“Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.”— Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome 161-180 AD, Author of Meditations IV, 40.

Notes:

> Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation, is opposed to biblical, fundamentalist “creationism.”
> The biblical fundamentalists do not hold a copyright on our term, “Nature’s Continuing Creation,” which encompasses ongoing evolution in culture, science, and technology.
> This book is not related to “Spiritualism,” “Scientology, or “Christian Science.” 
> Everything in this book is free to all readers. We carry no ads. We ask for no contributions.
> Our Essays can be thought of as Chapters in our book.
> Most of our Essays can be read independently.
> This book was written between 2015 and 2025. Your author, J.X. Mason, made use of artificial intelligence systems in only 3 of the Essays.  
> Over the coming months & years, Essays are likely to be updated for new information. The first page of an Essay displays its latest revision date. 

This seven-page Introduction Essay introduces The Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Purpose & Meaning in Nature, Science, and History.

We also refer to The Path of Nature’s Continuing Creation in the shortened form, “Continuing Creation.”  We sometimes call it “The Growing, Organizing, Direction of the Cosmos and “The Interlocking Processes of Continuing Creation.”

Still other names for Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation include: The Creative Flow of the Universe, The Flow, The Force, The One, The Whole of All Wholes, The Progression, The Sum of All Systems, Gaia, Our Path, Our Practice, Our Way, Continuing Natural Creation, Nature’s Continuing Creation, The Path of Purpose & Progress, and even the abbreviations “NPCC” and NCC”  We sometimes say that Nature’s Continuing Creation “Grows in the Direction of Organized Complexity.”

All these names are possible translations of the phrase “The Tao Te Ching” (literally, “The Way and its Power”), which is the title that the ancient Chinese Sage Lao Tzu gave to his small yet immortal book of wisdom, the foundational text of Taoism.  (See our full-length Essay, Evaluating Taoism & Zen.)

This book is a collection of related Essays. Forty Essays have been posted on our website, www.continuingcreation.org. All the Essays can be read independently of each other.  However, this brief introduction, along with the 27-page Overview Essay, should be read first. 

Note: This website also contains all of J.X. Mason’s one-page Blog Posts. New Blog Posts come out weekly, and you can subscribe to them by clicking the dark green button in the right-hand margin of each page. 

By traveling a “Path of Purpose & Meaning,” we mean cultivating a deep intellectual and emotional connection with, and actively participating in, the ongoing creativity of the universe.

If readers seek a longer synopsis of this book about Nature’s Continuing Creation, read our 27-page Overview Essay, which has links to topics in the entire book.

There are over 20 Forerunners to our Secular-Spiritual Practice, including Process Theology, Deism, Taoism, and Transcendentalism. We mention them in our Overview, and we also devote a separate paragraph to each of them in our Essay, Forerunners to Our Path & Practice.

The fundamental process of Nature’s Continuing Creation is this: When a steady flow of energy encounters a receptive environment, it can weave patterns and create systems of increasing Complexity.  Over time, the systems that survive may grow and elaborate themselves through the Processes of Evolution.  (See Duke University Professor Adrian Bejan’s Constructal Law.)

Within Continuing Natural Creation, the Science of Evolution is the most important of all the sciences.  This is not because Evolution is the most fundamental science (physics and chemistry are more fundamental) but because humans clearly experience and participate in Evolution — biological, cultural, and technological evolution. 

We define “Evolution” very broadly: Evolution is any process or system (astrophysical, geological, biological, cultural, or technological) that combines parts to form new and different “wholes” that can survive effectively and efficiently in their environments.  Such wholes are significantly different from the sum of their parts. (For example, an ant colony is significantly different than a jar full of ants; a language is significantly different than a list of all its words.) 

On Earth, Continuing Creation is powered by our sun shining down light and heat, and from the heat of its own molten magma core. This flow-through of energy powers the formation of our geology and atmosphere, and the construction of plant life. Plant life and animal life evolved from a common single-celled ancestor.  Today, plant life supplies food and oxygen for animal life. In the human animal, the energy from “burning” the food in our cells creates consciousness, thought, culture, science, and technology.

Nature’s Continuing Creation aims to be consistent with modern science and historical fact. NCC is not just the process of evolution, but all the processes of physics, geology, chemistry, biology, and the social sciences that underlie the universe and life.

All of Natural Creation, past and present, happens through the interlocking Principles and Processes that make up the Growing, Organizing, Direction of the Cosmos, including energy throughput, differentiation-through-combination, complexity, emergence, evolution, natural selection, phase change, feedback loops, catalysis, emergence, change-through-error, chain reactions, and far-from-equilibrium systems. Using clear language, we will explain each of these and other Processes in this Book.

The purpose of each human life is to create. Creating includes building positive and constructive relationships with our loved ones, neighbors, and co-workers. Creating also includes discovering, exploring, learning, preserving, teaching, wondering, reflecting, questioning, thinking, researching, exploring, discovering, learning, planning, inventing, designing, building, writing, composing, organizing, improving, weaving, teaching, growing, inspiring, communicating, caring, and loving.

People who follow Our Path of Continuing Creation are known as Co-Creators in… Followers of… Explorers of… Navigators in… Masons of… Weavers in… Gardeners of… Cultivators of… Architects of… Practitioners of… Partners in… Agents of… Nature’s Continuing Creation.

