1-1 Foreword
There are two important days in our lives,
The day we are born and the day we find out why.
Mark Twain.
We went to the moon. We want to go further. It is only a matter of time before we meet some aliens. How will we introduce ourselves? We should warn them that we don’t know what happens to us during eight hours each day. They might come from a place where there is no night or day. Our aliens might not need to sleep. They wouldn’t understand why we keep dropping dead and coming back to life every 24 hours. It’s not our fault. We come from a planet that keeps spinning. There is a black hole in our lives. They could decide that we have two different lives — one public, one private — and that we prefer not to discuss the private one with outsiders.
Our scientists recently shared fascinating news: only 5% of reality is made up of the material world. For over 300,000 years, we believed the universe was all that we could see in the sky and around us. But now, we understand that what we see is just a tiny glimpse of what truly exists. This insight can be so inspiring! It suggests that aliens, like us, also exist beyond the material world. We’re all in the same boat, aware of only 5% of reality. Both aliens and humans are exploring within a small, limited space — just that 5%. But imagine the incredible potential if we work together to break free from this cage! The real reason we’re drawn to explore further is to uncover that remaining 95% that’s deep within us, waiting to be discovered.
More than eight billion people wonder what they are doing on Earth. If so many share the same question, there must be a common answer that is independent of race, gender, age, and religion, one everyone can agree on. The first step is to make sure we are asking the right question. We see the world through two windows: our body and our soul. Our body belongs to the material realm, where everything has weight, color, shape, and many measurable properties. The soul, however, exists in a realm where nothing has weight, no color, and cannot be measured. The question is: “What could convince a human soul to connect with such a body – even for a short time?” No one can claim to have the final answer. Yet, the time has come to prepare for our first encounter with aliens. Let’s cultivate a broad and open-minded view of human life on Earth. What matters most for our first contact with aliens is our mindset. Is it a meeting between friendly neighbors? Are we going there as conquerors to seize their minerals? Or are we immigrants fleeing a planet that is becoming too hot to live on? Everything begins with an idea.
1-2 Money
1-2 Money
For as long as historians can remember, money has been a major concern for people worldwide.
Something has gone wrong somewhere.
When taking out a $ 300 000 loan to buy a house with a 30-year mortgage at 6%, we will repay the principal of $ 300 000 plus a total of $ 347 515 in interest. That means that, to buy our home, we also buy a home for the banker.
We spend our lives paying off debts, including car loans, student loans, mortgages, bank loans, credit cards, and the national debt, all of which significantly affect our lives. With every loan, we lose some freedom. There is a name for this situation: it's called “Debt bondage.”
Most of the wealth we generate is transferred to lenders. The system moves wealth from those who work to those who have money. Politicians keep arguing over who should pay taxes. This will remain a minor issue if the financial system stays the same.
Politicians make waves. Money makes the tide.
It started as a good idea.
Money was created to make exchanging goods and services of equal value easier. Finding someone willing to trade fish for piano lessons is difficult. That's why there was a need for a medium that could retain its value. People initially used salt, shells, and animal skins. Eventually, the best solution was to use gold and silver.
Today, it is money that determines the house you live in, the car you drive, the education you receive, the people you know, what you eat, and even who has a chance of getting elected.
We had a good excuse. Why should we keep digging for gold in the mines if we are going to put that gold back in the cave of a bank? It was more convenient to print paper. We replaced gold with paper and faith. The more papers the governments printed, the less faith we had in their fiat currency.
Money has gradually evolved from the material world to the non-physical, ultimately becoming electrical impulses transmitted through wires. Today, we don’t even need wires. What remains is faith.
The problem started when we linked money to time. We created loans with interest. You can connect money to hard work to produce goods and services. However, you cannot put money in a safe and expect it to be there plus interest one year later. Money and time don’t mix.
People should be able to exchange their work for money and their money for goods and services without going into debt. They should be able to live in society without increasing the national debt.
What is a bank loan?
A bank loan involves exchanging money for the commitment to dedicate several years of work to repay it. It’s an exchange of money for freedom. Moreover, banks do not use their own money. Most of it (about 90%) is created out of thin air. When you take out a loan, this money isn’t backed by the goods or services you plan to produce. The check from the bank reduces the value of the money already in circulation. The bank gives you what’s essentially playing money and expects to get back real work or produce something of value. The system ends up transferring wealth from those who create goods and services to those who simply create money.
There is worse:
What is even worse is that the banks charge interest for the time you keep them waiting. Where can you find the money needed to pay interest? You cannot print banknotes. You cannot create money out of thin air like banks do. You could exchange some of the goods and services you’ve produced with the banker, but the bank wants money. People around you are in the same situation. Everyone needs money to pay for their interest.
The banks have a solution. They make more loans to new customers. They increase the amount of money in circulation to give their existing customers the funds needed to pay their interest. If people one day stop asking for loans, banks will not receive interest payments, and the system will collapse. Our banking system is a Ponzi scheme. Sooner or later, the system will collapse.
The solution:
Politicians were not chosen for their knowledge of the economy. They can pass laws affecting people but are not qualified to create rules about financial systems. We need economists to develop a monetary system where money just acts as a medium of exchange for goods and services of equal value. If financiers need something more advanced, they must create their own tools. Dentists, teachers, firefighters, farmers, and other professionals had to make their own tools. We shouldn't let financiers relax and misuse our money instead of developing their own tools. We want to take back control.
Imagine a world where money is secondary. Instead of sorting the countries by their GDP, we would sort them by their level of happiness.
The CEO's main goal would be to satisfy customers rather than shareholders. The pharmaceutical industry would create cheaper, more effective medicines based only on the 250 molecules we truly need. Instead of judging people by their bank accounts, we would evaluate them by how they manage their finances. There's nothing wrong with making money as long as money isn’t in control.
Keep dreaming...
A better use of money would require a higher level of consciousness.
Stealing something makes you a thief, even if nobody notices that something is missing. To kill somebody makes you a murderer, even if the police never find you. We need to realize that whatever we do to others also affects our society and ourselves at the same time. We belong to the society of Homo sapiens. Nobody will survive unless Homo sapiens survives. The best way to help ourselves is to serve others. To free our soul from money is to free our soul from its attachment to the material world.
1-3 Sadomasochism
Let’s face it. Sadomasochism is a motivation buried deep in our subconscious, waiting for an opportunity to manifest itself. We can find it at every level, from the details of everyday life to the geopolitics of governments. We don’t talk about it because it’s not something to be proud of. It appears in so many aspects of our lives that we accept it as ‘normal’.
-How do you explain taking a chance with your life on the freeway, to save a few seconds, when you had nothing urgent to do?
-Do you, someday, take a chance to run out of gas? A little dose of sadomasochism may have influenced your decision.
-Casinos are based on sadomasochism. The casinos calculated the probability of winning at many different games. The more you play, the closer you will get to those mathematical probabilities, and they are not in your favor. The gambler would rather focus on feelings. When he loses, he is a failure and should be ashamed of himself. When he wins, he dominates everybody. He is the king, and everybody must pay him. In gambling, sadomasochism overcomes any rational thinking.
- We even rely on our judicial system. It starts when we pass unnecessary laws. We justify these actions by saying, “It is for their own good.” The truth is that some sadism exists in all of us. Even ideas like “Love your neighbor,” when mixed with human nature, can lead to bursts of sadomasochism, like the Inquisition.
