CONSCIOUSNESS & AWARENESS ● I. Consiousnes & Evolution ● II. Defining Awareness & Consciousness ● III. The Mystery of Awareness ● IV. The Enigma of Consciousness ● V. Consciousness in the East and the West ● VI. What Can be Said About Consciousness ● VII. The Ouroboros Consciousness ● VIII.  Ouroboric Super-Awareness ● IX. The Super-Awake Flow ● X. Fields of Consciousness ● XI. Group Meditation

THE INNER AND THE OUTER PERSON ● The inner and the outer Person ● Integral Suffering and Happiness ● Modern Forms of Suffering   THE BUTTERFLY OF THE SOUL ● The liberation from or of the Self ● The Glue of Love ● God wants to be Human CIVILIZATION & CONSCIOUSNESS ● Civilization and Consciousness  ● Civilization and Consciousness Part II

 •






























































 

 
EVOLUTION & BIOLOGICAL CONTROL SYSTEMS

We still draw the boundaries of our personality too narrowly. We always count as part of our personality only what we separate as individual, recognize as deviating. But we consist of the whole mass of the world, each of us, and just as our body itself carries the development pedigree down to fish and even further back, so we have in the human soul everything that has ever lived. Hermann Hesse: 'Demian'

I am a lizard King - I can do everything - J.Morrison

During my 45-year journey with daily meditation, I've occasionally delved into transpersonal realms so radically different from our perceived reality that I can confidently state: Those who touch these depths undergo a profound transformation.
This statement is particularly aimed for individuals anchored in rigid worldviews, be they rooted in religious or scientific dogma. I welcome having my own perspectives shaken, ideally by those who have experienced, at least once, a kind of spiritual epiphany that upends their understanding of reality as decisively as a bolt of lightning would disrupt a quiet coffee break. Alternatively, I value discourse with people who have endured significant hardship. Suffering, when approached constructively, adds layers of depth to our character.

As a young man, I glimpsed into the inner abyss, and it stared back at me with 'unconventional' insights. In the ensuing narrative, I endeavor to remain loyal to these insights through symbolic and poetic language, challenging the prevailing, skeptical perspective. However, I also aim to bridge the gap with the rational mind, offering interpretive insights into my imaginative universe, which is informed by ancient bio-archetypes that have been a part of me since my primordial days as a sea anemone, if not earlier.

The poem below written by the sufi mystic Rumi, shows the development of life in a form of spiritual evolution:

Originally, you were clay. 
From being mineral, you becamet vegetable. 
From vegetable you became animal, and from animal, man. 
During these periods man did not know where he was going, 
but he was being taken on a long journey nonetheless.  

And you have to go through a hundred different worlds yet. 
I died from minerality and became vegetable; 
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal. 
I died from animality and became man. 
Then why fear disapearance through death? 
Next time I shall die Bringing forth wings and feathers like Angels. 
After soaring higher than angels- 
You cannot imagine. 
I shall be that.
Rumi

Around the end of the 18th century, the writings of Sufi mystics were translated into German. Schelling was not late to embroider further on Rumi in a journey from sleep to wakefulness:

The universal spirit,
which slumbers in the stone, dreams in the plant,
awakens in the animal, becomes conscious in man
and reaches its highest unfolding in the artist.

In this chapter, we will view the human cell colony as a Noah's Ark for all previous life's bio-operating systems. Precambrian primal cells still sing life's fundamental tone for those who make themselves silent. In hunger for the nourishing waters of this primordial soup, I will turn Schelling upside down and travel back to the slumbering stones, dreaming plants, and half-awake animals that still reside in my inner darkness.

OUR BIOLOGICAL WORLD MASS

Our unique attributes evolved over a period of roughly 6 million years. They represent modifications of great ape attributes that are roughly 10 million years old, primate attributes that are roughly 55 million years old, mammalian attributes that are roughly 245 million years old, vertebrate attributes that are roughly 600 million years old, and attributes of nucleated cells that are perhaps 1,500 million years old.
 
If you think it is unnecessary to go that far back in the tree of life to understand our own attributes, consider the humbling fact that we share with nematodes [roundworms] the same gene that controls appetite. At most, our unique attributes are like an addition onto a vast multiroom mansion. It is sheer hubris to think that we can ignore all but the newest room.
David Sloan Wilson - Evolution for Everyone, 2007

It would be a controversial thought for most that meditation is also introverted archaeology. However, the following scientifically verifiable examples will illustrate that the idea is not as unlikely as it might seem at first glance.
 
