Evolution Of Consciousness & Information Processing
A crucial stumbling block for scientists has been their stubborn assertion that everything in the physical realm is caused therein, with chaotic natural competitive forces that evolve ever more complex organisms---quite by accident. They witness the incredible amount of intelligent energy exchanges going on within cells and organs and between plants and animals, yet deny the deep wisdom and information that it takes to accomplish interactive life so seamlessly. They wonder when consciousness arose, ignoring the quantum implications that consciousness itself is the very fabric of the universe---for their mathematics predict far more dimensions than their crumbling paradigms can handle. Each and every minute particle of matter is a manifestation of energy imbued with consciousness in some form or another. Where there is matter there is energy, and where there is energy there is information, and where there is information there is consciousness.
Where the presence of information exchanged is perpetually present wherever one looks in nature, it would be a tremendous stretch to presume that such a state would be reflective of accidental activity. Intelligence is hardly possible without information and its expansion through an interchange system. Nor could such a system exist for long without the element of intent. Chaos is in and of itself the formula for destruction, even when it is organized. Survival demands supportive forces to come into play in order to support such a goal. Finally, energy and matter are ubiquitous and even science proposes they are interchangeable. Thus, how could they be sustainable as uncomplimentary forces when they are more likely to be simply different forms of the same essence.
The information processing concepts will help scientists overcome the dogmatic fiction that consciousness is a result of life. They will find that it is its ultimate cause and destiny as thought is allowed its rightful place in the creative cycle. For indeed, without consciousness coming first, there would be no chicken or egg, or any cause and effect relationship of one begetting the other. But all ignorance and arrogance aside, they are correct in recognizing the power and dominion gained by the emergence of the human mind. This will be the key to recognizing the evaluative guidance that came along with the emergence of mind.
To place thought in the position of being the consequence of material evolution is to not only place the proverbial cart before the horse but to suggest that the cart causes the horse to move in a random direction when everything suggests that the horse is motivated by a more sophisticated form of guidance. Man.
Humanity will recognize from their own technological accomplishments of the information age that the Trinity of Self operates like a computer. The body will be likened to the hardware, with its preset parameters, brain processing and memory, and protective systems designed with the highest non-negotiable laws and values which are to be honored, respected and preserved. The body's emotional communication network will be recognized as the language of the human operating system, when found in electric brain pathways, in chemical production and receptor centers throughout the body, and computer chiplike properties and operations of the very cell membrane. It can then no longer be denied that the human self is an information processor, cycling information within and between all spiritual, mental and physical realms. It will be clear that emotion mediates the evolving consciousness at physical levels through subconscious, instinctive and impulsive actions.
It should also become clear that even if some type of extraordinary force of circumstance was responsible for bringing the portions of the computer together, it would still take a source to throw the switch, a source to provide the power and a source to utilize it in a creative fashion. When the evidence of such a source becomes so overwhelming as to defy misinterpretation, a new paradigm will be in place.
The mind will be recognized as the metaphoric software for the computer system. The focal point of human mind, which begins at birth of any given personality, collects self-experiences and makes patterned sense of them. It takes the sensory processed outputs of the hardware and consciously alters and adapts them creatively---becoming the full designer and conscious controller at the keyboard. Beliefs, habits, attitudes, and strategies will be recognized as the macros which are used as creative shortcuts by the mind. Herein comes wonder and power of free will to not only be aware of existing and ongoing bodily processes, but to actively and creatively participate in ways that enhance the life experience---and allow the unfolding of the highest destiny path. Emotion will be recognized as the evaluative guide of mindful thought, which aligns itself with the patterns of impulsive action and creates long-range strategies for ongoing pleasure.
The described "will to survive" is exceptionally short-sighted for, again, nature suggests so much more, especially in the case of higher consciousness where creativity is evident. When one observes the strides in music, art, prose, etc., one sees expressions of spirit being the primary purpose of life and the survival skills simply relegated to a secondary role.
The spirit is the timeless energy source and grand designer of the entire hardware/software system. Without the spiritual force, the system would be unplugged---dead. It is indeed the breath of life that connects the most minute and least complex levels with the ultimate complexities of All That Is. It is the inhaling of all energetic sensory wisdom and exhaling the mental and emotional self-created expressions that manifest the lyrical artwork of human culture. Upon attunement to the spiritual guidance available in feeling language and attainment of conscious unity in each breath, the human awareness can expand in both quantitative and qualitative ways to its full cosmic proportion.
