by John Traveler

Created on: April 06, 2010

Whether you are one who believes life is a gift from God, or one who in more realistic terms sees life as a manifestation of natural chemical entropy, we speculate all would be in agreement with the notion life is the rarest and most incredible thing that has ever happened in the universe. Life, and what it is or is not, is also the most pondered enigma humanity has ever devoted thoughtful consideration to. And it is our own life, our own existence, the relevance of the existential being that is paramount in our contemplations. It would seem, that life, at least in the human expression of its essence, tends towards egocentrism.

While life's enigma has been a topic of discussion among humans well back into pre-historic times, the ancient Greek philosophers are considered the first to ever approach and analytical understanding of it, if only because they were the first to leave written record of their thoughtful product. They were the first to truly consider life in terms of a status of dualism, that of a physical and spiritual presence in the same being. Indeed, it is in the Homeric works, the Iliad and the Odyssey we find first mention of the human soul, and essence thought then and now to be life's intangible force manifest within the physical form. The Presocratic Pythagoreans refined this dualist idea, suggesting that there were but two essences in the universe, the “limited” including everything that is finite and physical, and the “unlimited” representative of the intangible and infinite.  But the Pythagoreans didn’t stop here, they went on to define a transcendental process they called “Gnosis,” through which the limited and unlimited realms could become unified and eternal, and that such transcendence could be achieved on an individual basis.

In a time when the polytheistic pantheon of Greek gods reined supreme as represented in physical shrine, the Pythagorean’s and their concept of a spiritual essence flew in the face of traditional belief. Needless to say, the Pythagoreans were persecuted, imprisoned, exiled, and finally exterminated for their radical notions. As witnessed over and over in the historical record, human lives can be sacrificed in attempt to extinguish an ideology, but the seeds of thought once planted have a tendency to sprout again. And so it was, only a generation after the Pythagorean colony at Croton was annihilated, the ideas they forged would be considered again.

It is at this

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>