When Man Created God. Genesis of Religious Thought and the Spiritual Need [part 2]

In our contemporary societies, intrigues, rows and fights, jealousy, hypocrisy, selfishness and ignorance, break-ups and problematic communication are considered as standard spices to human relationships. It is normal for people to fight and be unable to reach consent with each other. It is normal to hurt each other both physically and emotionally, whether or not we feel sorry and apologize afterwards. Violence has always fascinated man and has been a preferred form of entertainment for both children and adults alike until this day. It is normal for peoples` behavior to first react and think later. Stereotypes and behavioral frames plague the minds of the youth, as well as their parents`. In their relationships, people do not seek harmony, but domination. Helplessly submitting to the will of their emotional affections and spontaneous urges.

It is no wonder really that ignorance and mental passivity are preferred states of the mind by default, since realization in self-awareness is not an easy process and causes much emotional distress to the traveler who dared to plunge into the depths of his soul. Self-control is an art that only the strongest wield. The first steps are the hardest. Just as the darkest hour is just before dawn.

A grotesque picture can be drawn of humanity today indeed, a present that we can radically transform. We create the future today, whether we do it consciously or not. If the average levels of awareness and understanding are heightened globally, we will make the next step in our social evolution as humanity and as self-aware, intelligent beings. This mental evolution is necessary if we are to move positively forward as humanity, because if we continue to develop only our exterior habitat, but remain stagnant and narrow-minded in our spiritual concepts and understanding one day a third world war with technologically advanced weapons will be inevitably fought. And this is a very grim prospect indeed, but lays very real and immanent on the path we currently follow. Our future relies upon us. Every individual matters, because if we are to truly change our world for the better, the change must begin in the mind of the individual! You may not be able to change the world alone, but you can change yourself and with that to positively influence your very local world. You may not be able to stop war and hate in the whole world, but you can stop those in yourself and bring peace and harmony in the world closest to you in the face of your family, at work, at the street in your relationships with friends and all the people you communicate with in your life. If you improve yourself and aim to higher awareness and understanding you influence the people around you and bring positive change in your life and the lives of people close to you.
And together we can move the world and drown it in a global wave of inspiration!

So, where do you start? Start with yourself!
How? Transform yourself into an example and embodiment of the new ideals – patience and understanding in your relationships with others, self-control and higher awareness in active mentality. Search for the reasons of your reactions and behavior, analyze, comprehend and understand yourself. Build your character, ask questions and search for the answers. Do not be passive – improve, dare and do!

Know yourself and reach the profound depths of your mind. Do not simply be an average person driven by your instincts and primal reactions, push your limits over the edge, sculpt yourself and wield yourself.
Most people find it hard at first to even see their inferiorities and imperfections or perceive their limited awareness, so that they wonder whatever there is to improve in themselves.

The human Ego is a strange entity or this essential personality that is formed in your childhood and established in your adulthood that you address when you say “I”. Often our perception for ourselves and what we show to the world differ, whether we do it consciously or not. Mostly our behavior as personality is driven by psychological motifs that are beyond our awareness. There are many common forms of behavior noted by the science of psychology that people share, like the compensatory behavior that is widely spread. For instance, a person who has poor self-esteem and deepened level of uncertainty tends to adopt an arrogant, aggressive and anti-social behavior with varying levels of intensity. Aggression always is a sign of inner uncertainty and fear.
Our ego has the peculiar property to conceal the true motifs for our reactions and affections, always searching for justifications, never allowing you to be critical towards yourself and ever sustaining a sense of greatness and impeccability. As if the purpose of the ego is to keep your consciousness in a semiautomatic state, preventing it from expanding and awaking. As if the human ego is a primal chain that frames our consciousness and keeps us asleep. A primitive mechanism that we haven`t realized as a limitation yet, along with our very basic mammalian behavior in the face of all the primal instincts that drive us.
As if, indeed self-knowledge is hidden from man, as the ancient wisdom says and human eyes have not yet fully awoken.
By a rule, if you are to grasp and comprehend the world and the most hidden mechanisms of the Universe better, you must first comprehend and understand yourself, the cosmos within you.
This is achieved by the process of self-observation that results in a heightened self-awareness and realization. By putting yourself at the place of the known object, whom you poke, question, explore and analyze. The more questions you ask and the more persistently you think on the answers the deeper your insight goes and the more you realize and understand.
Observation and contemplation are at the base of all knowledge. The answers rarely come in an instant with a flash, but usually unfold gradually in time becoming more and more profound and complete. Seek and you shall find.

