The True Origin of the Human Being

Discovered by Baruch Spinoza. The real origin of the human being is not what you were told.

Chapter 1. The fairy tale that told you defines.

Have you ever looked at yourself mirror and you have wondered what I really am and where do I come from? The answer that most of us carry recorded in the subconscious mind is an ancient history, a story of a perfect garden, a rib, a talking serpent and a god that molds clay with his own hands. We have been told that we are the pinnacle of creation, made in the image and likeness of a heavenly king, but fallen into disgrace for an ancient sin. We feel special, but at the same time we feel guilty and separated from the rest of the universe.

But what if I told you that story is not the truth of your origin, it is just a political fraud designed to keep you obedient? What if the true origin of the human being is something much vast, stranger and more majestic than being a simple clay figurine that became life?

Baruk Spinoza, the philosopher who was cursed by the synagogues and feared through the churches, dared to rewrite the history of our Genesis. He discovered that humanity has been living under a collective hallucination, the belief that we are one exception to the rules of the universe. Spinoza reveals that we were not created in a magical moment from the past by an architect who was bored. Our origin is not a historical event, it is an eternal process. And the truth is that what Spinoza unearthed completely changes your place in the cosmos. You are no longer a subject of a distant kingdom, you are something much more intimate and powerful.

 You will discover why the story of Adam and Eva is actually a secret code about the functioning of your mind. The answer will give you a dignity that no religion can offer you. But to get to that revelation, first we have to destroy the lie most arrogant of humanity, the belief that the universe rotates around us.

Chapter 2. The illusion of empire.

To understand your true origin, you must first forget everything you have been taught about being special. Religion and culture have sold you the idea that human beings are a unique creature separate from the nature. We believe that animals, rocks and stars follow physical laws, but that we, with our soul and our free will, float above those laws. We see ourselves as tourists in nature or like its owners. Espinoza calls this arrogance the illusion of empire within the empire. He writes, "Most believe that man in nature is like a state within another state. They believe that man disturbs the order of life nature rather than following it. We believe that we were created by a God which designed us specifically to rule the earth." But Espinoza destroy this with cold logic. You are not an exception, your origin is the same as the origin of a worm, a galaxy or a particle of dust. You are a way of nature. You are made of the same substance and you follow the same rules.

If a triangle could talk, it would say that God is eminently triangular. If a circle speak, it would say that the divine nature is circular. We humans say that God is human and that he made us for a special purpose. But your origin is not an act of an special intelligent design. Your origin is necessity. You emerged from the universe of the same way that a wave arises from the ocean, not because the ocean decided create a special wave, but because the pressures, currents and laws of physics made inevitable that a wave existed at that time. We were not put here, we sprang from here. This idea may seem depressing at first, “I’m not special, I'm just a biological accident”. But Spinoza would tell you: “you are not an accident, you are something much more important, you are necessary”. In a universe where everything happens by divine necessity, the fact that you exist means that the universe can not be complete without you, you are not an ornament, you are a structural piece of the reality. But if we are simply part of nature, why do we feel so different? Why do we feel that we have fallen from a higher state? This is where the story comes in, the famous story of the garden of Eden. Spinoza takes this myth and turns it completely around. It is not a story about the past, it is a story about your mind right now.

Chapter 3. The truth about Adam and Eve, the awakening, not the fall.

If our origin is nature itself, where does the story come from that we were expelled from paradise? why we feel that original guilt, that feeling that something is wrong with us? Spinoza in his analysis of the Scriptures does something revolutionary, read Genesis not as history, but as political psychology. The story tells us that the first man, Adam, lived in a paradise in blissful ignorance and God forbade him to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam disobeyed, ate and was punished with death and suffering. We are told that this was the moment when we fell and committed the original sin, but Spinoza said: "False”. That was the moment when we became humans. For Spinoza, the paradise of Adam was not a place of virtue, it was the state of animals, the state of unconsciousness. Adam was happy as a cow because didn't know anything, obeying his instincts, no question asked.

The prohibition of eating from the tree of knowledge is the representation of how authority, religious or political always tries to keep people in ignorance. The tyrant tells you, “don’t think, do not question what is good or evil, just obey and you will be happy." The act of eating the apple was not a sin, was the birth of reason. It was the first clumsy attempt of the humanity to decide for itself, to use the mind to navigate the world. Of course it brought pain. Consciousness brings pain. Know that you are going to die brings anxiety, have to work and choose brings stress. That's the expulsion from paradise. It is the loss of animal innocence. But Spinosa argues that this pain is the price of freedom. Your origin as a conscious  human being is not divine obedience, it is intellectual rebellion. You are not a fallen angel, you are an animal that woke up and that awakening, although painful, is your greater glory. Original sin is a lie designed to make you feel guilty for your curiosity. Spinoza then says, your curiosity is your divine spark.

We use philosophy to clean the mind of inherited guilts. So if we were not created in a magic garden and if our fall is in reality our awakening, what is our real relationship with the creator? Here we get to the deepest part of the mystery. You have been told that God is your father, a separate being who made you. Espinosa has a revelation that is much more intimate and for some much scariest.

We have already seen that we are not an exception to nature and that the fall is a myth. But the third truth is what redefines your existence. It has to do with where you are exactly right now.

Chapter 4. You never left God. The immanence.

