Chapter 7: MAYA
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. - Rachel Carson
The Seventh concept is Venus, who is all that exists, and all that has existed, and all that will exist. She is also Mother Nature, our mother, and mother of the Seasonal God. Her color is green, for life. She is the real material world and the active force in Nature that makes Nature act as it does. You are part of Venus. We have a place in the world and have evolved to be a hunter-gatherer, the natural niche that we are biologically made to fit. Our natural environment is our home, where we belong. Only as a hunter-gatherer will we ever be comfortable. Only as a hunter-gatherer will we ever function properly. It is the place where all natural desires are met.
Our biological nature is full of instincts. These instincts appear as desires passions, and feelings. The body tells us what we need to survive. Our body takes care of itself in its natural environment. Outside of our natural environment these desires and passions can go wrong. For this reason people in civilization see desires going wrong, start thinking that passion is evil, and reject Aphrodite.
Aphrodite is life, which must exist freely the way she does naturally. Those who want to change her are actually rejecting her. Civilization runs by controlling Aphrodite. I prefer to let her be free. Disciplining the body will make it act abnormally. Asceticism is an act of self-perversion. You just got to let go, if you really want to live your life.
Aphrodite is "Maya" Ascetics think Maya is an illusion that leads to suffering. People who are spiritually minded think that something other than the real world exists, and might try to see beyond the veil of matter. Maya-haters believe that their ascetic dogma is the only truth. They believe that the knowledge of their dogma or doctrine is the only knowledge and that everything else is ignorance. Calling Maya ignorance is a way of fooling people into believing in something else and convincing them to follow some illusion. Different ascetic cults, with different ways and different truths, will compete with each other, each claiming to know the only truth. Since they do not care about reality, they can make up any illusion they want and make people act in all kinds of unnatural ways. Each particular cult might call anyone who is not a member of their particular cult, "ignorant."
Some people think that the world is a projection of the mind. They think that the senses do not feel from outside, but rather feel what is projected to them from inside. The mind is pictured as a male who invents a creative female to make forms for him. Ascetics might say that Maya is when someone becomes attached to the forms as if they were real. Hindus accept the idea of a creative female who makes the illusion of matter, but will not accept the material world. Their goddess Shakti is not Aphrodite, but rather a female Saturn. They might say that a person becomes attached to the world because of his desires. They think that only ignorant people would let desires rule their lives. Some forms of eastern religion try to turn the creative mother inside of us away from the outside world, try to turn her back at the projection. They only want to look at the divine light inside.
The world may be an illusion like a virtual reality computer game. It is obviously an interactive illusion, what we do in it affects the illusion, especially that part of the illusion that is our personal lives. That personal part of the illusion includes people who are close to you. Are those people real to you? My friends are real to me, and the whole illusion seems real. It may be a game, but I feel like playing. People who want out of this game called life probably have not given it a chance.
I prefer a religion that is attached to the material world, thinks matter is real, and follows desires. My Goddess is not just the creative, but is also the creation. The truth is Maya, the only truth, and the source of all true knowledge and the only right way. She is the only natural way, because she is Nature. Only reality can be touched. To reject reality is insanity. True hedonists love Aphrodite. They know she is real and wish to be part of her. They follow their passions and desires and enjoy the pleasures of life. These pleasures are real and can lead to more pleasures.
Ascetics may tell you that these pleasures are only temporary and will eventually lead to unhappiness. This belief is why they call Aphrodite an illusion. What they say may be true in civilization, where the system causes the hedonist to fail. The hedonist was never meant to fit civilization, but instead, belongs in the wild. The ascetic fails to see that it is civilization and not Maya that causes unhappiness. Aphrodite is both the will and the place where the will belongs. Nature belongs in Nature. Most of those Maya-haters fail to see that people have a right place.
People are naturally social. We are born because our souls have chosen to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. We are social animals. The will to touch is our strongest instinct. Thus, we make ourselves part of a culture and teach ourselves to get along with each other. We organize into tribes and families. The family is our greatest need, without which we are lost. All humans naturally desire the family life. People are full of instincts that cause people to take care of each other. Anyone denying passions is denying that which makes us social. Changing people will make people antisocial. Civilized pressures can breaks up the family. You must be insane to support a system that breaks up families.
Those who fit the civilized system receive benefits that can be economic or even social. But these benefits do not really bring happiness. The benefits are unnatural, nothing more than a gilded cage. Some people are born into civilization, appearing to have all the benefits that will one day make them fit the system. They may one day find purpose and meaning as part of the system, but before they find a place in civilization, they must undergo a long, preparatory process. They go to the right schools and join the right clubs, allowing them to celebrate their success with others like themselves. These parties are not true hedonism. A true hedonistic party would be for enjoying the party itself. The prep parties are like the rest a slave gets, but the rest period is just part of the slavery, allowing the slave to adjust himself, so he can work even more. Sometimes, bits of pleasure are part of the asceticism, used for perverted reasons, to pervert our nature. People in civilization think they are doing what they want to do, when in truth, they are doing what the system makes them do. Civilization makes people free from themselves, like domestic animals, trained to act in a certain way, they feel what the trainer makes them feel.
