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Martinos Gryparis's avatar

very nice srticle, thank you!

I very much agree with the notion of we are life, and that life itself is a vibration, pure energy.

The Being, God, the Great Spirit, Nature, the Dharma, etc are imho all ways to come closer to the greater self, the spiritual reality.

What I believe determines true happiness in this realm is HOW you approach the ultimate truth.

Perhaps we should not be too rigid in our choice of spiritual paths, be it religion or something else. Trying out various practices and seeing how they affect your state of being can be liberating.

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Mofwoofoo's avatar

A few days ago I wrote something similar: The Philosophical Conundrum of the Discrete vs. Continuity or What is a Human?

The Philosophical Conundrum of the Discrete vs. Continuity or What is a Human?

Humans are a form of life which has a particular form of consciousness which is singular as it is for all species, in that it includes the possibility of self reflection. This unique aspect of human consciousness gives humans a much wider range of possible options than it seems than all the other species.

Life is opposed by "entropy", the tendency for all things to decompose. And for life to exist it must overcome the force of entropy. Currently, it is hard for our form of life (humans) to maintain this state for more than 100 years. Entropy is continuous while life seems to be discrete, that is, a flow of individual units. Hence, humans are discrete entities that make up a part of a chain that we call life. 

The human entity seems to exist on multiple levels from microscopic to macroscopic. And humans are composed of many other species of bacteria along with human cells. And while it seems that all living entities can experience the feeling of comfort or homeostasis, humans seem to have a greater capacity for appreciation of things beyond physical needs such as beauty, music, humor, achievement, contribution, conversation, literature, poetry, and all the arts, revelation etc.

And while the body has a somewhat mechanistic aspect, life, the product of all the dynamics of the physical body is of a different order. Just as the brain is the mechanism that produces the mind which is capable of producing thoughts. Thoughts seem to have no physical dimension. And when the physical dynamics are no longer capable of resisting entropy, life disappears, but continues in another discrete form due to the act of reproduction. In this fashion life is maintained in all the discrete entities found in every species. While life exists, it maintains a coherence that begins to dissipate  the moment life disappears. A desert is what remains once life departs. Sand refers to the size of the particles, which eventually become silt, and finally clay.

I just saw a squirrel outside. It seems that most all species spend a good deal of their time hunting for food. I am eating my breakfast now. Since maybe 10,000 years ago, humans began cultivating plants and animals for food, we no longer spend much time hunting food. Instead we gain our food in abstracted ways. We might work at a job to be able to go to the store to buy food. This might only take an hour or so, but we had to work 8 hours to get the money for food and other necessities. So, we may have been better off before we claimed land to cultivate as far as the time and enjoyment that we lost when we discontinued hunting and foraging for food. And another huge loss is that while we cultivated animals and land, we inadvertently cultivated ourselves and lost our wildness and connection to nature.

All entities need air (except anaerobic creatures), water, sufficient heat to maintain body temperature, and food (energy) to resist entropy. On attaining these necessities one might imagine that all entities feel comfortable (homeostasis). These satisfy the physical necessities, but life transcends the physical because it is animate, speaking here of all the phylum of the animal kingdom and needs to make decisions. 

Humans are analogous to "thought machines". Thoughts erupt into our consciousness, often with no effort on our part. Language augments thoughts. We can consciously focus our attention as I am doing now, to channel thoughts on a particular theme. This enigmatic thought mechanism that humans possess creates the possibility for us to create, imagine, and develop in a field of infinite potentialities. Our hands and feet help us to manifest thoughts into actions.

Mollusks can create a mobile home, their shell, while humans can create huge cities that cover over nature and are stationary. Since we are life, everything we do and create is natural, even synthetics. Everything initially comes from natural resources. What we call synthetics or inorganic are derived from natural resources initially and with time will become incoherent thanks to entropy. Since time seems to be infinite, nothing physical can withstand entropy. 

Nothing physical can be permanent. Or so it seems. But it may not be true. Question everything, especially whatever I might write. If all is energy and what we conceive as physical is actually energy, there is the idea that energy in the Universe remains constant. If that is true, then perhaps the "physical" is the discrete part of existence and energy is the continuous. They seem to exist together at the same time. So the physical (life) is a discrete entity that disappears and then continues, is "reborn" in another new form.

To continue further, if there was no life, there would be no point to there being a Universe. Why would there be a Universe if there was no life? The profound implication is that the Universe is dependent on the existence of life if it is to have any relevance or purpose. 

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