Let’s solve a little dilemma.

Eastern philosophy, spanning most eastern cultures base their core beliefs on a revolving process of life, some invoke reincarnation others quote karma to identify the continuity and organic view of our predicament. They’re spot on.

On the other side there is the Abrahamic tradition. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Their core-beliefs are that there is an infallible God, creator of the universe, omnipotent. And our reason d’être is to submit to His demands, to worship Him. I’d rather say to adapt to Him. They too are spot on.

And then we’ve got science. With amazing success science improved and destroyed many lives. They claim that their core-belief isn’t a believe, but actual fact; that life started billions of years ago and evolved to what we see today in living nature. Again, they too are right on the mark.

All three are right. All three tell a true story, but none of them tells the whole story. Together they do.

Let’s start with the ‘it’s a fact’ crowd. Yes, you’re right we did evolve! But that’s not really the point, is it? 

You claim that this evolutionary process is in a sense blind, that it has no purpose, no meaning. You say that it’s random, happening within the so-called genetic reproduction process wthin our genes. You claim that errors within our reproductive process deliver 'good' and 'bad' results for the chances of survival. And the ones with the best results, survive. But you do not call these results results. You call them adaptations.

It's adaptation that created an ever more complex web of life on our planet. But to adapt in essence means to react to your environment, which describes a conscious effort.

That we’ve evolved over many aeons is a fact. The how and why of our evolution isn't answered by science. 

But even Darwin wasn't a Darwinist. (I'll quote him later on this). Evolution is not blind it does what it does. And we humans are here to make sure it'll be able continuing what is does and wants. The most pertinent answer to the question of why we're here is;

Survival.

You have to copy paste this and translate from Wingdings to whatever readable font you prefer. (it spells survival, to save you the hassel)

...

Hi! You’re still here? Great!

Let me go on.

So there you have it. Science isn’t that wrong. You can find part of the answer in the accepted, but sociological based description “survival of the fittest’. It should be; ‘survival of Life’.

When we accept this answer, other questions arise. Some very pertinent ones. One of the most obvious is; why us? We don’t seem to be able to save life, we destroy it most of all. Correct, I say. But are we really in control?

Life’s been here for billions of years, from life we sprung just maybe a couple of millions of years ago. Life survived natural disasters unknown to men, I stand corrected, that were unknown to men. We know now, since the seventies, that life experienced some horrific events. We’ve all been taught about the meteor impact 65 millions years ago that ended the reign of the dinosaur, some claim. Then there was a more terrestrial calamity 250 million years ago. 95% of all of Life’s species died out. Life almost perished. Look at us now.

So, why us? Well, we hover in space, we are exceptionally well equipped to ensure our survival. We learn, fail and try again till we succeed. If there is any animal on this planet throughout the history of Life, only we might have a shot at averting a calamity as Life experienced 65 million years ago when a comet almost destroyed our planet, our habitat. It turned out to be to small for destroying our planet, but what about the next one?

The amazing and complex evolution of highly skilled life-forms with specialized traits to survive sometimes baffles us. From the ‘lowest’ life-forms to the ‘highest’ ones, you see brilliant survival techniques. Take some time out from your busy lives and watch some recent nature doc’s, you’ll be amazed how a blind process can come up with these things. Weird Nature is one of my favourites. Anyhow, back to our answer.

The first of many ‘irony’s’ is that the core principles of science share more with the eastern religions than with the Abrahamic religions they originated from. The idea of a revolving wheel of life, reincarnation and growth through experience, does touch the theory of evolution on some major levels. Science says: Life evolved into ever more complex life-forms, Eastern philosophy says: because it’s learning, failing and succeeding. That’s the process: it’s not dumb, it’s definitely not blind, it’s surviving anyway it can. We humans are Life’s creation that must be a part of Life’s adaptation to something so powerful, it can finish us all. It comes from nowhere, unannounced and turns our planet into an inferno. Whatever it is, we have  to adapt to it if we want to survive.

So our third mission is to find out what or who it might be that Lords over us from the skies. Lets call Him God.

So started the Abrahamic tradition. The omnipotent, all powerful and undivided God.

Now I’d like to ask you to come with me into the world I found we live in, and are imported parts of. Suspend your own convictions for a while and follow me.

Life created us with a purpose. This purpose is part and parcel of Life. Life’s actions define this purpose. These actions will reach right into both the eastern and western religious traditions. It’s one of the most divisive disputes in Christian history and it’s, on a whole different level, part and parcel of eastern religious writings: the Trinity.

In Christian history the Idea that God = 3 in one lead to the schism that created eastern Orthodox Christianity and western Catholicism. Also the idea of the Madonna being the Mother of God created strife. In eastern traditions the trinity can be found in for example the Tao, verse 42, that tells of three forces emanating from the Tao. Further in the verse they sometimes are depicted as the life-force. The four noble truths in Buddhist writings talk about suffering being the first force, though it’s caused by desire.

This trinity comes back to us, to Life. I already said that the actions define our purpose. So what is it that all life does, and more important, why?

The answer to all is simple, the answer to why looks harder but is simply resolved by imagining not doing it. It’s the why that will show us the trinity of our consciousness. How and why it came into existence, I don’t know, nobody knows, even Life doesn’t know. And that’s too why we’re here.

Pain & Pleasure. Most of us are familiar with this age old paradox. They seem to go together, they say that they can’t exist without each other. And we know it makes sense. How can you enjoy something if everything is as enjoyable. It has been discussed by most philosophers, is intricate to all religions in one way or the other.

