1 result for (book:notp AND session:796 AND stemmed:live)
[... 14 paragraphs ...]
This does not mean that those people are committing suicide in the same way that a person does who takes his life — but that in a unique psychological manipulation they no longer hold the same claim to life as they had before. They “throw their lives to the Fates,” so to speak, saying not as they did before: “I will live,” but: “I will live or die as the Fates decide.”
They may use other terms than Fate, of course, but the vital, personal, direct, affirmative intent to live is not there. They are headed for another reality, and ready for it.
[... 8 paragraphs ...]
First of all, there are verbal difficulties having to do with the definition of life. It appears that there is living matter and nonliving matter, leading to such questions as: “How does nonliving matter become living?”
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
There is no such thing, in your terms, as nonliving matter. There is simply a point that you recognize as having the characteristics that you have ascribed to life, or living conditions — a point that meets the requirements that you have arbitrarily set.
This makes it highly difficult in a discussion, however, for there is no particular point at which life was inserted into nonliving matter. There is no point at which consciousness emerged. Consciousness is within the tiniest particle, whatever its life conditions seem to be, or however it might seem to lack those conditions you call living.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
There were fully developed men — that is, of full intellect, emotion, and will — living at the same time, in your terms, as those creatures supposed to be man’s evolutionary ancestors. Species have come and gone of which you have no knowledge. There are parallel developments. That is, there were “apes” who attained their own “civilizations,” for example. They used tools. They were not men-to-be, nor did they evolve into men.
It is erroneous to say that they did not develop, or that their progress was stunted, for it was not. Their reality explored the ramifications of animalhood in a completely different fashion. Their development paralleled man’s in many respects, in that they lived simultaneously upon the earth, and shared the environment.
[... 20 paragraphs ...]