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CONSCIOUSNESS AND EVOLUTION

"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

The Recipe for a Human
What is a human being seen from a biological perspective? What bitches brew does it take to make such a being? Here's my take on the recipe:

Take about 40 liters of water. Add the right amount of Precambrian primordial sea salt. Fine-tune it to match the exact percentage of salt in the ancient sea. Then, add two kilograms of various bacteria. These bacteria, among them mitochondria, lived freely or in symbiosis before they became peaceful bio-citizens in the human body. Include countless forms of viruses, even some inherited from Neanderthals. Now, blend in cellular life forms that stretch back to the dawn of life. Finally, sprinkle about one percent of actual human genes over our 'Frankensteinian' brew.
  
This recipe is too long to complete here, but all ingredients lead to one conclusion: anatomically, humans are a baroque composite, a synthesis of prehistoric beings.
   
In this sense, the human body is a living zoological museum, composed of life forms and behaviors that reach back to the earliest stardust.
   
We rose from aquatic Precambrian life, and we still carry it within us,  protected by cell membranes. We are now washed ashore on the coast of life, essentially walking waves stirred by storms from the primordial ocean and warmed by sunlight from a million mornings.
  
This odyssey was made possible by cooperation and recycling.
  

OUR RECYCLED BIOLOGICAL WORLD MASS
We are composed of reused bio-software. From an evolutionary perspective, humans are made of various survival systems. The oldest code in this recycling process is our 'urge' to survive. It’s the teleological reason we are still here. All functional Darwinian experiences, from the primordial soup onward, are preserved as building blocks in our biological and psychological architecture.
   
Evolution doesn’t anihilate its foundation. Instead, it builds on existing biological structures. Our bodies are the sum total of all our previous species' lives.
 
We consist of reincarnated operating systems whose primary task has always been survival. As humans, we've only been here for a brief 2.5 million years. As zoological cell colonies, we are much older. Inside us are all forms of life’s previous forms—cells, microbiomes, worms, reptiles, and mammalian systems—coexisting under one roof. Some lie dormant; others help us in the game of survival.
 
Ion channels in Necturus salamander cells are found in rats and humans. Any DNA that worked well in evolution is reused by more advanced systems. The genes that regulate our heartbeat originated in sea anemones. We share 25% of our genes with trees. Our appetite is driven by genes developed in roundworms. Our teeth started as fish scales. Our face was formed when we were still fish. A fish face has eyes, a mouth, and sometimes, like the blobfish, even a nose!

The Blob fish - Psychrolutes marcidus

In the fetal stage, we relive our species' history, developing the beginnings of gills, for example.

As seen in this BBC video, a human fetus’ face is formed between the second and third month, assembled like a puzzle. This starts at the fish stage, finally forming a recognizable human face. The final piece is the philtrum, the groove under 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.

Before taking on a human form, our face passes through various zoological stages. During fetal development, we climb the evolutionary ladder, revisiting every step our species has taken.

Let me repeat this simple yet profound fact: as biological beings, we live at the intersection of prehistoric animals' operating systems streching from biomechal history to neurological functions. We are a living zoological museum, a hub where even ancient reptiles have survived the passage of time.

We are a patchwork quilt of mostly ancient elements, with only small traces of the modern, each layer adding complexity to what we call 'human.' In fact, the majority of what makes us is not even human.
 

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 sense ourselves and the world in awareness.
 
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.

CULTURAL RECYCLING
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.
 
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.

THE REPURPOSING OF ANCIENT CIRCUITS
Here are more examples of biological mechanisms being repurposed and taking on new functions.
 
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.

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 and cortisol 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 feelings 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.In summary, the human cell colony is a Noah's Ark for all previous life's bio-operating systems.

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PSYCHIC ARCHEOLOGY: EXCAVATION THROUGH INTROSPECTION

"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'

Now, it is time to introduce a new way of contemplating this process of patchwork evolution. From personal experience, I dare to claim that Precambrian primal cells still resonate with life’s fundamental tone for those who become silent enough to hear it. I am certainly not alone in this experience.

"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

It would be a controversial thought for most that meditation can be viewed as introverted archaeology. However, the following text will illustrate that the idea is not as unlikely as it might seem at first glance. 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."

This mystical vision suggests that our personal evolution mirrors both the biological and spiritual journey of all life, making introspection an excavation not only into our ancient, collective past but also into our future.

In fact, this inverted way of viewing material unfoldment as a product of spirit is not foreign to Western thought. By the late 18th century, translations of Sufi mystics, including Rumi, had made their way into German philosophy. Schelling, inspired by these mystical insights, repeated Rumi's ideas, tracing the journey from unconsciousness to fully awakened consciousness, this time not unfolded in the mystic, but in the creating artist and his art.

