The Trees

     One of planet Earth's most distinctive features is its massive amount of plant life in the form of forests, jungles, underwater sanctuaries, and manmade gardens. Are these majestic creatures conscious beings? Or organic machines for recycling gases in Earth's atmosphere? In the last 475 million years, land plants have orchestrated the evolution of life profoundly by providing the animals of the planet oxygen in return for their waste and breath. This simple, yet beautifully complicated cycle can clearly be shown in an aquaponics system. In aquaponics, or hydroponics, plants are grown above a source of water inhabited by fish, snails, and/or other algae eaters. The waste and carbon dioxide of the swimmers supplies the growing plants with nutrients to eventually yield food for a human, perhaps. It's these unconscious cycles in which the universe portrays its ability to create something out of what seems like nothing. The fish is just as aware of its eating and disposal of fertilizer as the plant is of its roots hydrating the leaves. They're not setting a goal to create food for humans or other animals. They just are. They live their lives completely unknowing of their purpose, all while in a state of complete being, simultaneously creating something deliciously beneficial. Anatomically modern humans can learn from this. Our evolved mind, aware of consciousness, is a blessing and a curse. Thoughts evolved as a tool of the mind to dig deeper into consciousness. Consciousness includes being, imagination, and creation. However, thoughts are also dangerous. There must be a balance between thinking and being. 

Many anxieties/sufferings in life are caused by identifying with thoughts as "you." When in reality, you are not your thoughts. You are pure life. Thoughts identify with each other. They latch onto each other and lead to conclusions not even related to the original situation. 

Venture into Nature and learn from the trees. 

Feel Tao.

A Philosophical Universe

     I believe that our existence, the nature that surrounds us, and the Universe as a whole is all intertwined in a beautiful knot tied by consciousness and physical reality. How could it not be? We can't find all of the answers on Earth, because Earth isn't even the tiniest fraction of what is out there or of what we can comprehend. Looking at features in nature, we notice patterns and what seems to be design. So, of course, we came to the conclusion that someone created us. However, as we have discovered more and more about ourselves and what's beyond our blue sky, we've realized that the "creator" is within us. We were born to think critically, cosmically, and creatively. Nature is full of patterns - on Earth and within the cosmos. But, instead of an almighty being in the sky, these patterns were formed through what we discovered to be beautiful natural processes. 

     Evolution. One of the essential driving forces of the Universe. From tiny microbes coming to Earth on an asteroid, to intelligent apes building and creating alluring bridges over waterways. Life finds a way and strives to become wise. However, life isn't the only aspect of the Universe that evolves. Instead of adapting to its surroundings over time and becoming more intelligent, stars evolve in a different, but even more stunning way. 

     Gorgeous nebulae fill our night sky with wonder and creation. In these breathtaking star nurseries, we can clearly see another major driving force of the Universe underway. The creation of stars. These stars serve many purposes, like providing light and energy; however, they give intelligent life what it really needs to thrive: Curiosity, something to wonder about, to write and sing about, to dream about, and to explore. In the perfect world, observatories would be on top of every mountain, where the pollution of light couldn't drown out our view of the cosmos. Government funding would go towards the exploration of space and educating the public about our natural home instead of blowing up civilizations overseas. Scientists, especially astronomers, artists, engineers, mathematicians, musicians, and philosophers would lead us to a newly reinforced relationship with the cosmos. A relationship kindled by the fire of a billion stars.

     With the future on our minds, wisdom in our souls, and the stars in our sights, we can discover who we are, why we're here, what our purpose is, and how we came to be. Like the flourishing marine ecosystems of our beautiful oceans, the entire Universe develops and lives as one. As stated before, we can begin to understand our cosmic abode by looking at our own home planet. Earth is full of amazing life. To me, one of the most beautiful connections on Earth is the bond between a mother animal and her child. When I see a baby ape crawl up into its mother's arms, I envision a star cuddled up inside of its warm mother nebula. Metaphors, analogies and literature in general is very important, because it's how we begin to understand our place in the Universe. For example, knowledgeable literature is printed on paper made from trees. Using the fact that space and time is blooming with intelligence and consciousness, maybe trees are knowledge. The perfect medium for a book made for a human. Once again, that isn't likely or "logical," but creative and purposeful. Another example, using imaginative philosophy, could be that the Universe is expanding because it is full of life that is constantly evolving and creating, expanding the consciousness of the cosmos. Not because it just exploded into existence. Now, we know this probably isn't true, because then how did that begin? Life is full of questions, many of which will never be answered. But that is our purpose. We were born to be curious, evolved to think critically, and now we create to pursue the stars.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
- Carl Sagan

The Mind of the Apes

The Great Apes. Earth's most dominant group and the perfect cradles for the evolution of the intelligent brain.

