8. What Is Life?

The origin is pure consciousness. You can imagine it like an eternal, endless ocean. The waves of the ocean are constant change. In the Yoga Sutras according to Patanjali, the movements, the ever-changing patterns of consciousness are called vritti. The Sanskrit term vritti is derived from the root vrit, which means "to choose", "to prefer". Consciousness selects one of the infinite states of potentiality or prefers it to the other states and creates the unambiguous real state from it. But "moving" and "turning" are also derived from the root vrit. This moving is the consciousness process, the IPO, from which everything arises.

Everything that exists are only excited states, only waves of different height, of this initial state. Consciousness is a spectrum of excited states of the primal ground that begins with death, pure unconsciousness or non-knowledge and ends with conscious death, pure consciousness or all-knowledge. The consciousness left the consciousness level of death by creating inanimate matter. All matter, every atom, has some kind of consciousness. However, it can only assume the lowest states here. Through the evolutionary process, the structures became more and more complex, more and more information-rich. From the elementary particles like quarks and electrons, atoms were formed. These combined to form molecules that became larger and more complex. From the large, complex molecules, the polymers, cells finally emerged. The cells arranged themselves into aggregates to perform certain tasks. Such organized many-particle systems, which maintain their internal organization independently, are called organisms. These organisms were eventually able to produce copies of themselves. With these self-reproducing organisms, a new process has emerged on earth: Life. Living structures are the most complex consciousness processes we know today.

Each of these countless steps is an expansion of consciousness, characterized by more and more information, more and more knowledge, more and more insight. In order to be able to record and store this ever-growing information, the structures of the data carriers have become increasingly complex. And so, step by step, consciousness rises higher and higher on its ladder to heaven.

Just as visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, so life is only a small part of the spectrum of consciousness. Living beings can occupy different areas in this section. Just as we can only perceive certain areas with light, there are also areas outside the life spectrum that we cannot experience with our subjective consciousness. Just like our physical perceptual apparatus, our subjective consciousness is also limited. Life does not just fall from the sky. Also, no new substance or force has come into existence, neither outside nor inside of matter. Life is the expression of consciousness from a certain level of consciousness onwards with correspondingly high information content and complex consciousness process. The basis of life is not forms, but functions, processes. Not matter is the primary, but consciousness. It is the consciousness that creates matter and tells it what to do, not the other way around.

Like electrons on their shells, the process of consciousness moves on different levels. The higher the level, the more information or corresponding energy is needed. Processes at higher levels can therefore only be maintained for a limited time, after which the process "jumps" back to levels with less information or energy. On the higher levels of consciousness, these jumps are called life and death and on the lowest levels, they are called quantum leaps.

We humans can create complex machines, automatons, robots, and even artificial intelligence. But all these are only forms of matter. Sequences, processes on very low levels, far away from the levels of consciousness on which life is created. Man cannot create new life. If we reproduce, we can only pass on life. Life never comes into something from the outside, life always comes out from within. Things are only the manifestations in which processes work. Living beings are only the manifestations of the life process. Living beings are the clothes with which life dresses itself. But if humans cannot create life, why do they think they can destroy life? Man cannot destroy matter, he can only transform it. He can only destroy the forms to which matter has joined together. Man cannot destroy life either, he can only destroy the processes through which it is expressed. He can only destroy
the clothes, but not life itself, which does not make it less bad. On the contrary. No process is independent of all other processes. If we obstruct processes in their natural development, if we destroy processes, this always affects our process. Because the outputs of the other processes are the inputs to our process. The task of man is to protect the expressions of life, not to destroy them. We should live in such a way that we do not deliberately harm any living being, because sooner or later this harm will come back to us.