Just as the computer can not activate without the operator throwing the switch, so life forms, at whatever point in physical reality, can not exist in a dynamic state without an energy source. Each new computer model plays a role in the design of a more complex and efficient one to follow and that process is dependent upon free will and the universal creative force.
In humans, and many animals, the safety features of the hardware parameters of the body are designed to accommodate varying levels of mindful consciousness, depending upon the quality of the willful use of mind. As humans learn and grow through the individual evolutionary process we have described as purposeful self-development, the mind collects more and more quantitative information about what is going on in the information/energy exchange process. (This energy flow has been described as the infinite cyclic exchange of energy information which is allowed admittance and exit through the chakra centers of mind as the spiritual challenges are met.)
There is an efficiency in nature that encourages all systems to enhance themselves with use. This is especially true of those systems that acquire and perpetuate information. Knowledge begets knowledge as intelligence begets intelligence and spirituality begets spirituality.
An "evolved" consciousness does a high quality job of adding enhancements rather than disrupting the process by dishonoring, suppressing, ignoring, judging or attempting to overrule the hardware parameters of body---particularly the suppression of feeling signals. If the mind has not sufficiently expanded to successfully handle a given situation, this is when the body will take over with its unconscious control and instinctive actions. These are the impulsive aspects within the feeling system that work behind the scenes with which the mind must align. In short, if the mind is not yet capable of doing the multi-purpose job, the body will default back into pre-set, unconscious, single purpose, safety-net control. If emotion cannot guide thought and action it will always settle for protective action alone.
When the mind places the body in a position where circumstances pose a fatal risk to it, the body will do
whatever is necessary, even a temporary shutdown of all system in order to preserve itself. This is a part of the self-learning process. Of course, if this becomes a pattern of behavior that is repeated to the point of being
insulting to higher intelligence, a permanent termination of activity results. To put it less subtly, we die.
Anyone who has spent time around the higher animal forms, i.e. those most popular of the "pet" type, will see clear evidence that our dog or cat will learn to carry out certain activities through reward or punishment. More accurately, it is the motivating factor of joy or fear that will act as the near exclusive motivator of behavior. Because these species are hardly capable to getting beyond these limited processes, they can not reach a point of emotional maturity or intellectual equality with their masters. Oftentimes, portions of the human species can become entrapped in the same limiting mindset and kept there for the duration of a particular physical existence.
The physical system is quite elegant in its flexibility and ingenious in its balancing of spiritual predestiny with mental free will, and the clues to this type of biological evolutionary flexibility are readily available to the scientists. From the lowest and least complex organisms, all the way up the purported phylogenic evolutionary ladder to humans, along with the increase in the complexity of form, there is also an observable increase in behavioral flexibility, brain capacity, and emotional processes that all support varying degrees of conscious willful control over the life experience. At any stage, there will be successful bodily regulation either through unconscious instinctive processes or conscious willful processes, or a combination of both---mediated by the emotional information flow and experienced as a unique spirit-in-flesh kind of experience.
Just as we can know and appreciate this variance, we can also come to understand that there is a point and purpose behind the existence of such a system. As simple math can evolve into a form of near abstract calculus, a seven note musical scale can be manipulated to produce the complex gestalt of a classical symphony, or a brush stroke of paint upon a canvas can initiate the production of a captivating work of art, so the spirit which exists in All That Is can continue to evolve into a state of perpetual growth.
As we have learned, emotion is a sense that is the closest approximation to the non-physical informational vibrations of All That Is---the language of spirit linking physical and non-physical portions of any gestalt of self. Without casting judgment upon any particular form of life, humanity can observe a myriad of available experiences and adventures in consciousness, each expressing value and experiencing emotional reward while dovetailing together in the physical realm and co-creating the Earthly ecosystem.
The evidence of this uniform state of being is virtually impossible to ignore. What is apparently possible to ignore, is the evidence that there is an interconnecting theme woven through a physical reality that is composed of those same qualities (to a greater or lesser degree) that we recognize in each other.
As humans become more and more consciously adept at recognizing the patterns within their own physical history, they will surely detect this evolving nature of consciousness and cast a new light on evolution both at individual and species levels. As this awareness unfolds, the gulf between hard-nosed scientists and those of enduring religious faith will come together. There shall be a reconciliation as the light dawns upon them both that the never-ending questioning of science is coming up with many of the answers that the faithful have long held. They will both recognize the inner compass and the true north of Divine Joy. They will achieve Divine Acceptance of the mutual connection, and interface and exchange more information allowing dogmatic rigidity within both camps to relax and a far more cooperative venture shall drive a cultural evolution which is long overdue.