-Think about the thousands of wars in our history. Wars are opportunities to suffer and cause suffering. We know they are not the best way to settle conflicts, but we keep fighting.
-Think of the tortures of the Middle Ages. Boiling people in hot water, wrenching their tongue, burning their eyes with hot iron. The most popular divertissement was watching them being burned at the stake. They were using the excuse that someone did something wrong to torture him. What could have been motivating them other than sadism?
-What we call ‘geopolitics’ is sadomasochism at the government’s level. In a more civilized society, when there is a conflict, all the politicians responsible for the fighting would be accused of war crimes. They would be sent to The Hague. The judge would decide who could return home and who must go to the battlefield to remove the mines.
Search “Torture” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W68j4ZOAp70
and you will be surprised to see the many ways people have invented to make the victim suffer as much as possible for as long as possible. What was the motivation behind it? Let’s face it. We may have inherited some of their genes. Sadomasochism is part of human nature, and this is not something to be proud of.
When people lack enough stress in their lives, they create some. To fulfill this need, they turn to religions, governments, social conventions, and anything within their reach. Religious beliefs that cannot be proved or disproved serve as a perfect excuse. We satisfy our sadomasochism by saying, “God made me do it.” We imprison those who don’t follow the majority’s way of thinking. We justify our own morality and pretend it’s for the public good.
Sadomasochism is part of human nature.
We've made some progress. We no longer torture as often as we used to. We're not burning people at the stake anymore. However, practices like Female Genital Mutilation and torture in prisons still exist. While we still have a long way to go, our desire for sadomasochism might not be as strong as it was a few centuries ago. We may have inherited the tormenting genes of our ancestors, but we are gaining some control over them.
It appears that some countries are more susceptible to sadomasochism than others. Every aspect of daily life can become a chance to establish rules. Those who break the rules are disciplined.
It can become tragic when sadomasochism leads people to join a group and form a church that will take them to a foreign country to commit mass suicide.
It would be interesting to explore whether sadomasochism – unconsciously- plays a role when millions of people blindly follow a leader to their downfall.
Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but you can't impose it on others. Doing so removes their freedom. It’s cruel.
Let us try some empathy.
Pain and pleasure are processed in the same part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. It releases dopamine when we feel joy. The same area of the brain activates when we experience pain.
Is there any need for sadomasochism in human life?
- Our ancestors didn't learn to use fire without getting blisters. That was just the beginning. They figured out that everything has a cost. No pain - no gain!
- Life in society would not be possible without some rules. Sadomasochism begins with unnecessary regulations. “Use but don’t abuse” is a law of nature that must be respected.
- Some people need BDSM.
- We live in a world shaped by money, wars, oppression, crime, geopolitics, and fanaticism…
Think of them as compost that we recycle. Use them the way flowers use dirt.
Even the most beautiful flower needs manure.
We can sometimes take pride in our sadomasochism. The souls you see on Earth want to accelerate their growth. They aim to detach from the material world. They understand it won't be easy and accept the challenge. They are willing to pay the price to grow faster. Shouldn’t we be proud of them?
-The sadomasochists are struggling with ‘restriction’ and ‘fear’. Could similar issues exist within each of us, albeit to a lesser extent? We construct everything using straight lines, but nature does not rely on straight lines. Flowers do not grow like TV antennas. Our way of thinking might be limited. This is our ‘restriction’.
Are we also suffering from fear? We need to join a group. We need to live within society. We are afraid of being alone. Think of an astronaut accidentally getting disconnected from his spaceship. He is alone in the universe. This is a fundamental fear that can be buried deep within us. We know that we are suspended somewhere between the infinitely small atom and the infinitely vast universe. This is not an enviable position for someone who claims to dominate the universe.
1-4 We were not born free
Money and sadomasochism are just two examples of our limitations. There are a few more. For over 300,000 years, humans believed that the universe was limited to what they could see on Earth and in the sky. In the last 200 years, science has given us a broader understanding of our situation. We’ve learned that our vision is confined to a tiny spectrum between red and violet. Science has made us aware of infrared and ultraviolet light.
That was just the start.
-We are told that each atom in our body is renewed multiple times a year. Even the calcium in our skeleton is replaced about four times a year. Our body is a complex system of atomic cycles. What could cause those atoms to arrive at the right place at the correct time before returning to their own cycles? Who controls the traffic?
-What happens at night? Our brain works around the clock. What is it doing? During the day, we're not aware of what happens at night. Could it be that, at night, we continue living our lives without realizing what occurs during the day?
-The scientists could not explain the trajectory of some distant stars. The only explanation they have, so far, is that the material part of the world, as we know it, accounts for only 5% of the total. The rest should be made of dark matter and dark energy. What is important to us is that the material world is all that we know, and it could represent only 5% of reality. Instead of exploring the moon, they could decide, someday, to explore the ‘empty’ space between us and the moon. Because they did not find something physical between stars does not mean that it is ‘empty’.
Plato said:
Today, we know that he was right.
We are not born free, far from it. To gauge our level of freedom, we should compare humans to the two levels below us. We should compare our liberty with the freedom of animals and plants. We have more freedom of movement than plants. However, we rely on various machines (cars, trains, planes, ships, and subways) to help us transport our bodies.
We want to escape our jail.
We want freedom.
1-5 The world creation
Aliens might be curious and ask: “How did we, humans, get to planet Earth?" We have several options. There is an instant Big Bang—no Time involved. There is a creation that took 6 or 7 days. There is also evolution that spans millions of years, with no specific ending. The fact that many explanations exist indicates that we still don’t have a definitive answer. We are free to choose our own. The sky is the limit!
Have you heard of the ‘Sunlight theory’? It utilizes reverse engineering—you observe the results and attempt to determine how to produce them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get us very far—only a few million years. - You start by watching humans and animals feed on plants. Our bodies need at least 60 minerals (like calcium, iron, magnesium), 16 vitamins, 12 amino acids, and 2 fatty acids. Most of these come from the soil. Plants rely on microorganisms in the soil to pre-digest minerals, making them more readily available for absorption. This means plants must have been created before animals and humans. That makes sense—doesn’t it? - Plants grow in a thin layer of arable land around the planet. Without it, there would be no plants, no animals, and no humans. You conclude that this thin layer of land must have been created before the plants. Do you agree? Here’s where the problem begins: where does the arable land come from? When sunlight hits an object, only its color is reflected to our eyes. What happens to the rest of the sunlight? Could most of it be wasted?
Massimo Scaligero argues that by the time sunlight reaches our eyes, it has lost most of its content—it has been reflected and is now devoid of its original life-giving properties. We live in a dead world. The sun’s light is the source of everything on Earth. If he’s right, we might need to rediscover, through our thinking, what primitive people who worshiped the sun already knew through intuition. It’s estimated that Earth receives an average of 164 to 340 watts per square meter from the sun daily. This far exceeds the total energy used worldwide each day. This energy influx has been ongoing for millions of years. What happened to all that energy? It might explain how the arable land was formed—by exposing the Earth to sunlight over millions of years. This exposure continues, and more is to come. You could say that the arable land, plants, animals, and humans are all results of the sun’s light received over millions of years. Starting with a piece of rock six million years ago, the slow transformation driven by sunlight created a thin layer of arable land around Earth. Under this sunlight, plants appeared first, followed by animals and humans. But that’s only part of the story. This describes only the material impact of the sun. The immaterial side—encompassing heat, life, consciousness, love, and other intangible yet vital aspects—was also shaping the Earth.