You should know, and most of us already do, that at the base of this integral behaviour of Life lies exactly that! The experience of pain & pleasure is part and parcel of feeding. Like I said, stop feeding end experience for yourself.

Most people I know answer the question why we eat with; ‘otherwise we die’. But that’s not the answer when we look at Life. We eat because, one; we get an appetite. This appetite is overall an pleasurable experience because you get to think and fantasize about what you’re going to eat. But here is the catch. If you do not feed your appetite, this pleasure will eventuality turn into pain. Hunger.  

May I introduce you to the Life-force; it is Hunger. Or maybe it’s Lust, pleasure, because it comes first. But did pleasure make Life move? No, it was hunger that compelled Life to react. Somehow matter was endowed with the life-force and compelled it to feed. And, as our scientists so well explained, we got the hang of it and even started to copy ourselves. We feed and excreted an identical twin. How amazing.

If you know a little about the discussion of how life began, you’ll notice that reproduction comes second in my thesis. I go even further by claiming that if feeding is the first action of Life points to one of the main aspects we attribute to our definition of consciousness; how we relate to our surroundings. Feeding is interacting with our environment. So I submit that consciousness lies at the base of life, it compelled us to act. When we did, the pain subsided, just as it would today with us. But only temporary. The rhythm of Life lies within the Yin/Yang of feeding. To feed before pleasure becomes pain. Those are the core forces at the base of our consciousness. The first two that came from the Tao. The first noble truth, suffering completely agrees with hunger, even the cause of suffering, desire (i.e. pleasure) completely agrees with Life’s forces. But what about the third, to complete the trinity? It’s so obvious, it’s painful. Fear. When you’ve experienced pleasure and pain and you know how to avert the pain, pain becomes a distant memory. But when you’re confronted again with pain, and survive, you’ll start to fear it. Hunger, Lust & Fear.

.

Pain, Pleasure and Fear the of pain, later of death (or of ‘not to be’) are the forces that make Life feed, reproduce and adapt to her environment. And that She did. With amazing skill that would eventually lead to something like us, humans. Because surviving goes beyond our narrow Darwinist view of life. Life’s been learning all her life, life has always been intelligent. But what Life needs now is a life form that can survive without a planet. A life form that is endowed with a feeling of self and a feeling of us. Who can act autonomous but knows it depends on the other. Just like us.

The pain the suffering, the wars, torture, are all part of one big experiment where we all are confronted with ourselves as lonely individuals, at the centre of our universe. We do not know where we came from, but we do know without the other we wouldn’t live today. This ‘other’ I talk about is was created by life 210 million years ago. The other is our mother.

As you al know we are mammals. One of my teachers told me something I knew but never realized, is that of all life-forms, humans are the most successful and at the same time the most dependent species on earth. I didn’t realize then, I was 13, that this clashes with the notion of Survival of the fittest. In contrast to far more ancient life forms, we need someone else to teach us how to survive, while lizards, fish, insects already seem to know everything they need to live their lives. To know when, where and how to eat and be physically capable of doing it sounds like a great strategy to survive. To be dependent on someone else while physically unable to fend for yourself seems treacherous. Still, Life changed her strategy 210 million years ago and created mammals. Wh-wh-why?

Here is my first quote of many I will use to strenghten my argument. Over 1500 years ago someone wrote a what we call a mystical text. As you'll read on you will read many ancient texts that support this thesis. The following text is from the Nag Hammadi Library, an exerpt from 'The Origin Of The World".

"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."

Before mammals Life was simple; you crawl out of your egg, ore whatever and you’re on your own. We still see that all around us in nature today. So why make an animal that has to learn from another to survive? It’s our environment, stupid.

It changes all the time, but sometimes it changes rapidly and is disastrous for Life. Mammals evolved out of such a disaster, the end Permian extinction, 250 million years ago. It was a terrestrial disaster, the planet was torn from Siberia to south Africa. This global catastrophe continued for millions of years. Most of the planet was in disarray. Life had to adapt to an environment that could change overnight. To survive in such a world every life-form that successfully survives to mating age has experienced and knowledge of her environment that is to valuable to waste. Teaching her offspring by example accelerated the accumulation of knowledge.

When the meteor struck, 65 million years ago, Life was definitely introduced to the idea of God. The planet nor the universe around us can be ignored when it comes to surviving. The planet can only be a temporary home for Life, the universe contains both dangers and opportunities for survival. We’ll have to adapt to it.        

Conclusion.

However you see, feel or project yourself into this world, we're only here for one thing. To learn. To learn what, you say? To learn how to be an individual between individuals. Our most important goal is how we deal with 'the other'. The other, or if you prefer 'your neighbour', is the ultimate necessity for surviving in the long run.

Life is forever evolving, forever living. For life to survive many incredible adaptations can be seen and studied. We to easily forget 'us' humans when we grapple with our environment. We forget that it is our consciousness that defines our surroundings.

We also forget that for life to survive indefinitely She'll have to leave this planet eventually. Life, like us, is trying, failing and trying again. Eventually She succeeds in Her efforts. Just like us.

For life to survive means adapting to the universe surrounding our nest, Earth. Leaving the nest is the only way to survive. We know that now. 

Human kind as we define it today, inherited a planet full of life, therefore full of sustenance. Today we're exploiting Her recourses as expected.

The evolutionary process we're in will eventually aid life to create individuals able to leave our planet. Individuals who are conscious of their interdependence with their surroundings, more important still, of their future need for 'the other' when we'll have to leave this planet, our nest. 

