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     As discussed earlier, one way of understanding the macro journey of Nature, from pre-big bang till now, is to look at its progression in terms of its three stages or we can modes of operation—random, programmed and intelligent process stage. Another way of comprehending this journey could be to try and understand it from the standpoint of the three engines employed in the above three processes. This will enable us to delve deeper and get a more ‘internal’ grasp of the character and functioning of the evolutionary process in Nature.

 

‘Energy Balance’, ‘Subjective Need’ and the ‘Desire and Happiness’ Engines

A closer observation of the random process (which encompasses both the pre and post-big bang periods) will reveal that the engine used by Nature at that stage was of ‘energy balance’. In Nature there exist energy forms, which are not only in a state of motion but also dynamic connection. A logical requirement of the existence, connection and making of energy formations is to achieve an energy balance in the course of their motions, otherwise they would breakdown. Hence the first engine in Nature is this logical requirement of energy forms to achieve a state of balance through making new formations. During the pre-big bang phase of this process situations arise where macro interactions (in terms of the larger environment of Nature) impact upon a particular energy unit or a group of connections in ways that disturb an existing balance. Consequently energy units start proceeding in a chaotic and violent manner, so to speak, instead of a harmonious manner, which necessarily produces ‘contradictions’. These energy units go through violent imbalance, until they achieve a balance once again which is different from the earlier one. It is a new specific balance, based upon different kinds of energy units coming together and getting connected. That is how energy formations in Nature keep evolving, based upon the first engine of achieving balance between connected energy units and formations. And this evolution goes on for an extended period of time until we come to the big bang.

 

After the big bang arises a second version of this first engine, in which energy formations very quickly develop to a magnitude where they assume the state of matter (heavy and strong energy forms and their atomic and molecular formations). At that stage the first engine starts functioning on a much more intensified scale because now there are no longer only weak particles existing in Nature but also atoms and molecules. The evolutionary process of different energy and matter combinations continues to proceed in this manner throughout the geological stage until first living forms come into existence. At this point an entirely new design of the evolutionary engine emerges based on an inner subjective need arising out of the existing ‘state of balance’ of biological life form (including botanical and also unicellular organisms). In living things this state consists of balance on the one hand, and incompleteness on the other. The emergence of the subjective need is a reflection of this incompleteness and also the means to address and reduce it. Hence it supplements the existing or initial state of balance of the life form, which was sufficient for its existence in point of moment but insufficient for its continued existence. Once the subjective need becomes operational then it has a dynamic of its own leading to the evolution of new capabilities which are evolved to prolong the continuity of the biological form. On the basis of the subjective need the biological process is able to create the infrastructure (consisting of some additional biological capabilities coupled with some emerging nascent mental capabilities) required for fulfilling or actualizing its needs. So we have the beginning of the programmed process, whereby the living thing starts interacting with and responding to its environment on the basis of mental software. That is when the second, subjective need based engine begins to drive the evolutionary process of Nature, resulting in the evolution of more complex and developed biological forms. When the subjective need based engine develops to a stage where man enters the period of civilization, we see a third engine emerging in Nature—the engine of desire beyond the subjective need. In the case of a subjective biological need the requirement was some simple specific thing, but in desire (in human beings) the subjective need does not remain simple and develops to a stage where it now has multiple choices (due to the growing mental capabilities) to fulfill a particular need in many different ways. For instance when there was a simple need for shelter, then it could be met by living in a cave, a mud house, a canopy of branches and leaves. But during the period of civilization when this need acquired the form of desires for luxurious houses and palaces etc., then by the same token the choices to fulfill this desire also became innumerable. And this has happened with all our needs.

