Human imagination has created in rough-and-ready fashion many hundreds of worlds where behind notions and events are no deliberate regularities, where magic that is inexplicable phenomenon and rules of the universe are unaccountable and inscrutable. FFVII offers to a player the world where rules and regularities are clearly determined and fixed and all events occur within the limits of these rules. Among global conceptual explanations there is a version of a law the life in the universe exists according to. In the current article we will try to collect together everything that is said about this law and place under it a practical basis appropriate also for the our real world.

The Game events lead Cloud party to the place called "Cosmo Canyon". By that moment the player manages such notions as "Mako", "Lifestream", "Cetra" and "Return to Planet", however only in Cosmo Canyon these notions are collected in the single Study of Planet Life. After examination of the Study the outline of the events stops to be an interestingly twisted fantastic plot and takes the form of an ordered consecution strictly subordinated to the definite laws.
So, the Study of Planet Life. This teaching was founded by former Shin-Ra employee and now the head of Cosmo Canyon's elders and astronomer - Bugenhagen, adoptive grandfather of Red XIII. By the notion "founded" we should understand not concoction of the conception but collecting together already existing but forgotten ancient knowledge. The main point of the teaching lays in two theses. First one: in the Universe exists some global so-called Lifestream, that drives and controls everything - from blooming of flowers to birth and death of planets. Second one: all living in the Universe united by some substance - Mako energy. People often mixing up notions "Mako" and "Lifestream" replacing one with another and not seeing the difference. Let's clarify: Mako - is the energy of spirits that is a vivifying origin of everything existing. Lifestream that is the stream of Mako. Let's put a simple metaphor to make it clear: if Lifestream is a river then Mako is water, that that the river consists from. If you would fall in Lifestream you got Mako- but not Lifestream- poisoning.
According to the teaching all existing is a space circulation of energy and information. Spirits of the dead unite with the Planet bringing new energy and new data about life to it. In that way the lifestream of the Planet is able to develop and to perfect itself. Lifestream of planets connects to the space Lifestream and in that way life in the universe develops and keeps up. Irreplaceable damage caused by Mako-reactors that we hear about from the first moments of the Game consists in that reactors pump out Mako and process it returning nothing into the Planet in exchange for dead technical wastes. In such way decreasing total amount of life energy of the planet. It is possible that using of Mako as main energy source would not cause such catastrophic damage to the Planet but at the time if it were not the situation when on the Planet's body already during two thousands years exists an open wound - a crater from Jenova's fall. The Planet tries to heal this wound with Mako sending the Lifestream to the affected place, but the Planet has not enough resources and from year to year it becomes less and less of them. The appearance of wastes around Midgar with its eight reactors, the fact that snow never melts around North Crater, and the fact that after construction of Nibelheim reactor all trees in the mountains had dried up is explained by that. In that way we see that the life of the Planet is under the threat, it can not heal its wound, and its inhabitants instead of help are only aggravates its suffering. From here takes its place so-called "the cry of the planet" that is heard in Bugenhagen's observatory.

The Study of Planet Life leads its adepts to the way of evolution of Cetra who were in harmony with the Planet without harming it, could connect to the Lifestream as a space source of information, and could speak with the Planet and learn about its condition. This path of evolution is not perfection of technology but perfection of oneself; it is the salutary for the Planet and for people living on it. To realize one's union with the Planet; not to oppose to the laws the Universe lives according to but on the contrary, to learn how to follow them - there are the basics of the Study of Planet Life.

