By Fabian Lyngdoh
Scientifically speaking, ‘Life’ is the dynamic manifestation of living things. A thing is said to be alive for as long as the biological processes in it continue to operate under favourable physical and chemical conditions, and manifested in the common characteristics of other living things. The urge to survive or the will to live is the most important characteristic of all living things. All other characteristics sub-serve the urge to survive. A thing which exists with an urge or will to survive has life, and when it loses this urge it is dead. The manifestation of life of every creature is primarily concerned with this struggle to exist or to maintain the biological processes in a coordinated whole. How sweet it is to behold a beautiful young person smiling radiantly in health. But when he or she is subjected to serious diseases, that beautiful whole appears to dismantle into a variety of organs, and wretchedly found to consist of intestines, liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, bones, blood etc. The most fundamental aspect of human rights which transcends all races, religions, gender, etc., is the right to the means of survival or the opportunity to maintain the biological processes of one’s physical and mental life. This right transcends even social norms and morality; hence the expression ‘necessity knows no law’.
The life history of every living thing is a struggle manifested in pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. Jeremy Bentham says that ‘pain and pleasure determine human interactions’. Pain precedes pleasure, and pleasure is nothing but a relief from pain. There is no pleasure without pain. Pain is a strain caused by a pull or push to change the status quo of human existence physically or mentally. Pleasure is a sense of relief or a satisfying feeling in the process of recovery from pain which is an affective manifestation of tension. The pleasure of urination and defecation is in the feeling of relief from physical tension. The intensity of pleasure is directly proportional to the level of the tension created and the speed of its release. The pleasure of eating arises from the relief from the pain of hunger. That is why it is said that hunger is the best sauce. Some persons derive pleasure from eating not only because of relief from the pain of hunger but also because of some mental or emotional tensions, the psychological relief of which is found in eating. Even sexual orgasm is nothing but a relief from muscular and mental tension similar to pain which has been built up stage by stage in the process of stimulation. At the intellectual and emotional level, hope has no meaning without the possibility of doubt, and joy has no meaning without the possibility of sorrow, trust has no meaning without the possibility of betrayal, etc. Courtship or romance would have no novelty at all if it consists only of plain and simple relationships. It would be interesting if the woman believes that other women are also attracted to her man, and the man believes that other men are also attracted to his woman, and excitement will arise when there is some degree of pain caused by fleeting doubt, distrust or suspicion. Spiritual tension is supposed to be created by the distance that man’s physical and mental nature is separated from his spiritual nature. Those who are able to recognize the meaning of the tension are said to have an intense yearning for the realization or unity of physical reality and spiritual reality in a unified awareness of being, manifested in some sort of spiritual orgasmic experience called ‘ecstasy’ or ‘rapture’.
The very existence of life in a physical body is a condition for continuous pain. The fact that a man is born or that he exists is the source of his happiness, but the fact that he would one day die, is the source of his continuous pain and sorrow. Every child born into the world is already carrying an incurable disease, and all of us have to die due to this incurable disease. This incurable disease is the natural and uncontrollable deterioration of the body stage by stage in the course of time. So death is the ultimate source of physical and mental pain. But death is also the ultimate solution to pain. It is this sense of refuge in death that induces some people in pain of incurable diseases to opt for medically administered peaceful death to end the suffering. It is also this feeling that led many desperate people to commit suicide. There exists also what we can call a pleasure of death. Many People find pleasure in varying degrees or stages of death under the influence of alcohol, drugs and other substances, and habits of life which interfere with the sound operation of the biological processes. Even man’s stages of pleasurable emotions if allowed to proceed uncontrolled, ultimately lead to death: Smile -> Laugh -> Singing -> Dance -> Frenzy -> Stupor -> Death.
Human life is physically and mentally enmeshed in what academics called ‘binary oppositions’. At the spiritual plane or conceptual level, we have ‘existence versus non-existence’; at the physical level we have ‘life versus death’, and at the social level we have ‘individual freedom versus the collective order’. Individual freedom has a link with the dynamics of unrestraint momentum of life, while the collective order has a link with restricting the unbounded manifestation of life. There is collective joy whenever the people are liberated from the tyranny of a dictatorial political system; but there is also collective joy whenever the anarchy of unrestraint individual freedom is brought under control by the collective order because the extreme of both cases is the shadow of death.
The dynamism of life is in the alternation of tension and its release. A spring has no life until we tension it, and its dynamism is manifested in its attempt to recover the tension. A battery has no life until a tension is created by inducing potential difference between the terminals, and we say that a battery is fully charged when the tension created is at the greatest possible. The dynamics of a battery or the reality of pleasure is manifested in the process of releasing the tension, the nature of which is towards neutralization or rest. But ultimate neutralization is inactivity and death. The joy of life is therefore neither in the pain of a tension nor in the lack of it, but in the alternate movements between the two. Pleasure is transitory in nature. So to keep human society alive with potentiality for development and to make human earthly life pleasurable, there should be continual alternation of the rise and release of tension.
Life versus death constitutes the greatest observable binary opposition to which every other form of binary oppositions like white versus black, light versus darkness, joy versus sorrow, pleasure versus pain, good versus bad, etc., is ultimately linked. In the general context, even in the physical plane, life always conquers death in endless battles. But in the context of individuals, it is only in the spiritual plane that life can ultimately triumph over death and destroy the binary oppositions forever. It is through ultimate suffering on the cross that Jesus Christ finally conquered death in the glory of resurrection. It is only in the final resurrection that there can be life with no more pain, no hunger, no tears and no death, but only joy without pain, and happiness without sorrow. But in the material plane we cannot escape from the binary oppositions of life. We have to learn to live contentedly with recurring pain and pleasure, deaths and resurrections all through our lives. A considerable part of malady in any human society is caused by the inability of its members to carry the cross, or to cope with the stress and strain of the binary oppositions of life. The health of any society depends on the physical and mental health of its members, and the soundness of its collective consciousness depends on the status of consciousness of the individuals. So, imbibing healthy consciousness in the individuals must be the most important objective of the collective educational system.