Life or the process of evolution isn't dumb or blind, She's surviving. Our consciousness began, scientist say, 3,5 billion years ago (hmm... time, times and  half a time...). The pain and pleasure metaphors found in philosophical and religious thought throughout history and within all cultures, are bourn from our first interaction with our environment, 3,5 billion years ago.

Feeding.

Even though modern day, western, atheist, scientific thought keep telling us there is no goal to be defined in the proces of evolution, there obviously is. Life's purpose is to live and keep living as long as possible. We call it 'survival of the fittest'. But in our universe Life by nature is weak, to survive She needs to interact with her enviroment. Modern science and philosophy fail miserably defining the absolute first interaction of Life with her enviroment. It's pretty sad.

It's not the ever quoted 'spontaneously copying of molecules' that kickstarted Life, something came before. Before copying or reproduction, Life fed Herself. It might have taken fractions of a second, but before Life reproduced, She fed herself.

For Life to grow and evolve feeding is a precondition. Just like with all lifeforms we know of now, studied, no lifeform reproduces before feeding. 

So to define a reliable definition for a Life Force I redirect you to the title of this blog. 

Hunger is our primal pain, Lust our primal pleasure. We can experience both when we just stop eating. 

This primal Pain-Pleasure paradigm we find within most, if not all, religions and philosphies around the world. This primal duality of our consciousness eventually created the third force of Life to complete the trinity of our consiousness, Fear.

I know that something dear to us and most important is is missing here. Love. But after 3,5 bollion years of Life and evolution, Love is our only hope for survival. When we are forced to leave this planet, we have nothing to retreat to. No planet full of sustenance that we can fall back on. We'll be totally depending on each other. Hence the universal: 'do not unto others what you don't want others to do unto you'. Or, the more simple Abrahamic version: Love your neighbour as youself.

I can't put it more plainly; We're here taking part in one of the most important experiments of Life; creating a highly intelligent 'individual' capable of independent thought and analisys and fully aware of our common purpose, to survive.

What will come would amaze you if you could fathom it. Life has survived for billions of years. As long as there is food, Life can live eternal. The amazing thing is, so will we.

But what about death?

Before I go deep into the subjects mentioned above, I need you to reconsider two basic, accepted ideas, many times discussed but never figured out completely. Then I will again explain the whole thing. And after that again from another angle.

"Third time I said that, I'll probably say it three more times you see. In my line of work you got to keep repeating things, over and over and over again for the truth to sink in. To kinda of catapult the propaganda" - President G.W. Bush.

I'll explain it from different angels, arriving at the same result. That we're a prelude to a life-form that will eventually leave this planet. In a sense we are all victims of Life’s lust/hunger for living.

Before we will actually leave this planet Life needs for us to become balanced. We can only be balanced when we know why we’re here. When we see a solution to a problem, we’ll adapt our behaviour to it, so the problem is solved. This might happen to us and will most definitely happen to who'll come after us.

Let’s be honest, we’re a physically weak species, which made us do so well in adapting nature to our needs instead of us adapting to nature. Speed, teeth, claws, night vision, sonar, scales or shells that protect and give an edge to many life-forms are absent in our existence. Our flesh tears quite easily, we’re not protected by scales or shells. We can’t outrun our fellow predators, but still we've prevailed and populate the planet with about 7 billion individuals.

The whole notion of 'Do unto others that you want others to do unto you' and 'Love your neighbour' are rooted in what we will become: Independent of our planet, but completely depending on each other. Our 10.000 year history is to experience our extremities and learn from them. It's our experience that'll shape the next generation.

****

Let me catapult my propaganda as I explain the myths and reality of eternal life.



I’d like you to include what we call consciousness in the equation. How we relate to our environment. For example; you can freeze your body with cryogenics, but what if when you awake you have no recollection whatever and essentially start out again as a baby having to learn everything. Your body has ‘survived’ but your mind or consciousness is empty.

Of course I don’t know this will happen, nobody knows. But there is an opposite of this idea of eternal life that we can see everywhere around us, in life forms that have populated this planet far longer than we humans have.

Eternal consciousness as opposed to the eternal body. It’s not new. Religions, philosophies, humankind has dealt with this idea for thousands of years. In every culture at any time. But we've only known, empirically about our evolutionary past for about a 150 years. The awareness of millions, even billions of years that it took to eventually create us is brand new.

Now forget about form and concentrate on consciousness. How do we relate to our environment? How do we act within our environment?

This brings me to the second basic idea, somewhat less ambiguous. Surviving. The now accepted paradigm within the Darwinian theory of evolution is at it’s core; survival of the fittest. I do not want to go into the semantics as this being a philosophical tautology, or into the stunning complexity that life brings us. I want to observe what it is life does and how. You can observe it to and already have. Let me take you back a while.

To survive one must eat. There is no theory about life that doesn’t accept this premise. Energy is what fuels us, food is energy. Enter consciousness. How do we relate to our environment? First we eat. When we apply reduction in our search for ‘the first interaction with the environment’ feeding must stand lonely at the top. It doesn’t however. It’s replication that has topped our charts for over a century. I contest that theory.

Back to our Darwinian philosophy of survival of the fittest. To survive you feeding was and is our main priority. So if life wants to survive wouldn’t it be logical that all new bourns would be able to feed themselves? Wouldn’t it be great when being born you know what to do and are able (physically) to do that? From the outset you know where to find a meal, what is dangerous, how to defend yourself and after a while where to find your mate and procreate. And during all these lives, experiences, triumphs and failures, will be inherited by you offspring.

As you see, I am describing the opposite situation of our existence. We’re born completely dependent, physically incapable of surviving on our own.

The last description of life, us humans, stands in stark contrast with life forms we all know and existed way before even our class of species appeared in evolutionary terms. Class Mammalia.  

