave rise to the three Abrahamic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The common factor is their believe in the one God, undivided, all powerful, all knowing, the Creator of the universe. First came Judaism. Out of Judaism came Christianity. The Christian Bible combines both the religious texts of the Torah and the New Testament.

An obvious difference between the Torah and the New Testament is the way God is described. In the Torah or old Testament He is a vengeful God who punishes whole nations when they are not obeying Him. While in the New Testament He is described as a loving God, forgiving and kind. So we fear the first and enjoy the second God of the Bible.

From these two religions arose Islam, the last of the Abrahamic faiths. Allah or God in the Qur’an is more angry, like He’s running out of patience with all the lying and stealing and killing in His name. He is warning us for the punishment that awaits the sinners. But He keeps telling us and showing us He is merciful and understanding.

Qur'an, Sura 39, verse 6:
"He has created you from a single being, then made its mate of the same (kind), and He has made for you eight of the cattle in pairs. He creates you in the wombs of your mothers-- a creation after a creation-- in triple darkness; that is Allah your Lord, His is the kingdom; there is no god but He; whence are you then turned away?"

The three Abrahamic religions also symbolize the trinity emanating from the Life Force.

The Christian Trinity and the three life forces from eastern traditions can be united if we take in account what it is we humans are here for. We have a special purpose that transcends mere feeding and copulating. We have to find answers to questions that are beyond ourselves but were risen from within. To tell the story of the Christian Trinity you’ll have to turn it around: The Holy Ghost, the Son and the Father. In very simple terms: the Holy Ghost (Life) created the Son (Humans) to deal with the Father (?). The Father represents Fear, the Son represents Lust and the Holy Ghost, Hunger. To deal with the Fear we are equipped with the ability to Love. I’ll explain later…

The Abrahamic dogma of the one, undivided God comes with a ‘flaw’. What I found very interesting and revealing is how in the Bible and especially in the Qur’an God talks about himself as ‘We’. This divine title of sorts has been hijacked by our European kings and queens. But it’s not some sort of special title for God, it means that we’ve got to do with two creators, of which one God (creator of the universe and the life forces: The big Unknown) and another, our earthly mother, emanating from the life forces.

Genesis 1:
“26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
**
Qur'an, Sura 2 verse 23:
"And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a chapter like it and call on your witnesses besides Allah if you are truthful."
**

Abrahamic Wisdom.

Even though the Abrahamic faiths believe in the one, undivided God, there are some amazing things to be found in the holy text when it comes to defining Life as a more or less hidden creator, showing herself disguised as Lady Wisdom in the Wisdom Books of the Bible.

When I realized that there was more to religion than just human folly I bought a Jewish study bible. This study bible has commentary on every page and on every verse in it. This is what this study bible tells in the introduction to the book Ecclesiastes.

“As literature, Ecclesiastes belongs, along with Proverbs, Job and some other sections of the bible, in the category wisdom. Wisdom texts reflect on the nature of the world and the God who created and controls it, and on the place of humans in this divine creation. These observations are usually presented as the work of one or more sages, who arrive at the observations by exercising wisdom – a faculty based on their own experience and that of other sages before them, and sometimes alsodivine revelation. But whether from experience or revelation, the wisdom is regularly understood to have God as its ultimate source. In the case of Ecclesiastes, the wisdom is presented as experiential (Experiential knowledge is knowledge gained through experience). The sage who comes to it through his experiences, one might even say experiments, is designated in Hebrew as Koteleth, and so supplies the Hebrew title for the book. Christian tradition generally uses, for book and sage, Ecclesiastes, “the one who assembled”, which is the Greek rendering of Koteleth found in the Septuagint. The twelve chapters of Koteleth cover a miscellany of topics: the cycles of the natural order, the amassing of wealth in property and other forms; the opposing forces that govern life; friendship, particularly as an antidote to life’s wearying uncertainties; the virtues and difficulties of human authority; the nature of folly and possibilities and limitations of wisdom; the enjoyment of ones toil; the terrors of old age. Behind these topics, it appears, are certain fundamental themes. The first is expressed by the term “futility”. For Koteleth, this is foremost the inability of humans to make sense of the world around them- to see a coherent pattern, a plan to their lives and to nature, in the sense of a movement towards lasting goals, a line of deployment or progress”.
sh Study Bible, Ecclesiastes Introduction, page: 1603
I think this speaks for itself...