 

The expansion and multiplying complexity of the desires process in turn led to developing multiple applications of our mental capabilities, which then produced yet another variety of choices outside the ambit of the subjective need and desire based choices. For instance, the ability to inquire, driven by the urge of knowing more, which is a function of our intellectual capability.When the desire process begins to grow and multiply, it establishes itself as a more developed form in Nature. Then it becomes the third engine—the desire and happiness driven engine as distinct from merely need driven engine. The reason for including happiness in the desire engine is that in the desire process one is looking for happiness. Desire is actually a mental projection or a prediction of happiness, and happiness is both the criterion and verification (in terms of experience) of desire. That is why the desire engine in reality is the happiness engine. The criterion for making a selection between our numerous different desire choices and their manifest practical experience really comes from the verification (or selection) process of happiness. Because at our developed level, verification is not in terms of the simple logic of energy balance which was there at the random stage, but complex logic of the ‘mental energy process’ of happiness. The new capabilities arising from the desire and happiness engine are largely software based but not completely. Because when it reaches the stage of producing a desire for knowledge per se then it is going beyond the software. That is when we find the first signs of autonomous mental functions, which then produce intellectual functions as the foundation for the emerging intelligent process in Nature. From there onward we have a rather developed third engine, which surpasses the need driven engine. 

In the initial but brief period (last fourteen to fifteen thousand years) of the third engine’s history, we find a great deal of the random process together with mental software and the emerging intelligent process. So we need to visualize the functioning of all these three processes as a compound in Nature. In all living things and also our pre-intellect stage the underlying general dominance has been of the programmed process but in particular areas/situations and in some point of time the random and the intelligent processes temporarily become dominant. In our current stage this compound is being driven by the unintelligent and immature state of the third engine, which is producing numerous disasters, tragedies, accidents and casualties as our desire system is growing up.

 

Transition from the Dialectic of Contradiction to the Dialectic of Harmony through the ‘Desire and Happiness’ Engine 

 

Here we would like to take a step back and look at Nature in terms of all the different layers of processes and forms that have emerged to become a part and player in its evolution. Just as the emerging intelligent, programmed and the random processes are all coexisting, similarly the different energy states of Nature, i.e., pre-big bang massless energy forms, post big bang atomic structures based upon heavy particles including biological structures, and post-biological mental processes are also existing at parallel levels. Over the course of evolution what we find therefore are these three types of energy forms, three processes (random, software and intelligent), and three different engines (‘energy balance’, ‘need’, and ‘desire and happiness’). All these constitute one integrated natural process, which is continuing to unfold, develop and evolve. In view of the above if we ask the question that where is this integrated process going, it seems it is on a journey from the dialectic of contradiction to the dialectic of harmony. One can observe this from two factors. One, the potential of the emerging human intelligent process for avoiding and eradicating the contradictions and conflicts that occur in the random process (which is completely free of any intelligence) and the programmed process (which is not as yet even half way intelligent). The second factor is the desire and happiness engine becoming the drive for the emerging intelligent process to produce harmony.

Desire and happiness are the objective criterion for selecting the dialectic of harmony, because without them we would not have this criterion. As far as Nature is concerned everything is on the plane of ‘logical harmony’, even the random process and its contradictions. So the question logically arises that when does the distinction between contradiction and harmony arise from the standpoint of Nature’s journey, which we are proposing has a direction? We are suggesting that it emerges with the third engine, which becomes the criterion for Nature’s direction of moving to harmony from contradiction. And the tool to achieve this harmony is our emerging intelligent process.   

We can understand how this happens by looking at how the happiness process works. It is through the mechanics of the happiness process that contradiction is sensed as pain and happiness as the opposite of pain, just as desire is the opposite of aversion. Thus harmony in Nature means, a state of intelligent balance where contradiction is equated with pain, and harmony with happiness. That is where we are going. At present we are progressing through a period of civilization, which on Nature’s time scale can only be described as an early civilizational period, in which there are growing conflicts and contradictions and diminishing stability and harmony. Thus we obviously need more intelligence capabilities (not based on our existing framework) in this stage, which means intelligently using and developing our existing mental processes and capabilities that arise from the interconnection and blend between the biological, atomic, and pre-big bang massless formations present in us. Proposing this is not anything unprecedented because we already know how potent a mixture our mental processes are in Nature. It was our mental processes that produced civilization in the first place.

