Evolution
Many people deny that they are the products of an evolving natural system. Maybe we haven’t fully understood it, but just look at these things we have found about ourselves.
During the last century an enormously expanded understanding of the human mind and consciousness has arisen. In other cultures much of what our own scientifically oriented culture has arrived at had already been stated. However, it is important for the western individual to gain insight from their own perspective, as much from past cultures is stated in language that is often not properly understood, and we often fail to really grasp what is being presented.
You, and most people, are probably not aware of it, but you already have gone through unbelievable evolutionary changes, but our education and beliefs have covered it up. For example it is now known that in the womb we start off at the very primitive level of cellular production. Then our forming body goes through a fish stage and has gills. Slowly it moves toward an air breathing body. And all these evolutionary changes leave their mark, for we have at least four levels of brain – the spinal – the reptilian – the mammalian and then the human.
But it is now understood that our brain developed its sections over the long span of evolutionary history. Because of this it has, within and also separate from the two hemispheres, a number of levels. As our present brain evolved it developed four separate ‘brains’ or levels, each with its own memory, motor and other functions (David J Mahoney, 1991). Each new level, as it developed, elaborated on and extended the function of the preceding levels. So, from the spinal cord the hindbrain and midbrain developed. The first level of brain that developed beyond the spinal cord has been called the Reptilian Brain. This is because what we carry within our human brain is still found in reptiles. This ‘brain’ often encompasses several parts of the physical brain.
| Each evolutionary process has a double nature: a “coming into manifestation” and a “moving into the depths of inwardness.” When manifest, the spirit is hidden; when hidden, the spirit is revealed. Evolution remains a riddle without an understanding of this double stream.
Most important, one must be able to differentiate between these two simultaneous streams in oneself. The stream of thinking cognition is always retrogressive: it begins in the present and strives toward an understanding of the causes and conditions of what has come into being. At the same time, one longs to grasp what is in the process of becoming. One tends to think about the future by extrapolating from the present and thus all too often projections are the mere representation of a naive causal construction. One forms a mental image of one stream of development, forgetting that this is but a reflection of a thought process. |
The neurologist Paul MacLean gave a definition of these physiological and psychological facts of our brain in 1990. He said that these levels of the brain work like “three interconnected biological computers, [each] with its own special intelligence, its own subjectivity, its own sense of time and space and its own memory”. See Animals in your Brain
Most of us think or say, “So what! We are not aware of those things so do not bother us.” But they do! Because we as a person did not simply grow into being Joan or Mahmoud because we were born as such. We were programmed into being less than our potential.
There are many records of children/babies that were lost and raised by animals such as wolves and recovered from the wild, girls as well as boys. In India two girls were found in the century, and some in America, a child that was shut in a chicken house and never spoken to. They, like Victor who were discovered in France, never learnt to speak, and became trained but trapped animals. They died quite young, unable to adapt to their life with humans. Speech appears to be like a computer program which when loaded into the human brain changes the way the brain works. The life of Helen Keller throws an enormous light into such childrens ability to learn. Helen was struck dumb and blind at an early age through an illness when she had only learnt one word. She lived like an animal without self awareness until the age of eleven. Then she was taught by a deaf and dumb teacher and remembered the first word and quickly began the climb back to being human. See Helen Keller; Feral Children
The stories of these children’s lives shows us the enormous influence the early years of learning has on our mind, and how language is like a huge computer program that alters our natural awareness. Isn’t it strange then that if in early childhood we can learn to be a wolf, a bear, or a human, that we don’t recognise this and train babies to be more than human? Perhaps such training would be a step toward reducing the murder, aggression and mental poverty amongst so many humans. See The Conjuring Trick
It is such an interesting subject, that a human being does not have any sense of identity, or develop what we call a personality by simply growing. If left they are nothing much unless raised by an animal that passes on millions of years of experience to the baby. Then it is a wolf or bear and not a human being. So we do not simply exist as a human being unless we are taught the amazing program of speech and human thoughts and social responses. Many of us believe we are ourselves because we were born human. Not so. We are carefully fed programs and we are what we are by being taught it. We are programmed – and of course we can learn to recognise that programming and hopefully grow beyond it. See Genius and Habits
We can however learn to change the habits and programming we are usually trapped in. See Archetype of the Paradigm; Meeting yourself; Instincts