The Features of LIFE

Ⅲ. The Features of LIFE

The essence of LIFE is a nonmaterial structure with a spiritual nature. To make LIFE dynamic and expressive, the nonmaterial structure must be carried in a specific material structure with the help of energy. We will look at the features of LIFE from this point. There are eight features that all LIFE on Earth share:

Form
Consciousness
Spirituality
Vitality
Birth
Metabolism
Death
Transformation

Those which have the above eight features are LIFE, others are not.

Let us consider people:

We have Form; we are visible, touchable, and occupy space.

We are Conscious and respond to changes in the objective material world and form ideas. That is, we turn perception from our senses and our minds into thoughts and guide our own words and deeds.

We are Spiritual. Our souls are only the foundations of our spiritual natures. Yearning for better futures, reverence to the Greatest Creator, worshipping Gods and Buddha, loving nature, and selfless devotion to our own species are all expressions of our spiritual nature.

We are Vital. We can move, walk, sit, lie, work, and create.

We are Born. Whether it was from our mother’s womb or in a test-tube, we all began.

We Metabolise. This can be seen through the process of birth, infancy, childhood, youth, adulthood, and old-age.

We Die. No one lives forever and everyone has the same ending - death.

We Transform. According to the law of the conservation of energy, the human body is composed of energy. After death, our flesh is absorbed by microbes and converted into other forms. From the perspective of eternity, our spirituality is a nonmaterial, information structure, and after death, it enters into the horizontal time domain and begins a new round of lifecycle in another carrier in another time-space.

I do not think that anyone will disagree that we are LIFE.

What about the livestock, wild animals, birds, and fish?

It is needless to say that animals are all LIFE and have consciousness.

Some may doubt their spiritual natures and transformations, but if you study and observe these animals, you will find that they definitely have spiritual natures. For examples, dogs and cats endeavor to win attention, parrots imitate sounds, horses are never incestuous, and dolphins play with people. All these phenomena prove the spiritual nature of animals. In addition, there are stories of their showing gratitude, the tricks of circus animals, various kinds of strange “excessive attention” courtship rituals, the noble self-sacrificial spirit shown by some animals to save others, and so on all indicate that animals have spiritual natures. As to their LIFE transformation after death, it only appears as narrations and descriptions in some mythology and fiction. We still do not understand it from the perspective of science, which shows that science has not yet developed in this area and human thoughts have not yet reached this level of understanding.

Why are fewer and fewer animals but more and more people alive today?

The truth is that most animals eventually transform into people, and by analyzing human habits we find that some people are naturally:

Cruel, because they were transformed from vicious carnivores

Timid, because they were transformed from small herbivores

Stubborn, but loyal and reliable, because they were transformed from livestock

Cunning, because they were transformed from snakes and foxes

Clever and good at temporizing and flattering, because they were transformed from dogs and cats

Then what about insects and microbes? Of course, they are LIFE, too. About the spiritual natures of insects, please read the Souvenirs Entomologiques, (Entomological Memories) by the famous French entomologist Henri Fabre. This ten-volume, more than four-hundred million word monograph is filled with vivid and lively descriptions about the spiritual natures of many insects. In fact, if we carefully observe dung beetles sculpting dung into balls to carry home, the tacit teamwork of ants and bees, and the movements and skills of flies mating, we will find that insects absolutely have spiritual natures. As for the transformation of insects and microbes after death, they belongs to another space (world). Though insects and microbes are closely related to people, their Life natures are very different from ours. There is no transformation between them and us.

Now we will examine whether plants have spiritual natures. I will start by referring to parts of a web-article.

A plant called Lagerstroemia Indica lives in Nan Hua Temple on Tiantai Mountain. Its leaves and branches will recoil when touched by people.

Mimosa will draw their leaves back if someone touches them.

There is a plant called Dancing Grass. Its little leaves will keep dancing once there is wind.

During the war with Japan, a large number of bamboos around China bloomed suicidally (the bamboo will die after blooming white flowers). Then during the nineteen-eighties, a local proverb-flood was validated when the bamboos flowered again and predicted the Jianghuai flood in the spring.

Clivia never bloom with inharmonious families but they will bloom in advance to announce any good news when there is celebration.

Oak will destroy themselves when loggers come.

Carrots will quiver when rabbits are in sight.

Ammeters and galvanometers show that palm shaped tequila react to the psychological feelings of people, and even trace their owner's daily levels of safety and danger, and joy and anger.

If light plants are grown in wet places, they will be confused and not grow well, but if embryophytes are planted in sunny places, they will lose their temper and even die.

Grapevines planted next to pine trees will not bear fruit, but ones planted next to elms will bear sour fruit.

Some plants release poisonous gasses. Evening Primrose can make patients with hypertension and heart disease feel uncomfortable and some plants can make people they dislike get allergic and fall ill.

Some plants will "cry" and release a kind of angry bio-wave when a branch is broken but they will flourish and release a joyous bio-wave when we care for them, water them, fertilize them, play music for them, and talk to them.

A type of tree preferred by giraffes can release toxic gas a few minutes
before a giraffe begins to eat it, which will force the giraffe to eat less.

In mythology, plants, especially flowers, possess humanlike spiritual natures, and are even regarded as fairies descending from the upper world.

In short, plants have spiritual natures. They have languages, emotions, memories, thoughts, feelings, and all the features owned by people. Plants will punish us if we abuse them but protect us if we cherish them.

Do plants transform into other LIFE after death? Yes! Non-flowering vegetation transforms into microbes, flowering vegetation transforms into insects, and fruiting vegetation transforms into herbivores after death, but vegetation never transforms directly into carnivores or people after death.

All flowers are of Yin, the anima of the celestial world, and that is to where they will return directly, so they will not transform into humans.

Grass is also LIFE, but together with it, microbes and insects form a LIFE system which does not belong to the system of animals, flowers, trees, humans, and Celestial Being; that is to say, grass will not become people or the other way around.

Nothing except people, microbes, insects, other animals, flowers, and trees, can be regarded as LIFE, but this does not mean that it lacks spiritual nature. "Everything has spiritual nature", even mountains, water, the earth and stones, and especially gems, all have their own spiritual natures. Everything has memory, especially metal. Although these substances own many of the properties of LIFE, they do not think, are not conscious, and can not transform into other LIFE after they disappear, so they do not belong to the LIFE category.

As for invisible Celestial Beings, Buddha, Gods, devils, ghosts, and other immortals who belong to the spirit world, they can only be seen as LIFE when they appear in physical forms. Otherwise, they are only spirits, which is why the God-Jesus, Buddha-Sakyamuni, and Celestial Being-Lao Tzu appeared before us in human forms.

People in the Thousand-year and Ten-thousand-year worlds are not spirits but LIFE because they retain physical forms. People who have become Buddha own the power to change their forms, so they can exist in the Elysium world, either in their spirit form or miraculously transform themselves into any physical form, freely and omnipotently.

In short, we should distinguish between LIFE and non-LIFE with those eight features. Those which meet the eight features are LIFE, but those that do not, are not.