While many people believe that there is a spiritual aspect to life, it is the scientific understanding of life that dictates how our world operates – because it informs the collective consciousness that dominates in all our political, public service, financial and business institutions worldwide.

The scientific understanding of life is as follows:

1. Life emerged from non-life about 3.7 billion years ago
2. Life evolved, and continues to evolve, based on mutation, natural selection, and time
3. All mutations are by chance.

This essentially means that scientists believe that life is purely a physical phenomenon. If life is purely physical, then the natural propensity of matter is crucial to the evolution of life, mind, and human consciousness; and it is human consciousness that dictates the way we act and behave, both individually and collectively.

Matter has a natural propensity to evolve toward lower complexity, as the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy explain. It also makes sense that the natural propensity of matter is toward lower levels of complexity once we accept that everything in nature has an innate urge to return to its source. Matter emerged from lower complexity (e.g., quarks, hadrons, leptons) to higher complexity (e.g., galaxies, stars, planets). Therefore, if the emergence was from lower complexity to higher complexity, then the return must be from higher complexity to lower complexity.

Now consider human consciousness in terms of complexity. The lowest level of complexity is to offer care and compassion to the ‘self’ only. Examples of increasing levels of complexity are to offer care and compassion to family, community, society, country, and eventually to all humanity; in other words, lower complexity equals lower inclusion and higher complexity equals higher inclusion – as the collective is a higher level of complexity than the individual. Based on this principle, it’s reasonable to suggest that, if human beings are purely physical, then their natural tendency is to care for themselves rather than the collective. This explains why selfishness is a natural trait that is innate in every human being.

However, is it logical to assume that life is purely a physical phenomenon? Scientists now estimate that dark energy and dark matter make up approximately 96% of the universe. At a macro level, scientists accept that dark energy influences the behaviour of the universe by causing it to expand at an accelerating rate. They also accept that dark matter influences the behaviour of galaxy clusters by keeping them gravitationally bound. However, at a micro level, scientists (geneticists, biologists) seem to deny that dark energy or dark matter have any influence on the origin and evolution of life. It is not logical to take the position that 96 per cent of the universe has no influence on life.

In my book, Dark Energy and Human Consciousness: Humanity’s Path to Freedom, I present logical arguments, based on scientific concepts, which suggest that life is influenced by both dark matter and dark energy. I further explain that dark energy is the force that causes human consciousness to expand and consequently evolve to higher complexity and greater enlightenment.

Therefore dark energy is the force that balances the natural propensity of matter – which is toward selfishness. It therefore brings balance to our mind and leads us to a more enlightened state of consciousness, where love care, and compassion are extended to all.

This is humanity’s only path to freedom from selfishness, corruption, abuse of power, and greed; and consequently from poverty, starvation, conflict, and war.