The encyclopedias define man as a “rational, moral and social being, mammal, biped, skilled in articulating language, which occupies the top of the zoological scale, an animal that is at the same time: body, soul, spirit; reason and emotion; physical and metaphysical; singular and collective; objectivity and subjectivity; conscious and unconscious...”
Man is a singular creature, a wonderful phenomenon, a great puzzle to be better deciphered. With his appearance, nature presents the biggest milestone of its evolution. A “discontinuity in the continuity” of Life, and the only creature with the ability of creativity at the highest level of his potentialities; he alone has faculties and gifts that make him unique among other creatures. Unlike non-humans, man is not just another element in the landscape in which he lives, but he is a conscious factor who transforms and invents. Consequently, the known Universe would be incomplete without man; the self-determining factor would be missing to complete the externally determined facts, because in man, the cosmic pyramid converges to the highest summit.
The most important moment of his evolutionary process took place when he acquired the conscience to discern between good and evil, the truth from imposture, right from wrong, continuing in the ascending march that will take him to the top of the angelic state, supposed that this particular man wants to achieve this process for in him prevails the most important element - free will, his centre of decisions.
The Greek philosopher Protagoras stated that man is the measure of all things, meaning that the individual human being, instead of a god or the immutable moral law, is a source that generates values, whereas Socrates said that man is the most direct object of philosophical concern.
During Stoicism (where virtue is the only good), and in Neoplatonism (of the belief in the superior quality of immaterial reality), there was a concern for the “dissolution of man in nature” to occur, revealing the great regard of these two conceptions of thought, with the admirable being that is the human being.
According to the Christian concept, “man transcends the world”, and Jesus, overcoming all the limits of knowledge, became the biotope of the integral man for he had dynamically developed in himself the potentialities inherited from the Cosmic Powers.
In the philosophical school of Descartes' rationalism, a radical break with the old world happens and a new method is created to reach knowledge, where it appears emphasizing the role of reason, which “considers reason as the main source and test of knowledge” or “any view that appeals to reason as a source of knowledge or justification.” For rationalists, through reason, fundamental propositions can be known that allow the truth to be discovered by deduction.
In idealistic spiritualism, “the human spirit has primacy in everything related to the world and life”, whereas for materialism, “the spirit is no more than a form of activity of matter which, at a certain stage of its evolution, from simple to more complex forms, has acquired consciousness...”
Jackson Mivart, the celebrated English naturalist, psychologically analyzing man, stated that “man differs from other animals due to the characteristics of abstraction, intellectual perception, self-consciousness, reflection, rational memory, judgment, synthesis and intellectual conclusion, of reasoning, intellectual intuition, higher emotions and feelings, rational language, true will power.” 1
Socrates and Plato understood that man was the result of an immortal being or spirit and non-being, that is, the union of matter with spirit, which together, provided man with the process of evolution.
Atomist philosophers reduced man to simple atomic particles which, when disarticulated, annihilated themselves through the biological phenomenon of death.
Philosophy, according to its various schools have sought to offer the man paths that lead him to continue in his attempts to interpret life and understand the man.
Psychology, which initially connected with the philosophical basis slowly broke free seeking to study the psyche, reaching importance for the understanding of man, his problems and his psychological challenges.
The diversity of tendencies in explaining the phenomenon of man proves the interest of scholars in the search for the liberation of the individual concerning the challenges and difficulties that afflict him.
The fourth major forces in Psychology, which emerged in The United States, is transpersonal, spiritual psychology, expanding the field of research beyond behavioural, psychoanalysis and humanist psychology, providing further clarification on the integral man, allowing the introduction of some teachings and experiences of oriental mystics, providing an opportunity for a spiritualistic vision of the human being in greater depth.
