Section 2: Consciousness Evolution (TCE 9 - 16)
Section 2: Consciousness Evolution
Any creative action is an expenditure of energy[1]. It expends the energy in three stages: desire to act, thinking or planning about the action, and performing the action[2]. If the intended result of an action aligns with achieving the target for oneself and for others, it is considered a positive action[3], the opposite is a negative action. If the intended result of a positive action (i.e., loss of spent energy) ended up in a loss, short-coming, or failure and if that does not deter one from further action, one is self-transcendent with respect to that action.
If an action is positive or negative can be known only based on the result, and will not be possible to know before commencing the action. Also, importantly, due to the dynamic nature of the Creation, an action that yielded positive result at one point, when it is performed at another time, another place, or with different people or things involved, the repeated action may not be guaranteed to produce the positive result in the same measure, as before. Nevertheless, by convention, an action is considered as positive or negative indirectly based on the positive or negative results it yields in most of the circumstances. This is a challenge that every individual is facing where no convention, organization, or tradition can set universal rules that hold true always. There cannot be objective measures, when humans are involved, that is guaranteed to work for everyone, even though it works for the majority. Later in the book, we will see how this challenge can be met successfully.
There are few reasons: First, as stated in the target criteria, one must be fully aware in order to experience the ultimate Bliss. If one, who is not yet fully aware, knows the type of action (positive or negative) beforehand, then he/she may not even attempt to do any action that preempts the possibility for generating new Bliss (i.e., violates the basis for creation). Another reason is that in order to progress towards the target, one must first be able to perform positive actions and avoid negative actions, consistently. Then only, one will become fit for transcending both types of action altogether, which is necessary for reaching the target. That discriminative learning can take place only by contrasts. Another important reason is that there cannot be anything in creation that is unknown to the part when it reaches the target of Absolute Freedom. Otherwise, the part may be subjected to relative creation again in order to know the previous “unknown”, which defeats the purpose achieving Absolute Freedom, in the first place. The creation’s design suggests that each part will have an opportunity to exercise all possible creative combinations, either positive or negative, that the collective whole could ever try out. Humans, among all the known species of the world, happens to possess this unique capability in the form of free-will (choice making) along with other advanced consciousness capabilities.
Every human being is free, has equal opportunity and access to natural resources, from the Creation’s point of view, however, they are not entirely free to abstain from actions. The avoidance factors, such as the threat of hunger and fear of death (negative factors), and the enjoyment factors, in the form of sex or in having comfortable sleep or rest (positive factors), act as catalysts for action. These are called “Action-Catalyst Factors (ACF)” and they apply not only to human beings but some extent to other life-forms, depending on the capabilities. The Natural evolution, according to Darwin, could have addressed these factors differently, say for example, similar to mitochondria acquisition in an animal cell[4], if the animal cell had acquired the chloroplast, the animals could have eliminated the need to depend on plants for energy. Another example is: as in certain plants if animals happened to be unisexual, one would have been able to produce progeny instead of the sexual act between male-female gender. However, from what we know, the Natural evolution did not solve these survivability needs. As will be discussed further, these factors are overarching and provide the basis for the very evolution itself!
Every life form, from a single-celled organism to the complex multi-trillion celled human beings and other animals, is conscious and evolves based on two fundamental instincts: self-preservation and self-expansion. Combining these two instincts together, it can be said as the universal driver for action is: increase happiness (or comfort) and avoid pain (or suffering)[5]. This evolution for every life-form is a continuous process, controlled by Self-Governance until it reaches the target by self-becoming. The manifestation (or instantiation) and the duration or lifespan of the life-form are decided based on the matching circumstances available in order to evolve further and dictated by Self-Governance. The positive (progeny, rest) and negative (hunger, fear) catalyst factors (ACF) fuel the evolution process. The evolution of life-forms continues upward until to the point where their consciousness capabilities sufficiently develop as expressed in human beings. With free-will and other advanced capabilities, the evolution no longer remains upward, however, the Self-Governance process and the drivers for action continue to operate in the same manner.