Ascetics are often social rejects. Loneliness made the ascetics insane. Civilization made them lonely. It is those lonely victims of civilization who invent new forms of civilization, focusing their madness into a religion of hate. I am sort of like one of them; that is why I know so much about them. You might have wondered: Where are the ascetic cults that I talk about? Do they really exist? My answer is, these cults are religions I almost adopted. Their doctrines and dogmas are ideas I almost agreed with. As I grew up, I was trained and conditioned to adopt one of those civilized cults. Everyday, I try to escape them and fight a war against those ideas inside myself.
Escape from any civilized restraints. Aphrodite is the desire and also the act and the reward. This reward is the true happiness you receive, if you live a natural life. These pleasures can be felt immediately. Do what feels good and it will lead you to a happy life. If something feels bad, it is probably bad for you, and your instincts are rejecting it. Your biological body will take care of you. The body reacts to the world and gives you signals, which tell you what you should do next. Just do what your urges tell you to do. Aphrodite drives men wild.
The world is a game called the will. Perhaps even the choices you make are what the game makes you choose. Whatever you choose is your will, even if you use your will to deny your will. The planet Venus appears in two forms: One is the Evening Star in the west, the star of passion. The other is the Morning Star in the east, the star of asceticism. The lines on the five-pointed star represent the path of Venus. The five-pointed star is at the center of the eight-pointed star of Aphrodite. The mystery behind this symbol is the meaning of life and the goal we need to win the game; People loves people. Failure to touch will drive you insane and perhaps even make you reject the world. What a strange game we live in.
To a human, the will to touch may seem to be the divine purpose of the universe. Perhaps it is only divine for social creatures such as humans. Other aspects of the universe may have other reasons. Those other reasons might be Outer Gods that we do not relate to. In this book, I only deal with Gods common to humans.
Evolution
Perhaps the will to touch came about by purely natural means with no supernatural purpose. Several social species exist, such as ants, bees and chimpanzees. Human social order closely resembles that of the wolf. Social animals survive by being part of a group, where individuals cooperate. Some people wonder how cooperation came about, if evolution involves competition. Actually, evolution has no fixed rules. In some circumstances it is advantageous for a species to live by cooperating. Evolution is not a race where the most brutal always wins. Actually, the environmental conditions often favor a less brutal life form. Social animals like humans happen because their natural niche is one where the social instincts are favored by the conditions in Nature. Generally, evolution will favor the herd over the superman.
The niche is the environmental conditions a life form must fit in order to survive. An environment is made of living and non-living conditions of that environment. Random genetic change produces different individuals. Natural selection only allows traits that fit the environmental conditions; those that do not fit are eliminated. There is no survival of the fittest, because there is no such thing as a hierarchy of "fitness." Either you fit or you do not fit. A member who fits enough to breed would pass his traits down to his descendants.
Evolution happens when the environment changes, as it shifts about. Such changes alter the conditions in a species' niche. It is the environment that molds life into its Forms. Many books on evolution claim that a species must adapt; this idea is misleading, giving the image of an entire population of a species changing slowly as time goes on. People may think that an improved form replaces a lesser form; this is not a correct image for all forms of evolution. The life form does not adapt to a new niche; instead, a niche adapts new members. Usually, only a few members of a species are adopted by the new environmental condition. Each niche would adopt life that is most capable of filling it.
A species will remain much the same for generations, if no major changes occur in its environment. A change in the environment can create new niches. All the species in an environment influence each other. The environment is changed slightly each time a new form comes about or an old form is lost. These new conditions open new niches that can adopt life forms. Forms in one niche may become separated from forms in a different niche. After a period of time random genetic change will cause these separated lines to become so different that they can no longer breed with each other. They will have become different species.
A new form is not necessarily better than the old one. Environmental conditions determine where each form fits. A new form will not necessarily survive. One form could become extinct, if the conditions change too much for it, or if something better able to fill the niche comes along and pushes them out. The old form could still be living long after the new form failed. Both forms could survive, if the environment has two places for them. Any living form could be the parent of other forms, if conditions made this possible.
If you have enough fossil evidence, you can place related forms in an evolutionary order. Darwin understood these evolutionary lines when he developed his theory. Many people think only of the evolutionary line, when they think of evolution. They fail to realize that changes in the environment, which made this line possible, are the critical part of evolution, not the line itself. Our evolutionary line should not move outside the natural environment. Evolution happens as the Earth's biosphere changes itself. Life on Earth slowly developed its complexity. A balance exists in this complexity, as an intricate web of life, where all species rely on each other. It is crazy to disturb this balance. The balance is such a vital part of our own nature. Technology will never be able to rebuild what only Nature can build.