In the Book of Wisdom we encounter Life as Wisdom, some excerpts:
6:22 As for wisdom, what she is, and how she came up, I will tell you, and will not hide mysteries from you: but will seek her out from the beginning of her nativity, and bring the knowledge of her into light, and will not pass over the truth.

7:22 For wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an understanding spirit holy, one only, manifold, subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good,

7:24 For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.

7:25 For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall into her.

7:27 And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets.

9:9 And wisdom was with thee: which knoweth thy works, and was present when thou madest the world, and knew what was acceptable in thy sight, and right in thy commandments.

9:18 For so the ways of them which lived on the earth were reformed, and men were taught the things that are pleasing unto thee, and were saved through wisdom.

13:5 For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen.

It’s pretty obvious that we have to do with something of major importance but it isn’t God. She is the worker of all things, the breath of the power of God, remaining in herself she, maketh all things new. It looks like the process of evolving life as a consciousness is being described here.

The East.

On the other side there are the eastern religions or philosophies. They more or less all have their roots in Taoism. These eastern religions are focussed on a (r)evolving process like a wheel of life. A lot of their traditions are based on the process of action/reaction, karma, reincarnation and becoming a more conscious or enlightened being.

The Life Force plays a central role in these traditions.

The Eastern tradition created insights into the process of evolution long before western science discovered it..

-- The Wheel of Life. (it's eating!)

"30) Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body." - Gospel according to Mary Magdalene - Nag Hammadi Library
** The four Noble Truths as taught by the Buddha. (in brackets from me)
1. Life is suffering (from origin Hunger)
2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires (Lust)
3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases (Fear is the original ceaser of Lust)
4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

"Buddhism is a spiritual tradition that focuses on personal spiritual development and the attainment of a deep insight into the true nature of life. Buddhism teaches that all life is interconnected, so compassion is natural and important. Buddhism arose as a result of Siddhartha Gautama's quest for Enlightenment in around the 6th Century BCE. There is no belief in a personal God. It is not centred on the relationship between humanity and God. Buddhists believe that nothing is fixed or permanent - change is always possible." - Wikipedia.

Yin/Yang.
"In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang are generalized descriptions of the antitheses or mutual correlations in human perceptions of phenomena in the natural world, combining to create a unity of opposites in the theory of the Taiji. The term liang yi: "two mutually correlated opposites", also known as Yin and Yang" -- Wikipedia

Even though the philosophy of Yin/Yang does not designate it as a force, it is directly correlated to how we perceive the world around us. This again is closely tied to the life force, which is the cause of the way we perceive the world. It’s what’s inside of us that makes us experience the world outside of us.

"In Descartes' philosophy of radical doubt the prima materia is knowledge or perception (including the inner perception of one's own mind) because the existence of an objective reality corresponding to our perceptions can never be demonstrated. In eastern cultures the mind is conceived as being the single substance out of which everything was formed. In religious cultures god and spirit perform this function. Given the variety of forms in which it appears it is uncertain whether the prevalence of this concept is founded in its objective reality or the structure of the human mind itself. Its existence is intimately linked to our need to understand the ultimate or absolute truth of our reality and to our quest for the 'theory of everything'." - Wikipedia

"3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you." - The Gospel of Thomas - The Nag Hammadi Library

Qi (or Life Force).
"The earliest way of writing qi consisted of three wavy lines, used to represent one's breath seen on a cold day. A later version, is a stylized version of those same three lines. For some reason, early writers of Chinese found it desirable to substitute for a cognate, character that originally meant to feed other people in a social context such as providing food for guests. Appropriately, that character combined the three-line qi character with the character for the grain we call rice.

In the Japanese language, the Chinese character corresponding to qi is pronounced ki. The Japanese language contains over 11,442 known usages of "ki" as a compound. As a compound, it may represent syllables associated with the mind, the heart, feeling, the atmosphere, and flavor.

