The Definition of “Life” Revealed

WE live on a planet constantly in motion, and except for the occasional natural catastrophe, it is usually a very slow, orderly motion.

The Earth is billions of years old and still in the making—glacial cycles come and go, continents move, mountains form and crumble. Yet Life persists.

Modern Science has, for decades, tried to sell us every soulless theory they could, from the ‘big bang,’ to the chemical origin of life, and a gravity-driven universe.

Our current dogmatic science ought to fear approaching the problem of life’s origins. Their hypothetical models always postulate random events, and chance mutations, in a hostile universe — a cosmos without conscience, consciousness or spiritual life.

All new theories lead up blind alleys. How Earth formed, how life arose. All we are offered is endless speculation, and the stunningly unscientific approach that, instead of welcoming new ideas, refuses to follow where the evidence leads.

And what life is in its most essential essence, continues to be the most ignored problem in science.

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The mainstream theorists have so far been content with a soulless stew of blind matter, which has neither intelligent design or purpose. But these have led nowhere in explaining the many mysteries hidden in everyday life.

Spirit, Mind and Matter

In stark contrast, Theosophy teaches that ‘life’ did not have to be created, but is a universal principle, and underlies the universe both macro and micro. Life only ‘arises’ to our attention according to science under rigid conditions.

“Life must conform to a chance based material worldview, measurable by laboratory instruments, and judged by our human physical senses.”

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But life is really a dynamic interaction between the forces of spirit, mind and matter, Theosophy says, and develops its forms via patterns embedded in an indwelling, divine evolutionary plan.  A great mystery recently was discovered challenging the foundations of modern scientific principles.

Arsenic Eaters

Astrobiology research funded by NASA made an amazing new discovery they say will “fundamentally change the knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth,”… and beyond earth. In the below video Dr. Felisa Wolfe-Simon sums up her findings at the NASA announcement. It should be noted that, according to Wikipedia, “reports refuting the most significant aspects of the original results have been published in the journal of the original research in 2012.”

Persistent Theory

Yet, Science persists in supporting a mechanical theory of life, and established materialistic concepts. What amounts to a literal interpretation of Herbert Spencer’s 1879 faceless definition of life as:

“…a definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences.”

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“The Urey–Miller experiment was an experiment that simulated hypothetical conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth,” says Wikipedia, “and tested for the occurrence of chemical origins of life, considered to be the classic experiment on the origin of life.”

Called “Abiogenesis” or biopoesis, it is the study of how “biological life can arise from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose.”

Stanley Miller

Paradoxically, Herbert Spencer also wrote of evolution as “the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations,” a statement that H. P. Blavatsky adopts in The Secret Doctrine to describe the (intelligent, not blind or random) method employed by a “Universal life-Principle manifesting everywhere in nature.”

Life is One

Morally interpreted, the key to a truly productive life, most spiritual teachers agree, is that humankind awaken to it’s higher potential, to become more Self-aware of its inner god — more loving and compassionate to each other, and recognizing the universal unity of conscious life.

Intelligent Evolution

“There exists in Nature,” says The Secret Doctrine, “three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point.”

“These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolutions.”

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There is a natural progression of awakenings that go hand-in-hand, Theosophy explains, with these three universal creative forces.

DNA

Galaxies Rebirthing

In space, no one can hear the swan song of a galaxy — but now you can see it on “Journey to the Edge of the Universe” – Next PrimeTime Airing Thu Apr 14, 2011, 9pm.

The Big Picture

The blind, undirected dogmas of Neo-Darwinism are no match for the Theosophical explanatory view of intelligent evolution advocated by ancient sages.

Consider one of H. P. Blavatsky’s compelling arguments for intelligent design, (The Secret Doctrine 2:348):

“Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ of a cathedral had come originally into being in the following manner. First, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration in Space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production of a state of matter named organic PROTEIN.

Grand Organ

“Then, under the influence of incident forces, those states having been thrown into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically evolved into and resulted in new combinations of carved and polished wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes and bellows.

“After which, having adapted all its parts into one harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed forth Mozart’s Requiem.”

Music

“This was followed by a Sonata of Beethoven, etc., ad infinitum—its keys playing of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent force and fancy….What would Science say to such a theory?”

Universal Evolution

The true key to our spiritual progress, then, lies in our recognition of the larger, reasonable, universal evolutionary picture, one that was described famously by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s elegant summation:

“…we are spiritual beings
having a human experience”

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Many Reincarnations

Many Forms

Self-knowledge is acquired, according to esoteric tradition, by struggling through a challenging series of reincarnations while in a human form. Yet there are other forms also transitioning and evoluting, says The Secret Doctrine.

Blavatsky quotes approvingly from Geologist, Professor Alexander Winchell, that “there may be intelligences corporealized after some concept not involving the processes of injection, assimilation, and reproduction.”

Intelligent Design

“Such bodies would not require daily food and warmth. It is conceivable,” the Professor asserts. “They might be lost in the abysses of the ocean, or laid up on a stormy cliff through the tempests of an Arctic winter…

…or plunged in a volcano for a hundred years, and yet retain consciousness and thought.”

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One Life

Eckhart Tolle says: “The Upanishads point to the dimension of the formless One Life that is you. Vibrant with life, but still. Extremely awake, but still. In between thoughts and words is the canvas on which the universe is maintained.”

Writes Professor Alexander Winchell: “Why might not psychic natures be enshrined in indestructible flint and platinum? These substances are no further from the nature of intelligence than carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and lime.”