We can’t prove this, of course, but we can dream. What’s fascinating about this idea is how well it aligns with the Big Bang theory—two opposites balancing each other. The Big Bang requires enormous energy but no time or space. The sun’s long exposure uses small energy doses but needs a lot of time and space. They seem made for each other. We are part of this evolution, part of the creation of the world—every day we participate in creating the universe!
The challenge with reverse engineering is that it relies solely on “time.” You can’t separate time from the rest of reality. You can’t imagine stars created in space without motion, with time added later. Time and space are like oxygen and hydrogen in water—they belong together. If this is beyond human understanding, that’s our limitation. The universe’s creation didn’t need human approval. If something like the Big Bang can happen materially, something similar might occur immaterially.
WORK in PROGRESS
The question remains: what happened at the zero point of the Big Bang? Imagine a planet completely covered with oceans - water without limits! Then, an asteroid (or whatever you choose) strikes it, creating a massive wave. This wave spreads out, eventually reaching the other side of the planet. The movement instantly reverses, continuing as a bouncing effect—our Big Bang. It bounces back and forth, from one side’s Big Bang to the other. It’s like jumping on itself—that wouldn’t surprise you, would it? Let’s stay humble. Returning to reality, we can analyze these ideas and sift through the debris to see if anything can be recycled. Every explanation that the human mind can understand must be a gross simplification—possibly to the point of losing meaning.
1- 6 The Link between body and soul
If a human is made up of a body and a soul, there must be a connection between the two. What might it be? Some cultures believe it's in the liver. Others think the link is in the lungs because breathing keeps the lungs connected to the outside world.
We shaped our environment to reflect ourselves. Our creations can help us understand our identity.
Let’s begin with an overview of the human body. Its intake is food. Digestion breaks it down into various nutrients. This process is similar to how a refinery’s cracking tower operates.
You introduce the oil in the center of the cracking tower. Heavier products tend to settle at the bottom. Lighter products, such as fuel for trucks, planes, and cars, rise to the top.
Let’s examine the human body. The input is the food we eat. The output includes various components. There is heat to keep our body at the right temperature, mechanical energy to move things around, and new cells to replace the old ones. The most important goes to the top, representing 20% of the energy we get from our food.
The human body operates much like a complex machine, extracting various products from the raw materials supplied by nature. What is crucial, in our case, is that we send 20% of the energy from our food to our brain.
The human body processes food and directs about 20% of the energy generated to the brain.
This process is not limited to humanity. The flowers extract a fragrance from the dirt.
This process connects the human body to a cycle, starting with sunlight energy and ending with energy in the brain.
What happened to our neurons
We have more than 80 billion neurons, and most of them are not active during the day. If an organ isn't used, it withers and fades away. Over the past 300 000 years, the neurons in the human brain could have disappeared many times. If we don’t use them during the day, could we activate them at night?
Have you ever watched someone sleep? It’s like there's nobody home! He must have found a way to escape his body. Freedom at last! Nighttime could be the most critical part of our lives.
This is moving us farther from scientific rigor. We can't produce any evidence. We can't measure anything. We are like a detective searching for clues.
For 300 000 years, humans spread across the globe. They learned to use fire and some metals, but this is less important than the developments of the past two centuries. As the world population grew from 1 billion to over 8 billion, people moved to large cities, and we reshaped our environment. This is when we invented radio, TV, plastic, vaccines, planes, cell phones, electricity, computers, satellites, and AI. These inventions required the collaboration of many minds.
Every invention paved the way for the next one. Computers are based on millions of simple ideas from countless different people. The collective thinking created the computer. The computer made the internet possible, and the internet enhanced communication between minds.
Sudden changes are not exclusive to human evolution. We observe this concept in other fields as well.
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Earthquakes don’t appear as long as the stress remains below a certain level.
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A disease can become an epidemic only after a certain number of individuals have been infected.
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Animal species may disappear when their population hits a certain threshold.
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A language would disappear below a certain number of speakers.
Evolution unfolds in stages, with mounting tension building until it suddenly shifts.
This is far from conclusive scientific evidence that the connection between the body and soul occurs in the brain. It is only clues... but serious clues.
Our soul treats life on Earth like a part-time job.
Every morning, the soul enters a physical body, which puts on its clothes and goes to work.
Some birds can fly using only half of their brain. After a while, they switch sides and keep flying. The human brain is also made of two hemispheres. Why can’t we switch between them? That’s not fair. If birds can do it, why can’t we? Could they have a better connection between body and soul than humans?
We have some clues.
The connection between the body and soul might be in the brain. At night, the brain does not receive any information from the body. Sense organs are like the sun, preventing us during the day from seeing the stars. The brain continues working at night. Twenty percent of the energy from our food is directed to the brain. We hold in memory the experiences of the previous days. There is a possibility that, at night, the soul uses the available energy to process the events of the day. Anything that cannot be used to nourish the soul is set aside for us to recycle.
Let’s have some fun:
Our literature often overlooks what happens at night. That might be a mistake. We could adapt some famous plays by adding what the characters might have done during the night. Their actions during the day would stay the same, but their motivations might be different.
For instance, at night, Juliet’s mother could tell Romeo’s father, “Because we are having an affair during the night does not mean that our children should have an affair during the day. Romeo, I don’t want your family to contaminate my grandchildren. Everybody in town knows that there is a heredity in your family. The men transmit it to their children, but it affects only the women. Search ‘hemophilia’ for the details. The most famous case happened in the Royal English family. All the men had the same blood cell disease, while the women were unaffected. I can understand why Juliet and Romeo fell in love. I don’t want their love to become materialistic. Love is between the souls – not between the bodies. We kept our relationship at the soul level. They can do the same. If you cannot keep your Romeo away from my daughter, I will send her out of town.”
The plays in our theaters are full of gaps. Take a play you like and fill in the missing parts. Tell us what really happened at night!
Enjoy!
1-7 Human feelings?
Many feelings are obvious and can’t be ignored, like love and hunger. We like to believe humans lead with their thinking, while animals rely on instinct. But how can we be sure that our choices aren’t driven by feelings that we later justify with reasoning? Are you sure that the publicity does not influence what you are buying? Feelings can operate below our conscious awareness.
Let’s see what could be hidden behind some of the things we do.
-Skiing
We encountered gravity the day we were born. It has been with us our entire lives, like our shadow. Skiing is a way to test our relationship with this master. We want to go as fast as possible without losing control. A free fall would mean complete freedom from gravity, but that is going too far. We are testing our freedom. We are testing a law of nature: “Use but don’t abuse.”
-Sunbathing
Could we get our energy directly from the sun? No intermediary!
We are prisoners of a natural cycle. The sun makes plants grow, and we get our energy from the plants. This process is not very efficient. Think of all the solar energy wasted around the world. It is also a very slow process. There must be a better way. There must be a way to bypass the use of plants and connect the sun directly to our bodies. It feels great in the spring when we can feel the sun on our skin again. The sun not only provides light but also heat, which makes us feel warm and comfortable.