These life forms, essentially all except birds and mammals, when it comes to feeding have to fend for themselves from birth. We all have seen a nature program where we see a hatchling lizard go about his way as if it was just another day. I even saw a lizard, half hatched, play dead.

A rat was passing his nest right at the moment the lizard clawed through his (or her) eggshell. He somehow knew what to do. We pass it of as ‘instinct’. But nobody really knows what’s going on. Is it instinct for a spider to built a complex web? For me instinct means subconscious reactions, like veering back when somebody wants to punch me. But building a bow and arrow, the equivalent of the spiders web, is not what I’d call instinct.

In fact, we were the first class of species that evolved into ever more dependent life forms, and as you all know by heart if you were taught Darwinian thoughts, is that ‘ironically’ we humans are the most successful species ever on earth, but at the same time the most fragile and dependent creatures when we’re born.

In reality, it’s not ironic at all.

Remember this well: our class of species, mammals, evolved into existence around 210 million years ago. Life inhabited this planet over 3 Billion years!

That means that after all those billions of years, life parted from an old strategy. Before (and still) life evolved skills through experience, i.e. became conscious of and adapted to, that were passed on to the offspring  genetically. The new way created a new dimension to the genetic evolution of consciousness; real time learning. Now we have real life experiences that can be taught to your offspring, enabling them to face and survive in their environment more up to date. Learning from mistakes and triumphs, on the spot, from the one you trust with every fibre in your body. There is a simple explanation for why life started to experiment with this new and daring adventure.

I went way too far into my initial two subjects, as I always do when I’m finally writing again, so I’m going to get to the point.

Eternal life doesn’t have to be physical. The fact that many animals we know, are born with full knowledge and capability to ensure their species survival, shows this. Imagine you would die this instant, and few moments later you’ll find yourself ‘waking up’ in a babies body. You open your eyes and as your eyes and brains adjust to this new vehicle of your life, slowly you start to remember. And, for sure, after a couple of hours you are completely aware and remember everything up until you died. A new body, but transferred consciousness. That’s what we can distil from a lizards life. And a fish and an insect. Just the birds come close to our choices in our evolutionary paths.     

I hope you have distilled my core thesis. Life is an evolving consciousness, born on this planet by reacting to her impulses. This eventually made her feed and reproduce and evolve. We call this surviving. In reality it is an ever increasing complex way of feeding and procreating. To be or not to be is the most eloquent description of our predicament. We’re here for a reason, a reason old as life itself. To survive.

But how do we fit in this picture?

I’m going to explain all this and my first focus is on how to ‘redefine’ the life force. This will go right into the core of our consciousness and will answer some age old philosophical and religious questions, never answered before. I’m referring here to the most magical of numbers, strewn through religious and philosophical thought everywhere and in all times. The number 3. 

It will answer the question of the Ttrinity, holy or unholy. The three jewels of Buddhism. The three forces coming from the Tao. There all directly related to the core of our consciousness, that what made life move for the first time.  

Now forget everything I said except the idea of an eternal consciousness in contrast to an exclusively physical eternity, actually seen in nature all around us.

To help me with my argument, I will use quotes and references from religious books, philosophical writings and scientific findings from the search for truth and wisdom throughout our human history.

It will tell us that it's not the strong and powerful that seem to cohere to the theory of survival of the fittest, but that we're a part of a process trying to achive the opposite; survival of the weakest. Creating thereby a life form feasible of leaving this planet and surviving indefinitely. 

It's the sacrifices we make and endure for the other that makes up our path to completion. We call it love, but have interpreted its values in  many different ways.  

The first thing I’d like you to reconsider is your accepted idea of the term/idea eternal life. Most of us in western society equate this idea with the search for it. Cryogenics, genetic manipulation. Trying not to age, or reversing the process of aging. All these thoughts come from our rather narrow view of life being all about the physical and genetics. I’d like you to consider another idea about eternal life. You don’t have to accept it, just consider it.

Maslow's Pyramid

"The myth is always an explanation of something already known"

Great stuff...

Hunger, ethics & satire

^^^

Dear visitor, with the following writings i will introduce you, over and over again, that we’re not a product of random evolution. I will show you, over and over again, that life is an evolving consciousness trying to… survive. I will show you, over and over again, that we are a logical result within ‘intelligent’ evolution we humans are a necessity for the next step in our evolutionary path; leaving the nest. By nest mean the necessity for life to be able to leave this planet in order to insure it’s survival. Nobody today denies the fact that life to survive will eventually leave the nest, our planet.



I will, over and over again, show that, in contrast to science, our life forces are real and we all know and experience them one way or the other every day. We use their names as metaphors for every kind of situation. These yin/yang, opposites, pain/pleasure forces defined by religions and philosophers since the dawn of men are the mundane forces that keep us alive. These three or trinity of life forces are the missing link between science and religion and reveal our creator, life. It is She, life, that created us, humans, in Her image (and His) to look for Him, God, up in the heavens. If there is a 'God' residing in heaven, we'll find Him. If not, other explanations will arise from our quest.



I answer the question; what’s in the sky that life needs to adapt to if she wants to survive?

Or.. now we’ve (life) conquered the planet, what is it that comes from beyond and threatens our existence?



Please read as much as you can bear and call me on any discrepancy you can find, and I assure you there must be a lot.


But anyway, thank you for your time.



Martijn van Galen Last

And oh,… my warning earlier hints at the soon coming demise of our precious fought entitlements to not have to suffer unnecessary. We're now destined to fend for ourselves. Our western leading philosophy of life, the fallacy of survival of the fittest, will prevail for a short time, creating massive suffering. But our ability to adapt will lead us eventually to the knowledge of our purpose for being here...

