Text: Survival One of the most fundamental principles of materialist science is the principle of conservation of mass-energy. The conservation of mass and the conservation of energy were initially two principles. They became one when it was recognized that mass and energy are interchangeable. Now I usually use the conservation of mass-energy to support the immortality of the soul. Thus Level II is substance, which is formed by Level III to make objects, Level IV. Such objects, including our physical bodies and all things constructed by man -- buildings, machines, etc. -- as well as plants and animals, can be destroyed, can die. Human cells have not only a built-in lifetime, but a predetermined limit to the number of times they can reproduce; thus a new organism will not continue to reproduce longer than its parent. So if everything that can be constructed can be destroyed or destructured, how can the soul be immortal? The answer is that it is not constructed. Structure arises at Level III. The soul is simple substance, energy if you like, and if energy is conserved, so is the soul. If we liken energy to the substance of the soul, we could liken mass to its troubles, its traumas, condensations of the otherwise free energy of the psyche. This would imply that memory is analogous to mass. Pursuing that tack we would see memory as the investment of free energy in what we would call the furniture of the self. Its sex, its identity, its position in the social structure (profession, avocation, and political, religious, and other affiliations) can be seen as concrete impediments, acquisitions necessary for living in the world but, in the last analysis, frozen or trapped energy that can become so burdensome that the soul gets stuck in matter, or in patterns of behavior or role playing, and can progress further only by dissolving its embodiments and regaining its freedom. But the question still remains: How can the soul grow under the principle of conservation of mass-energy? We must remember that the soul is a means, and the question is not so much that of its own growth as it is of its alignment with, and suffusion by, spirit. It was the hunger of soul that initiated manifestation, eating the fruit of the tree, and when that hunger is appeased, the monad can move on toward its goal. We cannot expect to resolve or even describe this advanced state from our present perspective. However, we can make use of evidence available from the stages of process. What I have not mentioned here, but did develop in The Reflexive Universe, is that each of the seven stages of process has substages that partake of the same nature as the stages. An interesting finding in this context is that all seventh substages depend on the next stage. Thus, at the seventh substage of the atomic kingdom, the disintegration rate of radioactive atoms can be controlled by molar concentration; seventh-substage molecules, DNA and virus, depend on cells for their replication; seventh-substage flowering plants depend on insects. Extrapolating from this, we can anticipate that human evolution, beyond the purely animal necessity of survival, is dependent on, and interrelated with, what is beyond mankind: superbeings or gods. And it is pertinent here that a belief in powers of a higher order, in gods or in a god, has characterized almost all peoples and cultures. The possible exception is modern Western culture, where the belief in science has tended to supplant the belief in gods. As we are dealing with first principles, it is important to note that the difficulty involved is due not just to the intrusion of religion into science, but to the inversion of cause and effect. Our whole learning experience in the world is that a cause precedes the effect, and science is based on that self-evident axiom. So in these examples of a dependency on the next kingdom, something not yet there, we are going against what is reasonable or natural. This comes to the fore in the case of human evolution. The concept of survival of the fittest, while deficient in that it does not explain how jumps to higher orders of evolution can occur, makes sense insofar as survival puts a premium on some forms versus others. With individual human evolution, the goal of survival is not sufficient. There has to be some transfinite dedication, some dedication to goals beyond the limit of a lifetime. It might be said that there is already some evidence of this in animals in their care of their young, but that could be accounted for by instinct. The evolution of individual persons, which as we have pointed out is necessarily self-initiated, cannot be accounted for by instinct nor by DNA. It is learning to think for oneself that is essential to human evolution. In this matter we should be on the lookout for clues from whatever source, and despite the fact that theosophists are currently in poor repute, I would like to mention that it was one of their claims that pet animals, by devotion to their masters, often are making the first step toward their evolution as persons. Devotion is above and beyond the requirements of necessity, and it paves the way for a different kind of evolution from that of the animal principle. Whether that is true or not, it leads in the right direction, in that the emphasis is on emotion and motivation, Level II principles, which are not dealt with by science because its policy confines it to the objective, physical world of measurement and relationship structure. We are in fact dealing with things larger than ourselves, while science can deal only with what it can control. This takes us back to my finding, described in the first part of this article, that intention is of major importance in the practice of healing, dowsing, and other psychic phenomena. I do not know whether there are other unrecognized types of energy, but in any case such energies, as well as those recognized by science, are directed and controlled by intention. Intention has its correlates in the measure formulae of physics in action, the product of energy times time. It is the essence of selfhood, the elan vital of Henri Bergson. It is not a different kind of energy; it is the principle that directs energy. In reference to its formulation as energy times time, one may think of the time component as timing¸ equivalent to direction. In other words, a cycle can be thought of as taking place in time or space; timing is the phase or direction in that cycle. We can now go a step further and correlate intention to spirit. Soul is the first precipitation of this spirit or essence into temporal being, into the world of becoming. Like Eve, it is the mother of all living, the matter or substance that can take on forms and produce the world of physical molecules that makes life possible. The means, substance (soul), and the formed embodiments of substance, are thus first made available and then used by spirit to achieve knowledge of itself, not only through gaining competence in organizing matter, but through the transformation of meaning into the more imperishable values of the soul: the true, the good, and the beautiful. Reprinted from the Journal of Near Death Studies, #41 Summer 1988 (c)1988 Human Sciences Press

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