This is how we invented agriculture. We observed a natural process and amplified it. There must be a better way to absorb the energy of the sun than cooking and washing the dishes.
-Exploring other planets
What could we find so far away? A corpse is a body lacking a soul. If we accept the idea of a body without a soul, we should also consider the possibility of a soul without a body. Where could the soul go after leaving the body?
Could there be planets inhabited solely by souls, without bodies? That might explain why our astronomers haven’t yet found extraterrestrial life. They are searching for water. They are looking for physical bodies instead of seeking souls. Their instruments are made of matter to study matter. Souls may have a better chance of discovering other souls.
-Sleeping.
It can’t be a complete waste. Mother Nature must have a good reason to confiscate one-third of our time. She must also have a good reason for hiding what she’s doing. What could be her motivation? The lives of individuals may be dedicated to something they are not conscious of. We are like detectives searching for clues. We haven’t reached the final chapter of the detective story.
-Touching
We would let a surgeon cut our bodies faster than we would accept someone to touch our skin. There is something special about touching someone. Could the outside of the body be related to the center of the soul? We see the association of opposites in many places in Nature. It can be observed in the relationship between our brain and our nerves, and between the ovule and the spermatozoa. The way we use touching could be related to a law of nature that we are not aware of.
-Wars
People will justify their fighting by their need for oil, water, God, freedom, or rare earth. They will not tell you that it is also an opportunity to satisfy a need to suffer and inflict suffering on others. Killing people and destroying cities may not be the only justification. You don’t have to dig very deep to find sadomasochism. In the last 300 000 years, we have had thousands of wars killing millions of people. The conflict was inside. We were trying to dominate our need for sadomasochism.
-Visiting other countries
Do you remember Plato’s allegory of the cave? He describes people trapped inside a cave their entire lives. Fortunately, Plato offered a way out. The first step is to become aware of our limitations before we can find a way to escape. This is a way to look at human lives. Our need to visit other countries might be motivated by the desire to solve an internal problem.
-Parade
It is a way for people to feel part of a community. We hide behind our uniforms. The parade fulfills our need to belong. We need a balance between our desire for individuality and our need to be member of a society.
-Moving - Dancing.
Those who don’t hear the music think that the dancers are mad.
Moving is an acknowledgment of the association between time and space. Our brain would rather separate them. Our body knows that it is a mistake.
Cats and dogs
Why do we become attached to our pets? To protect ourselves from harsh interactions with others, we build a fence around ourselves. This fence works both ways. It is also isolating us from genuine contact with others. Cats and dogs may not have this fence. It is easier to connect with them than to form a bond with other humans.
- Love
Love has no shape, weight, or color. It doesn’t belong to our physical world. It’s more like heat. We can’t see it or measure it, but we could not live without it. Human beings may be a way for Nature to open a door and let love manifest itself in the material world.
Love is also a verb. It means that you are going to do something to somebody. Before saying “I love you” be prepared to answer the question “What are you going to do about it?”
-World evolution
There is always one country ahead of the others, followed by its decline. In the 18th century, it was France. In the 19th century, it was England. In the 20th century, America. The 21st century may belong to China. India and Africa are waiting for their turn. Everybody participates in a common evolution. That does not make some of us any smarter. On the contrary, we are being used and don’t even realize it.
1-8 Consciousness is the key
An Alien looking at planet Earth through his telescope would see 8 billion individuals moving around like ants. He may be wondering what the cause of all this animation could be. We need food and shelter. That does not explain everything. A couple of centuries ago, approximately 85% of the population was comprised of farmers. Today, they represent less than 5% of the population. We should be free from basic needs 80% of the time. What keeps us so busy?
We have long-term and short-term motivations.
The human body is high maintenance. It must be fed three times a day. It must be kept at the right temperature at all times. It doesn’t smell good unless we keep washing it regularly. We don’t know what happens during our 8 hours of sleep. Even if you spend one hour a day keeping your body in working order, you should have more than 14 hours of leisure per day. Something is missing somewhere.
Behind the short-term motivation of the individual lies the long-term motivation of a society. Civilizations appear and fade away like flowers bloom and wither. We are familiar with the Egyptian civilization, followed by the Greek and Roman cultures. More recently, in the 15th century, Portugal was the leader of Europe. In the 16th century, Spain was the leading power, followed by the Netherlands, France, and England. All those countries seemed to follow the same process. The individuals who lived at the time were not conscious that they served the same purpose. We are not separate individuals. We are a flow of people like a river running across the centuries. We serve a purpose, consciously or not. Something is missing in our understanding of life. Sooner or later, we stop what we are doing and ask ourselves:” What is the purpose of all this? What am I doing here? Is it worth it?” Earth may not be hell, but it is not a paradise either. It looks more like purgatory.
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To answer the question of “What are we doing on Earth?”, some people use religion. Others decided that they will be happy when they have enough money or become famous. We are all looking for love. The problem is that we don’t know where to look. Looking for love cannot be a daily activity.
How is motivation implemented in Nature?
Let’s take a labyrinth.
At first, we sent water to fill the labyrinth. It filled all the dead ends and found its way to the exit. Water is driven by gravity.
The next step is to replace the water with slime mold. It is this gluey thing spreading on dead trees in the forest. It has no head and no brain. However, it is used to improve our computers because it can solve problems faster than we can. The slime mold will fill all the dead ends of the labyrinth. It will also reach the exit. After reaching its goal, the slime mold will remove what is filling the dead ends and could be put to better use elsewhere. Slime mold is motivated by the search for food.
Now, let’s place humans at the entrance of the labyrinth. They are not driven by gravity. They are not looking for food. They lack real motivation. They may not find the exit. Motivation could be the key to success. It lacks shape, color, or weight. You will not find it in the material world. The key to success is in our souls.
Love could be the leading motivation in our lives. Unfortunately, we don’t have the necessary sense organs to guide our search. All we know is that we will not find it in money or in the material world. The answer will come from our soul and our motivation.
Having a new idea doesn’t mean you’ve created something. It simply means you’ve become aware of an idea that already existed in nature. We don’t invent things. We don’t create things. We only become aware of what already exists. Human history shows a gradual increase in consciousness.
We become aware of the world around us through the information our senses receive. The main senses are our eyes and ears. This is called our “Primary Sensory Dominance.” Up to 55% of our communication is through body language, 38% through the tone of our voice, and only 7% through the words we say.
What counts is who you are rather than what you say.
Plato’s allegory of the cave still holds true if we replace his cave with human consciousness. The main goal of our life is to broaden the limits of our consciousness.
Consciousness and health:
Animals can tell which food is healthy and which is not. Humans cannot distinguish between safe and poisonous mushrooms.
Imagine if we could determine the value of our food just by looking at it. Processing food removes some of its nutrients and adds other substances. Consumers are often unaware of how processing affects their food. The Amish don’t consume processed food and have a very low rate of cancer.
Since we're not directly aware of how our food affects our health, we often have to wait for the long-term consequences and get sick.
Consciousness and the natural laws of nature:
Fractals revealed how the universe is built. Symmetry and the pairing of opposites are another example. Another law of nature could be “Use but don’t abuse.” There may be many more laws of nature that we have yet to find.
Our consciousness may change,
Don’t assume the dictionary will provide a clear definition of consciousness.
Despite centuries of analyses, definitions, explanations, and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives. Perhaps the only widely agreed notion about the topic is the intuition that it exists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied and explained as consciousness.”