The writer of The Secret Doctrine agrees with the Professor, but from a different basis. She refuses to stare through the spectacles of material science, which view life only as a mere combination of  different chemicals.

Complexity of Life

An article in the January 29, 2011 issue of NewScientist titled “The Life Factory,” and a similar article titled “Making life, but not as we know it,” point to a fundamental problem that Blavatsky also points to:

“The complexity even of simple life cannot spring out of nothing.”

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Thus, scientists are now looking for preexisting “simpler chemical levels capable of autonomous evolution.” Chemist Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow, UK  is quoted “I don’t think for a second that on planet Earth molybdenum oxide was ever alive.”

Crystal Cave

But, the article quotes Cronin’s comment elsewhere that:

“…given the right chemical environment—who knows?”

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Acknowledging the basic principle of the reality of universal life, Theosophy would agree—but only for the reason that it recognizes that everything material of whatever description or condition, contains the life principle.

The Eye of Shiva

Self-development is defined by the degree to which each of us is able to activate our inner, or ‘all-seeing’ spiritual eye.

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Re-initializing the dormant intuitional “third eye,” the old adepts all say, defines our spiritual development — increased by following in the dance steps of the Hindu god Shiva, our lives gradually become more spiritually directed.

The Third Eye

The God Shiva carries a “trident” symbolizing the three “gunas” – creation, preservation, destruction (followed by regeneration.) This weapon is wielded with the greatest wisdom resident in his awakened spiritual eye, referred to unsurprisingly, as the “eye of Shiva.”

Battling Materialism

“Stagnation and death is the future of all that vegetates without a change,”  Blavatsky explainsin The Secret Doctrine. This dance video has many layers of meaning, not the least of which is the importance of achieving control over our own thoughts and feelings. Especially when attempting to meditate.

Probably, most of us wish we had the will, time and talent to exercise the same laser-like determination in our daily lives as depicted in the above dance. Yet, all adept teachers, Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tse,  assure us that such an achievement is a possibility for everyone.

“The life of altruism is not so much a high ideal,” Blavatsky wrote to her students, “as a matter of practice.”

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Children Meditating

Considered the highest god in the Hindu pantheon, Shiva is discounted by some Western students as a “god of war, death and destruction” — forgetting the god is a symbol. He is the warrior in us, not the passive slave, the true pursuer of spiritual growth.

Just as Krishna, who leads his favorite disciple, Arjuna, into battle in the famous war of the Mahabharata — the Bhagavad-Gita — Shiva shows us the path of active discipleship.

Shiva

Shiva represents ‘change’ — not just in the form of physical death and destruction — but in the positive sense of the shedding of old habits, removing unhealthy behaviors. He is the god of the yogis, and represents the most essential goodness.

Buddha Life

Realizing the rewards of an active, Buddha-like life on Earth, means making morally correct choices, and performing wise actions — until these have become ‘second nature.’

Intuitive Consciousness

Conscious Oneness

There is a unified evolution, says Theosophy, which includes consciousness, and a great plan. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D explains this vision and describes how a new burst of consciousness is emerging in humanity that recognizes wholeness.

“Thou art Buddha”

–Voice of the Silence

There are three systems, Theosophy teaches, and each has its own laws, “and is ruled and guided by different gods.  Each hierarchy is “represented in the constitution of man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm.”

“And it is the union of these three streams in him [spiritual, intellectual and physical] which makes him the complex being he now is.”

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Namaste!

Buddha was able to stave off all the selfish distractions of physical existence, of separateness and temptations of the senses — able to act as a spiritual being while engaged in human life on Earth.

He wandered from village to village, teaching, living in his human body — helping suffering humanity to find freedom from its sorrow and ignorance.

Universal Unity

(Collated from the writings of H. P. Blavatsky)

“Religion and science were closer knit than twins in days of old — they were one in two, and two in one from the very moment of their conception. With mutually convertible attributes, science was spiritual and religion was scientific.

(Isis Unveiled 2:263)

Buddha Teaching Disciples

“Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable —hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.”

“Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of univsal being,” Blavatsky wrote, “yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction.”

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787).

“Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law…

“… and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion.”

Dimensions of Space

“In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone.

“The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed — and ‘darkness,’ solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the ‘deep.'”

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The Great Breath

“To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the ‘unknown essence’ produces the world ,” concludes Blavatsky— “and an inhalation causes it to disappear.

“This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present Universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.”

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The Great Breath

“It is the one life, eternal, invisible, yet Omnipresent, without beginning or end,” Mme. Blavatsky writes, introducing the Cosmogenesis of The Secret Doctrine (1:2), “yet periodical in its regular manifestations, between which periods reigns the dark mystery of non-Being.

“Unconscious, yet absolute Consciousness; unrealisable, yet the one self-existing reality; truly, ‘a chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.'”

The Intelligent Cosmos

“Its one absolute attribute, which is itself, eternal, ceaseless Motion, is called in esoteric parlance the ‘Great Breath,’ which is the perpetual motion of the universe, in the sense of limitless, ever-present space.

“That which is motionless cannot be Divine. But then there is nothing in fact and reality absolutely motionless within the universal soul.”

Conscious Ruler

This outstanding video which argues that consciousness is what drives and shapes everything. Matter as such does not exist, and ‘consciousness’ is the true substance of the universe.

This means ultimately everything in the universe and that even matter is consciousness in the most subtlest and dense form.

The below video clip features thought leaders Grant Morrisson, David Lynch, David Icke, Gregg Braden, Michael Talbot, David Wilcock, Wayne Dyer and Neil Kramer.

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