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f we develop the capability to become more intelligent, it will minimize the ill effects of the random and the programmed processes, especially since further development of the human formation is about minimizing the area occupied by random and programmed processes, and maximizing the potential of the above discussed ‘energy blend’ of our emerging intelligent process. That can only be done if we evolve more capabilities based upon the pre-big bang massless energy forms (which are reflected in our emerging intelligent and happiness processes), because only these will be able to minimize the space available for the random process and its contradictions. Up to now our intelligence process has been limited in its applications by the biological tools generally available to mental processes for execution. Whatever we think of doing today has to be executed through the biological processes and since they operate either as random atomic processes or software based programmed processes, so that limits the reach of our mental processes. That is why we need to develop that energy blend, which constitutes our identity and our mental processes, by producing more components and a larger share of the pre-big bang massless energy formations in it. So that we have more mental functions and capabilities that can be less dependent upon biological mechanisms for execution and instead have their own autonomous mechanisms which would extend their reach giving more room to the operation of intellect. To us this seems to be the logical direction of the further evolution of civilization.Hitherto we find myriad combinations of this energy blend varying from individual to individual. And these variations are primarily produced through the random process of genetic selection and its unfolding in interaction with the changing environment. Due to this we inevitably have some general types of individuals, and within those types there exist an enormous amount of specific variations. Furthermore, it is logical that those variations randomly produce some specimens whose minds are able to transcend the gravitational pull of their biological systems and operate autonomously at the level of the massless energy forms. In our view, some individuals such as prophets, serious poets, philosophers and even some scientists were perhaps specimens of this variety.

 

We can see from the works and lives of such people that they had highly dynamic intellectual and sensitivity processes and consequently their desire and happiness process was of a qualitatively different nature and dimension. It was not limited to the pleasures of their individual biological, and personal selves but extended far beyond these to include pleasures associated with everything that came within the purview of their sensitivities and intellect, which eventually encompassed the whole of Nature. That is the reason why we find nearly all of them (in their own ways) envisioning a macro scale of happiness emerging out of the integral connection between the macro process of Nature and the happiness and desire process of man. This connection in their thought processes is a clear indication of the potential of man to evolve mental capabilities and a system of feelings, thinking and applications, which would be in tune with and promote the potential in Nature for moving towards the dialectic of harmony. That is, towards more efficient levels of functions and capabilities representing higher states of harmony and corresponding pleasure and happiness.   In the minds of contemporary individuals this macro scale of happiness will become a reality when the emerging third engine, in result of its further evolution and maturing, is able to consistently extend the area of harmony and correspondingly diminish the space for contradictions or pain. We can see that ‘harmony’ by definition cannot be limited to a specimen. All desires and choices of an individual are clearly in terms of his interconnection with things outside himself. Thus harmony is necessarily a collective (interconnected) and not an individual dimension. It is no doubt experienced individually but not created or produced individually. Only when harmony is experienced by all the components of the collective that it becomes a macro scale happiness. When it is not experienced as such, then to that extent it is a source of contradiction.Thus man will reach the highest state of pleasure and happiness when the evolution of his desire and happiness process matures to a point, where it can create a ‘happiness system’ secure from contradiction and pain in all its components. Of course this highest state does not mean that an individual experiences a lot of pleasure because of having enormous wealth, immense authority and power. In our view this eventually leads to negative pleasure because we use all our resources for generating more contradictions. Highest state of pleasure and happiness means the evolution of pleasure in a direction where it ripens to attain a collective dimension within which the individual experiences maximum pleasure.  

