The word life can be interpreted two ways: as a natural phenomenon, and as the human condition. In the first interpretation it is what makes us tick, the basis for a domain of inquiry traditionally ascribed to the biological branches of natural science; in the second interpretation it is the story we tell and a matter of philosophy.

　　　I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. Life, however, is not exclusive to scientists and philosophers, nor am I a newcomer to the territory. Layman-ship has its prerogatives, not the least of which is a right to speculation. Furthemore, from the layman's perspective, living is an art before it is a science, and, in art, common sense is usually more reliable than academic discipline.

　　　To begin with, what makes the subject of life

so interesting, for scientist, philosopher, and layman alike, is the collapse of distinction between observer and observed: To address life, either as an objective phenomenon or as a subjective condition, requires the exercise of our uniquely human faculties for thought and reason, and that is only possible because we are animate and sentient, id est, alive.

　　　Now from my layman's perspective there is something decisively nonsensical about attempts to look for the basis of the observer in the observed. I am referring to the prevailing reductionist prejudice in both biology and philosophy that would have us believe life is an exclusively physical / physiological process. According to this argument, we should eventually be able to explain cognition in terms of such disciplines as molecular biology, neurology, and the study of systems, the premise being that simple systems give rise to more complex ones, and therefore the most complex system of all, human intelligence, must be an aggregate of everything that goes into making a brain. This is patently absurd.

　　　Consider this: What science brings to light is the intricate fabric of the natural order. To say that the cogition of this order, as well as the sense of awe it inspires-sentiment also comes with being alive-derives from electrochemical reactions and the stuff of cell tissue leads to a logical inconsistency: Can cognition of electrochemistry really be a product of electrochemical processes? Comprehension, because it is comprehensive, is by definition of a different order than that that it comprehends.

　　　We assume that all domains of human inquiry-science, philosophy, and so forth-seek to establish some measure of truth and certainty. We hope and expect to find fundamental principles that account for, and presumably simplify ( although we don't know that for sure, we intuitively suspect it to be true), the way things work: universal constants within an infinitely complex natural world. If such principles can be discovered and described, then it is reasonable to assume, as long as we assume that the universe itself evolved from the simple to the complex, that these principles are causal in nature. And if they are causal in nature then they are also causal to, rather than products of, rational human thought.

　　　What makes truth (and I accept responsibility for the boldness of the assumption that there is such an animal) universal is that it is abstract. Whether expressed in the mathematical language of the scientist, the dialectics of the

　　　Furthermore, the single most fundamental and essential element to the human experience of the truth is the a ha! that comes with it, the intuitive sense of rightness when the pieces fit. Without that-without the eureka, the light bulb overhead-there is certainly no truth.

　　　We cannto prove the validity of the a ha! It is a declarative act. In so saying, however, we need to concede that it is also neither arbitrary nor capricious: No amount of saying will make so what isn't. A ha! is a ha! out of congruence with some very precise yet invisible intuitive standard.

　　　Consequently, from the experiential perspective, we must conclude that the foundation of all knowledge is intuitive. Even science, the religion of observation and experiment, depends entirely upon the intuitive trust we place in the rightness of logic and numbers. We have the choice of either trusting this intuitive sense of what is so or relinquishing forever any hope of knowing anything about anything.

　　　Of course even this choice is only a figment of argument. In real life there is no choice; we instinctively accept the validity of intuition. As a working premise, we assume that we know what we know.

　　　Therefore, if the subjective (i. e., intuitive) aspect of knowledge is, as we are saying it is, primary, then we can safely dismiss any hope of defining intelligence in terms of electrochemical events within the nervous system. Exercising my layman's prerogative I prefer to suggest that intelligence is a universal condition reflected in everything, from molecular mechanics to celestial mechanics and biological evolution and so on, and if we imagine the magnitude of this intelligence to be that of a brilliant sun, then human intelligence can be described as this sun's reflection, a distant reflection filtered through so many panes of glass as to appear no more than a candle by comparison.