Although the concept of qi has been very important within many Chinese philosophies, over the centuries their descriptions of qi have been varied and may seem to be in conflict with each other." - Wikipedia

Taoism.
"Taoism refers to a variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts. These traditions have influenced East Asia for over two thousand years and some have spread internationally. The Chinese character Tao means "path" or "way", although in Chinese religion and philosophy it has taken on more abstract meanings. Taoist propriety and ethics emphasize the Three Jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. Taoist thought focuses on wu wei (non-action), spontaneity, transformation and emptiness/omnipotence. An emphasis is placed on the link between people and nature, and that this link lessens the need for rules and order, leading one to a better understanding of the world and one's surroundings" - Wikipedia

Hinduism.
"Hinduism is a religious tradition that originated in the Indian subcontinent Hinduism is often referred to as Sanātana Dharma by its practitioners, a Sanskrit phrase meaning "the eternal law" or "eternal way". Most Hindus believe that the spirit or soul—the true "self" of every person, called the ātman—is eternal. Samsara or samsāra refers to the cycle of reincarnation or rebirth in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and other related religions. Samsara is derived from "to flow together," to go or pass through states, to wander. Mostly a great revolving door between life and death and a new life reincarnated cycle of life. Also known as a game in ancient India." --Wikipedia.

**
On one side of the world they were creating the myths of the One Supreme Being, up there somewhere, all powerful and all knowing. On the other side they were creating the myths based on the process of Life, down here and inside of us. Both views seem to come together in some Gnostic writings and other mystical traditions.

All these different, and not so different views of life, God and the universe come together when we have to fit in the scientific discovery of evolution. Evolution is the key to uniting all religious beliefs. How ironic…

Together they lead us to the most logical conclusion: It is life that is our intelligent creator (or creator of intelligence) and she created us out of necessity.

She gave us free will to be able to do as much as we could possibly want, damn the consequences, the opposites have to be affirmed. But at the same time it's an effort to create an 'ethical being' because it's all based on pain and pleasure. And without fear, hunger and pain you can do no evil... think about it.

Besides the creation of an 'ethical being', we were created with the intention to answer the major questions we ourselves have been asking all these millennia. The questions of life, the universe and everything. ;)


Wisdom and the evolution of Love.

The Other.
"The Other or constitutive other (also referred to as othering) is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the Same, It refers, or attempts to refer to, that which is 'other' than the concept being considered. The term often means a person other than oneself, and is often capitalised. The Other is singled out as different."
-- Introduction of the topic 'Other' from Wikipedia.

"Lévinas emerged from the circle of intellectuals surrounding Jean Wahl as a leading French thinker. His work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Lévinas' terms, on "ethics as first philosophy." For Lévinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called "ontology"). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love"
Wikipedia on Emmanuel Lévinas
**
Of all life forms we are the most fragile species when it comes to ‘being fit for survival’ from birth. For us life had to create care, empathy and altruism in our parents. To adequately take care of your young it’s imperative to know their state of mind.

This is how life created 'The Other', by first interfering with our ability to feed ourselves, thus interfering in the Life Force; Hunger.

We came to experience ‘the other’ as a necessity for our well being. And because we don’t eat our parents, shouldn't fear them or reproduce with them, a new relationship evolved. Love.

Of course for us it means that the whole scale of Love has to be descended, all the way to Hate. But the creation of the other by Life had Love in mind... and still does. So the other, viewed as different according to wikipedia, should be viewed first as the same, based on the life forces and our common goal, only then different as an individual. But we've got our 'free will' so it's everybody's game.
The Other as it could be.

-- We ‘instinctively’ know that, even though we can love and care for fish, reptiles, amphibians and even insects, the relationship will be very one-sided.--


"An androgynous human being was produced, whom the Greeks call Hermaphrodites; and whose mother the Hebrews call Eve of Life (Zoe), namely, the female instructor of life. Her offspring is the creature that is lord. Afterwards, the authorities called it "Beast", so that it might lead astray their modelled creatures. The interpretation of "the beast" is "the instructor". For it was found to be the wisest of all beings."

Text from "On the origin of the world", the Nag Hammadi Library.
**
What we call living nature is in reality one living and evolving consciousness . The wisdom in this consciousness we can find in the application of the life forces in animals and plants etc. Though to us it sometimes looks like an horrible dog eat dog world, life in effect regulates the amount of hunger, fear and lust. Most species are food for other species, but there is almost no unnecessary suffering. We never call what we see in nature evil. That’s because it’s a balancing act that is aimed at thriving life for all. And when we see anything that could be described as evil behaviour in animals, it's most likely an advanced mammal.