How knowing yourself changes you? In quantum physics there is one fundamental principle, without the presence of which no system would have existed at all – this is the observer principle. The act of observation changes the behavior of the observable object, even more the act of observation sets it in motion and definitiveness. Without an observer no knowledge and no form exist. This notion is quite profound as it implicates that beyond our own consciousness that creates our personal reality, we live in another much bigger reality that is the Universe itself. And as far as we can discern this cosmos we live in is filled with all kinds of forms and definite objects with definite shapes and electromagnetic properties. Furthermore, this atomic soup of particles ultimately organized and reorganized in such a way that eventually led to life on Earth and evolution of human beings.
The Universe, from the energetic aspect we perceive it, is an unimaginably huge void of blackness and intangible nothingness that is scarcely filled with all the atoms that make up the billions of octillions of stars, all the exotic stellar objects of the cosmos, our planet and all life on it. As chaotic and unpredictable the quantum world is, all the systems from the stellar to the microcosmic are guided by certain patterns, physical principles and existential rules that define their form and movement. That is, the cause-and-effect link chain rules the world as we know it. Anthropology and cosmology tell us that the physical systems were set into motion and definite existence before the emergence of human consciousness, therefore there must be a greater, cosmic observer who by the act of observation has set into motion the organization of the atoms into ever more complex structures and the birth of the Universe itself. This is essentially the consciousness of the Universe herself, this Cosmic observer that observes itself and by this act creates all the forms, life and everything we know. Just as there are dimensions inside dimensions, so there are consciousnesses inside consciousnesses in a fractal manner and our human consciousness is a living mind inside the Mind of the Universe or this that we call God. Extremely profound. We discussed more this concept in our previous lecture and we will unfold it more in the lectures to come.
So, the act of observation gave birth to organized physical systems that led to our creation as well. Governed by the very same principles, the act of observing yourself sets your inner universe into motion. By observing yourself you gain insight about your inner workings and psychological mechanisms, you ask questions and tackle the answers, you analyze and by this process of taking notice of yourself you reveal new space in your mind and create new forms and knowledge.
Again, the more you take the effort to think, the more thoughts in your mind move, merge and organize into ideas, comprehensions, concepts and unfolding insight.
In the process of knowing yourself you become a creator of your very own, inmost universe that you fill with life. This is the deepest meaning to human life, that began to unfold since the ancient times when human consciousness gradually awoke for itself and began observing the world, this process of awakening from the primitive mammalian consciousness level to human is the profound transformation that inspired its symbolic reenactment in the biblical story of Genesis 3:7 “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;” The subject has detached itself from the object, the consciousness became autonomous and differentiated from the primordial womb of the unconsciousness. Now, the consciousness perceives itself as a subject that observes the world without as well as its world within. The symbolic psychological process this biblical story describes is very interesting to analyze, which we will do in an extensive lecture soon to come.
“And the eyes of them both were opened..” the human consciousness revealed.

It is time for the next big step in our spiritual, mental evolution. It is time to think deeper and realize wider, it is time to evolve our minds further! Someone
recently told me "What is normal?" in regard to psychopathologies in our contemporary society that are propagated as acceptable, so I though if we loose all of our criteria, what are we going to turn into ? And what about the health of this psyche of ours? I believe people should stop ignoring psychology, or deep troubles await us ahead!

“Your life is a reflection of your mentality.”
Bruce Lee

Improve yourself, change the world!

When Man Created God. Genesis of Religious Thought and the Spiritual Need [part 1]

"The experience of being the knowing subject . . is only one half of the process of knowledge. The other half is the experience of being the known object.”
E.Edinger

To know yourself. This shrouded in mysticism ancient concept brings a sense of esoteric mystery in modern thought. But the human soul has been an object of exploration and contemplation since tens of thousands of years ago. It has been the tool for spiritual insight of the first shamans of ancient tribal communities, who felt there is more to themselves than can be seen. Self-knowledge was born back then, when people for the first time began to interprete their dreams and the symbolism that sprang out of the depths of their minds. When people began to search for the source of their thoughts that appear in the mind as if having a life of their own. The source of their emotions to which they were subordinate.
Since then the great endeavor in search of answers that human though embarked on gradually gave birth to all the legends, philosophies and religions we have today.

Spirituality is a fundamental and intrinsic quality of Homo Sapiens. Our ancient predecessors felt their intangible connectedness to those invisible aspects of nature, to this hidden life-giving Source that was behind everything. And thus ritual was born, out of the need to communicate with the intangible that was later recognized as God.