In order to proceed towards this highest state of pleasure we would require post-biological capabilities for executing our mental functions at two levels; what we want to think, and then what that thinking wants to do. At present the templates of our mental processes come from the biological process through mental genes. Which means we have to interact with our brain processes in order to get the mental raw material and energy required for performing any mental task.  The point we are making is that this interaction needs to move onto a stage where mental processes no longer remain totally dependent on biological processes for execution of thinking and other mental functions. Only then we will be able to rid ourselves of the domination of the random and programmed processes and move onto the intelligent process stage in Nature, having the highest state of pleasure as an integral component of it. What we have outlined above is clearly about the future of our species, but the purpose of understanding the connection between the present and the future is to have a clear picture of where we are going and need to go in the context of where Nature is going. Our evolutionary journey and contemporary role is to go along with the macro process and its fundamental evolutionary logic. That is the best that the individual can do today for his own happiness. On that note, in practical terms, today we need to make an environment in which we create a governance, culture, economy, educational system and institutions conducive to this process. The contemporary social agenda or political manifesto for social action is to produce and install a favourable environment in all departments of life, enabling human beings to develop those capabilities (mental and physical) which will act as the main engine of Nature for the pursuit of its own direction. 

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Notes 

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i. We go back to the pre-big bang on the basis of our observation of the post-big bang energy characteristics, particularly specific properties of energy forms and their trajectories of individual and interactive motion. It is proposed that one cannot conceive of the pre-big bang energy formations and their characteristics on the basis of what we know of the post-big bang energy processes, but man has always used familiar words and concepts to describe the unknown, because without referring to the known we cannot possibly go into the unknown. To take an example in order to explain the energy state before particles, which must have produced these energy particles we came up with the idea of it being a string state, where the string is a one dimensional object or filament of energy. So these are all familiar concepts and objects we are using to conceive of that state. We even make drawings of strings and their shapes in terms of the objects we see. It is true that tangible knowledge and any preexisting understanding cannot fully explain the unknown but the process of explaining can at least begin. If that had not happened in human history the unknown would have always remained unknowable and man would not have reached where he is today.

Coming back to the pre-big bang situation, our knowledge and observation of the properties/characteristics and ‘behaviour’ (in terms of motion, interaction and interconnection) of the elementary energy forms that emerged in the wake of the big bang, and their subsequent evolution to heavier energy and matter forms enables us to infer two things. Firstly, in the pre-big bang phase energy must have existed in terms even more fundamental than the elementary energy particles produced in the big bang. We are unable to consider the idea of things coming into existence from ‘nothingness’, as a logically valid proposition just because we are unable to conceive of energy other than the forms we are familiar with. 

We have seen how we first thought of electrons, protons and neutrons to be the only fundamental particles, but then we discovered a whole breed of particles and energy states even more elementary than them. String theory is one example, and there are many other ideas being proposed about the nature of energy in the pre big bang phase, which we have discussed in 1B of this section. So there must have existed energy in some primordial form before the big bang, the dynamics of which produced the big bang. Secondly, in whatever form energy existed, its behaviour would have followed the same logic as in the post big bang, i.e., of attaining an ‘energy balance’, in consequence of some imbalance. 

The properties of post-big bang energies could not have arisen all of a sudden as a complete discontinuity from the entire past of Nature, and must have come from their ‘parent’ form. Today if we can see the electron to be made of ‘spinon’ responsible for the property of its spin, and ‘orbiton’ (Retrieved from: http://cosmologyscience.com/cosblog/electron-is-not-a-fundamental-particle/) for its orbiting motion, which only shows that the electron has the characteristics of the energies that produced it, then logically we can conceive post big bang energies having the property of attaining an energy balance coming from the pre-big bang energies that produced them. We suggest that before the big bang there would probably have existed many stages of balance followed by imbalance, again followed by a process of attaining a new balance and so on. In fact big bang itself can be seen as a product of some imbalance (arising after an existing balance) reaching its climax, resulting in the post big bang phase as a new journey of attaining energy balance (through various energy and matter forms) from a state of imbalance.   