Is it beautiful, romantic and some fantastic? Not so. On our planet similar study that has many adepts exists and this study serves as the confirmation for the fact that the Lifestream and the spirit energy are not fiction, but a real hint at the path of self-determination and orientation in big and incomprehensible world. We really can follow this path and it really may do the secret rules of nature a bit more clear.
The case in point is an ancient-china nature-philosophical conception of "the Great Limit". This conception gave a rise to religious-philosophical and medical practices and now the notions of "Tai chi chuan", "Quigong" (or "chi kung") and "Yin and yang". We will roughly describe the point of this conception focusing at the aspects commensurable with the Study of Planet Life. The idea of the world space organization according to the Great Limit is diametrically opposite to the European doctrines. Their way is - dismemberment, schematization of processes and creation of model for each of them. The way of the Great Limit is to discover relations and regularities between global space and elemental phenomena and the smallest phenomena of activity of nature. Understanding of interrelationship of all existing that is the basis of harmonious and happy life. World outlook of the Great Limit consist of the teaching about some universal vivifying energy "Qi" that is a reason and beginning of each movement and change in the Universe. The stream of this energy circulates through the worlds and gives them a life. Every living being - a man, a bird, a tree - is considered as incarnation of the Universe in miniature and every of these creatures has its own, local stream of this energy. With that Qi - is not a physically measurable energy, but some ether, a functional beginning, more thin substance then the one that can be detected with devices and organs of sense. Qi shaped at the first step of embryo programming its heredity and the fund of life power of the future living being. When a living creature dies its Qi returns to the bigger stream as a brook flows into a river that in its turn flows into a sea. At that there is no difference between a man and, for example, a bird - they are equal at the level of energy Qi.

Speaking about programming of heredity we should give more precise definition. Hereditary energy Qi is also called "energy of ancestors" because it is the energy coming form parents. If their Qi is not all right it becomes a pathogenic factor for organism of a child. Here it is appropriate to remember geostigma - it is the reason of suffering of those people's children whose inner lifestream is infected by Jenova cells. Those children inherited not heart disease or poor eyesight but pathology at the thinnest level. That is we see that the conception of the Great Limit is observed consecutively observed in the story of FFVII and AC.
It is interesting to mark that among so-caller "thresholds" during the practice of the Great Limit there is one saying: "You should not fear of hearing voices of dead or seeing their ghosts. That means that you have reached the certain level of harmony and have overcome a threshold of detecting of events from the material world only and only by physical receptors". Let's remember that Aerith from her childhood have been hearing some strange voices, including voices of the dead. This ability is called by Elmira "mystique", but she believes Aerith after receiving confirmation of her husband's death.
    The result of following the Great Limit is an attainment of harmony with the outworld. This harmony is a pledge of longevity, satori and absence of fears.Both the Great Limit and the Study of Planet Life tells us to practice for the purpose of self-development: in the first case - to comprehend the laws of the creation and to understand one's part in the Universe, in the second case - to approach to the wisdom of Cetra. These purposes are synonymous. In that way we see that projection of the Study of Planet Life to reality is appropriate and logically founded.

The comparison cited above plays important part for detailed research of FFVII. First, the fact that the world of FFVII is based on the rules that can be applied to the our world says that the point of view at FFVII as at fairy tale irrational reality is radically incorrect. That means that the story and events are in strict cause-and-effect connection. According to the Great Limit and the Study of Planet Life, there is no any event that happens by itself; it has its prehistory and reason and accordingly also has certain consequences. While supposing relations between events we can follow logic common for our world. And second, this comparison raises the extent of reality and morality of FFVII: one matter - to abstractedly love fairy-tale world living according to its rules that are not work in reality and completely another matter - to have a possibility to extract a practical benefit from the offered man-made world, be it use in gaining of knowledge, in solving of moral problems or in touch to a knowledge about true really working higher law. And third, one of the advices given in FFVII - to learn how to be in harmony with the world where you live in. In the world of FFVII the absence of this ability leaded the Planet and its inhabitants to the brink of disaster because of the technologically-scientific but not mental way: Cetra conserved Jenova and humans released her, Cetra cared for the Planet and humans pumped from it injured last life powers.

Drawing a parallel between the Great Limit and the Study of Planet Life we gain neither more nor less than detailed guide about searching of this harmony without waiting of the end of days.