     As the dawn of Man arose in Earth's history, something beautiful began to take place. The great apes that roamed the Earth at that time developed many evolutionary advantages to ultimately conquer the planet. They began to walk upright, allowing them to have a better view of the horizon. In the mean time, their brains increased in size, allowing them to have a better understanding of life itself.

     The great apes that roam Earth today give us many clues as to how our ancestors once thrived. Do apes have a mind? Can they be aware of their own and each others feelings? Can they recall the past and look forward to the future? New observations of great apes in the wild weave the tale on how our primordial ancestors were touched by the hand of the cosmos to evolve into the modern thinking man.

     Life evolves to ultimately gain wisdom of the Universe. It must adapt to the environment and thrive within it before learning how to use the environment to its advantage. Evolution created the brain to harness the eventual wisdom that life would receive. Apparently, the humanoid (the ape) was the perfect body to harbor the ever-evolving and amazing brain. From making stone tools to hunt for small prey to harnessing our star's energy to power our homes, intelligent humans have acquired the knowledge of shaping the world to themselves, rather than the other way around. This occurrence didn't just happen, either. It took the thirst for survival and the evolution of the mind.

     I believe that the Universe is made up of consciousness and intelligence for the existence of life to "tap into."  Living things (including plants) absorb this consciousness and release it back to nature as an action or thought or creation, much like breathing. As apes evolved and pursued to understand consciousness, they developed the mind. The mind was useful, because it gave early humans the chance to manipulate the consciousness, beauty, and intelligence that was flowing freely into their brains. As they drew in the wonders of nature and "thought" about them, they became the first life forms on Earth to express themselves through paintings on cave walls, a sculpting or carving, even in their spearheads, and possibly the ancient discovery of music. (Click here to read about Music: The Universal Language or the Soulful Conscience). This new creative awareness and curiosity of the world around them lead to everything we know today, such as the International Space Station. It's mind boggling to think about how far we have come in the past few million years, and especially in the past century. At this rate, we'll be exploring the stars even more in depth in no time.

     The great apes that we know and love today are deeply connected to us humans. I believe they feel a strong connection with us and we should feel the same. Using scientific facts and logic, we have slowly uncovered the tip of the buried pyramid of what it means to be human.

     Apes are still evolving too. Could we one day live in harmony with the evolved intelligent gorilla or peaceful bonobo? I sure hope so. Living along side thinking apes could change the way we view ourselves, the world, and our place in the Universe.

The Soulful Conscience

     In an earlier entry, I explained my belief that intelligent life and nature (possibly the totality of the Universe) is separated into 3 different aspects. Click here to read about the brain, the mind, and the soul.

     The soul is the most fascinating and mysterious subject of the 3. First coined by Socrates and his pupils, the soul developed into the mystical spirit that floats out of the physical body during the afterlife of Christianity and other prominent religions. This "soul" is either allotted into an everlasting paradise or cursed into eternal damnation. However, philosophical thinking differs very much from religious thinking. The "philosophical soul" ventures much more in depth and explores different possibilities of the true nature of the soul. I believe that creatively philosophizing and imagining new ideas and theories about the soul connects, absorbs, and contributes to the intelligence of the cosmos.

     The conscience. Those inner feelings and that silent voice in our head that human beings experience while conscious. Well, what exactly is consciousness? Where did it come from? (Click here to read about The Evolution of the Brain). As you are reading this, you are obviously conscious. You are "in" reality, aware of your surroundings, aware of yourself, and aware that you are reading this passage. At the same time, your mind could be and probably is on a million different things. Why is this? A look at a theory in a branch of philosophy called the "philosophy of mind" can give us some insight on this phenomena.

     What if... The brain in our head worked like the lungs in our chests? What if our brains absorb consciousness, intelligence, and art, manipulate it with awareness, and then release it back to the Universe? For example, Greek or Hindu gods and goddesses. A wonderfully creative and complex mythology that was imagined by intelligent human beings. As they experienced and perceived the world, they envisioned amazing gods and goddesses that represented elements, colors, celestial bodies, and more...

     Our brain is a sponge that is soaked in a concoction of consciousness, art, and nature, while simultaneously being squeezed out into a vat of cosmic intelligence.

     Now, where does the soul play a role in the constant photosynthesis of our minds? Well, what if the "soul" is consciousness? Or the "sun" to start the photosynthetic process? What if what we experience, perceive, and create during our existence is the energy that is left to venture out into the cosmos after we pass away? Maybe this energy is transferred to another life form so it too can experience the beautiful art that is consciousness, awareness, and possibly bona fide intelligence. Psychophilosophy is a branch of study that I feel needs to be more carefully and more openly observed. For "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Socrates).