Recipe for a human
Add an appropriate amount of precambrian primordial sea salt, as the salt balance in our cells is still the same as it was in the pre-Cambrian primordial sea. Take two kilograms of body mass consisting of bacteria. They once lived, before they became peaceful bio-citizens in the human body, their own free life or a life in symbiosis with other life forms. Add countless forms of viruses, including some types we inherited from the Neanderthals.
 
The recipe is too long to complete here, but all ingredients point in the same direction: Anatomically, humans are a baroque composite, an impossible synthesis of living prehistoric beings. Finally, sprinkle about one percent of actual human genes over our simmering biological stew.
 

We rose from the primordial sea and still carry it in our cells. In this sense, the human body is a surviving zoological museum composed of life and behavioral forms that reach all the way back to the earliest stardust.
 
These crossroads are life's provisional but certainly not final conclusion.
 
We are surviving waves raised in storms from the primordial sea and now washed ashore on the coast of life.
 
This odyssey would not have been possible without cooperation and recycling.

WE ARE MADE OF RECYCKLING
We are made of recyckled bio-software. The most ancient coding in this recycling is our 'urge' for survival. It is the 'reason' we are still here. All previously functional Darwinian biological experiences, from the primordial soup onward, are preserved as fundamental building blocks in our current biological architecture.
 
Evolution essentially does not reshape the foundation of its creation. Instead, it builds upon the already existing biological architectures. From an evolutionary development perspective, humans are composed of a whole range of different survival systems. Our body consists, in this sense, of the total zoological sum of our previous species lives.

We consist of reincarnated operating systems, whose main biological task was and is to make us survive. As humans, we have been guests here for a brief moment of 2.5 million years. As zoological cell colonies, we are much, much older. Within us are all of life's previous forms of consciousness. Cells, microbiomes, worms, reptiles, and mammalian operating systems have come together under a common roof in the body. Some of these beings sleep, others are more awake and help us in our survival game.
Ion channels in the cell membranes of Necturus salamanders can be found in rats and humans. Every single piece of DNA that has proven to work in evolution is recycled by more advanced systems at higher levels in evolution. The genes that control our heartbeat were created in sea anemones. We share 25% of our genes with trees. Our appetite is driven by genetic drivers that were developed in roundworms. Our teeth were originally fish scales.

Our face was fundamentally created when we were fish. A fish face has eyes, a mouth, and sometimes, as is the case with the blobfish, a nose!

The Blob fish - Psychrolutes marcidus

In the fetal stage, we go through our entire species history and develop, for example, the beginnings of gills. As we can see in this BBC video, the face of a human fetus is formed between the second and third month. During this period, the face is assembled like a puzzle, starting at the fish stage and ultimately coming together in a recognizable face. The final connecting piece in this puzzle is the philtrum, the groove below the nose.
 
Notice how the face, just before it takes on a human form, goes through various zoological stages in the shape of animal faces. During the fetal stage, we climb up all the previous steps on the evolutionary ladder that our species has utilized.

Let me like a magic mantra repeat the wondrous, thought-provoking, yet simple fact: As biological beings, we live and function at the intersection of prehistoric animals' and life forms' operating systems. We are a living zoological museum that has stepped out of time and come together in a hub where even the ancient reptile has survived the crushing teeth of time.
We are a patchwork quilt of ancient and modern, each layer adding complexity and richness to the fabric of what we consider to be 'human.'

Let me now give a few additional examples quoted from the library of our human DNA.

Biomechanical History
Consider the structure of the human hand. At first glance, it's a uniquely human trait that enables us to grasp tools and manipulate our environment. But this too is a biological patchwork. The basic pentadactyl limb configuration is hundreds of millions of years old, shared with many other vertebrates, from bats to whales. So, the human hand is not so much a revolutionary design as it is a modification of ancient blueprints.
 
Genetic Echoes
If we move even deeper into the genetic layer, the idea of 'junk DNA' also adds to the narrative of biological reuse. Once thought to be useless, these stretches of DNA are now known to play roles in regulation, development, and disease resistance. Some may be remnants of ancient viruses that infected our ancestors and became integrated into the genome. Here, the evolutionary echo persists even in our genetic code.
 
Genes for Development - Hox Genes
Hox genes, which are responsible for body plan development, are remarkably conserved across animal species. They control the placement of limbs and organs in everything from fruit flies to humans. In both cases, the same genes dictate the anterior-posterior axis of the creature, showing that the basic "blueprint" for laying out a body has been reused and modified over hundreds of millions of years.