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ii.  For instance, the existence of an atom of some element requires an internal balance of the different forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravity) within it, otherwise it would decay or disintegrate. In addition, its property to connect with other atoms also arises from the requirement of achieving a balance. In the atoms of most of the elements apart from the noble gases such as helium and neon, we find an imbalance occurring either from excess or deficiency of electrons in their outer most shell, due to which there is a necessity to achieve a balance, and consequently interact and connect with other atoms to either lose or acquire electrons. The fact that most elements in Nature achieve a more stable balanced state by existing as compounds instead of individual elements in their pure form testifies to the logical requirement of energy balance in the random process stage. See the following links for this information. (Retrieved from: https://www.boundless.com/chemistry/introduction-to-chemistry/classification-of-matter/elements-and-compounds/, http://www.chemicalgalaxy.co.uk/page3/page3.html). 

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iii. Unit here refers to a form with its own specific properties. 

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iv. By violence and contradictions we are referring to the situation created when force fields of energy forms having differing or inconsistent motion trajectories (based on their specific properties) come in contact. An example of such a situation of violence is the fusion of atomic nuclei within the core of stars wherein rising temperatures due to the increasing speed of collision between protons resulting from gravity, and the simultaneous repulsion between them results in the violent process of fusion of their atomic nuclei to form heavier elements. See the following link for this information (Retrieved from: http://aether.lbl.gov/www/tour/elements/stellar/stellar_a.html). So the words ‘violence’, ‘harmony’ and ‘contradiction’ are being used only to give a sense of the nature of such interactions and do not signify any ‘mental experience’ on the part of these energy forms, or refer to the existing connotations of these words when used by human beings to describe complex situations as perceived and experienced by their minds.

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v. For instance when the atoms of potassium come in contact with oxygen and water, they interact with them in a highly volatile manner and burn out releasing a lot of energy until a new balance is achieved in the form of potassium peroxide and potassium hydroxide respectively. The same happens in all compound based chemical interactions (although less violently), wherein a contact between more than one compound sets into motion a process of what we call ‘reaction’ which continues until the existing bonds are broken and a new equilibrium is reached in the form of creation of new bonds.

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vi. A ‘subjective need’ could only emerge after the living form evolved a ‘mental capability’ of sensing its internal state of imbalance, which required a regular consumption from the environment as a precondition to achieve balance in the form of the continuous survival of the living thing. This capability of ‘mentally’ sensing internal imbalance and subsequent needs to address it simultaneously gave rise to the ability to experience its form as distinct from other things around it, and also the ‘mental need’ to preserve its existing form. So our reasons for calling it a ‘subjective need’ are two-fold. One, it does not arise in response to affects of the external environment, but out of the logic of the inner formation of a living thing. Two, it acquires a ‘mental dimension’, which is not a characteristic of nonliving forms.

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vii. This incompleteness can be seen from the existence of chirality in living forms, and also their non-equilibrium thermodynamic system.

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viii. Biological forms are dynamic states, which like all forms in Nature have development/change and evolution inherent in them. The formation of anything in a moment will appear to be repetitive but over a period of time it will in fact be developing, changing and evolving.  Thus, in a manner of speaking, we have things existing in a quantum state of being repetitive and changing at the same time.

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ix. We are using the term ‘intellectual capability’ as distinct from mental capabilities that are connected to our subjective needs or even choices (coming from desires based upon our needs and personal agendas). Once we go beyond these needs and choices then the application of our mental capabilities reaches another plane and becomes an intellectual capability.  This opens up a whole new world for us; of poetry, art, relationships, the nuances of relationships in terms of being happy and unhappy, and the ability to make choices leaving aside the desire for directly acquiring pleasure related to tangible and immediate choices. This new variety of choices includes the choice of pursuing knowledge beyond tangible and short-term objectives, which becomes a new pleasure in itself.

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x. Today we can understand happiness as an energy state operating in a similar form in which our mental processes exist, i.e., as hybrid energy formations based upon a blend of the pre big bang massless energy forms and the post big bang atomic and molecular forms.     

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xi. Mental processes of observation and reasoning which are autonomous of the subjective needs and desires based on genetic software.