　　　From the layman's perspective there are obvious limitations to science. Science's relentless inquiry into the nature of the physical universe has, to say the least, proven itself extremely useful; it has given birth to much of what we associate with civilization and modern culture. It has also, however, done very little to provide answers to questions regarding how to live or what comprises moral and ethical behavior, as any brief appraisal of the state of affairs in the world at large will show. In order for knowledge to be valid it needs to account for the observer as well as the observed.

　　　The observer, as we are beginning to discover, operates by a different set of rules than the observed. Where it is possible to predict the trajectory of a rocket with an amazing degree of accuracy, it is quite impossible to predict the trajectory of a living being within the event-field of life.

　　　Living demands more of us than the faculties of reason. It demands a certain level of passion, and a certain something at stake. For aliveness to have any meaning it needs to be at risk.

　　　To be serious about the business of living demands honesty with regard to death. Where life has been concerns us far less than where it is going. The very uncertainty of life, we can safely assert, is its most fundamental certainty: We cannot predict life's trajectory, however, we can be certain of its outcome or destination.

　　　Claiming layman's prerogative again, I will state the obvious: When we say that a being is living we mean that that being has a body, and that that body is animate, and furthermore that the condition of animate embodiment has a beginning and an end. If I were to formulate this notion into a first premise it would read something like, human life is a directional process that begins at birth and ends in death. We can use this premise (and I am borrowing liberally from Sanae Odano from this point on) to define the conditions of living and dead.

　　　The essential objective qualities of a living being are: some sort of movement (movement of internal organs, breathing, external motor movement, etc.), body heat (in the case of humans this is 3637 or around 98), and sound (such as heartbeat, breathing, vocal sounds). The once-living entity that displays none of these is a corpse. Consequently:

　　　Life, as we know it objectively, can therefore be defined as a state of energy, that which is present in the living entity but not present in the dead entity, and death can be defined as a state of the body when this condition of animation is removed from it.

　　　Now, if this is so, then life and death are not opposite terms. In the above logical construction, life is the constant, that which is added or taken away. Death, on the other hand, is a physical condition (condition of the body) defined as the absence of life; death is relative to life and not the other way around.

　　　Life in its physical manifestation (animate body) works in direct antithesis to the forces of entropy. It creates order (organic over inorganic) and builds evolutionary complexity, advocating integrity in a universe that is otherwise generally breaking down (i.e., expanding). We are left, of

　　　As the layman speaking again, I would argue that the question may be more important than the answer: this because the borders of birth and death define, not only the organic pocess, but also the subjective experience of life (that is, the subjective experience of our lives). Questions as to what supercedes now-here clearly live on the other side of the slate in that speculative, subjective domain. They concern us, after all, because we take life personally: That which we observe objectively to be a state of animation (energy) exhibiting movement, warmth, and sound, we experience subjectively as the sequence of events, of actions and responses, that make up the narrative we also call life.

　　　The thread of that narrative is something we call consciousness. Consciousness is that that recognizes itself as the subject and recorder of the narrative. And the vehicle of that recognition and its record is the vehicle of sense: the capacity to recogneze sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.

　　　Sticking to layman's terms, I submit the following definition of consciousness: Consciousness is the engagement of the senses. To be conscious is to have a sense of self as something distinct from one's environment, and that distinction can only be made when the senses are functional and engaged.

　　　So the senses are clearly not the organs that feed them. I have a conscious capacity to see regardless of whether my eyes are open or closed, a conscious capacity to hear even in a state of silence, and so on. Behind the five physical senses, therefore, I can postulate the existence of an abstract sixth sense, the one that constitutes the capacity for sensual experience.

　　　Furthermore, since all of my experience, objective and subjective, is the result of this conscious capacity, I can define life in the subjective as that that animates this capacity for sensual experience.