As Consciousness is formless and holistic, it is a bit harder to describe the evolution process. It becomes more complicated as the target involves Self-becoming[6]. In order to understand the Consciousness evolution process, the entire Creation is viewed from two angles: 1) from the evolving part and 2) from the target whole. Within the creation, every part is considered to have an “Individualized Consciousness[7]” (IC) that operates within a certain allocated portion of the collective whole, which is known as “Cosmic Consciousness[8]” (CC). While ICs are performing actions to evolve, CC as a collective whole provides the platform for ICs to act. This concept is very similar to the implementation of computers programming languages (C, Java, C#, etc)[9].
While each IC may potentially take millions of actions, in a myriad of lifeforms, before finally reaching the target, it is identified by the type of life-form in which its manifested expression and evolution take place. The ICs are grouped into five global-types, depending on the degree of consciousness, indicated pictorially by the number of wrappers or sheaths[10] (see Figure 1). The more the number of sheaths in an IC, the less the degree of consciousness it has. The lower global-type IC includes the sheaths of the ICs above that type, indicating the capabilities of consciousness of lower global-types are included in higher ones. For e.g., the lowest type IC1, Matter, is shown in five circles with the outermost circle bolded with other four circles included within. This indicates that the properties of Matter will be included and added with additional capabilities in higher types, such as Life-force type plants (IC2) and Intellect type humans (IC4).
The Matter (IC1) is the lowest IC global-type and includes all non-living metals, molecules, minerals, solid, liquid, gases, etc. and also include the natural forces that control the properties of matter, such as electromagnetic, mechanics, gravitational force, etc. The term “Material Forces” is used to refer these set of forces, in order to contrast with “Life Force”. Although this IC1 type does not evolve by itself like other higher global-types, it gets included as the material composition for the life-forms to express, perform actions, and evolve in creation. The Matter is given a “consciousness” global-type in this model, since it affects the evolution of the higher IC global-types due to the interactions with Matter and also, this concept is useful for understanding the man-made machines in a holistic view[11].
Figure 1: Consciousness Evolution, with 5 sheaths
The Life-force (IC2) is the next IC global-type and the first self-evolving type. This global-type covers starting single-cell lifeforms to all plant types where the senses have not been developed beyond “touch” capability, which is used to interact with its environment. Life-force characteristics manifest in all of the higher global-types than this type.
The next higher IC global-type is Sensory (IC3). This global-type covers starting with everything above Life-force type, all kinds the animals up to but below human beings. This type specializes in senses where the instinctive response is predominant.
These two, Life-Force and Sensory types, have under-developed will (choice-making) capability that is basically guided by the environment and sense-instincts (termed as “auto-programmed will” or “guided will” in contrast with “free-will” in humans) and the consciousness evolves in these life-forms in an ordained manner, unless fettered by higher type human-being.
The next one is the Intellect (IC4) type, a challenging type: human beings! As noted before, the special Consciousness capabilities, in particular, the free-will (or “self-programmable will” or free choice making) makes the evolution no longer upward. It can remain in the same type, perpetually, indicated by the circular arrow in the picture. While it has an advantage of evolving upward quickly, it also has the chance to act as low as IC3 type, due to undue degradation in the consciousness. More about will be discussed in a later section[12].
The topmost IC global-type Blissful (IC5) is also in humans. In this type, the noble, selfless leaders, saints, etc. are covered who feel one with the large body of people as their own and work to help alleviate their problems. In this type, one can remain in type perpetually or, as an exception, downgrade to Intellect (IC4) type. The upward ascent from here will be to reach the ultimate target of becoming one with Cosmic Consciousness (CC).
The “Descent” aspect will be covered in Advanced Topics section (See TCE 34).
Through Individualized Consciousness’ own Self-Governance mechanism, every Life-force type IC2 or above prompts to manifest in a life-form based on the matching circumstances in order to evolve higher. After manifesting in a life-form, it evolves continuously based on the new circumstances during that lifespan, except in restful state (or deep sleep in humans), until the death of the life-form. In the lower life-forms with short lifespans, the transition of IC from another life-form should be seamless, since there are less number of variables to match and more chances for suitable circumstances would be available for it to manifest and evolve. As the consciousness evolves to higher IC global-types where the expressing life-forms that are made up of multi-billion or trillion cells, the process for finding the matching circumstances with many different ICs becomes complex and an IC may manifest partially with the optimal circumstances. With human free-will, the complexity increases exponentially with many other ICs involved for the matching process. However, the process remains the same [13].