The conscience thrives in reality, while the soul thrives in eternity.

The Brain, the Mind, and the Soul

     It's all in your head. Right? Without a brain inside of your skull, you wouldn't be able to perceive the world in any way, let alone understand it. Do you understand me? Of course you do, because you're a well-functioning human being with an incredibly evolved brain, unlike your chimp cousins. As evolution chiseled the modern human out of the stone age ape, we began walking around on two legs, and our brains grew in size. It evolved from an amazing organ that just powered life to an even more powerful organ that could completely change life. With the evolution of the brain in mammals, particularly apes, many other useful tools, feelings, and evolutionary advantages developed inside of the ape's head. One of these prominent developments was the mind. The mind was the early form of true intelligence - something we seem to take advantage of today. Our simple, yet complex minds millions of years ago allowed us to create lasting relationships with each other, within our hunter-gatherer communities (could this be the origin of human love? Click here). As we grew closer, and discovered more and more about this new mind together, other aspects of our lives began to change. And after thousands of years, the modern thinking human was born. Man was born to think. To love. To create. To wonder. To explore. To challenge.

I believe that we, life, and nature, is separated into three different components:
Physical: The brain, a chemically complex organ powered by neurons and oxygen flow. (Mathematics, the science of matter, physics, etc.) 
Psyche: The mind, life's most dominant weapon and source of ability. (Philosophy, wisdom, art, etc.)
Spiritual: The "soul," flowing through the cosmos during our afterlife, eventually settling inside of a new womb. (Natural energy, the unknown, etc.) Click here to read more about the soul.

     Without the physical brain, the mind wouldn't exist. Without the development of the mind to understand and manipulate consciousness, no thirst for discovery, knowledge, and ultimately wisdom would exist. No art or music would be fabricated or appreciated. No beauty. These elements are what make up the spiritual aspect of the Universe. Without evolution, no intelligent life. Without intelligent life, the Universe can't discover itself as more than just atoms and elements and ultimately, nature can't thrive.
 
     When one loses his mind, the barrier between reality and eternity is broken and one becomes lost in a mindless, emotionless void.

Insanity: A Poem

A virus in the Universe
Unto which we cannot see
When intelligence is cursed
Into incomplete sanity

Physically,
Chemicals imbalanced
Mentally,
Clawed by eagle’s talons

Some call it madness
Others call it crazy
But they feel not wild nor angry
For they are unaware, much like a baby

Eerily,
They watch, heartless, like ghosts
Spiritually,
Dead dust deep inside the cosmos

What even is a man diseased with this plague?
A man is born to think, not to die every day
Declaring war on an unseen force
Is like reviving a long fallen crumbling corpse

Love

"I love you."
"I love you more."
"No, I love you more."
"Noo, I love you more."

     This simple conversation got me thinking... What is love? What's its essence? Can you actually measure it? Now, obviously for the two young lovebirds in the case above, actually measuring their love for one another or even the question of "what is love?" probably never crossed their minds. However, for the thinking man, many questions and theories and are born inside of his head when the nature of love is questioned.

     Love is a strange, yet wonderful experience. It expresses itself in many various forms. The love between a married couple is different between the love portrayed at the beginning of this entry. Then again, those types of love are very different than the love between mother and child. Now, how do you explain when someone says "they were meant for each other" or "it was love at first sight"? Is love predestined between two people or animals? A mother doesn't actually see her baby until it is physically born; however, she still has a very strong, loving connection with it while in utero. Surrounded by fluid and white noise, the baby is unaware of his existence, and yet it still feels very bonded with its mother. After the baby is born, the love continues to grow and change, but the mother will forever, unconditionally love her child. On the other hand, a love between two non-related animals, or humans, is a little different. I'm not convinced that two animals, such as deer, can come to love each other, because of their lack of intelligence. However, I believe that when two people (what's the difference? Animal vs. Person) come to trust each other (even in the case of mother and child), the evolution of love begins. Love, like natural selection, grows and becomes stronger and more efficient with time and change. The bond between two people will continue to thrive as long as the initial trust isn't damaged. As the Universe continues to develop, love is and always will be a major driving force. Without love, planets would be tiny trapped worlds of chaos, stars couldn't bond to their mother nebulae, and Universe would completely fall to pieces.
     As we have discovered, art, intelligence, and love literally are the Universe - and we are definitely included in that. Your purpose as a human being is to create, learn and teach, and just love your fellow humans and your Mother Earth. You have a very special relationship with Her. Embrace it.