　　　Lets take this line of reasoning one step further. Life, we have said, is not the physical functioning of the body but what causes the body to function; the objective evidence of the presence or lack of this something is the presence or lack of appropriate movement, warmth, and sound. Now we have noted that the subjective evidence of it is our ability to perceive and function as sentient, conscious beings. when it comes to describing this something, however, we have no other choice but to begin with the observation that it is imperceptible; we can neither see, hear, feel, smell, nor taste it;

　　　Life energy is:

　　　1. NON - MATERIAL ( as opposed to material )

　　　2. ABSTRACT ( as opposed to concrete )

　　　3. CAUSAL ( as opposed to being an effect )

　　　The world of experience occurs at the intersection of time and space, and the object of experience is what we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste; what we are addressing now, however, is the subject of experience, and since it takes a subject to produce an object, even though this non-substance is imperceptible, we must concede that it is nonetheless real.

　　　Energy and matter, we know from physics, are not separate but part of a single continuum. Matter can be solid, liquid, gas, or plasma depending upon its level of energy. Energy also exhibits different levels described in terms of speed, wavelength, and frequency; higher levels of energy move at greater speeds and have longer wavelengths occurring at higher frequencies. Light, including the entire electromagnetic spectrum, we are told, travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. This speed, we are also told, is both an absolute and a universal constant.

　　　I exercise layman's prerogative again: If 300,000 km/sec is a physical limit it holds no authority over the power of imagination. Using the precedent set by Einstein, we are capable, at least, of "thought experiments" that imagine speeds

　　　If matter and energy exist in continuum, then we can conceive of matter and energy existing within the context of a larger continuum that, to paraphrase Odano Sensei, includes physicality and absrraction. The physical world can then be described as the domain of slower, centripetal (oriented towards form) energy. It can also be described as the world of effect. The abstract world can be described as the domain of faster, centrifugal (oriented away from form) energy, causal domain.

　　　In this hypothesis, the constan, C, describes, not ultimate speed, but a state of relative rest (remember what happens to the world of Einstein's man traveling on a train at the speed of light). C is the yardstick against which physical time and space are measured.

　　　On the other side of the spectrum is a state of energy we will label C. This term describes the conceptual limits of speed as infinite distance-this would include all of space-traveled in an infinitesimal unit of time, the unit of one instant. Energy in this state is omnisciently creative, that that creates the dimensions of absolute time and infinite space, of which physical time and space are aspects.

　　　Odano further hypothesizes that, on this continuum between dead rest and infinite speed, the speed represents the borderline between the centripetal, physical domain of effects and the centrifugal, non-physical (i. e., abstract), domain of cause.

　　　Be that as it may, if we are to peg the phenomenon of life somewhere in the continuum

　　　What are the conceptual characteristics of energy in the abstract domain?

1. EXCEPTIONAL SPEED: Speed that approaches an absolute position of now-here within the time / space continuum.
2. MEAN TEMPERATURE: Temperature approaching a condition of being that is neither hot nor cold, an absolute standard against which hot and cold-including physical human body temperature-can be temperature gauged. Odano Sensei has labeled this mean temperature absolute 36°.
3. EXTRA-AUDITORY SOUND: A sound-state approaching absolute silence. Absolute silence is equal to absolute listening, the functionality of absolute intelligence that makes all other sound possible.

　　　This therd characteristic includes the ability to listen for meaning, a capacity that occurs, not in the absence of sound, but in the presence of that very special and select set of sounds that carry meaning: the sounds of language. This is a subject for another time.

　　　So far we have established that life is energy, and that this energy, in order to account for the capacities of sense and cognition, must be of an order over and above that of physical energy, an order that perceives because it is transparent and comprehends because it is comprehensive. We have surmised that this energy, just as it is the stuff of life, is also the stuff of time and space and the stuff of the abstract order. What remains to be considerde is life's directionality and the meaning of evolution. (To be continued.)