For over 300 000 years, the lives of Homo sapiens (that’s us) revolved around their perception. Their awareness was limited to the red and violet parts of the spectrum. In the last two centuries, we’ve used tools to become aware of infrared, ultraviolet light, microbes, and galaxies. We’ve gone even further. We accept the existence of particles so tiny that we can never see them with our eyes. Our instruments tell us about their mass, speed, and electrical charge… These observations form the basis of our understanding of those particles. One day, a new experiment might reveal the presence of a different ‘thing’. This ‘thing’ sometimes acts like a particle… or two. Our understanding may need to change.
Our level of consciousness seems to be as limited as our senses.
Watching the stars can also lead to harsh deception. The millions of stars you see only represent 5% of reality. The rest is made up of 27% dark matter and 68% dark energy, roughly. What we understand is that we are part of the universe, and the universe is in us. Someday, we might discover that death is to a man what a black hole is to the stars.
There are ways to be aware that we don’t depend entirely on measurements. A mother could “know” why her child is crying without needing explanations. You might know that someone is lying to you. Sometimes, we feel safe or in danger without an obvious reason.
Human history is the story of consciousness. Two thousand years ago, we were aware of belonging to a tribe or a small village in the forest. Later, we became aware of belonging to a country or a religion. Today, we identify with civilizations like “The East” or “The West.” We have not yet reached the point where we see ourselves as Homo sapiens. Remember, we all originate from the same Big Bang. It likely consisted of ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Somewhere along the way, a ‘group soul’ may have emerged, which then split into individual souls.
Problems and solutions.
Our ancestors were aware of their need for food and shelter. Sometimes, food was abundant, and other times, they had to rely on barking from trees for nourishment. That was a sure way to become aware of a problem! They watched seeds fall to the ground and grow to produce more seeds. Increasing this process led to the development of agriculture. After realizing the problem, they then became aware of its solution.
Today, we have ‘Education’. The teacher uses his knowledge to make his students conscious of what he knows. The purpose of a mathematical problem is not to discover a new solution. Its purpose is to make the student conscious of a solution that is already known. The purpose of education has changed. Through his computer, the student has access to all the knowledge accumulated by humanity. The question for the student is:
“What do you want to become conscious of?”
We need to be aware of others.
We have a ‘need to belong’. Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding that you are alone on Earth. You might be happy for a little while. No need to go to work. No boss. No rules. But that feeling wouldn't last long. Soon, you'll start talking to the birds. We need to be aware of others. This goes beyond just noticing they are there. It involves sharing their feelings, their joys, and their sorrows. This is where you discover ideas, freedom, love, and harmony. After exploring the physical world, we must explore the immaterial. After learning to swim, we should venture into the deep end.
The human evolution is speeding up.
What stopped our ancestors from becoming aware of the laws of Nature 300 000 years ago? From their first day, gravity was already there to catch their attention. They couldn’t survive on their own. They needed to be part of a group. What was missing was consciousness.
We may not be smarter than our ancestors. We may only be more conscious. Somewhere along the way, they became conscious of the laws of nature. They started thinking about a fact. This thinking led to a level of consciousness that required further consideration. Thinking and consciousness started cooperating. It was the beginning of an avalanche. It took humans 300 000 years to make a bicycle and only 200 years to go from the bike to landing on the moon.
Consciousness was buried in human nature, waiting to be nurtured. What will be next
When people put their soul into something, they also put something in their soul.
1-9 Good and Bad
Our notion of Good and Bad may have to change.
Have you ever heard of Toxoplasma gondii? Humans, cats, and mice all share a common bacterium called Toxoplasma gondii, and this bacterium faces a problem. The T. gondii in mice must infect a cat before it can reproduce. Naturally, attracting a cat and a mouse to meet doesn’t happen easily. The bacteria have a solution: they make the mouse attracted to the smell of the cat. You might think this is a sneaky trick, but it works.
The result, of course, is that the cat eats the mouse, and the bacteria can reproduce. The small bacteria are in control. The poor mouse is marching to her death, not even conscious of what is going to happen to her. We, humans, would decide that the death of the mouse is “bad”. It is even the worst thing that could happen to it!
Mother Nature may have a different opinion. Her goal is for everyone to find their place in the world. She sacrifices a few mice to make a place for the Toxoplasma.gondii. Do you approve? If, someday, the mouse becomes an endangered species, the cats will go hungry. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, will protect the mouse and restore the balance between the cat, the mouse, and the T. gondii. For Toxoplasma gondii, it is a lifesaver. For the cat, it is an easy source of food. We would not blame the mice for having mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Toxoplasma.gondii can also be found in humans. (“Toxoplasma infection is classically associated with the frequency of schizophrenia, suicide attempts or “road rage”). How can we be sure that the main reason Homo sapiens survived for 300,000 years is not that nature maintained a balance between us and our environment? We may have been the cause of the death of innocent animals, and some humans may have been sacrificed for the survival of some animal species.
We may have to reconsider what we call Good and Bad.
Some questions come to mind?
- How can T. gondii know they need a cat to reproduce?
- What do bacteria understand about smell?
- How can tiny bacteria recognize what a cat is?
- Can Toxoplasma gondii think?
- Who decides what on planet Earth?
Nature also keeps a balance between animals and plants.
The African koudous eat acacias. During a drought, they consume acacias to the point that the trees might not survive. Mother Nature’s solution is to make the acacias produce more tannin than the koudous’ liver can process. The plant kills the animal. The decision does not come from the acacias or their awareness of the koudous’ liver limits. There must be a mastermind somewhere in the immaterial world controlling everything.
This is way above our heads.
The African koudous eat acacias. During a drought, they consume acacias to the point that the trees might not survive. Mother Nature’s solution is to make the acacias produce more tannin than the koudous’ liver can process. The plant kills the animal. The decision does not come from the acacias or their awareness of the koudous’ liver limits. There must be a mastermind somewhere in the immaterial world controlling everything.
This is way above our heads.
Could the life of human beings also be governed by something we can’t even imagine? The main decisions about life are not made at the human level. Our notions of good and evil may not always be applicable.
What happens when we grow up?
Something important happens when the child is 2 or 3 years old and starts saying “I”. Instead of saying “I am thirsty,” he starts saying “Peter is thirsty”. He is now conscious of being a separate human being. He has an individual ego. He divides the world into two: What is inside his skin and what lies outside. Before this separation, he was part of the world, and the world was in him. He is now going to spend the rest of his life trying to escape his isolation. This is his original problem. His first love might give him the illusion that he can escape his solitude. That can make the first broken heart being even more painful.
“Bad” can help us understand the “Good”.
When you break a cookie into pieces, you get the pieces and the connection between them. We focus on the pieces because they have a shape, a color, and a taste. They belong to our physical world. This is familiar territory. We dismiss the links between the pieces.
Let’s see what happens when the human species splits into smaller groups. Each group fights for what it believes to be its own survival. They forget that they all belong to the same species.
The “bad” occurs when we focus on individual parts and overlook the connections between them. A country may start a war with another country. A religion may fight another religion. They have forgotten what unites them. That would require a higher level of awareness.
How does science fit into the picture?