This anticipated state of blending of tolerance for each other's position, followed by a new paradigm of understanding of what each contributes to the whole will bring about a more complete understanding and adoption of the so often suggested Heaven on Earth.
Darwin & Lamarck Revisited No scientist will dispute that it is indeed the individual
within each species that is the unit of evolutionary change---that it is the genetic contributions of each organism that influence the species as a whole. But this is only a part of the story. The moral to this incomplete story is that the only purpose of any life form is to
reproduce---to perpetuate his/her genes within the pool. It is assumed that genes are unchanging, predetermined codes (unchangeable hardware parameters) that constantly reproduce themselves. It is only when some error in the
copying of genetic information that mutations occur which offer any form of adaptation which may enhance the genetic information. But it is well known that mutations can also degrade genetic information, and thus all enhancements
or anomalies are accidental whims or mistakes of nature.
Why should it be presumed that something so basic to life itself, i.e. the genetic code, be excused from the evolutionary process? Surely there has to be something more to such a complex system than mere "unchanging" perpetuation.
But the DNA is far more complex and attuned to human experience than is now suspected. Fortunately, the information processing model will offer the uniting paradigm that will make it plain that both genes and the environment create changes in one another that call for and depend upon the higher purposes of self-development and self-expression. Not only does the physical environment effect inner changes, but the entire realm of mental thought is also a profoundly influential addition to the environment. Likewise, the coded instructions of the genes create chemical expressions and secretions that contribute to the ecosystem. The ongoing energy conversion/information processing cycle will leave no doubt that the effects of the environment which are largely controlled---and indeed created---by the human mind, have a profound effect upon the activity and replication of DNA itself. This fact will bring about a revolution in the realm of evolutionary thought, but it will also hearken back into human history where this possible path of inquiry once diverged.
The concept that our destiny is locked into whatever DNA qualities are discovered to exist in our physical history will now be subject to a widened interpretation of the what this system is and how it relates to our own creative capabilities. It should become clear to scientists and religious alike that the quality of free will and the capability to create our own reality out weighs any pre-ordained presumption that we are stuck with predetermined probabilities unless this is accepted as an unwavering belief system which we have chosen to adopt.
Long ago, before Darwin became canonized and causality was decided to be in the genes alone, there was an alternate evolutionary theory set forth by Jean Baptiste de Lamarck. Lamarkian thought was that there was some cooperative force at work within evolution that worked toward the benefit of the entire species, not simply the genes alone. He intuitively understood that the experiences of any given life form must have some way of affecting their offspring or all learning and creative expression would be meaningless. His concept of "felt needs" which inspired certain changes was far ahead of its time. For indeed, it is the mental and behavioral adaptations that create emotional conditions which alter the chemical reproduction and coding within the genes themselves.
Again, the genetic code is not likely to be so permanent as to be impossible to alter if one so wishes. The process of changing
one's DNA is no more complex than affecting one's immune system by visualizing a strengthening process which the mind can than convert into physical alternations. All past, present and future conditions are subject to our creative
free will. Having said that, one need now only to believe it, a process directly connected to our needs.
The DNA are the tools of the mind and can successfully alter our own developmental potential, not just that of our children. This is just another form of information locked deeply within our cellular make-up. Once activated, it has massive and nearly unlimited power to formulate whatever state of being we can imagine.
The concept of ongoing, evolving co-creation would have arisen long ago had both parts of this picture been recognized as valid contributions instead of opposing approaches. With the information processing model and emotional self-regulation uniting the two, it will be plain that evolution is driven by both internal environments (spiritual, mental, electrical, chemical, genetic, and atomic processes) and external environments (sociocultural landscapes, opportunities for purposeful development and expression, and basic survival conditions). It will be clear that a constant give and take mediation is occurring wherein adaptive mutations are created by thoughts and actions---ever guided by the balancing, safeguarding, and enticing emotional messages of spirit.
More progress is stifled by the artificial establishment of opposing concepts than can ever be found justified in our current state of mind. All competition must include the trust in spirit which guides the human being toward the greatest possible potential.
The turning of the millenium marks the potential of critical mass as the revelations of the inner unifying mechanisms sweep through mass consciousness, accomplishing another dramatic shift which will propel humanity up to a higher "being state" of consciousness. With the understandings of how evolution is accomplished, we can now take a closer look at the trends within human cultural evolution.