All living beings are made up of cells, animated by that conscious life force mentioned previously.
Spirit[16] is the living essence of what everyone knows as life.
Additionally, all members of the vegetable kingdom are alive; many activities similar the ones briefly mentioned in the chapter The Human Being ⇒ are found within plant cells, while other activities are specific to the life of the plant in question: amazing processes of growth and survival coded into their DNA dictate the life and behaviour of the various cells.
Vegetables also get sick and can heal. There are even studies that have shown that plants experience what we define as pain and suffer due to environmental changes.
No one would dare to claim that vegetables are not alive; this should be a point of reflection for some vegetarians and vegans.
But what is Spirit?
It is virtually impossible to clearly and accurately interpret the structure of Spirit in the Unknown Dimensions of Virtual Reality, that is in the dimensions beyond Our Virtual Reality (see chapter Virtual Reality from Our Point of View ⇒). The impossibility of interpreting this is once again down to our own limitations. However, it is possible to provide simplified ideas of what Spirit is and what it does.
Spirit is a spiritual entity that manifests itself in Our Virtual Reality as a vital element of every living species.
The consciousness of life within cells is the manifestation of Spirit.
Without Spirit, all living beings would simply be inert accumulations of organic material.
This means that neither we humans nor any other form of living being, would really make sense without Spirit.
Note: The reader is invited to review the Manifestations of Entities with Other Dimensions ⇒.
As mentioned, the manifestation of Spirit in Our Virtual Reality is the conscious energy that makes all microscopic activities within the cells of living beings possible. In other words, all the various conscious activities that take place in a physiological system are brought to life by Spirit.
But not only that.
The vital essence within living beings is not the only manifestation of Spirit.
Spirit also manifests itself at the psychic level. Those mental activities that psychologists call the unconscious mind are largely manifestations of Spirit at the mental/psychic level. Spirit also manifests itself by generating some of the mental activities included in the definition of the subconscious.
Outside of the mental activities relating to conscious, the most cognitively elevated mental activities generated by manifestations of Spirit, such as emotions and instincts, are defined in psychology as the unconscious, while less cognitively elevated mental activities generated by manifestations of Spirit are defined in psychology as the subconscious, that is, activities which automatically or semi-automatically regulate and synchronise physical and physiological activities.
From the perspective of the average individual, the mental manifestation of Spirit contributes to restlessness and generates confusing and disconnected thoughts; those thoughts that yogis seek to calm with traditional meditation.
In fact, those innumerable, seemingly confusing thoughts have a very precise meaning and utility: they stimulate thought that is then considered by the rational part of our mind (the manifestation of an entity that we will call Mens).
Grand ideas, strokes of genius, and big discoveries all have origins in these seemingly confusing thoughts.
That is, the source of so-called “strokes of genius” is Spirit; individuals who tend to have a greater number of “strokes of genius” are not more intelligent individuals, but rather possess a more developed Spirit component, a greater intuitive ability to grasp the archetypal meaning of received information, and a mind that is open to accepting new information.
In an altered, or non-ordinary state of consciousness, it is possible to give greater voice to Spirit, allowing for its abilities to be extended by enabling it to access and pass on information to which it does not have regular access (see paragraph Thought, States of Consciousness, and Archetypes ⇒).
Spirit is not the generating source (of the archetypes) of “strokes of genius”.
As mentioned, Spirit has the potential to access, tap into, and pass on certain information residing in Extramental Dimensions when the individual is in a given altered state of consciousness.
To gain an idea of the source of "strokes of genius", that is, their primordial origin which is utilised by Spirit in an altered state of consciousness, it is necessary to take a closer look at what Spirit is.
Many ancestral cultures had, and some retain, belief in the concept that nature on our planet possesses a certain spiritual structure. Some cultures call this spiritual structure Gaia, others the Great Spirit, or Pachamama, or Madre Selva. The common concept is that of a spiritual component that governs the perfect balance of nature on Planet Earth.
As was often the case, the ancients, with socio-cultural structure simpler than today's, had an ordinary state of consciousness very different from our present one; this made them more receptive to the archetypal messages that surrounded them in their ordinary states of consciousness, but above all in their non-ordinary states of consciousness.
The ancients possessed insights stemming from archetypal information, which gave rise to somewhat correct concepts; these concepts were never subjected to further study, research, or investigation, thus remaining freely interpretable. These free interpretations, containing little actual knowledge, gave rise to far-fetched beliefs, where the correct part of the initial concepts has become blurred. When such beliefs were then paired with other senseless beliefs, they became the basis of religious beliefs and superstitious rituals.
Today, intellectual progress and our thirst for knowledge, combined with the strong base of established functional logic rooted within us, would stimulate us to seek answers to mysterious concepts, if we had easy access to new archetypal information as the ancients had. Unfortunately, however, our minds are perpetually clouded.
A popular Italian saying goes, - he who has teeth has no bread, and vice versa -.
