The Awakening of Matter

The Other Half of Evolution

LEVELS OF AWARENESS

From Microbes to Man

A Common Thread in Life’s Great Diversity

By Vern A Westfall

Foreword

     There is a common thread running through life’s diversity that has been overshadowed by our focus on physical forms.

   …. “I am convinced”, Darwin wrote, “that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive means of modification……”

      Darwin’s understanding of how living forms are modified has been our primary guide to understanding life’s changing physical characteristics, but natural selection has another trace. Following Darwin’s hesitant lead in attempting to understand emotions and instincts;

……I am convinced that Natural Selection has also been the most important, but not the exclusive means of creating a common chain of developing awareness that unites all living things.

      We are made of the dust from exploding stars and are the product of three and one half billion years of adaptations to earth’s changing environments. Life’s serendipitous beginnings may have occurred in comet’s tails or in tidal pools and we may never know the complete story, but we can follow life’s tangled web from its conception to the present by following two parallel paths, two things all living things have in common; genes and awareness.

     Our genetic trace is splintered and has millions of discarded attempts and millions of successful living forms. The trace of emerging awareness is less fractured, has fewer discards and is easier to follow, but is more difficult to analyze. Form and awareness are inexorably linked and have always been tested by natural selection as a complimentary pair. Physical form and awareness have been full partners in the development of life from the beginning and we can expect to find the same essential pairing in every living thing we may yet discover; be it in the ocean’s depths or on other planets. Awareness is more than mind, more than intelligence, more than consciousness, more than reason, and more than cognizance because it is all of them. Awareness is an essential component of the evolutionary process, is common to all life and recently has usurped genetic selection as the primary determinant of life’s future. To understand the evolution of life fully we must recognize awareness as equal in importance to the gene and consider it an emergent state with significance beyond the organs that produce it.

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