Introduction

Call me crazy...


Why hasn’t anybody, no scientists, no philosophers, thought of investigating the simple and logical theory that life in itself isn’t a dumb process, but an ever expanding intelligent process, looking to survive? Let me explain myself…

Now we know that life has been evolving for probably billions of years, more specific, around 3.5 billion years, when you look around you in nature, you stand in awe of the creatures life creates, always adapting to the environment with some of the craziest and most beautiful inventions. We know it started out on microscopic scale, but over the millions of years it, with erratic intervals, evolved into the most complex of creatures, all connected with each other in a complex maze of feeding, fighting, fornicating and fleeing. The immediate conclusion you make when you’re confronted with this web of life is that it all points to survival by all means necessary. Of the individual itself, then the offspring it produces. This is what kept life going on till today, but not without some big potholes on the way, that’s where we come in.

If this life, this process we’re part of isn’t blind or random, but trying, failing and succeeding (much like our own human evolution) then why would we’ve become an indispensable item for life to survive? We’ve already answered this question many, many times since 1974, when we first found that in the long history of life major catastrophe’s befell her. In 1974 we connected the extinction of the dinosaur with a meteorite hitting our planet. There you have it, there is our so-called God, being vengeful and creating an end-time for life. The end always rings in a new beginning…

So that’s what I’m going to try to do over the next 30 or so pages. I’m going to delve in to the idea that we’re purposely created, not by a almighty God, but by life itself. That we’re part of a strategy that will eventually create the necessary and far more complete beings who will be able to survive this planet and the relative vulnerable place we occupy in space.

Between 200 and 400AC Christian Gnostic writings described it like this:

"We, humanity, are existing in this realm because a member of the transcendent godhead, Sophia (Wisdom), desired to actualize her innate potential for creativity without the approval of her partner or divine consort. Her hubris, in this regard, stood forth as raw materiality, and her desire, which was for the mysterious ineffable Father, manifested itself as Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge, that renegade principle of generation and corruption which, by its unalterable necessity, brings all beings to life, for a brief moment, and then to death for eternity. However, since even the Pleroma itself is not, according to the Gnostics, exempt from desire or passion, there must come into play a salvific event or savior.. (cf. Apocryphon of John [Codex II] 9:25-25:14 ff.).
***

Desire is only one half of the Life Force. Desire, or lust, has been named as primary throughout history.

Sartre: In order to ground itself, the self needs projects, which can be viewed as aspects of an individual’s fundamental project and motivated by a desire for “being” lying within the individual’s consciousness

Epicurus: He taught that the point of all one’s actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one’s desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death

Freud: Thus his theory of the instincts or drives is essentially that the human being is energized or driven from birth by the desire to acquire and enhance bodily pleasure.

C.G. Jung: The error of Sophia, which is usually identified as a reckless desire to know the transcendent God, leads to the hypostatization of her desire in the form of a semi-divine and essentially ignorant creature known as the Demiurge

I can go on and on, but my point is; We never defined the second half of the life force.

The Buddha: The second noble truth, or reality of the origin of suffering, calls for the practice of renunciation to all mental states that generate suffering for oneself and others. The mental state that appears in the second noble truth is taṇhā, literally “thirst.” It was customary in the first Western translations of Buddhist texts (Burnouf, Fausboll, Muller, Oldenberg, Warren) to translate taṇhā by desire. This translation has misled many to think that the ultimate goal of Buddhists is the cessation of all desires. However, as Damien Keown puts it, “it is an oversimplification of the Buddhist position to assume that it seeks an end to all desire.” (1992: 222).

The first two Noble Truths of Buddhism are: Suffering & Desire.
***

The actual reason life created us are the mass extinctions of aeons past. Even though we sometimes think we are more likely to destroy our planet than save it, we're actually saving it. We're in no way able to destroy all life, let alone the planet. And don't worry, we're not even in control.

The major problem with the answer of the question; why are we (human-kind) here, are the sheer logical answers to the most sought after questions in ‘man’s history. For example; We'll define the life force or life forces so that it fit's almost all descriptions given to it over the last 5 millennia or so. But you won’t like it.

You won't be able to deny it’s innate properties and the significant similarities to major religious and philosophic definitions of it, you can’t even deny experiencing it, but you probably won't accept it.

But if and when you do, even just as an experiment, you’ll find that all peoples, cultures, religions, philosophies ask and try to answer the same questions, when they’re given the time an space to reflect. And that we are purposefully ignorant of our mission as to create as much uniqueness in human endeavours as possible, but always having to struggle with… authority.

God does exist as an experience life tries to define for us (and we for her...) as an abstract, unknowable, before we learned and her consciousness developed into our own. He, God, nearly killed us by creating an inferno on earth, lasting for aeons (multiple times!). We now know that earth has been hit many times, if God is doing this, He’s been visiting the Kuiper Belt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt). But we (life) always survived and adapted.

So think, how do you adapt to unpredictable and unbelievable danger from, what we now call, deep space? Or, even worse, how do you adapt to a violent planet, that has threatened our global chances of survival even more in the past?

Well, you'll need something like us humans to learn and do all that's possible. And when knowledge and wisdom are sufficient you'll discard the bad and keep the good. I believe we know enough to be wise, but desperately try to hold on to our foolishness.