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xii. In the course of any enterprise or undertaking if there is any area whose complexity lies beyond the reach of our software and intelligent processes then inevitably the random process predominates there. During normal functioning, in this compound stage, as far as our emerging intelligent process is concerned, the software process remains dominant. And it is only when this process gets exhausted in resolving a problem that the mind resorts to the random process.

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xiii. Our desires at the unintelligent level form and operate on the basis of the fundamental programme we have received from our animal past, which is basically individual centric and concerned with existing and tangible items and situations. This programme in its basics is about taking or consuming from the outside world for one’s needs and agendas, giving rise to an adversarial relationship with the outside world. However at the human level this taking and adversarial relationship is not primarily with other species and objects in Nature but with our own species. So much so that one’s desires and happiness have to be pursued at the expense of and in competition with other individuals, groups and so on.  This state is not only destructive and disintegrative for the individual but also for the social process. The desire for excelling in an unintelligent competition for fame, status, material dominance etc. has been producing various forms of perversions in the emotional and intellectual processes of individuals. Which also have their manifestations in breakdowns/disruptions in social functioning whether it is in the form of psychopaths or serial killers on the lose or wall street bankers disrupting economic institutions and economies of countries or politicians and leaders exploiting advanced scientific developments to destroy entire societies and so on.  

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xiv. Arising from a combination of the atomic formations, the complex biological molecules and the early universe pre atomic massless energy forms. So they, as a new form, are neither atomic (including the biological formations) nor just massless energy particles, but a third complex form that is a combination of these three energy states of Nature.

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xv. We can see this potential due to the myriad beneficial products (physical tool, inventions, and also mental methods and tools for upgrading and resolving specific problems at the individual and social levels) that are our existing intellectual process has already produced. And this has happened when the programmed process is still the dominant process. So if the intelligent process comes in the driving seat then it is not difficult to visualize what it will be able to achieve and do.

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 xvi. We are saying ‘logical harmony’ because there is no contradiction in logic itself, but only in the unintelligent motion and interaction of forms. In Nature all interactions whether contradictory or harmonious are logical. 

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xvii.  If there is an evolutionary journey in Nature then there has to be a direction. We will have a real problem if we say there is no direction in Nature, because in fact we do observe a continuous movement and development towards complex and stable formations. Hence we cannot say that Nature is just going round in circles. If there is a direction then the question is what is its criterion and where is it going?

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xviii. This emerging intelligent process as mentioned earlier is in the process of becoming capable of minimizing conflicts and contradictions that are basically products of both absence (as in the random process stage) and low or immature levels of intelligence (in the programmed process).

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xix.  See the above endnote xiv. 

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xx.  The increasing complexity (in terms of handling more factors and aspects) and subtlety of processing would logically require a very fast and efficient energy utilization process so its stands to reason that it would involve massless energy forms which would operate without any resistance from heavier energy and biological processes. 

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xxi. This mixture reflects the varying ratio between subjective agenda based emotional and intelligence formations and reason based impersonal sensitivities and intellectual functions existing within individuals.

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xxii. We would like to clarify that we are not ignoring the role of their individual labour in developing and cultivating their minds but that is largely a build up on the original genetic fund of mental capabilities and capacities/functions available to them at birth.   

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xxiii. Their mental formations operating in terms of these massless energy forms acquire a dynamic of their own and start interacting amongst themselves and producing more elaborate and subtle processes which no longer remain connected with the biological and brain processes. Hence their mental formations and functions are largely driven by the products of interactions at that level and not biological or electro-chemical levels. 

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xxiv. We are not saying that there is no individual dimension of happiness, but we want to emphasize that it cannot totally be without contradiction if there is disharmony in the interconnections with other individuals and phenomena in Nature.

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xxv. By pursuing our pleasures vis-à-vis other individuals our growing individual centric personalities gradually become exclusive and consequently come in conflict with other personalities. So this unleashes an unending spiral of emotional and intellectual distortions and then disintegration within and outside of individuals.