Jaime Larraín - The Three Laws of Life

Index

Foreword

The Third Law

We All Think

Memory

From non-living matter to life

Evolutionary purpose through the MNM Theory

ECO Worldview

Thinking and Evolution

Daily Life

Epilogue

The Zeroth Law

THE THREE LAWS OF LIFE

About the Third Law that was missing

© Jaime Larraín Ayuso, 2022

RPI 2022-A-145

ISBN epub: 978-956-61-3139-7

Translation into English by Denise Griffith

griffith.denise.03@gmail.com

Digital Design: ebooks Patagonia

www.ebookspatagonia.com info@ebookspatagonia.com

Foreword

I’ve been asked the same question several times: What is the book that has had the most impact in your life? And the answer is always the same: The Human Phenomenon by Teilhard de Chardin. I remember clearly that inner tumble when reading that book amid the whirlwind of my 18 years. All my friends deemed it a dense book, but it made my soul lighter, it gave me wings to leap into the void without fearing the fall. Although in that moment I was sailing to the depth of Catholicism, I had given up the episcopal seminary when my promising career as a priest was just starting, despite my studies on Theology at the Bellarmino center and the recent Vatican II which promised change and inclusion; my fascination for the French Jesuit book had nothing to do with that. I was astonished by his effort to unify science and religion, issue that for those times was almost heretical and awakened something in me that flourished 50 years later, the compulsive need to integrate and find a theory of Everything that could answer the greatest questions of science, philosophy and theology. It was not until 2014 that the integration occurred. The idea of the Omega Point and the Noosphere had been preying on my subconscious mind but I had forgotten, and it’s not a coincidence, the idea of the Christosphere as a point of confluence with Consciousness, it simply did not dwell in me and what is more, I thought that the lucidity of Chardin had lost its shine when forcing his theory by trying to make it culminate in his religious beliefs. This makes sense for a Jesuit who was trying to overcome the exile that the Vatican had infringed on him for opposing the dogma.

I must admit my fascination with processes comes from my background as architect, which makes me understand life as a permanent flow, a construction, evolving towards an unknown destiny. Undoubtedly, in this range, Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory seemed just right, though it always appeared to me loaded with the materialistic excess that prevailed at the moment of its publication. Years later, I found myself closer to Wallace, the almost unknown author of the Evolutionary Theory that had dared to defy the scientific world, incorporating the spiritual variable. Wallace may have laid the foundation for Teilhard de Chardin.

Before the consolidation of my theory MNM, my mind worked unintentionally searching for the origin of things, of phenomena, the causes, the social and political processes as if it was there where I could find the answers that were constantly stabbing me. From that obsession emerged the discovery concerning the origin of personality later displayed on the ECO Model as a process that could be applied to mitigate human suffering opposing, dissenting with all due respect, Buddha's explanation about attachment. Going against the tide, as I had with Catholicism, led me to postulate that the Causa Finalis of suffering is Fear, idea that was later portrayed in the book The Fear Disease (Amazon, 2021).

In my eagerness to integrate, I went along Ken Wilber's quadrants, travelled around the Spiral Dynamics Integral and avoided falling into the web of New Age. Transpersonal psychology emerged as an integration of spirituality into the world of psyche, and I found myself facing a topic I had been dodging for decades, as a consequence of the rebuff which I had developed from watching the Vatican and most religions in general. Only Buddhism, as a practice that is not referred to a divinity, seemed honest and devoid of manipulation and control through fear, sin or submission to a supposed divine scheme. It was inevitable and I had to face the topic of Creation, not from that biblical myth but through science, without involving dogmas.

Oddly enough, the approach of the scientists Varela and Maturana, who had been in my memory bank as a great discovery in the field of biology, suddenly gained substance when I related that to Teilhard de Chardin's approach. Varela and Maturana had discovered something that nowadays seems obvious: They discovered that all organisms tend to self-reproduce and maintain and take care of that process. At the same time, and from another dimension of thought, Teilhard de Chardin had already told us in The Human Phenomenon that all living organisms tend to become complex enough to acquire a certain level of consciousness of themselves. Eureka, in both cases we were speaking about Evolution, and therefore involving a guideline pointing to the future. Processes, evolution, which were perfectly proved by science. The theory of Autopoiesis by Varela-Maturana although genius, was restricted to the biological sphere. However, Teilhard's approach, which already integrates biology and psychology, speaks about Consciousness, and designs a Total Consciousness concerning Christ's figure, the Omega Point, the end of evolution. Undoubtedly, proposing Christ as the Omega Point, Teilhard de Chardin tries to integrate Theology as well. At these stages of lucubration, to follow the scientific trail, I tried to leave out of the analysis the belief in a Christ, understanding that Consciousness is not only a spiritual topic but also a scientific one, as proven by neuroscience.

Recapitulating: organisms self-reproduce (autopoiesis): they grow complex until reaching consciousness, but we were missing the last question: what's the purpose of this all?

This book is about that Evolutionary Purpose and, therefore the of the fate of our species and may help us to reformat our conception of what it is to be a Human Being. In this book, you'll find the integration of the proposals by the Varela-Maturana, Teilhard de Chardin along with mine (The MNM Purpose, Amazon, 2014), in the timeline, the evolution. I called them the Three Laws of Life that, obviously, imply an intentionality or, in other words, a Creator.

Thanks to that book, The Human Phenomenon, which in my 18s fueled my curiosity and prevented me from the fears that haunt those who delegate thinking to specialists.