Nothing in this story is illogical or even needs a so-called leap of faith. I’m fully convinced that this is the reality of our existence and we will eventually all agree on that. Of course… this probably won’t be your opinion. No major new insight in who or what we are ever was accepted in the messengers life-time. So feel free to, no I urge you, to point out my misinterpretations, false statements and general ignorant assumptions. I’m perfectly willing to abdicate my conviction if proven wrong.

I used to be, pretty much, a Darwinian evolutionist. I never ever believed in a almighty God up in the heavens, and I never ever abdicated my firm believe that we’re the result of an evolving process, over many, many years and only recently ‘arrived at the scene’. A few things kept nagging me.

Why do we define nature as being 'a struggle to survive' based on competition, when I can see and feel clearly that nature is an intricate balancing act where everything depends on everything else.

Why is it that I feel 'me' as somehow separate from nature, even when I know I'm not. That must mean something. Even though I experience life as being at the centre of it, I rationally know that I'm part of this process of living nature. I sprung from nature and completely depend on nature's abundance. All I can conclude, reasoning from my ego point of view, that my, our, 'mission' must have something to do with learning. Learning through experience.

To counter the 'competition dogma' I'd like to quote Charles Eisenstein:
“In fact, the competition that we see as the driving force of life and evolution is very much a projection of our own cultural beliefs. Just as we project our own anxiety onto primitive peoples, so we project the relentless competitiveness of modern human life onto nature. Competition is an important part of nature, of course, but not the prime mover, the defining feature, nor the engine of progress." - Charles Eisenstein, "The Ascent of Humanity" page 183.

We're going to define this 'engine of progress'. The engine is also known as the trinity, it defines the building blocks of our consciousness and metaphorizes the Holy Trinity.

I start my story as if you never read the words above, and visited this blog for the first time, and remember...

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer.

We're in need of a new narrative...

                               ***

"Heaven and Earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs." Laotse, "Tao te King" Verse 5

                               ***

"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


The Question:

How can we integrate all we know today with the wisdoms and traditions of the past and come up with a sustainable all inclusive narrative that will guide us out of our insanity?

The Answer:

Can you accept that our creator is fallible, just like us?


Only when you accept that we are a product of millions of years of evolution you can see how it all fits together, how we were inevitable.

How it's all about surviving...

There is a new, or to put it in a better way; not yet seen narrative in our own histories and the history of Life on this planet. Our lives represent the story of Life Herself. So we can learn and survive.

Can randomness be proven? 

Why should we stop with the notion that evolution of Life is based on random changes within our genes when we reproduce? The idea, or ideology (of the survival of the fittest), and of random changes is not scientific fact. It's an assumption, trying to adhere to scientific objectivity. I do believe that we are a product of millions, even billions of years of evolution. I do not however believe that it's all meaningless and by accident.

Until about 40 years ago we didn't know enough about Life's history to connect the dots.

This logical, simple yet pretty complicated explanation will be able to absorb the fundamentalist atheist as well as the religious fundamentalist.

With today's scientific knowledge and recorded human history,  the Story is actually pretty obvious when you see it...

Surviving has always been and still is the problem.

The reason we humans are here is very mundane. In short: Life, you know, that evolutionary process that's been going on for over 3 billion years now (at least, according to present day scientific findings) created humans out of necessity. Without us humans She will not realize her goal: To survive. Her reasons and motivations lie in what happened to Her long before we arrived at the scene, many millions of years ago.

Yes, you heard me correctly, I'm talking about Life as a 'single' entity. An all-encompassing consciousness creating all Life forms. We're part of that huge conscious organism. The reason we feel ourselves to be individuals and at the centre of our universe is pretty easy to explain. We, each and everyone of us, represent Her story. The Story of Life on this planet: Being born, being dependant, experiencing pain and sorrow, pleasure and delight, fear of death... and eventually learning how to deal with all that.

Even though Life can be said to be androgynous, I refer to Life as Her, mostly because the actual assembling of our offspring happens within what we humans call the female and because God and The Son, in western Abrahamic religious traditions, have been designated to be male, being the opposite or outside of us. But the answers of course lie within.

"Wise men of old gave the soul a feminine name. Indeed she is female in her nature as well. She even has her womb" -The Exegesis on the Soul, Nag Hammadi Library

Evolution is not based on the abstract notion of survival of the species (no species survive indefinitely) but, more sensible: the survival of Life Herself. This evolutionary process is by no means blind or dumb. Just like us She is learning, failing and eventually, succeeding.

Life is an evolving consciousness, in which spirit precedes form. This contradicts the now prevalent scientific view on Life; as a mechanistic process wherein form (matter) creates a by-product like our consciousness. But when you apply common sense you know as well as I do that it cannot be the form of the animal that makes it survive but it's actions or behaviour. We'll find that form and consciousness define each other.

When we approach Life from a scientific point of view we can define the Life Force(s) and thereby the origin of our consciousness and, within the analogies, the (Holy) (T)trinity. Moreover, it will explain our overall purpose for being here, probably not very satisfying, even painful, but for those who value Life first, pretty comforting.. And, believe it or not, Life is eternal and so are we. Even though..., death still is a reality. Of course, reality totally depends on our consciousness.

We are, as so many animals before us, part of a strategy to survive.

Don't get me wrong though, surviving is a great pleasure and privilige, mostly...

The history of Life.

Myths and Reality do sometimes mix. It depends what you're aiming for...
There are many references in the Bible, Qur'an and other religious texts that tell of disasters like falling stars (hitting the earth) and other major global calamities. Most often they are attributed to (a) God. Most of these texts were written in days of old, before we scientifically discovered mass extinctions caused by major natural disasters.
-- 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. Take a look at our moon, you'll see the amount of impacts it endured. The earth is four times the size of the moon.