The primary texts of the world’s great religions contain much wisdom, but they also recount myths that did not take place and are not literally true. Those myths were written ages ago when men and women had little knowledge of the Universe.  Newer spiritual paths, such as New Age and Scientology, also demonstrate a lack of scientific knowledge. (See our Essay, Smaller Religions & Modern Cults.)

The sacred books of the Old Middle Eastern Religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — portray Continuing Creation in human terms – as an all-powerful individual God who intervenes directly in individual human lives. This is an anthropomorphic projection of human characteristics onto Nature’s Continuing Creation, and it is only metaphorically true.

Today, in the twenty-first century, people who cling to the old myths and old conceptions of Continuing Creation as “God” are killing each other over their outdated, unscientific beliefs, and over their desire for disputed land. Muslim versus Christian and Jew; Catholic versus Protestant; Sunni Muslims versus Shia Muslims.  Religious violence repeatedly threatens to overwhelm the world and usher in a new dark age. (See our individual Essays on Taoism & Zen, on Hinduism, on Buddhism, on Evaluating Jesus’ Teaching, on Early Christianity to 312 A.D., on Medieval Roman Catholicism, and on Islam. There is also an Essay that examines 46 smaller religions and modern cults.

In the Old Middle Eastern Religions, God is a person-like super-being. Today, we know that Continuing Creation is a network of Interlocking Natural Processes.

In the Old Middle Eastern Religions, God stood outside us. Today, we know that Continuing Creation is woven into our very DNA, and into all the systems – geologic, biological, ecological, cultural, and technological – that are within us and around us.

In the Old Middle Eastern Religions, God intervenes to reward or punish individual humans. Today, we know that Continuing Creation does not intentionally intervene in individual human lives.

Mankind must cast aside the old religious fundamentalisms, particularly the literal interpretation of “sacred” books, and adopt a Secular-Spirituality consistent with Nature, Science, and History. Only then can religious conflict cease.

Religions have been transformed many times in the past.  Protestant Christianity grew out of Catholicism. Buddhism grew out of Hinduism. Now is the time for another transformation.

Nature’s Continuing Creation calls us to a high morality that is informed by human tradition. It includes both love and action:
          >  Love is deeply interested in and caring for some person, creature, thing, activity, or system.
          >  Action is “Doing the Next Right Thing,” and doing it with Virtue — a Greco-Roman concept from the Stoic Philosophers.

This book about  Nature’s Continuing Creation also includes Essays on morality, ethics, virtue, and the art of living a full and satisfying life.  

——————————————-

Nature’s Continuing Creation in Short Stanzas

> Nature’s Continuing Creation is The Growing, Organizing, Direction of the Cosmos.

> Nature’s Continuing Creation involves everything and everyone.
It Creates Wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts, and
Each day, it creates new and greater Wholes for tomorrow.

> When the nuclear fires of stars created complex elements out of hydrogen,
When the elephant evolved from ancestors of the mastodon,
When Americans built the Golden Gate Bridge and the latest supercomputer,
All of those and more are Continuing Creation at work.

> Quarks combine to make atoms; atoms combine to make molecules.
Molecules make compounds; compounds make single-cell organisms.
Single-cell organisms join to make complex plants and animals.
Complex animals join to make societies (bees, elephants, humans).
Human societies create art, language, science, and technology.

> Nature’s Continuing Creation speaks to us through centuries of human learning,
But that accumulated knowledge remains imperfect. 
Our book about Nature’s Continuing Creation should have many future revisions,
So that it stays consistent with our knowledge of Nature, Science, & History.

> In earlier spiritual traditions, God has been called many names, including:
The Way, The Light, The One, The Tao, and the Ground of All Being.
Lacking knowledge of science, older traditions cannot fully describe Natural Creation.

> Mankind’s old conception of ‘God’ is outdated and no longer useful.
Nature’s Continuing Creation is not a magical, all-powerful super-person God.
NCC does not see or hear, although many of Nature’s creatures do see and hear.

> Nature’s Continuing Creation does not interfere in our individual lives. 
However, individuals can interact with each other, magnifying their achievements.

> We humans cannot talk directly to Nature’s Continuing Creation,
But we can talk to each other about Nature’s Continuing Creation.

> Continuing Natural Creation cannot intervene on an individual’s behalf.
However, positive participation in Continuing Creation can enrich each person’s life.
Nature’s Continuing Creation is not all-powerful — but it is very powerful and very persistent.

> We do not worship The Processes of Nature’s Continuing Creation,
Because worship involves submission, obeisance, and supplication.
Humankind should not bow to something of which it is an important part,
No more than one human should bow to any other human.

> Meditation is a vital practice for mental calm and secular-spiritual growth,
But endless meditations in an attempt to reach “Nirvana” is escapism.

> We humans must live in sustainable economies and sustainable ecologies.
Only then can Earth’s ecosystems and its creatures, including humans, be saved.

> Instead of worshiping a God or Goddess, we celebrate Nature’s Continuing Creation!
And the best Celebration is our positive, active participation in daily Natural Creating.

> Participants in our Practice seek to live ethical, virtuous, creative, and fulfilled lives.
We align our spirit, thought, and behavior with Continuing Natural Creation.

> We Human Beings are not “Children of God.”
We are Agents of Nature’s Continuing Creation.

______________________________           
                — J.X. Mason.  ContinuingCreation.org