We get to the heart of the philosophy of Spinoza on our origin. The Religion tells you that God created you and put into the world like a painter who finishes a painting and hangs it in the wall. There is a distance, you are here, God is there. Espinoza says, "That's impossible. If God is infinite, how all religions affirm, then there can be nothing outside of it. If you were outside of God, God would not be infinite, I would end where you begin. Therefore, the logical conclusion is, you are within God. Your origin is not a past event when you were created, your origin is a constant and eternal dependence. You are a form of God. Spinoza uses the metaphor of the ocean and waves or the mind and thoughts. You are not a separate substance, you are an expression of the unique substance. Your body is God or nature spreading in space. your mind is God or nature thinking a specific thought. This means that your origin is now, in every second, your existence is being sustained and generated by the infinite power of the Universe. You don't have a life of your own separated from life at all, you are a channel through which cosmic energy flows. This radically changes your sense of identity. The traditional vision makes you feel small, isolated and fragile, a cork floating in a hostile sea. Spinoza's vision makes you feel immense. You are not the cork, you are the water. You are the universe experiencing itself as an individual. You don't have to look for God, you don't have than return to your origin, you are already your origin. You've never left home. The feeling of existential loneliness is alone an optical illusion caused by your limited imagination. And this is where the thing gets interesting. If we are expressions of God, what drives us? Do we have a written destiny or are we free? Spinoza discovers that within you there is a motor, a force that pushes you forwards. It is not a ghostly soul, it is something much more real and powerful. It is the God's fingerprint in your biology. Do you want to know what really moves you? In the next chapter we will open the hood of human nature and see the engine that Spinoza discovered. It is the key to understanding why you do what you do.

Chapter 5. The engine of your existence, the Conatus.

If we were not created for an external purpose like a hammer created to drive nails, why do we fight so much for living? Why do we seek happiness, power and pleasure? Which is the force that defines us? Spinoza gives a name to this internal motor or engine, vital force or Conatus. He writes, "Each thing, as far as it is in it, strives to persevere in his being. This is your true dynamic origin. You are not a static object, you are power in action. You are a quantum of divine energy that fights to stay together, to grow, to expand. Your origin is not a moment in the past, it is this constant effort in the present. When your body fights an infection, it's your life force asserting itself. When your mind searches to learn something new, it's your life force expanding. When you look for love or sex, it is your vital  strength seeking to join others to be stronger. Spinosa teaches us that there is nothing wrong or sinful in this desire for power and self-affirmation. On the contrary, it is the very essence of God in you. God is infinite power. You are a finite portion of that power. Depression, sadness and passivity occur when this motor is blocked by external forces or by your own wrong ideas. Happiness and joy is simply the feeling that this engine is accelerating. Understanding this, frees you from the blame, you don't have to apologize for wanting to exist, for wanting to be happy or for wanting to be powerful. That impulse is your divinity. Your duty is not repress it, as the moralists say, but guide it with reason to be effective. Now, there is one final question, the question that torments us all. If we are just ways of nature, if we are waves in the ocean, what happens when the wave breaks? What about our origin?, When do we come to our end? 

Espinosa has an answer for death that closes the cycle of our origin. It is an answer that does not require faith, only understanding. The final destination is surprisingly the same place as the origin.

Chapter 6. The circle closes. The real eternity.

We have reached the end of the journey.

We have seen that we are not clay creations, but necessary expressions of nature. We have seen that we are not expelled sinners, but awakened minds. We have seen that we are power in action.

Now the conclusion.

If your origin is infinite substance, God or nature, what is your destiny?

Espinosa's answer is Eternity. But not the eternity of living always in your body with your name and surname. That is the fantasy of the ego. Espinosa talks about something more real. Because you are a logical and necessary expression of the universe, there is a part of you that is outside of time. The truth of your existence is eternal. Imagine a mathematics truth like 2 + 2 = 4, it didn't appear one day to disappear another day.. it just is. In your deepest essence, you are a truth in the mind of God. The fact of that you exist is an eternal truth of the universe. When you die, the duration of your body ends, the wave returns to ocean, but the essence of who you are, the energy, the truth, the logic that formed you remains in God because is God. Nothing is lost in the universe, only transforms. Spinosa says that if you cultivate your mind, if you use reason to understand this truth while you are alive, you will achieve eternity. Now we feel and experience that we are eternal he wrote when you understand your true origin, the fear of death dissolves. You realize that you are not a strange visitor who has come and will go. You are the universe, temporarily looking itself in a mirror. Your origin is not the mud, your origin is eternity and your destiny is to awaken to that fact. You have stopped being a puppet created by a distant God. you have become what you always were, an indestructible part of the whole.

In modern day a new discovery made by Biologist, Jeremy Griffith explains human nature (what he terms the human condition) by proposing that as consciousness emerged in our hominid ancestors, the intellect's experiments in self-management were in effect criticized by our pre-established instincts, the result of which was that humans unavoidably became increasingly "angry, egocentric and alienated". An article by Griffith published in The Irish Times summarized the thesis presented in “Freedom: The End of The Human Condition” (2016) as "Adam & Eve without the guilt: explaining our battle between instinct and intellect." Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Griffith offers a treatise about the true nature of humanity and about overcoming anxieties about the world”.

According to psychologist Ronald Conway,  Griffith holds that we are at war with our own selves, causing humanity to become, as Plato proposed in his allegory of the cave, alienated from its original peaceful state of innocence. Griffith says that this war within is the cause of ongoing actual wars and the general lack of cooperation in the world. Griffith analyses the scientific literature in human evolution; rejects claims that human ancestors were brutal and aggressive; and instead points to fossil evidence such as that of Ardipithecus ramidus in support of his thesis that ancient humans were a gentle, loving and co-operative species.

In turn, this human condition has its origin in the guilt of the supposed original sin.

Finally, describe the process to solve the “Human Condition” to save mankind extintion.