Letter 2.9 A detective story
Benoit - Do you like detective stories? I have one for you. The mystery to solve is “What is the purpose of our life on earth?” Nobody seems to know for sure. That means that you are free to make your own investigation. The reason you may not have heard about it before is that we don't like to talk about questions for which we don't have an answer.
Everything becomes simple when we accept the idea that we cannot understand
You were told, at school, that the world comes in layers: Matter – Plants – Animals and humans. This is a good start but it does not tell us what happens to our soul, to love, consciousness, egos, music, feelings, ideas and all those things that make us happy or miserable.
We will start by looking at a human being and our environment. I will give you my answer to the detective story in my next letter.
Let’s start with a scientific point of view of our environment:
Scientists are telling us that our material world represents only 5% of the universe. They call it “our reality”. The other 95% are made of dark matter (about 26%) and dark energy (about 69%).
Scientists don’t seem to know much about this dark side of the universe. Don’t ask for details. To keep it simple, we can put our body in the material world (the 5%) and our soul in the dark world (the 95%). That makes “our reality” of 5% look very small compared with the rest of the universe. Everything becomes simple when you accept the idea that you cannot understand.
How do we use our 5%?
- Look around you. Planet earth is a big eatery. Everything that is alive is busy eating. When animals are not asleep, they are looking for food. If we did not have to eat, we would spend most of our time on the beach instead of going to work. Even the plants are extracting minerals from the ground.
This is not limited to the Homo sapiens. It applied to the whole planet earth. Flowers can extract beautiful shapes and colors and a fragrance from stinky mud. Planet Earth starts with a sphere of matter supporting a thin layer of arable earth. In this arable earth, the plants extract minerals that they associate with the light of our sun to make food for the animals. From this food, people and animals extract ideas and feeling that belong to the dark world.
There is a general current going through planet earth. It starts with dirt and extracts from that dirt the ‘dark’ elements it contains. What we call matter, plants, animals and humans are the different steps of that process. This current is moving from the level of matter and up the ‘Big staircase’.
The staircase:
You must have been told, at school, that the Homo sapiens are on the 4th rod of a tall ladder. Below us are the steps of matter, plants and animals. Your teacher did not go any further but, today, you have the internet. Searching for angels or list of angels will tell you about many more levels above us. Some of their names may already be familiar such as Seraphim and Cherubim. In those conditions I think that it is not unreasonable to assume that there is at least one level above us
I tried to guess what this superior level could be made of. I made two extrapolations.
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First extrapolation:
You move from one level to the next by adding something important. Letter 1.2
-To move from matter to plants you must add the ability to grow, to take a certain shape, to make seeds and to reproduce.
-To move from plants to animals you must add the ability to move. That may require a brain, nerves, muscles.
-To move from animals to humans requires increased thinking.
To get access to the level above us would require something better than thinking. We don’t have it and that’s our problem.
Second extrapolation:
​To understand what happens at one level requires access to the level above.
-How can you explain that the water in the soil can overcome gravity, climb in the air and take a certain shape? You need access to the level of the plants to understand what happens at the level of matter.
-The cow does not know what happened before her birth and what will happen after her death. The farmer does.
-To understand what governs our life, we would need access to the level above mankind.
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Conclusion:
To master what governs our life requires something better than thinking - This is something that we don’t have. This is our glass ceiling.
You remember Plato’s allegory of the cave. It still applies. You only have to replace the cave by the human body.
CONSCIOUSNESS ?
THINKING
Homo sapiens - Unite.
We all are in the same predicament. Plato's allegory of the cave still applies.
Whatever we have accomplished is nothing compared with what we could do together outside our cave.
Instead of fighting each other, let's work together and get access to the level above.
My way of looking at the human being:
-We eat plants (or animals who have eaten plants). This is our input. From the plants we extract ideas, feelings, heat, mechanical work and fertilizers. This is our output. Quite an achievement! That reminds me of what happens in the cracking tower of a refinery where the light elements move up and the residue moves down. If, some day, the Homo sapiens disappear, Mother Nature will have to look for another way to extract ideas and feelings from her plants.
Benoit - This refinery needs refinements. This is only a simple idea about a very complex universe. It can, at best, point you in the right direction. Take it apart and see if you can find something worth recycling.
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- We get conscious of the world around us through our sense organs.
This is most unfortunate! Our eyesight is limited between red and violet. We are not directly conscious of the infra-red and the ultra-violet. We are not conscious of what food is good for us to eat (try mushrooms). For thousands of years we were not conscious of viruses, microbes, bacteria and the galaxies around us. Our consciousness seems to be limited to the minimum needed to survive in this environment.
- We are not conscious of what happens when we are asleep.
Look at somebody asleep and it is obvious that there is nobody home. The soul seems to be free to leave the body like you leave your car in the garage every evening. During the day we get powerful signals from our senses. Those signals prevail like the sun prevails over the stars. At night we can see the stars. Unfortunately we have no memory of what happens in our sleep. Falling asleep every evening is not a complete dissociation between soul and body. However, it shows some possibility to separate and reunite body and soul. That makes you wonder if the most important part of our life is not what happens when we are asleep. Being awake could be nothing more than the soul diving into the body like you get in your car and go to work at the refinery! Life on earth could be a part-time job!
What do we know about the human soul?
We could compare the human souls with a sunset on the ocean. You see thousands of little sparks. They are separate but all of them reflect the light from the same sun. Human souls are separate but reflect the same light.
The child is not aware that, some day, puberty is going to change his life. The world will be the same but everything will be different. Puberty is like a little seed that he waters every day until, some day, it blooms. What happens to our body could also happen to our soul. We could get a ‘puberty of the soul’. Deep inside, we could have a little seed that we water unconsciously, every day, waiting for it to bloom.
This is a (very) general idea of the human being and his environment. I’ll let you imagine what relationship could exist between them. Make your own opinion and we will compare it with mine in my next letter.