How material essence precedes existence in the reality of the self

The word “life” defines our essence well, as matter with the capacity of metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, reproduction, but includes one more deeper definition: in theological materialism the internal-essence or meta-essence of life is called the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, and it is material, or supermaterial. Things defined as “spiritual” are usually just that, definitions, sacred words with no real life or essence of life in them, they are openly and proudly non-material.

I affirm the traditional statement “essence precedes existence” as long as essence does not mean non-materialism. Essence is existence. When you say “existence precedes essence,” which is beloved of existentialists and implied in post-modernism, that is not much different from the loose idealism of Marxism or even modern liberalism, leading to the idea that human behavior is infinitely malleable since their is no essence or human nature.

The reality behind the “self” does not discard the material world as being only a deception. That kind of thinking has for many centuries led to the Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood. This view is the Platonic and Orthodox religious view which turns reality on its head and says only the non-material is real.

The essence of life, the activation of life, that is, the material Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, must in reality face the exigencies of evolution and natural election on its evolutionary path toward Godhood. But the Inward Path of traditional religion and philosophy is nevertheless conservatively retained as preliminary insight transformed in the Outward Path.