Spiritism, in turn, synthesizing several currents of psychological thought and studying man in his condition of eternal Spirit, presents the proposal of an idealistic philosophical behaviour, in the Immortalism (a doctrine of or belief in the soul's immortality), whose basic principle is the immortality, helping him in solving his problems, without violence and based on reincarnation, pointing out the best directions that man can follow.
According to Huberto Rohden, Brazilian philosopher, theologian and educator - the precursor of Universalist Spiritualism and proponent of Universal Philosophy that emphasizes self-knowledge and self-realization - man is an unprecedented and an original entity that never ceases to be a man. His evolutionary journey, from self-knowledge to self-realization is his supreme and unique goal - assuming this man wants to achieve that goal. Man can get closer and closer to his goal in evolving, and for that, he was given the chance to develop from his potentialities, a greater one, for, although complete, man is still a work in progress, an unfinished symphony with the opportunity to become a better version of himself; free to sow according to his free will, however, obliged to reap what he sowed. The choice is the responsibility of everyone.
It happens that even if the man reaches the excelsitude of wisdom, and this not only at the level of knowledge, but in the spiritual reason, of the mystical experience of the first commandment, with the ethical practice of the second, he will never be able to identify himself with his Creator, the Infinite, because between any finite (the Man), and the Infinite (the Creator), an infinite distance is interposed. Can a man make himself a better individual, in overcoming his dramas and dilemmas, in his morals and ethics, man can integrate himself in the Creator, but he cannot be dissolved in it.
This is the cosmic law that governs the harmony of the Universe.
Every puzzle can be unravelled from analysis, intuition, initiative, determination in its solution. In all sectors of human knowledge, countless puzzles have been solved. It is up to man to know himself, as in nature, which is revealed in all its splendour. As long as he remains a caricature, a person wearing different masks, entertaining the circus of mediocrities, remains stagnant or walking very slowly in the process of his evolution, running the risk of disintegrating into the ether. This is because the intellectualization of instinct made man a monster of greed and aggression, whose claws and teeth were perfected in the form of weapons of mass destruction, disgusting sexual debauchery and a hell of physical and mental illnesses, that no other non-human knows or experienced.
Self-knowledge... It is the key to unravelling this enigma, and the great final apotheosis of this discovery is self-realization, the greatest glory that a man can achieve.
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1)- After more than 120 years of this statement made by Mivart and in the middle of the world's largest computer communication network with its different programs and information, and its billions of users, this or that certainty can no longer be categorically stated. Prudence above all must be used, for what the human being knows, is just a drop of water in the ocean of its ignorance.
Recent scientific studies show that many non-human beings have the ability to show particular individual consciousness and a reason that is conditioned to their stage of existential evolution, for the soul of the Universe, is present in all beings of creation, therefore, these beings also exhibit mental states, feelings, emotions, intentional actions, intelligence, personality, spirit, free will, love, intuition, compassion, guilt, loss and possession, and territorial dominance.
According to quantum science experts, some can communicate with humans through visual messages of different characters, including complaining about their rights. They are our equals, sharing our same Universe but spread out in different aspects.
To mention an example, the brain functions of a Labrador retriever dog submitted to MRI presented the same and exact functions that part of the human brain has. As mammals, in general, evolve in the same way as humans, only presenting different physical characteristics, it is assumed that from a behavioural point of view, they have the same attributes.
Those who love and cultivate coexistence with animals, in particular with dogs - with which human beings have almost 15 thousand years of relationship - if looking in detail, it turns out that the various species are carriers of almost human qualities, as for prudence, patience, discipline, obedience, sensitivity, intelligence, improvisation, spirit of service, vigilance and thirst for affection, instilling the idea that the closer they are to human creatures, the more similar they become; gradually perfecting their instincts in the pursuit of intelligence in the same way humans aspire to someday reach a greater stage of evolution.
And many other non-humans, among all forms of life, have shown surprising particularities of universal intelligence living in their existences.
For readers interested in yet another surprising relationship between a human and a non-human, visit the Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher, winner in 2020, of the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
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