Ⅲ. The Features of Life

Ⅲ.  The Features of Life By Xuefeng The essence of life is a nonmaterial structure with Spiritual 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’ll look at the features of life from this point.There are eight features of life (in terms of life on Earth): it has forms, consciousness, spiritual nature, vitalityenergy, birth, metabolism, death and transformation. Those have the above eight features are life, otherwise are not.Let us make some examples. Human being is life. It has form: visible, touchable and occupying space.It has consciousness. It can respond to the change of the objective material world and form ideas through turning the perception of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind into thoughts and guides its own words and deeds. It has spiritual nature. Soul is only the foundation of the spiritual nature. All those things such as the people's yearning for the better future life, the reverence to the Greatest Creator, the worship of Gods and Buddha, the love to nature, and the selfless devotion to humanity all belong to the expressions of human’s spiritual nature. It has vitalityenergy: it can move, walk, sit, lie, work and create.It has birth: whether born from mother’s womb or being cloned out, it has a beginning. It has metabolism: can be seen from the process of birth, early youth, youth, middle-aged, old age. It has death: Nobody can live forever and everyone has the same ending -- death. It has transformation: According to the law of conservation of matter, the human body is absorbed with energy; . after After death, the flesh is absorbed by microorganism and converted into other energy; . from From the perspective of eternal spiritual body, the human’s spiritual entity is a nonmaterial information structure, and after death this structure enters into the horizontal time domain and begins a new round of lifecycle in another time-space. Human being is life. I don’t think people will disagree with that. So what about the livestock, wild animals, birds and fish? Needless to say they are all life and have consciousness. Some may have doubts concerning their spiritual nature and transformation. In fact, you can find that animals have spiritual nature if you pay some attention to observe. For examples, dogs and cats can "win attention"; parrot can "imitate the sound"; horses do not "incest"; dolphins can "play” with people. All those phenomena can prove the spiritual nature of animals. In addition, there are stories of animal showing gratitude, the "tricks" of the circus animals, and the different kinds of strange “showing excessive attentions” ways of animals at courtship, the "noble" self-sacrifice spirits showed by some animals to avoid racial extermination and so on, all indicate that animals have spiritual nature. As to say the transformation of animal life after death, it only appeared in the narration and description of some myth and fictions. Human still don’t understand from the perspective of science, which shows that science has not yet developed to this area, and human thoughts have not yet reached the level of such understanding. Why are there fewer and fewer animals and more and more people on earth now? In fact, most animals are transformed into human. Analyzing the habits of human beings we will find that some people are naturally cruel, because they are transformed from tigers, wolves and , leopards and other animals; some are very timid because they are transformed from small antelopes and deer; some are naturally stubborn, but loyal and reliable, as they are transformed from the cattle, sheep and other livestock; some are born cunning, because they are transformed from foxes; Some some are born clever, good at temporizing and flattering, because they are transformed from dogs ...Then, what about the insects and microorganisms? Of course, they are life, too. About the spiritual nature of insects, please read the Souvenirs Entonologiques written by the famous French entomologist Henri Fabre. This monograph of 10-volume, more than 400 million words is full of vivid and lively descriptions about the spiritual nature of many insects. In fact, if we observe carefully the dung beetle (beetles) making the dung into balls to carry "home", tacit teamwork of ants and bees and the movements and skills of flies mating, we will find that the insects are the creature with spiritual nature.As for the transformation of insects and microorganisms after death, it is something belongs to another space (world). Though insects and microorganisms are closely related to human beings, but the nature of their life is different from that of human being’s. There is no transformation between them, that is, human will not convert into insects or microorganisms, and vice versa.Now let’s see whether plants have spiritual nature or not. I will start by referring some of the instances from an article on the web: there is a kind of plant called " lagerstroemia indica " in Nan Hua Temple of Tiantai Mountain. Its leaves and branches will swing when touched by people. “Mimosa “” will draw back its leaves if someone touches it. There is also a plant called "dancing grass." Its little leaves will keep dancing once there is wind. ". "During the Anti-Japanese War, a large number of bamboos around China bloomed suicidally (the bamboo will die after blooming white flowers). Late 80s, with the occurrence of the Jianghuai flood in the spring, the local bamboo also flowered, which predicted the summer floods and proved the local proverb-Flood will be coming when bamboo blooming flowers '. "Clivia never blooms in the inharmonious family, and it will bloom in advance to announce the good news when there is celebration. "Oak will explode itself when the loggers come, and carrots will be frightened to quiver when growing in the fields when the rabbits are in sight. Through an amperemeter galvanometer we can find out that the tequila with a palm shape can react to the psychological feelings of the people, and even trace the owner's daily safety and danger, joy and anger. " If the light plants are planted in wet places, they will beare disgruntled and do not grow well. If ombrophyte are planted in sunny places, they will lose their temper, and even will "die". Some plants will release "poisonous gas"; "Evening Primrose" can make the patients with hypertension and heart disease feel uncomfortable; and some plants can make the people they dislike get allergic and fall ill. Grapevines planted next to pine tree will not bear fruit; while the ones planted next to elms will bear sour fruit. We found that plants would "cry" and release a kind of angry "bio-wave" when a branch was broken, and they would flourish and release a joyous "bio-wave" if we care about them, water, fertilize them, play music for them and talk with them. A kind of tree preferred by Giraffes giraffes can release toxic gas within a few minutes just just before giraffe begins to eat and forces the giraffe to give up eating. In myth novels plants, especially flowers, possess the humanlike spiritual nature, and they are even regarded as some fairies descending from the upper world. In short, plants have spiritual nature. They have languages, emotions, memory, thinking, induction, and all the features owned by people. Plants will protect us if we cherish them, otherwise they will punish us. Can plants be transformed into others after death? Yes. Non-flowering vegetation will be transformed into microorganisms after death; the flowering vegetation will be transformed into insects after death; the flowering and fruiting vegetation will be transformed into herbivores after death; the vegetation will not be transformed directly into meat-eating animals or people after death. All the flowers are developed from the anima of celestial world and that is the place they will directly return to, so they will not be transformed into human beings. Grass also has life, but its life, together with the insects and others, forms a life system, which does not belong to the Celestial Being and Buddha system of animals, flowers, trees and human beings. In other words, people will not be transformed into grass, and vice versa. Except human, microorganisms, insects, other animals, flowers and trees, others can not be regarded as life, but this does not mean that they have no spiritual nature; "Everything has spiritual nature" such as the mountains, water, the earth and stones especially gems all have their own spiritual nature. Metal has memory, and everything has memory. Although these substances own the most properties of life, they do not have thinking and consciousness and can not be transformed into other life after they disappear, so they do not belong to the life category. As for the invisible Celestial Being, Buddha, Gods, devil, ghost, etc. who belong to the spiritual world, they can be seen as life when they appear with physical forms. Without the physical form, they can only be called as spirit, which is why the God-Jesus, Buddha-Sakyamuni, Celestial Being-Lao Tzu appeared before the common people with a human identity. The people going to the thousand-year world or ten-thousand-year world after death are not spirit but life because they will remain in their physical forms; in the case of the people becoming Buddha after death, they own the power to change their forms, so they can exist in the Elysium world in the spirit form or miraculously transformed into any physical forms, free and omnipotent. In short, we shouldwill distinguish the life and non-life with the eight features. Those which can meet the eight features are life, and not otherwise. 2010-12-1 13:54 Upload Download attachment (180 KB)