The Totality of Life - Consciousness, Awareness

To understand life, all life, The Totality of Life not just the neat bits and pieces, the stuff we select to champion so in the championing of it we are coated in a reflected moralistic glow. It is a glow which we then judge others by thereby elevating ourselves to a higher ground. The judging of others has no place in life unless we are talking about the judgement made in a court of law regarding a crime committed. Judging someone as being fat or thin or ugly or of not having the right faith, the correct beliefs, is not a judgement we are able to make. Those judgements are manufactured by humans to enable humans to define by their criteria what they think is the right way, their way. It is self-delusional. To understand life we must first comprehend the enormity of such a task. 

So what is life?  Well, for a start size is immaterial. Are not atoms and molecules that form the foundation of life small? Does light not travel through the honeycomb of rock, the same rock we would dash ourselves against? Size doesn't limit life nor defines it. The very definition of life is open to argument. We do know that life on earth began as early as 4.26 billion years ago following the formation of the ocean 4.41 billion years ago and that just after the formation of the planet 4.54 billion years ago. All of which is interesting but doesn't explain what is life.

Trying to define life is an incredibly hard task. Various branches of science, biology, genetics, biochemistry along with seeking life somewhere out in the universe all add to the mix. In many ways, the old Hindu story of six blind men trying to identify an elephant provides a wonderful illustration. One man touches the trunk, another an ear, another a leg, another a foot and so on. Those composite parts make for a fragmented view of the subject in question but none provides a holistic, overall truth. Science is like though isn't it? Science is a wonderful tool for it grapples with issues we wouldn't understand if it wasn't for science but it is very mechanical isn't it? It likes to dissect, box, labels different parts of what is life.

Is it life or is it all of existence? Is all of existence life?

I walk mindful of all about me. Things fly past my eye, small things, large things. I observe them but do not identify or label them. By my side, beneath me, the earth scuttles alive, creatures crawl, the breeze blows vegetation so it bends, it follows the breath of heaven.  I hear a multitude of sounds from near and far. The thundering of metal on metal, rubber on tarmac, feral cries, feral warnings, laughter, chirruping, voices soft and low, voices loud. The breeze blesses my skin. Above me infinity beckons. Is this the eternal? Is this universal life that makes me feel so alive? It feels like reality. It feels like a merging. One is all as all is one.

Is a virus alive? Is it a lifeform? Viruses – like all life as we know it – carry DNA or RNA and has led some to suggest that viruses belong to the tree of life whilst others have claimed that viruses hold clues to understanding how life began in the first place. If this is the case, life begins to look less like a black-and-white entity and more like a nebulous force, an energy with confusing borders.

"Nucleic acids: are compounds that make up the DNA strand. Nucleic acids include deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) and ribonucleic acids(RNA). Proteins: are the business end of the DNA in the cell."

These are the building blocks of life but there are more. Of the 92 natural elements, 25 are essential for life. Of these, there are six main elements that are the fundamental building blocks of life. They are, in order of least to most common: sulfur, phosphorous, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen. These building blocks are found in plants just as they are us. Plants contain 90 to 95% water. Humans contain a brain and heart which are composed of 73% water whilst the lungs contain about 83% water. Water is after all vital for all life on earth.

But here I go, taking the route so often taken of labelling all and everything, of sub-dividing life into sentient and non-sentient beings.  This is fine if you need to break down the mechanics of what life is made up of but it does not explain life in its entirety. All existence is alive. All depends on its existence on one another. The physical existence of a thing, be it a flower, a rock or bird when observed by someone with the smallest degree of awareness resonates with life beyond its physicality. 

Consciousness is defined as the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings. How many of us are truly aware to all that is going on around us? Truly aware? The mind chatters. It is allowed to talk to itself, to rehash a conversation you just had, to regurgitate an argument you had recently the answers to which you didn't supply at the time but would now. The mind is controlled by the 'I' not the self for the self when the mind is awake, is fully aware of all that is taking place in the present. Eckhart Tolle suggests consciousness as being unmanifested, the eternal as of being timeless so therefore not part of the evolutionary process. If consciousness is eternal then consciousness must be as one with God, not the conceptual deity but the reality. When we are fully aware, and I struggle with this, struggle with my ego, struggle when outside forces combine to gang-up and argue with me, to let my ego go, when we are aware, fully aware then you are totally in the present. The ego, along with those outside forces are seen for what they are and they are nothing to do with you. By being present you are fully conscious therefore connected to a timeless state that exists within and without you. 

That is awareness. Awareness comes from being conscious. Being conscious and aware gives you an insight into your own mind. Once you start down the pathless route to the truth, your truth, you realise how powerful the mind is when silent. In that silence as the world around you spins, the stars above dust the heavens, distant suns including your own, disprove psychological time, that awareness becomes acute and silence opens your mind. It is then when the conceptual God fails as the reality of God becomes present within you. God is in that silence just as you are part of God.