Excerpt from Chapter 2: The Life Forces
For thousands of years, humans
have attempted to make sense of and understand their
relationship with the earth, plant, animal, and human
realms as well the wider universe. Their traditions and
rituals have formed the foundation for worship, given order
to life, and provided the means to sustain these beliefs
over time. Ancient pagan religions embraced a geocentric
view of the world and attributed magical qualities to the
natural realms. Tribes used dance and ritual to appease the
natural and supernatural elements of the earth, and they
designated a chosen few within the community to manipulate
these forces through ceremony and knowledge. These ancient
models of spirituality were the first attempts to make
sense of the Divine; different versions of these models
existed in every culture.
In eastern cultures the shamanic ideas of northern Mongolia
were combined with the philosophy of Buddhism to form
Taoism. This brought the elements of suffering, service,
and the manipulation of the forces into an organized,
principled, and erudite human philosophy. In Taoism,
humankind was seen as the balancing intermediary in the
interplay between the forces of earth, our own elements,
and those of the heavens. Hinduism, on the other hand, saw
the extraordinary handiwork of the Creator in the single
deity of Brahma, yet Hindus essentially created a
polytheism through which they worshipped all aspects of the
Creator. The underlying structures of all human beliefs,
whether pagan, polytheistic, or monotheistic, all
acknowledge the interplay between human beings and the
forces outside them.
Early monotheistic doctrines explained man’s
existence in terms of a hierarchy. Around 250 A.D., the
classic philosopher Plotinus spoke of the One, or Absolute,
from which emanated Intelligence, from which emanated Soul,
from which emanated Matter. Plotinus rejected materialism
in his search for ecstatic union with the Divine. From his
ideas arose the Neoplatonic view that living in the
material world can cause us to forget the purpose of our
existence: reunion with the Divine. This philosophy has
strongly influenced monotheistic religious thought.
In Islam, these ideas were furthered through the work of
Sufi philosophers and later became part of Muslim
understanding in relation to the hierarchy of the elements
within us. This hierarchy consisted of the lower selves
(nafs) and the higher elements or spirit (ruh), which were
recognized as having an influence on the human. Muslims
believed that perfection was attained through the mastering
of the lower selves and the cultivation of the higher
elements within us, and they recognized the human as the
intermediary between Allah (God) and the earth.
The idea of a hierarchy is central to what are known as the
life forces. A force is the power, strength, or energy that
initiates a change of state. When Einstein spoke of energy
as matter in motion, he referred to the movement of
particles at a subatomic level. Because this movement is
invisible to the naked eye, we might assume that all matter
contains only latent or potential energy. In fact, this
energy is present at all times, which implies that all
matter is energy. All energy contains a particular
frequency, or waveform, and each of the
kingdoms—material, vegetative, animal, and
human—has a specific carrier wave. Each of these
carrier waves represents a force.
Just as our external world is composed of material,
vegetative, animal, and human forces, we, too, are composed
of, influenced, and supported by these same elements. We
call these the life forces, and they are present both
within us and in the world around us. We can illustrate and
differentiate them as a hierarchy, beginning with the
material force and moving upwards through the vegetative,
animal, human and noble levels towards the Divine—the
primary life force from which all other forces
originate........