The perception of the mystic, hidden, spiritual and this intimate connectivity of all that is visible with something beyond ordinary senses do not spring from anywhere else, but the human soul. Satori, enlightment and divine insight do not come from anywhere outside, but take place in the soul. All this is important to mention, because worldwide there is this prevailing age-old delusion that the Divine is situated somewhere outside ourselves, what is more, somewhere far away and far above up in the unreachable heavens. We are used to perceive God as a human-like figure with human emotions who sits authoritatively on a throne in the skies forever watching the crawling little specs below, may be eating chips while following up the developing intrigues, war conflicts and newest technological brake-throughs.
Of course, our whole view of the world from a religious perspective is old and inconsistent with modern humanity and this is why there is so much tension between peoples and religions. We need a new, wider, deeper and more encompassing view and understanding of God, the Universe and our place in it, a view that will suit our mental potential and capacity as intelligent, civilized beings. We do not live in the middle ages anymore, despite that the new pope seems to have been living under a rock.

And there is only one way to achieve the next level in our social advancement as one humanity – by realizing and understanding ourselves deeper and better. The change must begin in the mind of the individual, the transformation from the primitive levels to higher levels of self-awareness and realization on the whole.
Which returns us to the ancient notion of knowing yourself.

To know yourself is the process of self-realization, self-contemplation and self-improvement. It is the active consciousness that is aware of its mechanisms, that observes itself, takes notes of its behavior and reactions, understands and realizes the psychological motifs of others as well as those in itself. Active consciousness that operates on a higher level than the average awareness we have as a social standard today.
The science of contemporary psychology, as though still in its infancy, has organized and synthesized all the empirical knowledge we have thus far about the mechanisms and structure of human psyche into an elegant and comprehensive system. Psychology is the modern analogue to the ancient practice of knowing yourself.
People from the past had always perceived this inmost, invisible darkness that has control over them and filled them with fearfulness. This darkness is the very nature of the predominant part of our psyche – the unconsciousness, the contents and mechanisms of which are unseen and unknown to our regular “I” consciousness that is by default our self-perception and all this that we call “Me”. When you say “I” you address this limited perimeter of awareness that floats “on top” of the depths of your complete Self.

So, what exactly is this unreachable unconsciousness? And if our wishes, moods, affections and behavior are predominantly set to motion by psychological motifs that we are not aware of, then how can we realize all these so that we expand the limits of our minds?

The unconsciousness contains all the mechanisms that drive us in life, its roots begin from our DNA, where the fundamental instincts are encoded (Self-preservation and Reproduction instincts that we share with all other life on this planet, as well as many other forms of behavior which we will discuss at another lecture). The structure of our psyche is in layers and as we pointed out the deepest layer begins in our DNA that contains all the information from the very beginning of life on Earth. We have much to understand about this and much to learn. This is what the old Sanscrit esoterics call “Akasha”, the Informational pool of Earth or what Carl G.Jung describes as the Collective Unconscious, the source of primal symbolism. In brief. Then comes the personal level of the unconscious where all those emotional affections, events, twists and turns that shaped our personality throughout our lives are contained. In the universe energy is never lost, information is energy, memories are information. From the very moment when your brain is complete in the womb you start the record button and it never stops until your death. The psyche records your life completely, even though consciously you forget many things and remember just a few of all.
Having described these very basics of the psyche you may argue that if your psychology is rooted in your DNA then personality is predetermined genetically. The answer is a firm No. Firstly, you cannot dismiss the influence over ones personality the family setting has. The influence that the setting where you grow up has on your personality is tremendous and is the main shape-giver of what you are as a person and character. Then when the child is older it is greatly influenced by its peers, the “spirit of the era” in terms of the most fashionable stereotypes, mind frames and traditions that prevail in the society it lives in. And until it is adolescent and able to think and analyze on its own, this child` psyche is already fully formed and in most cases it remains in this shape with very little change throughout its life. That is why how you rear up the child is of utmost importance about what it is going to be when it grows up.
Of course, this is the case for most people who never embark on the journey of self-realization, observation and improvement. Because whatever your psychological start in life, when you grow up you have the ability to consciously reshape yourself, rebuild your personality and radically better yourself as a self-aware individual.
Considering the more or less uniqueness of every individual psyche, the process of self-improvement thus cannot have one universal formula that will work for all. However, there are certain key points that are collectively applicable to all and a must in order for you to achieve results, these are as follows: to put yourself at the place of the object of observation, to ask questions about yourself to yourself and search for the reasons behind your behavior, character, personality traits, moods, affections and reactions; honesty and sincerity with yourself. Perseverance and persistence in your will to achieve results and attain insight.