Nowadays we live in a society that constantly controls our minds, and most people do not even realise it (chapter on Socio-religious System ⇒). Our developed minds are perpetually clouded and we cannot pay attention to the archetypal messages that surround us. Science is glorified despite it flaunts scepticism for what it does not understand, and it reduces ancestral knowledge a priori to useless superstitions when it is inconvenient (chapter on Science ⇒).
Exactly as the ancients perceived, there is a link between us and nature, or better, between us and any other living being which, as every living being, is endowed with a Spirit component.
Every form of life on earth, whether from the animal kingdom or the plant kingdom, has a Spirit component that, as we have seen, manifests itself in Our Virtual Reality (even if it does not possess spatial components) and also in other dimensions.
In Our Virtual Reality, with our five senses, we perceive other forms of life as separate entities from ours: we perceive each living as individual entity separate from all the others.
In other dimensions, some Spirit's components of all living beings are (indirectly) connected to each other, generating a kind of “spiritual network”.
Humans have an Individual Consciousness and, when analysed as part of a group, have a collective consciousness; lions have a consciousness of their own and, when analysed as pride, have a collective consciousness; ants have a consciousness of their own and, when analysed as part of an ant colony, have a collective consciousness; a certain type of tree has its own consciousness and, when analysed as part of the forest, has a collective consciousness. Even the various Spirit each have their own consciousness and, when analysed in the "spiritual network", they have a group consciousness.
It is exactly this group consciousness of the "spiritual network" of Spirit that gives rise to what the ancients called Pachamama in Andean cultures, Madre Selva in the cultures of the Amazon, Great Spirit in the American Indian cultures of North America, and so on. In this text we will identify Gaya as this "spiritual network" of Spirit, recalling the name of the mother goddess of all lives in Greek mythology.
I like to give a figurative example, as crude as it is, of Gaya. The following example does NOT match reality, which from the writer's perspective is indescribable in an ordinary state of consciousness, but provides a simple figurative example:
we want to see Gaya as a huge tree, representing the collective consciousness of the “spiritual network” of all the Spirit of the planet Earth. Such an enormous tree has an infinity of leaves. Each leaf represents the consciousness of a Spirit.
With a little wind, each leaf comes slightly into contact with the leaves close to it, and this represents the physical contact of the five senses that a living being can have with another living being.
Outside any physical contact, each of the leaves is connected and is potentially in communication with all other leaves through the sap of the tree.
When a life ends the arc of its existence, the leaf detaches from the enormous tree, falls close to the tree itself, biodegrades, and is absorbed into the ground; from the ground, the enormous tree absorbs what remains of the leaf: the consciousness of Spirit is always a part of Gaya, both when the living being is alive (the leaf on the branch), and when the living being is dead.
From the point of view of Spirit, death is the state in which Spirit no longer manifests itself at the cellular or intellectual level, and nothing more.
The details of what happens to Spirit's consciousness of after death, beyond the previous figurative example, is still a subject of research.
Nevertheless, there is nothing dramatic in the cessation of the existence of Spirit: a person dies, some manifestations of Spirit cease to function, but the consciousness of Spirit was and always remains part of Gaya.
At all time, an innumerable number of living beings whose Spirit is a constituent part of Gaya are born and die. Gaya is seen as a unique element, the various consciousnesses of Spirit are a part of it, and the innumerable succession of deaths and births of living beings are the fundamental dynamics of Gaya.
The true shamans of the Amazon[17] state that their knowledge of how to use plants for healing purposes, were not passed down orally, but was acquired during shamanic rituals through “spirits of master plants”.
Sceptics have always mocked this kind of statement, despite never being able to provide a valid explanation for how shamans knew how to prepare and use specific medicines obtained with certain combinations of plants. Many sceptics claim that shamans have experimented over the course of millennia to find the right concoctions... However, if one uses a bit of logic and common sense, they will understand that this statement is nonsense: in the Amazon rainforest, there are roughly 40,000 types of plants[18], some of them poisonous: combining only two plants gives rise to 1,600,000,000 possible combinations, some of which are lethal; therefore, the thesis that shamans have learned through experimentation has no basis in reality, also because it would take about 135 years simply to count up to this number[19].
Yet despite all this scepticism, pharmaceutical companies and cosmetic companies have always profited from precious shamanic plant knowledge (further detail in annotation The Mystery of the Origin of Yage ⇒).
Some shamanic cultures speak of a "master plant", a plant with the ability to communicate, teach, and transmit information.
As mentioned above, each Spirit possesses its own consciousness. A so-called "master plant" is a plant that possesses Spirit with elevated consciousness.
The "master plant" par excellence of the Shipibo shamans is the Ayahuasca plant. A true shaman has the ability to bring an individual into an altered state of consciousness in which the individual can receive guidance from a master plant. While a bogus shaman in the Amazon rainforest, known by a term that is not sufficiently negative, ayahuasquero (read 'aiawaskero', one who administers ayahuasca), can only produce a hallucinogenic journey devoid of teachings.