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"

Knowing we are relative newcomers in evolutionary terms, humans are also the only animal that has the capability to detect, avert and survive a catastrophe like the meteor-impact that, according to conventional thought, eradicated the dinosaurs. So, if it comes to survival… for now, we are the best and only option.

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 this is called an Interrupted or punctuated equilibrium. This points to 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, slow and steady, but in 'short' bursts after which evolution becomes relatively in-active. Most of these evolutionary bursts happened after a major global catastrophe.

There are two major changes in Life’s behaviour that need more explanation than random events within our genetic reproduction process. The first and most obvious is sexual reproduction. This process started around 1.4 billion years ago, before that Life just copied itself. The second major deviation of ‘traditional practice’ happened more recently, 'just' 210 million years ago; the creation of Class Mammalia.

These changes point to more than blind luck, they point to the desire and need to survive.

This Will to survive is composed of the Life Force(s) (Charles Darwin referred to it in his quote I posted above). When we define these forces we will see what it is that is actually happening to us.

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 an ‘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. In this verse the Life Force(s) are summed up and explained at their core.

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 we can find the answers to questions like: Why we are here, the origin of our consciousness, the essence of good and evil, and the answer to the age old enigma of the Trinity and/or the Life Force(s). All you've got to believe (as in leap of faith, that what I abhor, but have to accept here) is that we're part of a single consciousness, creating individuals in Her image...

In many major and minor religions and many philosophical and mystical writings, but also in all kinds of artistic expression, there are thoughts and theories that suggest we are part of an evolving consciousness, that Life Herself 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 -

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


C.G. Jung (1959)

"In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature ands which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix) there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists on pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."

Charles Eisenstein, `The Ascent of Humanity` (page 176)

“Furthermore, the growth and spontaneous movement of living beings does not in any obvious way reflect simple, mechanical laws like the conservation of momentum. We do not behave as mere masses subject to forces, but initiate action on our own. Intuition tells us that this animation, this spontaneous movement and growth, is a key feature of life. Thales recognized as much in the 7th century BC when he said, `The lodestone has life, or soul, as it is able to move iron`, as did Aristotle in associating life with movement (`The soul creates movement`).


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.

When we define the Life Force(s), we'll define the origin of our consciousness. The origin, of course, lies within.

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 used and accepted definition of Life;
- Life has a metabolism;
- Life reproduces itself;
- Life interacts with its environment.

Or:
- Life feeds itself;
- Life reproduces
- And Life interacts with its environment (like feeding!).

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 we 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. ** The essential activity in Life is feeding.

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 its environment. To feed means to interact with your environment, which points to a form of consciousness.

"Richard Dawkins’ 1990 book, 'The Selfish Gene', lucidly presents the prevailing view of biogenesis, conceived a hundred years ago buy Oparin and Haldane. Like the Neodarwinian theory of evolution, it hinges on two key features: random mutation and natural selection. The story starts with a prebiotic soup of the organic molecules that are the building blocks of life. The crucial event is the appearance, by chance, of a complex molecule with the very special property of catalyzing the formation of a new copy of itself. (…)

A sponsoring assumption in the “selfish gene” biogenesis story is that there is a clear demarcation between organism and environment. There are the replicators, which are distinct from one another, and there is the substrate. The key event in the origin of life is the appearance of a molecule, presumably a strand of RNA or something like it, that can ‘replicate itself’. The separate individual is seen as primary. How naturally this fits in with the beliefs of our own culture: that human beings are separate from nature, and that each of us has a distinct, separate existence independent of other human beings. How naturally it accords with the attitude that nature is a collection of recourses for us to use to our best advantage."  "The Ascent of Humanity" by Charles Eisenstein. P. 179.
**

So Life feeds itself, reproduces and 'interacts with its enviroment' (like feeding, arguably the first interaction with 'the enviroment'.) This is what science gave us to work with up to now.

Let’s try to define these Life Force(s) 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.
***

Alan Watts, Baffled by hunger...

"That (when) an animal eats because it is hungry. What we’re really saying is, that it eats when it’s ready to eat. And, hunger is the initial stage of eating. It is a way of perceiving readiness to eat. And then again when we say it dies, because there is no food, if you look into this carefully, what you’re actually saying is, that when food is not in the environment, and therefore is no longer being transformed into the pattern of the organism, then that pattern isn’t there anymore. It dies. But, you see what is happening here, all we’re doing when we say because, is that we are describing what is actually happening more carefully. In other words; the organism dies because there is no more food. If we simply say; instead of this word ‘because’ we simply say; the organisms’ death is the cessation of food being transformed into it’s pattern. You see, we’ve eliminated the word ‘because’, and this is actually what we’re doing all the time when we explain things. We’re not really describing their causes, that seems to be what we’re doing, when we don’t know the full nature of the event. What we’re really doing is we’re describing the event that puzzles us more completely."

***

As you can see, and hopefully understand, our primary activity (and the primary activity of Life), eating, is empowered by a dualistic force composed of pain and pleasure. They come together, one cannot be without the other. If you don’t eat you’ll first get peckish, then you built up a big appetite, when you still do not feed yourself you will feel pain. And this pain represents the original pain: Hunger.

It’s not our world that is dualistic in nature, but we are. We experience high-low, big-small, good-bad, tight-loose… These things do not represent 'reality', they represent value. And what’s more valuable than Life?

The Life Force(s), hunger & lust, is (are) the original motive(s)* for acting, out of necessity or out of lust. The pain represents necessity and lust… well, represents lust.