The first steps are the hardest. For me, after a decade of active mentality and self-analyzes I have achieved remarkable results that are already visible for everyone who knew me since back then when I first began. And even, I can say that I truly put my will into this some five years ago when I overcame my worst teenage years. So, in this period of five years I improved my character and relationships greatly, attained amazing insights about the nature of human mind, soul, society, religions, God… during the last two years I`ve increased my IQ with 30 points and my understanding about myself and the world is increasingly deepening and widening. Also, I notice an acceleration in the rate of sudden realizations and profound insights. A truly remarkable journey that sadly very few people undertake.

In the beginning it is hard, confusing and seemingly futile. The hardest part is being honest with yourself. It is very hard to admit to yourself that you were wrong, that you reacted inadequately, that the blame is in yourself and to acknowledge your negative personality traits. But if you persist, the results gradually come and in time you expand your awareness and the process of self-analyzes becomes a state of your mind. Your ability to communicate with others improves as well as all of your relationships. And problematic relationships are a plague for modern societies, resulting in all those ridiculous intrigues, constant fights, brake-ups and divorces.
Just imagine if everyone consciously betters him/herself and heightens his and her awareness. Humanity will radically transform into something unforeseen by grim science fiction views of the future where the same people fight with better guns.

Let us turn our attention now towards the introductionary quotation of E.Edinger and analyze that, which it describes.
In order for any knowledge to exist two fundamental factors must be present – observing subject and object of observation. When the scientist examines the atom, he or she is the observing subject, while the atom is the object of observation. When we explore the world we live in, the world is the object of observation and we are the observing subject.
During the predominant part of their life, the average person is mostly in the role of the observing subject, experiencing the world with our senses that connects us to reality outside and our consciousness with gaze fixed on the scene from without. It happens more or less to occasionally reflect on oneself, but so rarely this self-contemplation is persistent and consistent enough so to lead the personality to realization and awareness, to improvement, unfoldment and perfection.
In the process of self-knowledge and self-awareness, you put yourself at the place of the observable object, while the observing subject is you again. This is the consciousness that is aware of and observes itself. And in this process of self-observation your inmost universe becomes alive and fills up with forms, emotions and symbols that were previously unseen by your minds` eye.
Self-knowledge, as the highest aim and spiritual meaning to human life has been a central part in all philosophical and esoteric teachings since the most ancient of times.
Yet, our psyche remains largely unexplored and poorly understood to this day. The average levels of self-awareness being so low worldwide and humans still primarily driven by their most basic instincts. Mostly incapable of self-control, slaves to destiny, relying on the main stream to guide their thoughts, behavior and life. Still living by the laws of the herd and mental passivity.

[continues..]

How It All Began. The Story of Earth, Life and Human Society. We Are 1 Big Family [part 3]

As powerful as the perception of beauty can be, in reality there are no ugly things. For evolution everything is practical, evolution does nothing without purpose. It does not create beautiful or ugly forms, evolution shapes every form so that it be optimally practical and useful to itself.
Indeed, if you observe nature and analyze the causes and consequences of animal behavior you will inevitable notice that every little detail has its purpose. Every skill and every colorful shade has a purpose and practical use in a world of tough competition and fight for survival.

Only the fittest survive and this law holds true even in our contemporary human societies in terms of peer and financial competition. Shaving off the unsuccessful and unfit lies at the core of every advancement. And advancement, as a process, signifies the transition to a better state. Advancement is what the process of evolution is involved with.
All living things adapt to the environment they inhabit and develop their skills based on their needs for survival. For instance, pray birds have adapted to life high above the surface, so that is why they developed excellent vision and long, sharp claws to enable them to hunt successfully land animals. The anteater is an excellent example for biological design optimally suited for the feeding habits of the animal – they have long, trunk-like mouth with long and thin tongue that can stick into termite holes and exceptionally long claws which makes them ideal tool for burrowing in the tough termite towers of dry mud.

Evolution is invariably practical, but there is one principle a part of her mechanism that is involved with the variations between individuals of the same group. That is the almighty natural selection instinct. Natural selection is a tool of the fundamental reproduction instinct, but it also triggers the self-preservation instinct in the form of fear and aggression. For this reason it is the males that are more brightly colored in nature, because they have to compete in order to reproduce. The more colorful, the stronger and more successful male will have the chance to pass on his genes.