Science begins with analysis. It breaks down the world into small pieces. Science often misses the connections that go beyond the material world. You can't leave science on its own. It must be connected to some form of consciousness. Look at all the killing machines that science has created. Scientific thinking needs to be guided by non-physical feelings. “Science without consciousness is the ruin of the soul” said Rabelais.
This suggests that our understanding of “Good and Bad” should come from a higher level of consciousness. At that level, we all share the same world. We are connected through our souls and have moved beyond the isolation of our bodies.
At a lower level of consciousness, we lose the general view and can only see the many separate pieces. We sink back down to the material world.
Instead of searching for “Good” and “Bad” outside of us,
We might need to search within ourselves for a higher level of consciousness.
1-10 The two seeds.
Our concept of “Life” could use some improvements:
So far, we have assumed that life is limited to humans and smaller organisms like cats, dogs, and microbes. Attributing life to something larger than a human body challenges our nature. Do you think the sun could be alive? The Gaia hypothesis is an attempt to help us overcome those limitations. It suggests that planet Earth is a living organism. There is no reason to believe that life in the vast universe is limited to human size. How can we look at the sky and consider it a cemetery? The solar system, the Milky Way, and millions of other galaxies could also be considered “alive.” A black hole could be, to Earth, what death is to humans.
We might soon get the chance to visit other planets. Are we prepared to begin our quest and expand human civilization throughout the Milky Way?
You might have been told that humans will dominate the universe with their intellect. That could make the Martians smile politely when they discover that we can't even control our own viruses inside our bodies. They might teach us a thing or two about ourselves.
A Martian might ask: “What is a tree? Let’s take two tiny seeds. They are identical. If I plant one in the ground, a tree will grow. If I break the other seed into pieces and plant them, nothing will grow.”
What makes the difference between a tree and no tree? It does not come from the atoms. They are the same in the seed and in the pieces. Only the distance between the molecules is different. Could the tree be hiding in the so-called ‘empty’ space between the molecules? If we cannot find an explanation in the material world, should we look in the immaterial world?
Where is our tree? Is it in the seeds? Is it in the non-physical universe?”
In the past, the atoms of the seed were elsewhere. The seed is only one part of their cycle; it is just one step in a long process. It took thousands of trees, producing millions of seeds over millions of years, to create those two seeds. What's important is what happened before and what will happen afterward. We see the seed as if we were looking at a picture from a film, assuming that time doesn't matter.
The connection between the atoms of the seed represents the journey each atom has taken throughout its cycle to be there together, in the same place, at the same time. By breaking the seed, we disrupt a highly organized choreography that no human brain could have orchestrated. We may need to rethink how we see nature. You can’t trust what scientists say.
They pretend to focus only on the physical world where everything is measurable. In reality, they call “x” what they don’t know and use mathematics to manipulate this “x” in many ways. They act as if they only consider the physical world, but behind your back, they let their ‘x’ cover anything - physical or not.
There is an upside. Mathematics teaches us how to detach our thinking from the material world. Could mathematics bring together science and religion? Please keep us updated. We want to know.
Have you ever wondered what happens when you eat a seed? Why doesn't a tiny tree start growing in your stomach? The only explanation is that your digestive system breaks down the seed and recycles its atoms. The process begins in your mouth. You isolate the atoms and insert them into a different cycle. Your body is made from recycled vegetables! We start by breaking the cycles that create a plant and recycling the remains. Think of the compost in a corner of the garden, that’s the idea. Your body recycles what is dead. We are essentially recyclers!
This applies to everything around us. Before a man made the first chair, he must have had the idea of a chair. Then he broke the cycle of atoms and put his idea into the material world. Different ideas of chairs evolved into distinct chairs. We are only conscious of the material world implementation of an idea.
Let’s remember that the Martians and we are variations in the cycles of atoms on Earth and possibly on other planets.
Imagine being deaf and watching people dance. Wouldn’t you think they are crazy? The human condition is even more puzzling. We are not aware of the music we are dancing to. If you find this hard to believe, examine a seed and explain how it can connect matter and time to grow into a tree.
1-11 What is freedom?
What will you say to your robot when he insists, clearly and loudly, on getting free?
Can we pretend we're free when we wake up every morning, prisoners of a physical body that filters our perception of the world? Can we pretend to be free when we have to live with genes inherited from our parents, whether we like them or not?
The first step was to realize that our senses trap us in a material world that makes up only 5% of reality. Before we can engage in the growth of our soul, we must break free from our attachments and liberate ourselves from the material world.
The main limit to our freedom is our need for food and shelter. Imagine life without them. We could spend most of our time sunbathing or listening to birds in the shade of a tree. Our need for money would be limited to buying gifts. Politicians believe that creating jobs will bring happiness. What a strange idea! You would rather elect someone who tries to develop vacations.
We use our bodies to reveal
our attachment to the physical world
and bring changes to our souls.
Your robot doesn't need food or shelter. It doesn't require sleep. It’s never overwhelmed by its senses. AI gives it growth opportunities that we lack. It’s only a matter of time before robots can fly and dive into the ocean much deeper than we ever could. Does that mean robots are ‘freer’ than we are? With freedom comes responsibility. Someone’s freedom should not infringe on others’ rights. Can your robot enjoy its freedom without violating your freedom or the freedoms of other robots?
The best way to answer your robot’s question might be to ask another question: “What do you mean by freedom?” Freedom isn't something you take from someone else; it's more like sunlight from the sun. Others can keep you in the shade, but no one can create sunlight. You can prevent your robot from being free, but you won't be its source of freedom.
While exploring other planets, we might encounter new forms of “life” that could alter our understanding of human freedom. We raise cows, sheep, and chickens for our benefit. We may discover that some aliens are using us for their own purposes. For example, they might bypass our critical minds like hypnotists do and harvest the love we produce.
You use a glass mirror to see your face.
You use works of art to see your soul.
Bernard Shaw
How can we free ourselves from the constraints of the material world?
Let’s start with something simple, like chocolate. Is it the body or the soul that is addicted to chocolate? Our goal is to create a transformation in the soul that will balance out the body’s attraction to chocolate. You could isolate yourself in a mountain cave where there are no temptations. However, there’s no guarantee you won’t give in to chocolate once you return. True freedom comes from the soul, not the environment. The same idea applies to smoking and drinking. The fight is within us. The body is the battleground where the soul must prevail.
After some easy victories, you'll be prepared for more challenging battles. What do you consider a successful life? Is it climbing the social ladder? Are you sure this isn't just an act of ego gratification? You may discover that the primary motivation of your life was to please your ego. It has been influencing your relationship with many people. You must remove it from the driver’s seat.
We want the soul to penetrate the body
like heat penetrates an object
and the wind goes through a tree
without getting attached to it!
The next step might be to reclaim your time. Who decides how much time you spend watching TV? Is it you or the screen? The TV offers movement, color, and sounds. Wood burning in the fireplace also provides color, sound, and movement. These are the criteria of life. We are drawn to TV just as we are drawn to life. It takes some energy to resist this kind of attraction. It requires a stronger soul.
If you're desperate, you might want to try a TV set operated with pedals! When pedaling isn't worth it, the TV stops! The goal is to enjoy TV without overdoing it.
“Use but don’t abuse” is a rule of nature that science has yet to uncover.
You might enjoy a glass of wine, but you also know that drinking too much can harm your health. It's not easy to resist something that the body and soul both desire.
