Let us begin by establishing a common ground here from which to work.

Since you are reading this text and that is an attribute confined (as far as we know) to human creatures and perhaps some computers, we assume that you are one of the two.

Let me be perhaps presumptuous and assume that you are the former. Furthermore, since it is I who have written this text you may assume that I too am a human creature or a computer. I assure you that I too am a human creature.

That means that we have a base for communication, for we share, apart from a precious human body and a marvelous mind, the fact that we were both born, at the moment live and will undoubtedly eventually die like all life forms guided, if not at times controled, by our genetic programs.

We can agree also that between that moment when our apparent individual consciousness first begins and the moment when our individual consciousness ends, no matter how we may each define it, we will have been alive.

We might agree also that life itself is a wonderful thing, not because it is fruitful and enjoyable, which it is not for many, but simply because it is life. Now the question we will address here is, what is it that transports us from that birth to death? We call it the Life Force. We can understand easily that it is a force of energy, but that tells us little. 

How does it manage to sustain anything, for it appears not to be a “thing” in the normal sense or even a “transcendental power”? We can call it simply energy, but that is a nice “catch-all” word. Does the Life Force then use energy or is it itself energy? 

                    Well, that all depends on how we define energy.