Seeking to find a logical explanation to shamans' statements regarding the origins of their knowledge, Jeremy Narby suggests[20] the idea that communication between individuals and plants may take place through an exchange of biophotons released and received by cells (see annotation on The Relativity of the Near-death of Mens ⇒).
Just as for the brain, where the detection of electromagnetic activities in cerebral areas is not an indication of the processing of memory by the brain, but rather is a consequence of access to Extramental Dimensions, the biophotons emitted and received by cells are not the same messages that are exchanged between different Spirit, but rather are the manifestation in Our Virtual Reality of the activities of the Spirit that occur in other dimensions.
We have said that all Spirit are indirectly connected to one other through Gaya.
In the Holonomic Brain chapter (⇒) and the annotation on Storing Memories in Extramental Dimensions (⇒) it is hypothesised that the Extramental Dimensions containing memories and knowledge could be holography in atemporal dimensions. Since this idea is neither falsifiable nor demonstrable, we cannot know the form in which Universal Knowledge is stored, housed, and written.
Nevertheless, since Universal Knowledge is theoretically accessible by all Spirit (and Gaya), it can be assumed that the Extramental Dimensions have "compatible" dimensions with those in which Gaya resides. Indeed, a Spirit with high individual awareness can access and draw information from the Universal Knowledge.
The explanation for the origin of shamanic knowledge is, then, an obvious consequence of the above, taking into account the socio-cultural structure of a true shaman which provides him with an ordinary state of consciousness different from that of an ordinary individual, as well as his familiarity with the management of non-ordinary states of consciousness, during which he can indirectly access the Universal Knowledge.
In an ordinary individual, the confusional succession of ideas that emerges from the unconscious part of the mind could be replaced by extremely useful information yet unknown to humanity, were it the will of Spirit with elevated consciousness, if such a Spirit's individual were in a psychophysical state to permit this.
Spirit, unlike Soul, cannot access large amounts of energy; on the contrary, in critical conditions, it can barely provide enough energy for our body to survive.
Ascetic practices such as yoga or martial arts, meditation, a healthy diet (and cosmetic routine), conscious sexual activity, that is, all of the healthy habits recommended for your Anandayana, are practices that help Spirit to rebalance energetically.
Spirit, like every individual, can increase its consciousness by living new experiences. Experiences of altered states of consciousness' are an excellent way for a Spirit to develop its own consciousness.
As Spirit has limited access to energy and generally does not possess an elevated own consciousness (in the case of the majority of Spirit), Spirit is incapable of effecting major change within Virtual Reality.
As mentioned, the consciousness of life at the cellular level is a manifestation of Spirit in Our Virtual Reality. Spirit can have spikes and crashes in energy. The effects of these spikes and crashes are reflected in our bodies and health.
When Spirit is in poor, disturbed, or stressed condition, for any reason, its energy levels fall. Its manifestation also has repercussions of various kinds in Our Virtual Reality both at the physical (lowering of the immune system, hormonal dysfunction, etc.) and the psychological (difficulty concentrating, mental fatigue, lack of lucidity, etc.) level.
Conversely, a sudden increase in Spirit energy could establish a period of excellent health and physical condition, even so far as inexplicable recovery from serious illness.
“...
While chatting with J. and R. and the son, M., this afternoon, I asked J. how curandero[21] works. He answered: - there are diseases of the body that require doctors, there are diseases of the psyche that require psychologists; we shamans work only on the espiritu[22], although we sometimes also act as doctors... -
...”
A true shaman is able to cure a patient by energetically rehabilitating their Spirit.
The causes of Spirit energy highs and lows are manifold: from the individual's harmful lifestyle, including (but not only) prolonged periods of exposure to stress or absent or negative spiritual conduct, up to constant poisoning of the body with poor dietary choices and the use of toxic beauty products/pharmaceuticals.
This means that if we mistreat our bodies, Spirit suffers energetically, resulting in physical problems.
Our physical health is a cause and effect of the health of our spiritual part, Spirit.
Spirit requires spiritual and physical care so that its manifestation as our body's vital energy remains in good condition.
If we wish to speak of spirituality as the cult of Spirit's wellbeing, above all it is important not to neglect appropriate physical activity and a healthy lifestyle.
Those who neglect or deny their own bodies love and care are not following a complete spiritual path.
Without caring for one's own physique, there can be no complete spiritual treatment; likewise, to properly care for one's physique, one cannot neglect the spiritual aspect.
It is difficult to imagine a serene, happy person who is in worse physical condition than usual. This means that a spiritual journey in search of serenity cannot exclude attention to one's physical and psychological wellbeing.
The foundation for building one's own Anandayana lies in understanding the spiritual importance of maintaining a physically healthy lifestyle.