* [It’s hard to decide if it’s Two or One]

When you first become aware of this dualistic force within you, you’ll inevitably will experience the third force, completing the trinity of our consciousness.

**
"Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die."
- W.H. Auden (1939)
**

Age Old Knowledge

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 we first experienced lust, or appetite and because that doesn't force us to do anything, after a while this Lust became hunger. The hunger (pain) is what first made us move (feed).

As soon as we feed ourselves the pain (hunger) disappears. When we feed before we are hungry we won't even feel any pain. From these two inseparable forces: hunger and lust the third force arose.

Well, as of course you've already guessed, the third force is Fear.

When you know pleasure and you know pain, and moreover you know they come as a pair, you'll have to be constantly aware of how you balance these two forces... You do not want to feel too much pain, right? Well, that, in a nutshell is Life's Herstory (do you mind...?)

Back in time...
So what happened after Life was born 3.5 or so, billion years ago?

Hardly anything happened during the first two billion years. Life was feeding and copying Herself, blissfully unaware of... well almost everything. But then, 'all of a sudden', 1.4 billion years ago Life started the process of sexual reproduction. This is when evolution, the creation of  'different' life forms really started on earth. But why this change after two billion years? It has to do with Life's experiences.

Even though we could count the individual organisms expanding along the seashores of Pangea, there was only one consciousness. What could have triggered Life to start the process of sexual reproduction?

During the first two 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 two 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. Besides the pleasure and the pain She now was endowed with the third force mentioned in verse 42 of the Tao; the force that completed our three-dimensional consciousness. When you know that pain can come unexpectedly, you'll experience the third force.
***
Gnostic Scriptures

When I first found out about the Gnostic traditions and started to read some of their ancient texts I was amazed at how Gnostic mythologies can easily be ‘transplanted’ into Life as a evolving consciousness, learning, failing, changing, experiencing and surviving. I will use parts of these Gnostic texts, written 1500 years ago, to show you that when people write with ‘inspiration’ about Life, they’ll tell us the story of Life’s evolving consciousness. Like this one from the Nag Hammadi Library, ‘Authoritative Teaching’:

But the soul - she who has tasted these things - realized that sweet passions are transitory. She had learned about evil; she went away from them and she entered into a new conduct. Afterwards she despises this Life, because it is transitory. And she looks for those foods that will take her into Life, and leaves behind her those deceitful foods. And she learns about her light, as she goes about stripping off this world, while her true garment clothes her within, (and) her bridal clothing is placed upon her in beauty of mind, not in pride of flesh. And she learns about her depth and runs into her fold, while her shepherd stands at the door. In return for all the shame and scorn, then, that she received in this world, she receives ten thousand times the grace and glory.


************************
Life.

History of Life. I added the mass extinctions. Click to enhance.
***

Animal behaviourists define four main activities they call (tongue-in-cheek) the four F’s, they are: Feeding, Fornicating, Fleeing and Fighting.

*** The Four F's***
 

So, here is my proposition: Hunger, Lust & Fear are the three forces mentioned in the Tao tse Tung. Or: Pleasure, Pain & Fear (Pleasure in front!)

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 GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY

Lets translate: The first form is darkness. What does darkness represent? It's not fear, it's what we fear. The second desire. Desire = lust. And the third ignorance. Ignorance does represent fear.

“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, tells of the first contact of Life with God (Something mightier than it). Of course God is an unknown and, as He has shown, pretty powerful, maybe even all-powerful. If so, we have to know, we have to find out.

How about this ancient text:

"Seven appeared in chaos, androgynous. They have their masculine names and their feminine names. The feminine name is Pronoia (Forethought) Sambathas, which is 'week'. And his son is called Yao: his feminine name is Lordship. Sabaoth: his feminine name is Deity. Adonaios: his feminine name is Kingship. Elaios: his feminine name is Jealousy. Oraios: his feminine name is Wealth. And Astaphaios: his feminine name is Sophia (Wisdom). These are the seven forces of the seven heavens of chaos. And they were born androgynous, consistent with the immortal pattern that existed before them, according to the wish of Pistis: so that the likeness of what had existed since the beginning might reign to the end. You will find the effect of these names and the force of the male entities in the Archangelic (Book) of the Prophet Moses, and the names of the female entities in the first Book of Noraia." 'On the origin of the world' The Nag Hammadi Library. http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/origin.html

It’s Gaia that we’re looking for. Not Gaia portrayed as the so-called spirit of our planet, but as in the ancient Greek mythological figure of; Mother Nature, Life. It’s Zoë we’re looking for; Greek for Life.


Before I knew about these names, written over the ages, including Sophia (Wisdom), Pistis (Faith), I thought of Chloe. On the one hand it is an acronym for “Creates Her Life On Earth” and on the other hand Chloe is a pretty cousin of mine from Down Under. A very nice happenstance...

I'm pretty much convinced that we're part of a story that will eventually save us from extinction. For now it's the end of a saga...

Plato on the 'Demiurge':Plato has the speaker Timaeus refer to the demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus circa 360 BCE. The title character refers to the demiurge as the entity who “fashioned and shaped” the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent and hence desirous of a world as good as possible. The world remains allegedly imperfect, however, because the demiurge had to work on pre-existing chaotic, indeterminate matter.**  Plato's Demiurge, from Wikipedia.

When Plato talks about a deity that ‘fashions and shapes’ the material world, he means literary creating the material world by our conscious becoming aware and adapting to the material world.

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.

**
"Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of Life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim". "Studies in Pessimism" Arthur Schopenhauer

Well, we can make a pretty good case that suffering is the direct and immediate object of Life.

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