Molecular Machinery
ATP Synthase: This enzyme is responsible for making ATP, the energy currency of the cell. It is highly conserved across all domains of life (Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryota), indicating its fundamental importance. Even in vastly different species and cell types, the mechanism for producing ATP is often strikingly similar, a clear case of biological reuse at the molecular level.

Sensory Systems
Opsin Proteins: These light-sensitive proteins are found in the photoreceptor cells of the eye and are vital for vision. Remarkably, similar opsin proteins also exist in simpler organisms. For example, certain algae use a form of opsin to sense light direction for photosynthesis. The fundamental molecular machinery for detecting light, therefore, appears to have been reused for various forms of vision in more complex organisms.
 
Gut Instinct
Our gut microbiome is another fascinating area of biological reuse. Comprising a complex ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, our gut microbiota affects everything from digestion to mental health. Many of these microbes have ancient origins and have co-evolved with us, playing an essential role in our survival. These internal communities mirror ancient environmental ecosystems, now internalized.

Behavioral Traits
Fight-or-Flight Response: This basic survival mechanism is shared across a multitude of species, from humans to small mammals and even birds. When faced with a threat, adrenaline and cortisol levels spike, preparing the organism for rapid action. This physiological response has been conserved because of its effectiveness in promoting survival.

The Neurochemical Symphony
Even our complex emotional lives carry the vestiges of our evolutionary history. Neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin govern everything from our pursuit of rewards to our social bonds. These chemicals are not unique to humans; they serve similar functions in many other animals. The pathways that produce feelings of happiness in humans can be traced back to mechanisms that once helped simpler organisms navigate their environments in search of food or mates.
 
Neurological Functions
Serotonin: This neurotransmitter, crucial in regulating mood and emotion in humans, has a long evolutionary history. Interestingly, it serves a similar function in invertebrates like lobsters, which also use serotonin to modulate social status and aggressive behavior. The conservation of serotonin as a social behavior-modulating molecule across such diverse taxa indicates a form of biological reuse.
 
CULTURAL RECYCKLING
Societies and cultures also engage in a form of 'reuse.' Our collective memory in the form of myths, narratives, and social norms are reiterations and reinterpretations of older versions. They function much like the 'old code' in our DNA, serving new purposes while echoing ancient wisdom and survival strategies.
 
The Recursive Loop
Human art and storytelling frequently circle back to themes and archetypes that have existed for millennia. The hero's journey, the quest, and the transformation are recurring motifs that resonate with us because they reflect deeply ingrained social and psychological patterns.

Technological Evolution
Much like in biological evolution, our technologies also build upon previous foundations. Consider the internet: it operates on principles first laid out in telecommunication networks, which themselves evolved from postal systems. Our smartphones are little more than highly advanced, pocket-sized computers, whose fundamental operating principles are decades old.
 
In summary, the notion of 'biological reuse' extends far beyond just our anatomical or cellular structure; it pervades our emotional lives, our societies, and even our technologies.
 
THE BRAIN'S TRIUNE DISAGREEMENT

We are obliged to look at ourselves and the world through the eyes of
three different mentalities, two of which lack the power of speech.
MacLean

The illustration below shows the brain as constructed in three layers. This is, of course, a strong simplification of the actual conditions. It may even be incorrect. Nonetheless, it is thought-provoking. The project here is not strict empirical brain science, but to intuitively view the brain's different operating systems as deposits from various time periods in our evolutionary history.

The innermost and oldest brainstem, the R-complex, we have in common with reptiles. Here lies our most instinctive and autonomously controlled behavior. These control mechanisms live their own life, and can neither understand the animal brain's emotions nor the human brain's language. The middle part, the limbic system, we share with mammals. Here we feel ourselves and the world in attention.
 
Finally, we have the uppermost and outermost part, the neocortex, which we share with whales and great apes. This is the seat of language and consciousness. The frontal lobes are especially interesting in this context, as it is likely here that wakefulness itself is formed.

The notion that our brainstem is reptilian in origin, topped by a mammalian brain, provides a compelling lens through which to view incidents like Uruguayan soccer star Suárez's impulsive act of biting an opponent's shoulder. After all, what is a soccer match if not a symbolic struggle between two tribes over a valued resource, much like animals fighting over food?