Instincts are the basic form of behavior established through collective experience and imprinted in our DNA so to ensure that life will go on. It is simply amazing how collective experience is established throughout millions and billions of years and information is preserved and encrypted in molecules that basically serve as behavioral programs that guide the living being in its life.
Evolution, furthermore, shapes the design of the body as well. As we mentioned, the biological design adapts to its environment so that it increases its chances for survival. Biological design always changes and fits in the surrounding habitat, because self-preservation is the other basic and fundamental instinct of life. And that is why when Homo Sapiens left its birth place continent for the first time and began to take over the Earth, those groups that all took off as the same looking ancient African people in time developed so differently to form all the ethnic varieties we know today.
People who settled in the north hemisphere began to change over the millennia, because they needed to fit their new habitat. Their nose bases became thin, so that it could warm the cold air breathed. Their skin paled, because with very few months of intense sunshine the body did not needed to produce so much melanin anymore to protect the skin from UV rays, because clouds were doing this instead. Also, the blue and green eyes and light color hair is considered to be the result of milk-products consumption. People in Europe from tens of thousands of years have goats and cows and their main nutrition for many millennia has been milk and its products. Whereas the people in other parts of the world consumed very little to no diary products at all and that is why there are no light eyes and hairs in ethnic groups that do not derive from European settlers.
Every little detail of the body design is there for a purpose and this purpose is shaped by the geo-climatic specifics of the environment the organism has adapted to.
People in the hot and moist regions naturally have dark skin, because the body produces melanin, which builds up in the outer layers of the skin so that it protects the organism from harmful UV rays and bad burns. Also their noses are wider, so that it cools the hot air breathed. The hair has remained on our heads because its purpose is to cool or warm the brain. The eyebrows are designed to protect the eyes from sweat drops coming down the forehead. Make an experiment – shave your eyebrows and go into the shower, notice how water flows from your forehead directly into your eyes, whereas if eyebrows were present they would diverge the water away from the eye! This is the practical side of body design.

You know about this pesky useless appendix that people have that causes problems to kids eating nuts without peeling them. This is an evolutionary remain of a second stomach where primitive people some a hundred thousand years ago used to store plant products they ate for further digestion. After some couple of dozens of millennia the appendix will complete disappear from the human body, as well as the “wisdom” teeth at the back of your jaw.

For you see, environment is not a static constant and it is constantly in motion and a subject of change. So evolution is constantly at work as well, adapting the organism to its forever changing environment so that it always survives. Because if the organism is unable to adapt to its environment it simply dies out. And the job of evolution is to preserve and maintain life, also to make it better.

Our human life is so short that our environment seems to us as if it has always been there in the way we see it. But our whole human civilization has developed in just one frame of the whole lifespan of this Earth. Too often, unfortunately, our perceptions and minds are also as narrow. When we mindlessly segregate each other on “superior and inferior races” without being able to comprehend that we all are descendants of one race and one tribe – the Homo Sapiens. There are no other human races presently alive. How ridiculous racism is and a prominent trait of our primitive consciousness and narrow minds.

Thankfully and finally we have the solid facts that we are all one big family, descendants of one tribe located in Africa some 60 thousand years ago. Namely the Genographic Project that gathers up genetic data from tens of thousands of men, because the “Y” chromosome in the male genes passes with very little to no changes throughout the generations, so it is easy to follow. And our common ancestry does not finish there, it can be traced down the evolutionary ladder and back to the very first life forms on this planet. Because we are all born here and we are all part of this great journey of life that began 4 billion years ago. Even more, we are in a symbiotic relationship with this planet and this ecosystem, even though we have supermarkets and pharmaceutics today. We all share a common beginning and a common future and it is about time to take the next step in our evolution, the step that has to be made in our minds!

It is so naïve and ignorant when people think they are not animals. The truth is, that not only we are mammals, but sometimes people act more mindlessly than all other animals.
Our common instincts and physiological needs aren`t the only things all living beings share. We furthermore have such a close behavior, habits and social structure with other higher mammalians. But the human ego blinded by its illusions of immortality and perfectness treats other animals like inanimate things. When animals also have minds on their own, of course much down on the evolutionary tree than our complex human consciousness. But animals also have some early form of psyche, because higher mammals dream in their sleep and this means that their brains store memories which turn randomly into dream patterns when asleep. And this fact is truly amazing. If you have a dog or a cat pet, you know what I speak of. However, it is all down to our primitiveness that we behave the way most people do in the world today – driven by their primal instincts, blindly following their spontaneous urges for sexual satisfaction and aggressive reactions.
Unaware of the reasons for their behavior and totally unaware of the psychological mechanisms and factors that shape their personality and social behavior. Slaves to their random moods and impulses, pushed by the collective flow of the mass.
There is no unity, no lasting cooperation and understanding between countries and between individuals. Even members of one small family so often fail to achieve harmony and understanding with one another. We have so many words in our languages, yet we cannot find words to communicate with each other. The fact is, that if one has not achieved harmony with oneself, one cannot achieve harmony with others.

