What is Life? Life comes from life. Life needs and relates to life. Life flows into life. Life flows out of life. Life makes shapes and forms which determine how these processes will come about. Life is simple and complex. Sometimes the greatest simplicity is effected by complex means; sometimes the greatest complexity is effected by simple means.
Life is not static, but active. Life needs energy in order to live. The energy is used to grow and sustain itself, to move with, and to sense or know. Life is born, lives, and dies on the individual level and on the species level, creating developmental rhythms. Life on the planet level seems constantly to articulate itself toward greater and more complex action, sensing, and knowing, with a rhythm that includes being born and developing itself but not yet the process of dying. Yet surely other planets, in other solar systems, have given birth to life, have seen it flourish, and then die.
The stages of an individual life include being born, the establishment and clarification of modes of relationship to that from which it is born and to other like-born things; development of methods by which one takes energy from other life systems; separation from and clarification in relation to other life systems; development of the capacity to produce energy and life; relating to those life systems one produces; separation from the life one produces; death and decay.
Consider a tree. It is born as a seed. As a seed it is made up of material of the parent tree and is indeed literally part of the parent tree. At some point in its development the seed is disengaged from the parent tree and becomes itself a total separate entity. The seed then creates an energy relationship with the soil it falls in and the sun and water which, it is to be hoped, will be present. Roots in the ground take in the energy of soil nutrients, and leaves above ground take in the energy of the sun. Both these energies are applied to the process of becoming a seedling and then a sapling.
In effect the plant is in relationship with other species of plant which chemically dictate what shall and what shall not grow in the soil near where they are. The chemistry of the soil may be such that the leaves of other species or even its own species might inhibit it from growing.
Gravity plays a part in the perpendicularity of the trunk and the relationship of the cells to one another. The tree takes in energy and converts it into leaves, chemicals, and wood. At some point in its growth the young tree begins to produce materials for seed, and those seeds in turn fall away and produce other young trees. Eventually the young tree grows large, if all goes well, and its leaves and shadow dictate to all vegetation in the near vicinity how much it can grow.
After years of seed production, the tree, having accumulated the scars of time and aging, is no longer able to process the energy of the sun and the earth, and its living system halts. Nonetheless its energy passes to other forms of life, possibly as compost or fire, but no longer in an interchanging and stable way. This dying, decaying energy process demands that it no longer be a tree but be reduced to its less complex elements. Unless transplanted, it is still in the same place in which it took root, and, although having gone through several stages, it is still a tree of its species. When its active participation in the energy-transference process ends, it loses its complex and interactive structure as well as its store of energy and control of its processes; it is then consumed in some way by the environment or by other living systems.
Somehow life manages an ecological balance of inner energies and outer energies that permits a dynamic stability during the lifetime of a living organism. A single life does not and cannot live in a vacuum. Other life entities of similar and different form are necessary for the continuity of the individual life. All life forms must keep the bulk of their energy system within and enclosed, and must have sensory and control mechanisms attached to them which manage the energy flow appropriately. The energy of the sun does not enter the tree just anywhere on the surface of the tree but specifically on the surface of its leaves. The sun, so to speak, bounces off the trunk and the branches and the twigs. The rain and dissolved nutrients of the soil do not enter the tree through the trunk or the leaves but are literally shed by all parts of the tree except its root system which is prepared to process them.
The living processes of the tree and of all life are designed with specific functions, with little interchangeability. The tree is also so structured as to function within a certain quantitative range of sunlight and water supply. Should there be too much of either, the organization of the tree would break down. Each species of tree being nicely adapted to its climate belt, this rarely happens except for the interventions of man or dramatic changes in the environment such as floods, droughts, etc.
It is a function of life to produce more life and, over long periods of time, more adaptable and more conscious life. Sometimes the life force struggles to maintain itself and sometimes it seems to be engrossed in a dance of itself and within itself for no other reason than to dance the dance of living things. Life is a living possibility which seems to be its own reason for existence. Were we to have choice as infants, knowing the pain as well as the joys of life, knowing what was to be lived through before inevitable death, would we choose to be born? The quality of the life envisaged would tend to influence the answer.