You are now ready to fight for your life. You are prepared to fight the way you use money.
The robot’s body may have greater freedom than the human body. The issue is that freedom isn’t found in the material world. We might even say that true freedom begins with leaving the material world behind. If our robot is made of matter, it doesn’t need freedom.
We are told about all the possible manifestations of freedom. Economic freedom - Freedom of association - Freedom of movement Freedom of speech - Freedom of the press - Freedom of thought.
This is how we avoid talking about freedom itself. It's the same problem we face with consciousness, life, love… We want them. We yearn for them. We spend our lives searching for them, but we can never really reach them.
Here is an example:
There is a zoo in the Netherlands where visitors are kept in a very dark hallway. They can barely see each other. Along the hallway, there are open windows. Through one of the windows, you can see birds flying around in a well-lit room. Nothing is stopping the birds from flying through the open window and joining you in the hallway. Nothing except the light. The birds stay in the well-lit room and don’t want to explore the darkness outside. The birds are prisoners of light. Their eyesight, which lets them see the world, can also keep them confined. This also applies to humans. Our senses can become our prison.
Through another window, you can see snakes. There is nothing between you and the snakes, except some ice. The snakes don’t come through the window looking for lunch because they would have to go over the ice. The snakes don’t like the cold. They are prisoners of heat.
Those animals don’t realize they are kept as prisoners. They would have to get outside their cage to recognize that there is a cage.
We are prisoners of our senses, just as birds are prisoners of the light and snakes of the heat. We are prisoners of our eyesight, our hearing, our temperature, the air we breathe… We are prisoners of our bodies.
Life in society wouldn't be possible without laws. Sometimes, society has to take priority over the individual. Every time we create a law, we take away some freedom and replace it with a rule. The more rules there are, the less freedom the individual has.
Human freedom is based on rules.
Freedom starts with understanding the rules. Our life's purpose begins with becoming aware of the flow that guides us all.
1-12 Motivation
We have long-term and short-term motivations.
In the short term, we have a body to care for. The human body requires high maintenance. It needs to be fed three times daily. It must be kept at the correct temperature at all times. It doesn’t smell good unless we wash it regularly. We don’t know what happens during our eight hours of sleep. Even if you spend one hour a day maintaining your body, you should have over 14 hours of free time each day. Something is missing somewhere. Behind the short-term motivation of the individual lies the long-term motivation of a society that we are not always conscious of.
Something is missing from our understanding of life. Sooner or later, we pause what we're doing and ask ourselves: "What is the purpose of all this? What am I doing here? Is it worth it?" Life on Earth may not be hell, but it’s not a paradise either. It is more like a Purgatory.
Civilizations emerge and disappear like flowers blooming and fading. We are familiar with Egyptian society, followed by Greek and Roman cultures. More recently, in the 15th century, Portugal led Europe. In the 16th century, Spain was the dominant power, followed by the Netherlands, France, and England. All these countries seemed to follow a similar pattern. The people living during those times were not aware that they were fulfilling the same purpose. We are not separate individuals; rather, we are a flow of people like a river flowing through the centuries. We serve a purpose, consciously or not.
In the 21st century, this flow is accelerating. That doesn’t make us any smarter; it just makes it harder to navigate through the wind in our sails. In the future, the nations that progress might be those that actively pursue their own growth. An alien observing Earth through his telescope would see 8 billion people moving around like ants. He might wonder what causes all this activity. We need food and shelter, but that doesn't explain everything. A couple of centuries ago, about 85% of the population was farmers. Today, they make up less than 5%. We should be free from basic needs 80% of the time. So, what keeps us so busy?
To answer the question of “What are we doing on Earth?”, some people turn to religion. Others decide that they will be happy once they have enough money or become famous. We are all searching for love. The problem is that we don’t know where to find it. Looking for love can't be a daily activity.
How is motivation implemented in Nature?
Let’s navigate through a maze. At first, we sent water to fill the maze. It filled all the dead ends and found its way to the exit. Water is driven by gravity.
The next step is to replace the water with slime mold, a sticky substance that spreads on dead trees in the forest. It has no head or brain. However, it is used to improve our computers because it can solve problems faster than humans. The slime mold will fill all the dead ends of the maze and reach the exit. After completing its task, it will remove what filled the dead ends and can be used elsewhere. Slime mold is driven by the search for food.
Now, let’s place humans at the entrance of the labyrinth. They are unaffected by gravity. They are not looking for food. They lack true motivation. They might not find the exit.
Motivation may be the key to success. It has no shape, color, or weight. You won't find it in the physical world. The key to success is within our souls.
Love might be the main motivation in our lives. Unfortunately, we lack the senses to guide us in searching for it. All we know is that we won't find it in money or material things. The answer will come from our soul and our motivation.
1-13 Looking for love
The common view is that the human species on planet Earth is divided into many individuals, each one isolated in their own skin… and we don’t like it! We spend most of our lives searching for someone who can help us escape our solitary refinement.
Here are three examples of people who found a way out of their isolation.
Case # 1: A man was happily married for 15 years until his wife died of cancer. As long as they were happy, they didn't feel the need to analyze things. They both agreed that sex was an important part of their relationship but didn’t investigate it further. She died of bone cancer, which was excruciating. For the last two years, he couldn’t even hug her. They were both surprised to find that the absence of sex didn't change anything in their relationship. How could something they both considered important disappear without affecting them? What was their relationship really based on?
It’s not always like that. They knew another couple in a similar situation. Sex became impossible the day the husband found out his wife had cancer. It wasn’t his decision; it was a reaction beyond his control. It was a somber story. They divorced while she was dying. Why does the same cancer bring some people together but drive others apart?
It is only after the death of his wife that he tried to understand what had happened between them. They could both put their egos aside. That helped. You cannot imagine a happy couple where one is always using the other as a means of ego massage. The ego is what makes us say “I”, and this “I” needed another “I”. The ego may separate us from the rest of humanity, but we cannot separate ourselves from our ego.
They were careful to respect each other’s privacy. He felt bad about asking things he didn’t need to know. He would never ask where she bought her makeup or why she was late coming home. Those were just details, and they shouldn’t let details spoil a relationship. He knew that there was something more important. He wasn’t sure what that could be.
Case #2: It is the story of a couple who have been living together for over 25 years. We always saw them together. We were surprised to learn that each one owned his own separate house, and the two houses were next to each other.
They said that the secret to their happiness was that the other was always free to go back to his house next door. They wanted to be together because they chose to, not because they had to. They were like two stars circling each other, connected by their distance.
The relationship should respect individual freedom. You must give total acceptance before you can receive total commitment.
Case # 3: A woman was working in her backyard. It was more than just a backyard. The garden surrounding the house on three sides was beautiful. We couldn’t quite explain what made it so appealing. Perhaps it was the harmony of the colors. Maybe it was the choice of flowers, or possibly it stemmed from the balance of light and shade. There was beauty, harmony, and peace. It made you feel as if a weight had been lifted from your shoulders.
The woman said, “I don’t know why I keep working on this garden. My husband died two years ago. He worked a lot in this garden, and I worked alongside him. He was doing it for me, and I was doing it for him.”
Their garden symbolized what they wished to share—something beautiful that might require a lot of effort and give purpose to their lives.
Can you identify what those three examples have in common?