First Life instructed directly through the life forces like in reptiles and fish. Than she incarnated 'an image' of herself into the female mammal, creating an instructor for their off spring, we would eventually be born with a 'blank slate' or empty consciousness, to enhance our individuality. We're born within the life forces but without any knowledge and ability to deal with them. Without 'the other' filling in the blanks we will simply die.
The secret of eternal life.

"Consciousness is Life.
Life is Nature.
Nature is Creation.
Creation is Universal Intelligence.
Universal Intelligence is Divine Will.
Divine Will is Creative Energy.
Creative Energy is Cosmic Energy
Cosmic Energy is Atomic Energy.
Atomic Energy is Light.
Light is GOD.
GOD is Awareness.
Awareness is Consciousness
Consciousness is Divine Will.
Divine Will is Creation.
Creation is Nature.
Nature is Life.
Life is Consciousness."
- Oliver H. Jobson

"1. And he (Jesus) said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death." -- The Gospel Of Thomas, Nag Hammadi Library

Corinthians 1, chapter 15, verse 26:
"The last enemy to be destroyed is death."

The evolution of the mammal started the process that would eventually ‘hide’ the fact that we actually do live ‘forever’, at least original life does. When we talk about longevity we think about the physical limitations, but our actual life is based on consciousness.

Consciousness comes from the life forces. Information is attached to the life forces. I think we are mistaken when we define memes as ‘self reproducing bits of information’. Without any form of value, information will not ‘stick’. If information has no meaning it’s worthless. The original creator of value is the Life Force.

The same we can say for the so called 'selfish gene' which implies a living thing. A gene is not alive, it is a bit of information. It is not the gene that copies itself, but the life forces that reside within our cells. A piece of paper doesn't copy itself, you need a Xerox machine and a power source.

So every time a reptile or fish is born it is ready to go, not having to learn anything, all the information is right there. I've seen a half hatched reptile play dead because of a nearing predator .

This creates the experience of eternal life in the original life forms. That's more or less how life forms were created until 210 million years ago, when the mammal was introduced.

"Oh no, not again..." A reptiles eternal life.

I believe that when you hold two reptiles in your hand your actually holding one and the same animal. When it comes to the origin of the Life Forces we might have to look in the realm of Quantum Physics, where one particle can be in multiple places at the same time. But that's only a guess.

For us life had to create a beginning so we would envision an end or 'death'. If you don't experience a beginning, like original life forms, you will not be able to envision an end.

"18. The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us, how will our end come?"
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is." - Gospel of Thomas - Nag Hammadi Library
**
This end is what worries Life, she almost perished 250 million years ago. This will eventually happen again, most scientists agree on that. We are part of Life's plan to avoid this.

The creation of ‘consciousness-less’ birth also gave rise to a more flexible form of learning. In essence life created a real-time learning machine. By depending on, and learning from "the other" together with the experience of a beginning, we created 'the self'.

For us life seems short and we don't know from where we came and where we will go. Where we are, why we suffer and die and who or what is in control. In a real sense these are the actual questions life is asking and answering through us.

Now imagine that sometime in the future we can undo this 'fake death' experience and live again like original life does, but now everything you experienced in your life time up to the moment you 'die', will be 'incarnated' into a new body. Being born will be like waking up in the morning.

But, for now, we are equipped with the notion of an end, a scary, untimely, maybe even horrible and unexpected death. That's what was needed for us to arrive at the place we are now.
**

"The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from the sky which had fallen to the earth. The key to the pit of the abyss was given to him. He opened the pit of the abyss, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke from a burning furnace. The sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke from the pit." --New Testament, Revelations--

--We now know what happened 250 million years ago. The horror came from earth itself. There were world wide eruptions of volcano’s on a scale never since seen. 95% of all species died out. It made an effort to escape this planet an imperative. Hell of which we read in the Bible and the Qur'an are actual experiences of life, experiences she'd rather avoid if at all possible. Therefore we must submit to 'the Will of God', whatever that means.--


The 'natural law' for mammals for all intents and purposes, can be defined as: love your neighbour (the Other) as yourself, by taking care of: first our off spring, then our social group until we reach our first goal: taking care of all of human kind.