Some moralists would have you think that social cooperation is an improvement over other animals; this is only an opinion. An evolutionary line has social traits, if the niche that it moves into makes such traits necessary. A line can lose the social traits, if ever the line moves out of a niche that demanded social traits and into one that does not require them. No law in Nature always makes social cooperation an improvement.
Many people assume that evolution means improvement. They think that humans are on top of the evolutionary line. In fact there is no top, because evolution has no up or down. Supposedly, all life evolved from bacteria, but that was billions of years ago; since then, all kinds of genetic traits have come and gone. If all animals became extinct except sheep, billions of years later we would find complex animals and one-celled animals, all descended from sheep.
We do not rule the Earth. The Earth rules us and we are bags of chemicals in a global soup, which we need to live. This soup is called Gaia, which is life on Earth. All creatures of the Earth grow together as one biosphere. The true rulers of the Earth are microbes, who make and sustain the life zones on Earth. Even the greatest technology can't make us rule. We are drops in the soup. Our technology could destroy us, but it will not stop the bacteria. We could blow up the Earth with our technology and pulverize it into little pieces, but eventually, gravity will pull the particles back into a ball. The bacteria that survived would reclaim the globe and start the soup over again.
Mankind has had much the same form for thousands of years. Do not assume that an extinct form of human was somehow less evolved than people today. He could be a different form, which might actually have improvements over you. Do not assume that future forms of humans will be an improvement over you. The forms may be different but not necessarily better. The best thing a species can be is to be part of its niche. No niche or species is better than another. Civilized people are not living the way humans should, this makes them less than even the simplest life form. A primitive savage can call himself a human, but a civilized person cannot.
Some critics of evolutionary theory have trouble understanding how the long sequence of DNA necessary for life came about. They think a long strand of DNA with the right sequence would be unlikely if the whole process was random. They fail to realize that the whole process is not random. Nature is full of tendencies. These tendencies can be thought of as repeating structures. An example would be the pattern that some crystals form, which is usually caused by the way atoms bind in a molecule. These repeating structures make the larger structures possible. Tendencies in nature made the smaller segments of DNA. All you need is a few of the right segments to come together to make the right sequence for life. This process could happen anywhere that the conditions are right. It could even be common.
The tendencies in nature are why the storm called Chaos produces structure. Things do not just fall apart. Entropy does happen but nature produces some amazing shapes while it burns out. We are one of those shapes that the storm is producing.
Us or not us
All creatures are connected to their outer ecology and also have an inner ecology, which is the way their parts cooperate with each other. The outer and inner are interconnected, depending on how the species fits its niche. We are interconnected with Nature; in ways that science has not yet discovered and possibly never will.
People who try to define what a person is sometimes use words like mind, soul, self, intention and consciousness. None of these words have any clear meaning. What they’re talking about seems to be concentrated in the brain. But the process that makes a person themselves is not limited to the brain. For example, the behavior of the skin has a big influence on what gets done in the brain. The brain stores responses. How a stimulus is felt can affect how the person responds. This response will affect how the stimulus is felt. This process is constantly writing and editing a person’s personality. Perhaps you can’t just move a person to a new body by moving his brain because the person is extended to include the whole body working together. The person’s mind has grown to fit a particular skin. Perhaps the end product of a brain in a new body would not be the same person as the same brain in the original body. It might share memories but it would behave differently.
Wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs are all closely related. Each is adapted to a different niche. It is possible that dogs have evolved a built in menu of potential variations. Having a pre encoded menu of variation would have certain evolutionary advantages. They would be able to respond to different environmental conditions appropriately. I believe humans also have a built in menu of variations. Each person is born with a different Animal that will influence what it does during its life. I have no idea how much of this is genetic. The parents might also be responding to environmental and social influences that cause them to produce hormones that condition an embryo.
The way a species interacts with its own kind can be a major environmental factor, especially with humans. Social instincts are genetically encoded in us. We live in a social environment that molds us like environments do. Those who fit the social norm produce normal children. Those who fit the normal social order will attract a mate and reproduce. Those who do not fit are rejected. Our social nature is the kind of natural selection that keeps us socially natural. Social selection only works in a natural society. Civilization changes events and creates conditions where events do not work properly. Civilization has a social order, but it is not the same as a natural social order. Civilization prevents some who should succeed from doing so and promotes the success of some who should not. In few a thousand years, civilized people will lose normal social instincts as more misfit genes enter the gene pool, without the normal natural selection to eliminate the defective genes.