Modern man and woman are not very different in their behavior than their ancient predecessors. Still acting in the darkness of their unconscious insctinctivity without ever questioning their behavior, without ever looking for the deeper reason and cause.

If we are to change our world for the better, we must change ourselves. We must advance in our minds and our understanding of ourselves and this world.
Human behavior is much too primitive for the 21th Century technological advancement. And such a set of primitive consciousness and technological weaponry leads to self-destruction.
An uplift of human consciousness is urgently needed. And you can make a change, by improving yourself! The more people take part, the more difference we will make globally.
When you seed the idea of self-observation, that is heightened state of self-awareness, this is the first step into the process of realization. Gradually, in time you will notice more and more about yourself and the hidden mechanisms that shape your character will become more and more apparent for you to realize and modify.
At some point, the initial effort you had put into keeping your mind into an “open” self-observational state a.k.a when you are aware of your own behavior as well as the behavior of others around, so that you are able to control yourself; The initial effort you needed will turn into a state of your mind, so you will no longer need to make an effort in order to achieve it. In other words, you will have learned your mind to operate in a higher level of awareness.
Because, your talk may be very wise and impressive. But after all, a person is recognized for his or hers deeds. You are the way you act and behave. You are what you do. Empty talk is nothing. You must be an example for others, so that they feel the need to advance too.

It is time to expand the limits of our consciousness. To advance our minds so to match our technological civilization.
As we can see by the state of humanity today, there has been very little advancement of our minds, on the whole. Still waging wars and evergoing conflicts, unable to think in a wide and objective manner, still needing religion to give a meaning to our lives, a meaning that turns into senseless fanatism that takes the life of millions and turns brother against brother. Religion that being so poorly understood in its very nature turns the human being into a mentally passive unit that behaves mindlessly when his or hers simple beliefs are questioned. Thinking and questioning is banned in religion, because it was implemented in primitive societies as a political tool to unite the masses and engage them in community activities like going to collective pray. God has no religion and the Universe is not a human being.
We are all one big family! Let`s put an end to this madness and lay the beginning of a new humanity with a brighter future.

Open your eyes and see,
look for the hidden bondages
that connect all things. Follow
them back and forth and see
where they lead. Travel with
your thoughts beyond the speed
of light and touch with your mind
every hidden place in the cosmos
and your soul alike. Observe, explore,
think, analyze, synthesize, ponder, tackle,
learn, understand, realize! Know no
limits to your mind! Just as there are no
boundaries in space alike. Question and seek.
Seek and you shall find. The Universe
unveils her secrets only to persistent
minds and the soul does too alike.
Excel forward and upward. Be better,
advance and know no limits to your
imagination and your mind.

Sept.2008

* * *

These are texts that I have written an year ago. I will expand them, analyze and
discuss on the previous and the forecoming topics yet in the future! The photo is a
gorgeous late afternoon at the 7Lakes region in Mt. Rila , Bulgaria. Dense clouds were
gathering over and shape-shifted constantly. I just sat there at the mid of an oval meadow, surrounded by the cloudy myst and the Silence. On the other day we took off from the hut
there to a trek down the Rila monastery. A crazy thunder storm caught us on the way, a very muddy and steepy trail-way down a huge green ridge! 7+ hours trek on the whole, last week.
A very rainy summer this was.. and still is! :) And there is so much more to come!

