THE NUANCE : INTRODUCTION

The nuance of life with death has outwitted everyone who has tried to give meaning to life. Death means nothingness and life in the backyard of death cannot be anything. It has never been defined anywhere, scientifically, if life is the life of birth, growth and death for an individual species or life is the life of the species in common, through an endless series of birth, growth and death, or life is the life through mutation and divisibility like bacteria, or if life is the age and biomass of a caterpillar or the age and biomass of a butterfly. What definition of life do we get when a mayfly lives for a day, a human for 70-85 years, a Greenland shark for 400 years, a glass sponge for 10,000 years and a hydra without death? Is life, further, as old as the life on this planet, for 3.7 billion years, since the birth of microbes, or over 5-million-year-old anthropes or about 3-lakh-year-old homo sapiens? What comprehension of life do we make, individually of our own, between our birth and death, while our living conditions, religions, faiths, practices, means of livelihood, etc. are different from one another? Whatever collective meaning, on the other hand, could we possibly give to human life, or any other life on this predatory planet, when deaths are more unnatural than natural, more by our own vagaries? 

We may define life as the life of reproduction through birth, growth and death. If this is the definition, so all life forms -- from microbes to mamals to humans -- are one and indivisible, although we find difference in growth for different organisms. Then, if the life of difference is seen between organisms, the life of an organism is how it is growing and living. But we find uniformity in how the plants or birds or animals grow and live, although they are different for different species. But what uniformity do we find in humans who are distinct from the rest of the species on earth? What meaning can be given to human life cut into pieces, as some live richly and some poorly, some healthily and some handicapped, some idolized and some demonized, some till old age and some die an infant, some on booty, some exploited, some as Hindus and some as Muslims or Christians, not to mention countless other differences. If we give meaning to human life on the scale of differences of how humans live, we will not get to an end. Hence we find our life undefinable, incomprehensible, sans any apparent outline. 

The only, and universal, definition of life is that life is mortal. That, birth is followed by death. That, death is inevitable. Even so, we notice death is evented more by diseases, hunger, malnutrition, wars, accidents, crimes and natural disasters than the biological occurance of death through natural senescence. As death comes any moment, we add another universal meaning of life that life is momentary. Apart from this, however desperately we give meanings to our life of differences -- by being rich, not poor; healthy, not sick; a god, not a demon; a victor, not a victim; powerful, not humble; having pleasure, not pain; or living full, not short -- all artificial meanings perish into meaningfulness of death. As long as life is mortal and momentary, a thousand meanings of life are meaningless and each meaning that we give to life creates only further distortion, confusion and divides.

Now, there is an ever-growing number of emerging and sinking definitions of life principally through socio-economic, political, demographic and environmental changes. Besides, different ideologies and experiences of living create different meanings. As a result, terrorists define life differently from pacifists, detactors from democrats, industrialists from communists, rationalists from blind-believers, saints from sadists, not to mention many other

such mutual contrarians have filled the earth that have overshadowed the true meaning of life, breeding endless conflicts, competitions, struggles, wars and violences as well as corruption, exploitation and other crimes.

Humans are only species on this planet to have got a special brain and by their brain, they are capable of comprehending the limitlessness of the universe and giving infinite meanings to what they can see, hear, taste, smell and feel. They have an intuitive faculty, called sixth sense, through which they can feel metaphysical existence and give concrete meanings to the abstract and incomprehensible. But unfortunately, they are unable to give any definite meaning to their own life. They create desperate meanings of life through their living which drag them into confusion and due to confusion, they remain fixed to the ancient and unscientific ideas as the meaningful parts of life and find comfort in meaningless things like god, religion, bigotry, prejudices, enjoyment of pleasure, selfishness, self-aggrandizement, vainglory, etc. And, at last, each one dies meaningless. 

The true and ultimate meaning of life is being immortal. 

Humans have got to understand that they are different from the rest of the species of the planet and they have evolved from early to ancient to medieval to modern and have revolutionized each transit by their knowledge of science, technology, arts and architecture. And the fact of the present scientific revolution in bionic life, AI, genetic science and other technological advancements strongly directs toward humans' turning an inorganism or immortal organism in the coming future. If what Yuval Noah Harari terms it as 'homo deus', in his famous book, Homo Deus, is any indication, humans are evolving to turn gods and become omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and immortal. 

The Nuance navigates the universe with epistemological inspection of life, suggesting human immortality and reasoning about its inevitability. The verse advocates for the immortality of each human being and deals with the concept through its versified 3400 rhetorical questions in 1700 heroic couplets which are divided into 17 no. of cantos. Through these cantos, the verse develops the logic of human immortality and reasons that life is not limited to the mundaneness what we experience and observe but a continuous evolution toward eternal permanence. If life has been possible with death, life without death can also be possible. The brain, which holds the key to immortality, is too young now for us to be conclusive that death is inevitable. 

The verse protagonizes the human brain and urges for the use of the brain for the work of science to discover the key to immortal life and is optimistic that some day science will make it possible by manipulating biological, physical and chemical mechanism between matter and energy, which will enable sapiens to escape from the ecological cycle of birth and death of the mundane earth and live directly on the indestructible energy of the universe. The verse puts forward recent scientific and technological advancements, along with evolutionary logic, in its resolute proposition on immortality. 

The book preaches 'one humanity, one god, one religion, with science and scientific practices at core' and concludes that human beings will find the secret of immortality once they find the secret of origins of life and the voyage of science which is deep into the research, on the calm unified sea of humanity, will arrive at the secret some day, only if the voyage is not disturbed by the storms of bigotry, wars, crimes, vices, violence and divides and when we transform selfishness into selflessness at the individual level, the transformation of mortality into immortality and ephemeron into eternity is inevitable. For this, human brain must be free from the clutches of the regrssive mind that inhabits nescience and uneducation. The book champions that the brain as the engine of humanity, must be fuelled by the progressive mind to enable the engine to ferry us safe across the fatal sea.

CORE MESSAGE OF THE BOOK: We never owe death our life; it is only our stupid submission. Acceptance of death is our pessimistic retreat from life... In the deepest region of Nature is planted the secret seed of immortality. The real task of human beings is to discover that seed and tend it to grow to liberate themself from the clutch of the soil that breeds and kills them. 

Human life is the suprememost form of science and not limited to the mundaneness what we experience and observe but a continuous evolution toward its extraterrestrial existence and eternal permanence. Human beings with their almighty brain have got ability to evolve fast and transform themself into an immortal biology.

CORE WISDOM OF THE BOOK: We are mortal because we live on the mortals-- the transforming energy. Our immortality is definite if we get energy directly from the universe, independent of plants, animals and birds.

The universe is an energy manifestation and the whole energy of the universe is her indestructible spirit. Life which is a transformation of this spirit through the body can be conserved indestructibly by a scientific synergy between the body and energy. 

                                               N. P. Samal, Author