Advanced medical technology enables people who would have been unable to reproduce in Nature to do so. Their defective genes are allowed to pollute the gene pool. As the generations pass, these defects will pile up in the gene pool, creating people who are not completely human. Eventually, people will no longer resemble natural humans. These unhumans will be unable to return to Nature and will dependent on technology to survive. Natural parts of people will be replaced by artificial components. They will be addicted to technology, their descendants becoming more addicted as time goes on. We must find a way to keep natural, or else people will be born artificial.
Some people might try artificial methods, like selective breeding, to keep people strong. It is possible that selective breeding will not work, because we can only detect certain defects. A gene code can affect the results of other gene codes. The full internal ecology of our species might never be understood. Unknown defects will pile up in the gene pool, and we will not know about them until it is too late. Other solutions may be attempted, but most would only delay the problem and add other problems.
Genetic engineering might leave permanent damage to be passed around in the gene pool. Genetic engineering would upset the normal internal ecology of an individual, resulting in a horrible life, with people unable to be people. We might even lose our social instincts. No artificial system can replace Nature. We were made by Nature, and only Nature can keep us natural. Once a species is removed from its natural niche, traits sustained by that niche may deteriorate. Perhaps we should limit how much medical technology we use and allow Nature to keep us fit. A species will genetically degenerate as far as its technology allows. A form of stunted natural selection will then begin to kill just as many people as normal natural selection would have, but they would continue to be as degenerated as their technology allowed. Any advance in technology would make things worse. It would have been far better if they had stuck with natural selection. The Earth may undergo natural evolutionary changes, which we will miss if we remove ourselves from the natural order. We could possibly lose our place on Earth.
Perhaps the most important question we must ask ourselves is, "What is human?" Do want to be ourselves, or be something different? Some people will tell you that humans can be anything they wants to be, because we are an existence with no essence. These people are blind and fail to see that we are something. Our essence is our biological nature, which is only complete in its natural environment. Today, we are still biologically able to return to Nature. Some day we may become so biologically dependent on technology that we could never return to Nature. We would be like the breeds of domesticated animals, which cannot live without artificial protection. Imagine what would happen if we found out that we should have returned after it was too late to return. Civilization will have won.
Today, recycling industrial products is popular. Industry has found a way to get us to play hot potato with its waste. Industry has already made people dependent on industry. Recycling is just another way of making us more addicted. I do not recycle. I throw my junk anywhere I want. I refuse to let industry addict me. Industry has changed something, and now to fix its damage, adds more changes, like recycling. It may look like a solution, but it will only make the situation worse, because it gives industry freedom to expand. It would be better to eliminate industry, before the problem gets worse.
If the machine consumes mankind, people will become more prostheses than human. They will be biomechanoids like the figures in paintings by Giger. Even our souls will be twisted, since the new mother will not bring us happiness, as did the old natural mother. A culture of perverted fashions will become the norm. It is unspeakable, trapped in a spell of the Necronomicon. You do not want to know what I mean. Blame Bill Gates.
We can still return to Nature. A few billion people might have to die, but a few billion people is a small price to pay, compared to what might happen if some day we are unable to return to Nature. I hear people worry about their civilized jobs, and they destroy Nature to keep their jobs. These jobs can be eliminated. Jobs are unimportant compared to the ecosystem.
I am not sure what will happen in the future. I do have a feeling that people will still be here. The great universal plan still has a lot in store for us. We are only beginning this journey down the path of Aphrodite. I had a vision of people thousands of years in the future. Different conditions had caused the formation of more than one form of human. The effects of advanced technology had affected some forms. I also saw something else, which is difficult to explain. In some forms, human social nature had become a dominant selective pressure. No one planned this change, but it causes a breed of human more human than me.
Sometimes when I tell people that Humans must discover what human is, they say, "How ridiculous!" They fail to ask themselves how much they really know about mankind and fail to see any importance in the question. Knowledge of what we are may help us to realize where we belong. I make a lot of assumptions about people, but also realize that assuming that an idea is true is not the same as having clear evidence of a truth. I am a mystic, and mystics have ridiculous ideas. These ideas may serve a useful purpose in society when they stir peoples' imagination and make people think, but they are unreliable.
This is not a scientific book and I am not trying to pretend that it is. I use science or history when it supports my ridiculous ideas. This book is about those ridiculous ideas. In order to have more reliable facts, we should look to science. The quest to discover what we are will require a great effort by the sciences that study humans. Scientist will have to perform many long-term studies, a search that may take more than a few decades, perhaps centuries or thousands of years. People are extremely hard to understand, perhaps too complex and dynamic to ever be fully understood. Many people jump to conclusions. A false idea of people allows people to think of false places for people. My objective is to encourage people to start the search. I do not claim to have not found any final conclusions.
Sources and related topics
James Lovelock, Ages of Gaia. Published by Oxford University Press, 1988. http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/785
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Published by John Murray, London, 1859. http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species