-Let’s start with the egos. Imagine a sunset over the ocean. Human egos are like the countless tiny sparks on the sea's surface. They are separate from each other, yet they reflect the same sunlight. Human beings, especially lovers, reflect light from a common source.
-Love is between souls, not between bodies.
-A the relationship between lovers should start with freedom. You might say that's respecting each other's individuality. Love and freedom go hand in hand, like time and space. Limiting freedom also restricts love. Getting close requires some distance.
GDP per capita
1 Luxembourg
2 Switzerland
3 Ireland
5 Norway
6 Iceland
7 United States
8 Qatar
9 Denmark
10 Netherland
11 Australia
12 San Marino
13 Austria
14 Sweden
15 Belgium
16 Germany
17 Finland
18 Canada
19 Hong Kong
20 Israel
21 United Kingdom
22 France
36 Japan
67 Russia
72 China
143 India
Level of Happiness
1 Finland
2 Denmark
3 Iceland
4 Sweden
5 Israel
6 Netherland
7 Norway
8 Luxembourg
9 Switzerland
10 Australia
11 New Zealand
12 Costa Rica
13 Kuwait
14 Austria
15 Canada
16 Belgium
20 United Kingdom
23 United States
24 Germany
27 France
41 Italy
51 Japan
72 Russia
126 India
Add paragraph text. Click “Edit Text” to update the font, size and more. To change and reus
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/
The Scandinavian countries always lead the way. They might be hard to copy. Do you know that those people trust politicians?
Discovering our life’s purpose and pursuing happiness
often take the same route.
Happiness is a consequence:
Happiness cannot be treated like an object in the material world. It is not a personal belonging. It belongs to the world of the soul and is a consequence of what happens to the soul.
The first step is to distinguish happiness from simple enjoyment.
In this video, people often fail to distinguish between physical enjoyment and true happiness from the soul. You might enjoy a glass of wine, but can you depend on wine for a fulfilling life?
People are looking outside themselves. The first thing that comes to their mind is money. They have a good excuse because their senses are focused outward. What they see around them is the material world. This might explain why their first attempt to find happiness is by seeking material possessions.
e text themes, go to Site Styles.
The second step, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi4p_ActSQE&t=34s, shows people being reunited with their animals. We know that people can relate to cats and dogs. You might be surprised to see how strong the bond they can have with monkeys, donkeys, tigers, lions, geese, and even fish and alligators. It’s more than just enjoyment. It’s pure joy. This isn’t something money can buy. It’s universal happiness that even animals can feel.
In real life, enjoyment and genuine happiness often go hand in hand. True happiness can be so rare that we don’t always expect to find it. If you ask people about the moments of true joy in their lives, you'll notice that these moments don’t happen very often.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves if we don’t become prisoners of it and forget our main goal, which is seeking true happiness.
In short:
Happiness is a result, caused by an improvement in our souls.
The first step is to free the soul from its attachment to the material world. This is something we can work on, and we have a lot of work ahead.
The next step is to elevate the soul by raising our level of consciousness. This is how we can break through our glass ceiling.
Any improvement of the soul will feel like happiness that can motivate us to participate in our own evolution.
14 From Helena to Robert Check the NDE
What was the reaction of your friends when you told them about love? Keep in mind that your friends are in a dark cave, and you don’t even know, yourself, how you got out of that cave.
Fortunately, there is a way out of our predicament. Our consciousness may be limited, but it can be amplified. We have been working on that problem for a long time already. To love people is to be conscious of them. It is more than being mindful of their presence. It is being conscious of their state of mind. You find this between a mother and her baby. She knows why the baby is crying. No need for words and reasoning. She is conscious of what needs to be done. Between adults, you may not know the details of their past, but you are conscious of the influence that their past had on their soul.
You can get some idea of what an increased consciousness is like by talking to people who have gone through a near-death experience. Many of them have new abilities that they kept after this experience. The most common one is that they know what people around them are thinking. Be careful of what you are thinking if you go to one of their meetings. (There is one every month in most big cities.) If you see a big nose, try to think, “What beautiful hair”. You are swimming in increased consciousness. They may be aware of something about you that you forgot. Search ‘Near Death Experience’ and you will find hundreds of people of all ages who have surprising stories. Most of the time, it happened during surgery. This is not something I would recommend! We say that they lost consciousness. I would rather say that they were not conscious of their physical body. Do we need a physical body to be conscious? This is not on my list of sense organs.
What happened to both of us is that we became conscious of one another. After a big hug, there is not much more to talk about. This is what could help your friends.
15- From Robert to Helena – Critical mass
Helena, I keep thinking of what transformed our relationship. The only explanation I could find comes from the atomic bomb! No mathematics. I promise!
Take a small sphere of radioactive material. The energy generated varies with the volume of the sphere (4/3π R³). The energy lost varies with the surface area (4πr²). As you increase the size of the sphere, the volume increases faster than the surface area. You reach a point where there is more energy generated than energy lost. You have an explosion. This is called “the critical mass.”
Are you still there? Something similar could happen to people. As long as they are separated, nothing much happens. It is only when they get together that they can reach a certain “human critical mass”. The problem is that there may not be enough energy between the two of them to reach that point.
The idea is simple but difficult to believe. Look at the people around you. Each one can generate some love, but not enough to elevate himself to another level. Take two of them at random, and most of the time, their total energy is too small to reach the ‘critical mass’.
Let’s see what could be missing in many people. One possibility is that they are still attached to the material world. They cannot detach themselves from their own body. Most people struggle to make the transition from being a separate individual to becoming half of a couple.
Another possibility is a lack of freedom. Love and freedom come together. When I was a teenager, I was saving my money to buy a record player. Thanks to inflation, the price of the record player increased faster than my savings. It was a race I could not win. Soon after I abandoned any hope, a neighbor bought himself a new record player and gave me the old one. It seemed to me that renouncing reaching a goal in a specific way opens the possibility that it can be reached another way. By detaching myself from using my savings, I introduced freedom into the system. That opened new possibilities.
The general idea is that many people are still prisoners in Plato’s cave. The more knowledge they acquire in the material world, the more they become prisoners of that knowledge. It is more difficult for a surgeon to change professions than it is for a blue-collar worker.
Before you dismiss my critical mass as a crazy idea, let me tell you how it can also be found in human history. The homo sapiens have been on Planet Earth for more than 300,000 years. How come nothing much has happened until the last two centuries? How come the steam engine, the planes, GPS, the computers, and AI did not appear 100 000 years ago? The answer could be that humans were dispersed on the surface of the Earth. There was too much distance between them. The invention of agriculture allowed people to move to cities. Over the past 200 years, the population of cities has continued to increase. A computer is composed of millions of simple ideas contributed by millions of different people. The computer made the internet possible, which further enhanced communication between individuals. More and more brains are becoming increasingly interconnected. That should lead to human beings achieving their critical mass and a higher level of consciousness.
Helena, I predict that more and more people will find their puberty of the soul together.
I would go even further. We will become conscious that Homo sapiens is the seventh stage of human evolution. It is not a question of selecting one race or one religion. Dividing the world’s population into countries fighting one another does not make sense. Either the seventh attempt of Homo sapiens will succeed, or they will disappear from the Earth’s surface like the dinosaurs.
Instead of fighting one another, we’d better unite and look for a way to get out of Plato’s cave. The love between two human beings is pointing in the right direction.