The human being is the only creature capable of pushing back chaos—the destructive force of human civilisations—and recreating order. Yet the human being is also free to turn order into chaos and destroy the world. A person can revive a dying forest, restore a sick animal to life, plant a flower with their own hands and water it until it blossoms. They can create poetry from words and fantasy from images of their own making, and even recreate these images in the world of reality. The human mind can decipher the mysteries of existence and, with the numbers it knows, realise the magic of guiding an object—or even its own species—to another planet. The human being is not only what they are, but everything they can become. The existence of the world is astonishingly open to human ascent and transcendence—open to becoming more conscious and more free.

Freedom is the singular essence that makes imagination and transcendence possible in the human being. Freedom is not itself the meaning of life; it makes the discovery of meaning possible. Along this path, individuation—understood as the person we can become on our horizon—becomes the meaning of life. We are free to become what we can become through realising the Self.

Aydin Areta