Big Quiet

Once upon a time there was the Big Quiet. Then a miracle happened[1] and there was the Big Bang which created matter and energy which expanded to fill space and time. Within the cosmos there were galaxies in which stars were created and destroyed. Many stars have planets orbiting them and thus form solar systems many of which might contain living things.

Planet Earth appeared when our solar system was created about 4.6 billion years ago and may well last for another 5.4 billion years till the sun stops burning.

Life on planet earth began when some naturally occurring macro-molecules began to reproduce themselves. This led to simple single celled organisms some of whom formed many celled organisms which included various groups of animals without backbones.

Backbones evolved and this gave us fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The reptiles were dominant until they were wiped out by a meteorite and mammals flourished in their place. The apes were outputs from this process and within that line were the hominids and eventually Homo Sapiens.

Even single celled organisms notice changes in their environment and react to them. The process can be labelled as irritability. In many celled animals there is division of labour between the cells. Some become sense organs, some become long nerve cells, and some become the brain. When the external environment is relatively stable it is good enough that patterns of irritability are hard wired. The animal is in essence an irritable robot that behaves predictably. The same is true of plants.

In the story so far we have dealt with cosmic and biological evolution which gave us predictably hard wired robots. We now turn to cultural evolution which generates organisms whose reactions and responses to changes in the environment are flexible and therefore unpredictable. Note that the hard wired, predictable system is ‘nature’ while the flexible and unpredictable system is ‘nurture’: Nature is cheaper and faster to run than nurture.

In the story so far I have not used the ‘consciousness’ word – this is because it is hard to figure its structure and function. It has to do with perception, awareness, mindfulness and with being awake. There are two versions of it (a) the unconscious where a lot goes on but there is no awareness of it in the attention centre of (b) self-consciousness.

The unconscious is a giant iceberg of which the self-conscious is the tiny tip. The self-conscious relates to the illusory notion of me, my, mine, ego and self.

Self-consciousness is the reasonable mind that feels that it has an unreasonable mind of its own.
It is aware of its irritability (ie is conscious of its consciousness).
It is what disappears when a person enters the non-egoic state when in ‘flow’.
It is what is transcended by meditators when they just sit and drop off body and mind.

In the West during the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment reason was lionised and the unconscious was thought to be a hell realm of beastly drives and instincts.

In the West more recently, especially after the development of brain scanning machines, the efficacy of self-consciousness and reason have been called into question, and the mind-numbing complexity of the unconscious has been highlighted.

Modern Homo Sapiens has been around as a stone age, language using forager for about 200,000 years and as an agriculturist for about 10,000 years. Language was a game changer as it made it possible to ask questions and to develop answers which became culturally embedded myths and magic. Joseph Campbell’s monumental mythological collection points to a universal set of commonalities and this suggests the evolution of hard wired frame works.

In the Judaic/Christian tradition for example there is a father figure in the sky who is omniscient but works in mysterious ways. He must be kept on side by means of sacrifice.

We are living in an age where increasing numbers of people refuse to accept the myths and magic of our ancestors. But we are still hard wired to seek meaning in patterns which are driven by conscious agents. (Ref Shermer).

This essay offers a new world view. There was the Big Quiet which became the Big Bang which resulted in Planet Earth. Inert chemicals evolved to form living organisms that developed self-consciousness. There is therefore the potential for directing the future course of evolution. This will include non-egoic meditation and thus blissful reunion with the Big Quiet.

PS – in 5.4 million years the sun will go out and planet earth and life will be destroyed. In the meantime it seems reasonable to make our time on the planet as pleasing as possible.

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[1] I call it a miracle because Science cannot as yet explain it