How It All Began. The Story of Earth, Life and Human Society. We Are 1 Big Family [part 2]

Water is the essential component that created the necessary womb-conditions for life to spring. When Earth was young and molten there was not a single drop of water on her surface and it is yet unclear exactly how water formed and prevailed. Some of the water most probably came from comets, which are huge frozen chunks of ice that crashed on the planet in her early age. However, most of the water that we have today was formed by the process of chemical reactions that hydrogen and oxygen initiated bonding together. Earth is rich in iron and those first oceans contained much of it as well. The atmosphere was dense from the greenhouse activity of volcanoes and mainly composed of carbon dioxide and methane. A lot of research has been done on ancient rocks that are like time-machines telling us what Earth was in ancient times.
The particles that make up all matter have the peculiar property to bond and combine with each other, so to form ever complex systems. Almost like an intrinsic urge it is that atoms combine into molecules and molecules combine with one another with the billions and create elegant structures of amazing complexity from stars to our brains. However, complex systems evolve in time and no complex system is assembled at once from the very first time. That is, matter and molecular structures evolve and better themselves through time and collective experience. Mostly I refer to life on Earth.
Thus, following this fundamental principle of unfolding complexity based on collective experience life evolved from a single type of unicelled bacteria, the prokaryotes. These first living things were very simple molecular structures, more like chemical programs that synthesized chemical molecules and used them as a biofuel for their simple cellular processes to sustain their system and to divide, that is reproduce. Earth has been practically devoid of oxygen in her first few billion years of her existence, geological research concludes. So the first generations of organisms lived on other elements like iron, methane and hydrogen. Research has also shown that life began in the warm and chemically rich oceans. The first plants also evolved in the ocean beads. Terrestrial volcanic activity is linked to rapid increase in oxygen levels in the atmosphere some 60 million years ago, which just coincides with the evolutionary boom of mammalian life. However, when ocean weeds gradually began to take over the shores some 500 million years ago and then embraced the whole surface of the Earth, they synthesized carbon from the carbon-rich atmosphere and transformed it into oxygen. Oxygen that was to become the fundamental life-giving molecule for life on this planet. Life on Earth is a closed system, that is every creature is sustained by other creatures in the form of the food chain and symbiosis.

For instance, all oxygen breathing life is in an inseparable symbiosis with the plant life, as we breathe what plants exhaust and plants breathe what we exhale. This is the closed ring of life that established itself hundreds of millions of years ago. In fact, breathe and breathing is so intimately imprinted in our genetic memory that much of human mythology and spiritual symbolism is associated with the act of breathing. For example, in Genesis we read that God breathed in the soul of the first human. We associate the mouth as the opening through which the soul leaves with the final breathe of the diseased. Even the etymology of words like “spirit” and “soul” derive from the words for “breathe” and “breathing”. Which is quite an interesting symbolism, that is created spontaneously and unconsciously and is associated with cellular memory, that is with the collective memory of the species and not that of the individual.
There is this ongoing debate between religious creationists and evolutionists, that is the old debate between science and religion. This debate is the result of nothing else but our limited minds and narrow understanding of the world and ourselves, with emphasize on the general lack of understand of ourselves, our psyche and the workings of human psychology. Because religion is a spiritual fruit of the human psyche and ironically we are unable to analyze and understand the symbolism of our own soul. However, we shall discuss the genesis and meaning of religion and religious symbolism in a lecture to follow.

Observing the development of life on Earth by indirect means of anthropology, geology, archaeology, carbon dating and real-time observations people with ability to think and analyze matters objectively had slowly revealed the timeline of evolution of life on this planet. Let us briefly summarize what the concept of “evolution” describes – Evolution is the constant change of life in order for it to be optimally adapted so to ensure its survival. Evolution is the process of development, which began from the birth of those very first bacteria billions of years ago and which continues until this day and will continue as long as there is life on Earth.
Because change is a constant that is ever in motion, nothing is static.

Returning to this moment when inanimate matter bonded in such a way that gave birth to life, provided the right environmental conditions were present of course. One may think that this whole life phenomenon is no phenomenon at all and rather it is a predetermined consequence that lies on the path of this cosmic principle of ever more complex systems. And yes, this is quite true if we think in mathematical terms and make some simple calculations we will come to the conclusion that somewhere out there must be at least one more planet with life similar to the one here. It`s just that if you make more calculations you will realize that the cosmos is so incredibly huge and the distances involved are so tremendous that there is a very good chance that no life will ever encounter another in this vast Universe. Even if you travel with the speed of light, you will still need billions of years and no matter is able to travel beyond the speed of light and remain in a state of matter, that is if a space ship is to travel beyond the speed of light it will dissolve and disappear as though it went into a black hole. But, I truly wonder why do people dream of alien life so, when there is so much life and beauty in this planet and there is so much to learn and understand, so much to create and so much problems to fix and settle that plague humanity today.