Putting it all together, the entire Creation platform, as a whole composed of limitless ICs, acts like an “Infinite variables State Machine” making the matches for every IC, every moment based on its need in order to evolve further.
The closest analogy I found for the above process is in the Computer Operating System (e.g., Windows or Linux) managing multiple processes or applications within its control. The matching process is very similar “Online Target Advertising” that is done by companies like Google, Facebook, etc. based on what user needs, based on the data collected from the movements that user made online.
TCE 16. Is it possible to prove this theory: life-form transitions, matching process, etc.?
As mentioned before, through the analogies, many of the concepts in this theory have been emulated already but in silos that can be integrated to provide a simulation as close as possible to a manageable set of variables. That said, despite having a theoretical model which can be simulated using computers, there is no logical possibility to prove the workings of the transition from one life-form to another. No other theory including Darwin’s has even explained this. A lower IC global-type life-form cannot comprehend the workings of the higher IC type. No human being, being the part of the whole creation, cannot logically comprehend the workings of the matching process that requires considering potentially every other ICs in the collective whole creation. However, even with that inexplicability, this theory does provide an opportunity to test and prove the workings of evolution and the matching process using human consciousness capabilities, which will be covered in Section 6: Quickening Evolution.
The most important use of this evolutionary model is that it provides the basis and framework for self-analysis (see TCE 29) for finding root causes for one’s own problems and also help address others problems where the causative factors for the problem are within their control. In addition, this framework opens up the possibility to solve the root-cause issues rather than applying remedial fix based on the symptoms in several other areas: self-development, parenting, counseling, dispute resolution, health care – particularly for cancer, incurable diseases, auto-immune diseases, geriatrics, etc – and many more[14].
[1] Sacrifice or Yagna, in Hinduism; In practice, the emphasis is given on fire ceremony more so than for attitude.
[2] Iccha Shakti, Gyaana Shakti, Kriya Shakti, in Hinduism
[3] Dharma of Hinduism. See more in TCE 36.
[4] Popular hypothesis in the scientific community is that, sometime in the distant past, the “predatory” animal cell acquired the mitochondrion bacteria cell for energy and evolved as the animal cell, that we know now, in a symbiotic relationship. Similarly, “predatory” plant cell acquired the chloroplast cell to become what it is now.
[5] Sukha pravritti dukha nivritti, in Vedanta
[6] This has been one of the main reasons for the contention between different religions and divisions within religions for their varying interpretations of Consciousness, in the concepts of spirituality. However, thanks to the advancements in abstract thinking and in Computer programming, now we have a better set of tools and visualizations which this book utilizes to explain the Consciousness Evolution concept.
[7] Many religions interpret it in a varied manner, in particular for humans: soul, Atma, jivatma, son of God, ego, son of man, ahamkara, etc. Not much were discussed about the lower life-forms in this context.
[8] Many religions with varying interpretations associate this concept with God, God the Father, Paramatma, Brahman (not four-headed Creator), Atma, Allah, Jehovah, Great Void, etc. There is a utility for this approach that we will discuss later in Human Evolution section.
[9] In computers programming languages (C, Java, C#, etc), IC is like a “pointer” or “Class” of the portion of the entire addressable “memory space”, which is analogous to CC in our case.
[10] Pancha koshas in Vedanta. Annamaya – Matter; Pranamaya – Life-force; Manomaya – Sensory; Buddhimaya or Vigyanamaya – Intellect; and Anandamaya – Blissful.
[11] Influences such as drugs, attractions in gold & gems, attachment to real-estate, etc. See also TCE 31 for discussion on manmade machines.
[12] See Section 4: Self-Governance.
[13] Resembles aspects of the highly influential and controversial Karma and Reincarnation concepts of Hindu origin. However, a vast number of interpretations, misunderstandings, fatalistic beliefs, superstitions, blames, incorrect applications, etc. in them make it harder to subject them to any meaningful analysis. The transition of life-forms one to another is beyond human comprehension, hence not covered in this theory. Undue attention to the life-form transition and even research studies of Near-Death or After-Death Experiences is of little practical value as long as the chasm of death confronts us.
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