On Being Human
We have the curious privilege of being both alive and human. Human life is very different from other forms of life in that we have so much more consciousness and so much more choice available to us than have other forms. Not that our lives consist entirely of consciousness and choice, but that the quality of our lives can be considerably affected and altered by the knowing and choosing that we do.
Consciousness and choice are not thrust on us the instant we emerge from the womb. Is a baby conscious? Does it make choices? Certainly, but not to the extent that an adult does. Indeed that is one of the problems of becoming an adult, learning the range and limits of those abilities, as well as all the other capabilities a human inherits.
A tree is not very flexible. It cannot move, it is not conscious, it does not seem to make any choices, yet it lives its treeness successfully. Humans are so flexible in comparison. We can move, can know, can choose, can adapt. We are not frozen to our environment nor to our innate structure. However we cannot ignore the fact that we do have an innate structure that has been passed down to us from the beginning of time. This structure, though we are not conscious of it (or possibly even it of us), knows and recognizes life as all life forms know and recognize life, and stubbornly clings to its patterns of survival. I do not believe that we can become conscious of all that we are and be able to choose all we can be or will be: but we must come to terms with those forces and powers within us, over which we will never have control, in order to make of the total of ourselves a harmonious entity. Such an entity fits in with all the natural world of unconscious, partly conscious, and wholly conscious life that includes our human adaptability and learning capacities. The humanness should and can be used to enhance and focus what is native to us and all life. Humanness is not against nature nor above nature, but is an outgrowth of nature. Like a powerful focusing lens, our human capacities should intensify life and bring it to its highest clarity, consciousness, and innate capacity for fulfillment.
Being human is more than just being alive. Each leaf of a tree is part of a pattern that one can discern when one looks at a tree from a distance. The leaf, though, does not "know" it is part of a pattern and does not "know" the shape of the tree nor choose to be part of it. The individual leaf, as well as the individual tree, has an identity, a place, and a function without knowing it. A human has the capacity to know his position relative to other humans and the ability to alter it, deny it, shape it in such a way as to enhance the group or himself, ignore it, or accept it.
When a child is born to a family it is analogous to a leaf being born to a branch. By virtue of its position within the family, certain behaviors will be expected of it, certain responsibilities will be thrust upon it, certain events will assert themselves in relation to it. In short, the power of external demands and events will be quite strong in pressuring it to a predestined place, much as the leaf is predestined by its inner nature and force of external nature to take its unconscious place. How much can man, by the use and force of his ability to know and choose, safely--for himself and for his immediate family and the family of man--alter his position in the family? How radically can he change and still maintain his sanity and capacity to have pleasure and to function?
If knowing and choosing were considered God's right and not man's right, could man become a full human being by our definition? Certainly some cultures restrict knowing. Perhaps not all knowing but some knowing is seen as God's province and other knowing as man's. Consider the fate of Adam and Eve who learned to know good and evil. In the Biblical myth they were banished literally from the world of earthly and unconscious pleasure. Is the lesson here that it is better not to know and stay happy or that it is all right to know but that you will lose your capacity for pleasure and joy if you do? Do knowing and choosing inevitably lead to suffering and severance from the natural world of beauty and bliss? Does knowing separate man from nature or is his knowing a tool of nature to improve on itself? Is the point of education and therapy to create and develop suffering, intelligent stoics--incapable of spontaneity and joy?
Clearly, educators and therapists should have a world view and frame of reference within which their work can be understood. What are the goals of therapy and education--therapy to heal the sick human and bring him back to life and humanness? Education to lead the normal human to the fulfillment of his life and humanness? But what do we mean by life and humanness? I will attempt to define, to the best of my ability, what I mean by those terms as well as the terms therapy and education. I hope to present a unified theory and approach in the use of psychomotor techniques for educational and therapeutic ends that will be consistent with a world view of man's life and his humanness that would seem to permit him the greatest knowing, choosing, sensing, feeling, thinking, acting, and joy that he is capable of, while enhancing the lives of those around him and in the rest of the world.