I think we should concentrate on our own development and evolution of our minds, and just maybe when we reach a certain level of our mental evolution we just might encounter other minds but in a quite different way than science fiction movies imagine.
Again, on the primitive debate between science and religion, primitive religion says “God created all life in an instant with magic wand in six days.” and primitive science says “There is no God, the Universe is a meaningless void of chaos and emptiness and life is a random generation of confused molecules.” The truth is that our knowledge and understanding is still in its infancy and there is much ahead of us. Because what we refer to God, or the Creator of the Universe and life is a very real and fundamental principle in quantum physics that sets things into motion and without it there would be no definite states, nor forms or complex structures. This is the observer principle. Since, we know that life existed long before humans were around to observe it and the Universe existed long before Earth got around, there must be a cosmic observer that was aware of this Universe from her very beginning. This Cosmic Mind is the Creator, but it is by no means the religious concept of God having human face and human emotions. The Universe moves guided by fundamental laws and principles and it does not suddenly shift by her will, as though if it gets angry and orders a massive flood to punish naughty humans. I do not intend to go deeper into my insight about the nature of reality just yet, but we know nothing about God and what this Universe is. The Universe does not have a religion, only humans do.
After this brief and unavoidable divergence from our current topic of evolution of life, let us go back to it and continue our mental journey back in time.

After the dinosaurs died out, nature reevaluated its evolutionary path and everything became smaller and more compact. It seems that huge size for both animals and plants was not sustainable for our planet and in the course of time it changed its ways and mammals branched off as the new all-promising breed of life. Carbon dating the anthropological remains found we estimate that around 2.5 million years the first Hominid branched off all other animals. These ancient human-like creatures had little in common with modern day humans and were simply the evolutionary trial version of what was to lead to us. Of course, globally thinking the appearance of the first bacteria was to ultimately lead to us, since we are at the top of the evolutionary tree. As if the Universe purposely wished to lead evolution to manifestation of living consciousness, so that it can know herself better.
Finally, the first skeletons that absolutely match modern day human skeletons we found date at around 200 thousand years ago, that is when Homo Sapiens branched off all other Homo species and took on its road to total domination. Now, the concept that humans are descendants of apes is a big misunderstanding of Darwin’s theory that was turned into religious propaganda by the institution of the church. Firstly, we can also say that humans are descendants of prokaryotes or the first living bacteria, as well. Second, even though we apparently have such a close genetic structure to apes compared to all other mammals Homo Sapiens is descendant of Homo species that for one reason or another evolved to be much different than apes. And apes and Homo Sapiens were two different branches of the mammalians that led to the Homo strain down at the crossroad where this evolutionary divergence began to take place. In other words, all animals are descendants of each other in this planet and apes today do not evolve into humans simply because they never were from the Homo Sapiens family.

It took really long, long time for Homo Sapiens to develop civilization, but once they did it our race plunged into an ever progressing spiral of advancement. Mostly in terms of external development of our environment to suit our needs for a comfortable and effortless existence. Homo Sapiens apparently did nothing but to simply survive living very much like all other animals lived for more than 150 thousand years. But then, gradually something in our minds began to awaken and to realize the world that was surrounding us, even more these awakening minds began to interprete this world and to express themselves. The need for self-expression gave birth to the first art we find in caves from the Stone Age period of our development in the form of cave drawings the oldest of which, found so far, dates back to approximately 32 thousand years located in France.
The brilliant human mind embarked on the journey of understanding the world around and the world within. Since we will be discussing genesis of religious thought in another lecture, let`s tackle another interesting concept of the human mind – beauty. Our perception of beauty when applied to other humans and particularly to representatives of the opposite sex roots deep as an evolutionary aid to one of the two fundamental instincts – reproduction. Beauty is generally associated with proportionality and symmetry. Symmetrical proportions of facial and body features convey good genes, which is all that evolution looks for. So, considering that every form of behavior in animals is triggered for a reason and usually has a very practical purpose we can follow down the basic principles that gave rise to the concept of beauty, that later on developed further into a great part of our social behavior.
Our perception of beauty is the practical quest of evolution to produce healthy and better offspring. Of course, we humans have developed to appreciate the character of the person as well, which on numerous instances is far more important than shallow beauty in regard to creating a good and stable family environment, where the parents stay together and get along well so that they rear up their offspring and provide them with affection and protection. Still, the magnetism of beauty are undeniable and next time when you see a man or a woman you feel attracted to, remember that what you experience is instincts and evolution in action!
However, our perception of the beauty has another aspect that is not related to other humans looks, but to scenery and inanimate objects. We look to a nature scene and consider it beautiful, we see beauty in color combinations and shapes. This is the artistic inspiration that created all forms of art and poetry. A true mystery of the human mind, closely related to this intrinsic property of human psyche – spirituality.

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