Summum Unum. The Diversity Of Life

SUMMUM UNUM

The DIVERSITY OF LIFE

This essay explores the relationship between life and the diversity of its forms: Life appears not only uniquely diverse but also highly integrated. The dual principle of diversification and unification and integration can be the basis for an enhanced understanding and management of diversity. In a balanced perception the interplay of the two appears in its proper relationship in which the centrifugal diversity is naturally integrated by the centripetal unity.

There is one life and many forms of it. There are many creatures that are enlivened: animals, plants, humans. It enters them at their birth and leaves them after some time, earlier or later, depending on the form or life, the species and the circumstances of life, the initial genetic endowment and the course of live of those living organisms, which may be more or less conducive and connected to live, more or less embody life as such, the life force.

Without life nothing exists whatsoever that is of significance. Only by virtue of life things take and make meaning. Therefore, the connection to life is the actual mystery of life, the highest and deepest, that which escapes the complicated minds of thinkers and scientists who often remain at the level of the forms of life, without actually being able to lift the veil of its enigma and penetrate its mystery. So the secret of life remains hidden to them. They remain at the surface, although they may study subatomic particles under sophisticated microscopes and stare into million galaxies. There is a gap between the form and life itself, comparable maybe to a well or spring with numerous channels which irrigate the crops for millions. The channels and „conduits" of life are not life itself, but rather that which passes through them and has the power to sustain the forms of life.

The myriad forms sustained by life carry life due to life itself. This life is one life which has the power to enliven the many, the innumerable carriers of life as the light of the sun gives light to uncountable stars. When it is not given there is darkness. When life is no longer flowing from the source of life itself, life withers away. Light and life provide their carriers with a capital to sustain them but they have to be continuously and fully reconnected to the source of life or light to be rejuvenated, enlivened and enlightened. The force is so strong that the stars and planets as well as the living organisms would not be able to sustain the permanent total exposition to those powerful sources. It is stronger than death, the strongest forced in the universe. Therefore the overall balance always remains in favour of life. It cannot be ended unless the source of life itself decides so. When life inundates the „conduits" and light inundates the planets everything is cast in their quality which forms a common medium of those in the area of influence of these powerful sources. If living organisms were not able to respond to those energies, they would disappear. The „conduits" display myriad shapes and forms and types and appearances, yet they all radiate that which flows through those „conduits” and everything they do is enabled, nourished and sustained by it, without which they simply would not be at all.

When man becomes a bad „conduit“ of life, because he resists it or because he forgets about it, he starts confounding the „conduit“ with that which enlivens it. Now the forms and shapes and colours have taken the place of the actual, the source which has produced them and sustains them. The product substitutes itself for that which has enabled it. This disconnect is the human condition in many ways. The disconnect between form and substance produces the loss in diversity, due to a loss of memory of the common source. The manifestation of the one source and its current in myriad forms is the nature of life itself. Man’s forgetting of the source causes a disconnect and a depletion of the flow of the source. He cannot be without the source and tries to substitute other „conduits” for the source, which creates the diversity challenge. As long as diversity is integrated in its source myriad shapes and forms of diversity are simply different „conduits” of the same. All „conduits“ recognize that sameness in other „conduits” and being of the same nature they are naturally solidary. Otherwise, by obstructing other „conduits”, they would - being of the same essence and partaking in the same nourishing flow - also obstruct their own life sustaining source.

The oblivion of the source requires a substitute, but there is no substitute, there are innumerable „conduits” whose spirit of life may, however, strengthen that of other „conduits”. Not being able to sustain oneself without the source one enters in a battle for the source with other „conduits”. The connection to the source is erroneously, through oblivion of it, substituted for by the battle with other „conduits”, which cannot provide a real substitute, because they are not the source. Now the appearance of difference takes the shape of a threat, whereas difference appears as essential sameness when it is enveloped by and imbued with the same flow of the same source.

Therefore all antagonistic diversity issues arise as a consequence of the oblivion of the connection to the source. This is, in a way, the original diversity sin. It comes through man’s oblivion of his sameness at the level of sine qua non, which is that without which simply nothing, not even diversity, is. Reconnecting to the source, and therefore seeing through diversity and discovering the one life behind it heals the life threatening disconnect through reintegration of diversity in it source.

Diversity conflicts are the battle of life and for life. Therefore they become paramount at a moment of history in which threats to life as such appear. Diversity conflict resolution often displaces the battlefield to a place, where there are only losers, and no solutions to its challenge. The diversity warriors fight the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield. That has gone on for millennia and seems to continue until man understands that he produces the battle, the battlefield and the fighters through oblivion of the common source. And therefore the one and only sustainable appeasement is the change of direction of attention away from that battlefield of diversity to the source, to life. At that moment he realizes that he is fighting a wrong battle, with false warriors and battlegrounds; a war caused by a monumental error of perception of his own making.

The reconnection to the common source submerges the battle, the battlefield and the fighters in the ocean of the source. None of the three has continuity because they have come into being erroneously; the greatest error of man throughout history, namely that which disconnects the form and the essence. It is based on an incomplete perception. In the complete perception the actual solution for the limited perception is provided, because the complete perception resolves diversity in its cause, which I have chosen to call life and which may denominated differently by diverse world views.

The creation of distance between the players and the source creates a virtual life without real substance and this lack of substance crates the battle for substance which cannot be satisfied virtually and so the battle goes on forever until someone comes and leads the way back to the source, which is life and then the false battles of diversity cease. The emergence of non-religious times is paralleled by the emergence of diversity conflict, because religion in particular tries to teach about the ultimate common source. The understanding of it makes battles over diversity superfluous. The real founders of religions have tried to reconnect the diverse human phenomena to their underlying source of life – the true meaning of religion – which, if it is achieved, makes all fight between the diverse „conduits" unnecessary. One drop of water does not fight the other. They combine to form billions and trillions, oceans; the rays of the sun do not fight each other, they combine to illuminate the whole world. Atoms, molecules and photons do the work of life in this way. Essential likeness connects to the source. But there is a spirit which refuses the one source, the one life, which says “follow me”. That is another instance of the original sin of diversity. This division, the separation from the source is the actual false way. Whatever is achieved on this false way has little continuity because it lacks the nourishing life of the source. This bifurcation of the path of life and the exclusive path of the form, are a key difference between the right and the wrong way, the good and the bad. That is the bifurcation where ethics and religion are actually born and come into play. They entail the ability to choose and adhere to one way or the other, where either life or death, being or not being, love or hate, war or peace have their origin. Life and its diverse forms as an expression of that life are both absolutely necessary. They are part of the wholeness of life. The problem arises when they are not seen as belonging together. – Neither the form, nor even the myriad diverse forms but rather the disassociation of unifying life and its diversified forms seem to cause a problem. - Then the natural integrator of the diverse forms is lost out of sight and diversity cannot solve its diversity conflicts at its own level alone. When the disconnection is reintegrated in life itself diversity issues are solved sustainably and not merely superficially.

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