However, this triune brain concept should be viewed primarily as a vivid metaphor. Evolution didn't merely stack new structures onto old ones but also upgraded those ancient layers, much like renovating an old house—right down to improving the damp cellar.

In this sense our urban civilization reflects the biological systems that created it. In the cityscape, we see the same houses as there were a hundred years ago, and there are cars like those from 50 years ago. One of the new additions is digitalization, which today permeates all these older structures in the same way that the newest layers in the brain have drilled neurons into the brain's oldest layers. Just as I can live in a modernized apartment in a house that is several hundred years old, I reside in an inner body home full of old walls, doors, toilet pipes, and windows - but now with freshly painted walls, modern heating systems, added electrical wiring, refrigerators, flat screens, and internet connection.

Goosebumps as Positive Emotional Markers
It's worth noting that these repurposed, older layers don't function exactly as they did in their heyday. Take, for example, the phenomenon of hairs standing on end. In our evolutionary past, this response was associated with aggression or fear. In a similar vein to hairs standing on end, the phenomenon of goosebumps was originally an evolutionary response to cold or fear. The rising of small "pimples" on the skin would have helped our hairy ancestors retain a layer of warm air close to the skin or it would have helped them to look bigger and more dangerous. Nowadays, we often experience goosebumps during emotional or awe-inspiring moments, such as listening to a beautiful piece of music.

Furthermore in mystical traditions, many recount experiencing this same biological reaction during profound encounters with the divine. I've had numerous experiences myself where all my hairs stood up as I felt a transcendent presence fill my soul. In this way, a biological mechanism originally intended to signal threat has been repurposed to signify intense, positive emotions.

Here are some additional examples of biological mechanisms being repurposed or taking on new meanings.

Morphed Organ Functions
Lungs and Swim Bladders: In fish, the swim bladder is used for buoyancy. It is thought to have evolved from the lungs of ancestral fish that adapted to life underwater. In this way, an organ used for gas exchange in one environment was repurposed for buoyancy control in another.

In Public Speaking
The "fight or flight" response is a primal reaction geared to prepare our body for imminent threats. Yet, in today's world, non-life-threatening scenarios such as public speaking or job interviews can spur this adrenaline surge. Interestingly, actors and public performers often attest that a measured dose of this age-old adrenaline can enhance the vigor and caliber of a performance.

Blushing and Social Interaction
Blushing is thought to have evolved as a social mechanism to show submission or a change in social status, helping to establish social hierarchies without the need for violence. Today, it serves as an involuntary emotional signal, revealing feelings like embarrassment or romantic interest, which can carry different contextual meanings.

Pupil Dilation as a Sign of Interest
Pupil dilation originally served the purpose of allowing more light into the eye in low-light conditions. However, it's also been observed to occur during states of emotional arousal or when looking at someone we find attractive, giving a new social context to an old biological function.

Tears as Emotional Signals
Crying is thought to have initially evolved as a way to clean and lubricate the eyes. Now, tears have a communicative function, signaling emotional states like sadness, joy, or relief, and prompting social support or action from others.

Smiles & Laughter for Social Bonding
Laughter likely had its origins in signaling contentment or trust within a social group. While it still serves this function, it has been co-opted for various purposes in complex human societies, ranging from a form of critique (satire) to a way of strengthening social bonds beyond immediate family groups. Similarly, smiling, especially when showing teeth, can elevate oxytocin levels in both the smiler and the recipient. However, flashing teeth in a smile to a dog might be misconstrued as aggression.

These examples demonstrate how biological traits originally evolved for one purpose can be repurposed or imbued with new meanings in complex human societies.
 
However, glimpses of the original behaviors these bio-operative systems were intende for can often be seen through the veneer of modernity. Consider Western political tendencies for power struggles and exploitation of other cultures—aren't these just echoes of our ancestral primate drive to dominate the food chain? The primal reflexes of our ape ancestors are still lurking just beneath our tailored suits. When we peer down into an abyss, we feel a sensation in the sphincter and coccyx, regions rife with nerves that have outlived their original purpose. These nerves remain blissfully ignorant that the tail they once helped to balance has long since disappeared.
In this context, the layered perspective of the brain retains its validity.

Brief Overview
Using Ernst Bloch's term "unzeitgemäßheit" (untimeliness) — albeit out of its original context — we can see that our bodies are complex amalgamations of biological systems developed throughout life's vast history. The past continues to influence the present; we exist in multiple timelines concurrently. We are echoes of the primordial seas, bearing information from every epoch. As a result, various parts of our anatomy differ in age. While some body parts operate on ancient bio-software, others utilize newer systems. Only the latest brain functions operate in full consciousness, with older systems rooted in primal, more dormant states of awareness. Most of our existence unfolds in unconsciousness — not just due to Freudian repression, but because our body, a patchwork of genetic software, dates back to our earliest origins as single-celled entities in ancient seas.