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 my hunger for the nourishing waters of this primordial soup, I now journey back, carrying a torch of light through the half-awake animals, dreaming plants, and slumbering stones that still dwell within my inner darkness. The first layer I encounter is my emotional mammal brain. Here, I embody both predator and prey. This realization brings new meaning to Papaji's story Wake up and Roar.

A slumbering 'Wittgensteinian' Stone
Wittgenstein famously claimed that if a lion could speak, no one would understand it. While he's correct within the confines of the thinking brain, this perspective represents the ultimate expression of the "talking academic heads club"—a mindset so deeply caught in the spin of thought that it forgets the head is firmly rooted in a pre-linguistic body. This classic tension between intellectual scribes and mystics dates back to the time of the Buddha.
 
Anyone who dares to turn inward, away from the external world, can see that we consist of phenomena far beyond the reach of the small part of the brain concerned with language and rational thought. At deeper levels, we all carry within us the roar of the lion and the scream of the deer when the predator triggers our amygdala.
 
We 'innerstand' all life because we consist of recycling
IIn meditation, we intuitively 'innerstand' the lion's roar. We share fundamental biological operating systems with it. The deeper we explore our inner life, the older layers of human evolutionary history are revealed. In this sense, meditative introspection mirrors astronomical extrospection: the further we gaze into the universe, the older the phenomena we observe.

The next creature to confront is the snake or dragon, ancient symbols of the reptilian brain. This bio-circuit operates beyond the realm of emotions and feelings, consisting primarily of abstract patterns of sensing. In ancient Indian traditions, it is symbolized by the Kundalini snake, the serpent power that energizes the awakening of consciousness. However, the reptilian brain is not only accessed through meditation. In dreams and psychedelic journeys, the snake frequently reappears.

Just as researchers can recreate a dinosaur snout on a chicken by reversing its genetic code, we can, through meditation, revisit our own inner biological prehistory in an evolutionary journey. This journey takes us back to what I, borrowing from  Meister Eckhart,, call the "ground of origin." Here, this ground rests in the billions of years of cellular life humming within us. The billions of cells that make up what we call a human being are a living, prehistoric cross-section of the entire journey of life.
 
To OWN an Insight Through Experience
It’s one thing to read about these ideas, but by truly looking and feeling within myself, I have experienced myself as part of the biological world mass. As a sea anemone, I have sensed the tides of the primordial ocean. I have felt the snake crawl up my spine on its journey to the brain. I have lived the inner Stone Age man’s impulse to throw the first stone at a man from a foreign tribe. Yet, in this, I am not unique. Anyone who turns inward with sincerity can access these earlier—not individual—lives, but universal life forms that reside within us all.
 
Reincarnation is a Scientific Fact
Again and again, reports of reincarnation surface in connection with deep meditative experiences, near-death encounters, and entheogenic journeys. These experiences are often interpreted as individual because, in our normal state of consciousness, we perceive ourselves as separate individuals. Thus, Mr. Petersen might feel as though he has experienced being Mr. Hansen in a previous life. But this happens when our limited mind takes linguistic ownership of a profound, non-verbal experience. The small ego tries to translate something from a fundamentally incomprehensible, multi-dimensional universe into our familiar world of three dimensions.

In this context, the ego is like a frog at the bottom of a well, trying to explain the life of birds in the sky. An even more fitting analogy might be ants attempting to describe a highway with cars—an experience so vast that their attempt to cross the highway is entirely at the mercy of forces beyond their comprehension.
  
Individual versus Transpersonal Life
At this point, language itself begins to strain under the weight of trying to convey experiences that occur beyond the typical subject-object relationships in a three-dimensional universe of time, space, and matter, as we know them from daily life. In such experiences, there is no 'I' in the conventional sense to observe or narrate.

Transpersonal experiences of pre-existence are not personal in nature—individuality and language are relatively recent evolutionary developments, appearing within the last few thousand years. In the context of life's billions of years of evolution, this is less than a blink of an eye compared to the birth of cellular life in the primordial ocean.

"Oh Friend! Understand
The body is like the ocean
Rich with hidden treasures.
Open its innermost chamber
and light its lamp."
– Mirabai

Swimming in one's own Cambrian primordial ocean is something that can be done without the traditional sense of self. Here, you are a traveler of attention and consciousness, unbound by the ego-operating system we rely on in everyday life. This alone can make the encounter with one’s evolutionary past feel unsettling. The sense of control that our everyday consciousness clings to has no place here.

The majority of this journey must be undertaken without the identity we associate with the 'I'. To turn the inner zoological clock back even for a second requires letting go of the familiar sense of self.