Science cannot explain how life came to be. Perhaps we are asking the wrong question. We think of life as something that comes and goes, is given and can be taken, that arises at time of birth and departs at time of death. But this is a childish interpretation of reality. Our common understanding of life is, in fact, not an understanding of life, but of self-awareness and/or of intelligence, which are specific manifestations of life or, put simply, they are just one of life’s infinite manifestations. This truth is clearly reflected in our interpretation of the so-called life after death. We talk about living after the body has died, but what we’re actually discussing is our hope and desire to remain self-conscious and to maintain our corporeal image. Not necessarily in the physical sense, but we hope to retain our memories of the self and of the people we love, and of what is important to us and so on.

So, what is life?

Earthly life or, more specifically, life in a human form, is perhaps best imagined as an organized and highly complex system of various physical elements or parts working together. But life in its truest essence exists on a far deeper level of being-ness: as particles at the sub-atomic level. At this level life may not necessarily be intelligent, i.e. possess the so-called abilities to acquire and apply knowledge and skills in the same way that we humans do. But its active, it’s unpredictable and, most importantly, it bears infinite potential for expression. Every sub-atomic particle is in constant movement, in interaction, and thus is alive! That is where the fundamental essence of life dwells and must be investigated and understood: as an indestructible potential in ceaseless motion, in a process, or in so-called vibration.

Such an understanding of life leads us to ask some deep and essential questions about the nature of reality, such as: do particles become alive, or have they always been alive? In other words, could life be the absolute quality of the way it is? And therefore, could life be written into the essence of the Universe? Understanding life potentially holds the answer to every other mystery of the world, including consciousness, and most fundamentally, it may reveal the original essence of who we truly are. We explore the wondrous predicaments of life in depth in books III and IV, where we seek new interpretations about the nature of our world, about our origin and, consequently, about who we truly are.