Transitioning from Knowledge to Wisdom through Mantra
I frequently recite these assertions as if they're mantras. While the intellect may assume understanding after one exposition, it quickly shifts focus due to its inherent restlessness. However, genuine comprehension, termed "innerstanding," evolves differently. Through a dynamic form of repetition, we navigate from surface understanding to deeper wisdom.

 
PSYCHIC ARCHEOLOGY - EXCAVATION THROUGH INTROSPECTION

There are people who, through concentration and other yoga exercises, can bring the subconscious up to the conscious level where they can discern and judge, and thereby benefit from the unlimited treasures of the subconscious memory, among which not only the memory of our previous lives is stored but also the past of the lineage, all pre-human forms of life, and the memory of the consciousness that makes all life in the universe possible.
Lama Anagarika Govinda

Wittgenstein claimed that if a lion could speak, no one would understand it. Wittgenstein is, to me, the ultimate expression of the talking academic heads club, a club that presupposes that one is so caught in the thought 'spin' that one suppresses the fact that the head is firmly rooted on a pre-linguistic body. The struggle between scribes and mystics dates back to Buddha's time.

Anyone who dares to turn inward and away from the world can see for themselves that we consist of phenomenons way beyond the grasp of the smal part of the brain corcened with language and rational conceptualization.

We 'innerstand' all life because we consist of recycling
In meditation we 'innerstand' the lion's roar.
We share most of our operating systems with it.
The deeper the introspective exploration of inner life goes, the older layers of human evolutionary history are exposed. In this sense, meditative introspection resembles astronomical extrospection. The further out into the universe we look, the older phenomena we observe.

To own an insight through experience
One thing is to read about it... By looking and feeling into myself, I experienced myself as the biological world mass. I have, as a sea anemone, felt the tides in the primordial ocean. I have felt the snake crawl up the spine on its way to the brain. I have felt the inner Stone Age man throw the first stone at a man from a foreign tribe.

Just as researchers can recreate a dinosaur snout on a chicken by playing its genetic coding backward, we can, through meditation, visit our own inner biological prehistory on an evolutionary journey. This inner journey leads back to what I, borrowing from Meister Eckhart, call the ground of origin.
 
Reincarnation is a scientific fact
The billions of cells that go under the designation, a human being, are a living prehistoric cross-section of the entire journey of life. Anyone who seriously turns inward can experience their earlier - not individual lives, but universal life forms.
 
Again and again, there have been reports of reincarnation in connection with deep meditative experiences, near-death experiences, and entheogenic journeys. It seems that meditation under certain circumstances allows us to travel back in our own zoological prehistory.
 
These experiences are often interpreted, because we in a normal state of consciousness experience ourselves as individuals, as individual matters, where Mr. Petersen experiences himself as Mr. Hansen in a previous life. That's how it appears when our tiny mind takes linguistic ownership of the experience. The little ego tries through language to translate an experience from a fundamentally incomprehensible and languageless multi-dimensional universe to our known world consisting of three dimensions. Here our little ego is like the frog at the bottom of the well, trying to tell itself and its fellow species about the birds' life in the sky.
 
Individual versus transpersonal life
Already here, the language's usual expressions are strained, which syntactically are created to convey experiences in subject-object relations in a three-dimensional universe consisting of time, space, and mass, as we know them from our daily life: For there was no 'I' in the traditional sense to observe the experience.
 
Transpersonal experiences of pre-existence are not personal matters - for individuality and language are a very new little evolutionary wonder, created within the last few thousand years, which is less than a second compared to life's cellular birth in the original primordial ocean.

Swimming in one's own Cambrian primordial ocean is just one thing you can do without an 'I' in the traditional sense. Here you are a traveler in attention and consciousness without the ego-operating system we normally use to navigate. For this reason alone, the encounter with one's own evolutionary past can be frightening. There is no room for the feeling of control that we, in our everyday consciousness, believe ourselves capable of having.
 
The vast majority of this journey back must, therefore, be undertaken without what we normally associate with an 'I' identity. Our traditional sense of 'I' must be left behind for those who wish to set their inner zoological clock back just a second.