Bible, Galatians 5, verse 14
"The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

To this 'natural law' was added, especially for us: And love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:30). Because we are the mammal destined and designed to define God and eventually live in His kingdom (or: to boldly go where no mammal has gone before.:).

But only when the creation of the 'ethical being' is complete, will we be able to 're-join' original life.

If evolution of life on other planets has anything in common with ours, it will be the life forces. And to create social beings they too had to evolve their version of love. So to send us out there the way we are now, wouldn't be such a great idea...
*
I think we are confused when we think of ourselves as intelligent beings. I suppose it means that because we are able to learn we are intelligent. But shouldn’t it be the other way round? I mean, most animals do not have to learn anything, they already know what to do, how and when to do it… that strikes me as intelligent. While we have to learn everything, know nothing and therefore we should classify our species as (born) dumb.

**
For everyone who finds it hard to believe that a process taking millions and millions of years has a purpose, I’d like to refer you to a few verses in the Bible and Qur’an that might explain the vast difference of how we perceive our world, time and life in comparison to Life herself.

Bible Psalm 90:4
"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night."

Qur’an: Sura 22, verse .47
"And they ask you to hasten on the punishment, and Allah will by no means fail in His promise, and surely a day with your Lord is as a thousand years of what you number."

Bible 2 Peter 3:8
"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."

Qur’an Sura 32, verse 5
"He regulates the affair from the heaven to the earth; then shall it ascend to Him in a day the measure of which is a thousand years of what you count."
**
A day is like a thousand years...
Of course this doesn’t prove anything, but still…
**

-- Here you see a working partnership between birds and humans. Only mammals and birds have these unique relationships where the evolution of the 'the other' plays a vital role --

I’m more and more convinced that the evolution of the bird from the dinosaur is a symbolic gesture from Life to us. The bird is a tribute to original life, but at the same time the bird shows us the major problems of living ‘old school’. Not only did the bird evolve from a cold blooded animal into a hot blooded one, it actually evolved its own version of ‘the other’. That is the reason we have these special relationships with birds and mammals, and not with reptiles and fish.

Then there is the birds' life story. Within that story lies our destiny: leaving the nest. Only by flying away from the nest will a bird survive. Only by eventually leaving our planet will we.

***********************************

We are the ones we are waiting for.

I know that during these depressing times of war and fear of changing climates, decease, hunger and (un)natural disasters, we are not prone to see ourselves as saviours of life. All I can say to that is that what ever we feed will grow and prosper and what we starve will perish.

So if we keep our misplaced faith in the system that now dominates our planet it will eventually devour us. But if we starve that faith and instead feed a more ‘mammalian effort’ where ethics are broadly based on the life forces and the primary goal of every life form NOT to starve or suffer, we might just survive. If we don't, life will eventually come up with a new and improved version, based on our experiences.

Quran, 2: 48 & 123
And guard yourselves against a day when no soul will in aught avail another, nor will intercession be accepted from it, nor will compensation be received from it, nor will they be helped.

So in effect our actions are being weighed, weighed on the basis that we'll eventually have to leave this planet. Without a planet we can only rely on one another, so it's essential we evolve into a loving and caring creature, all other behaviour will be 'discarded'.

"44. Jesus said, "Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven." - Gospel of Thomas - Nag Hammadi Library

It just might explain all that jazz about loving your neighbour, compassion and empathy as being primary virtues. And it might release us from the destructive forces of our own misinterpretations about life and evolution. Not by denying its existence but by defining it better.




"Strength" - or Fortitude (42) -
By Tuck & Patti

Years of tears Pain for breakfast
Lunch is longing Dinner never comes
**
Hunger ruled this lonely spirit.
All the time.
**
Tears of yearning for a stranger
Who would take the pain away
And ease the sorrow and the hunger and the longing...
But the stranger never came
**
She didn't understand that this was all arranged
She stays up late and studies
Though her eyes are red and she is weary
Sometimes she is afraid
**
She can't believe, still can't believe
he left her with these babies all alone
**
She sometimes feels she just won't make it
That she will shatter all to pieces
Or just disappear
**
But there's a feeling in her spirit
When she is quiet she can hear it
And it gives her strength and courage
To dry her own tears
*
******************************