Chapter 1

1. Quoted in Dennett (1995), p. 289.

2. Depew and Weber (1997), p. 495.

3. Gould (1999), p. 4

4. Capra (1982), p. 97

5. Capra (1996), p. 35

6. Many in the field of Artificial Intelligence would argue that mind does not require life--that it could emerge from some other kind of "hardware" than the brain. Whether this is true or not, though, mind in the natural world has emerged from life, and even if we should someday create computers that are universally acknowledged to be intelligent, they will have in an important sense required our life and our mind in order to come into existence. Nobody, I presume, seriously believes that silicon chips could have evolved into computers while completely bypassing life.

7. Some theorists who accept a hierarchical view believe that everything was originally created from consciousness. In this sense, we could say that lower forms of existence require a very high form of "mind". This view does not, however, negate the basic principle of asymmetry we see throughout the hierarchy. I will discuss this later in the book.

8. How ironic that today's Creationists, Biblical literalists who reject not merely Darwinism but any theory of evolution, point to gaps in the fossil record as proof that all of life was created as is by an intelligent being. These gaps, evident even in Aristotle's day in the major differences between certain kinds of organisms, provided support for evolution well before Darwin (Strickberger, 1996).

9. Lovejoy (1960), p. 59.

10. Quoted in Strickberger (1996), p. 7

11. Quoted in Lovejoy (1960), p. 50.

12. A basic principle of the holarchy, as we will see later, is that the higher both transcends and includes the lower. So every higher level is the levels below it, plus something more or extra. Can principles applying to a lower level ever apply to this something more or extra? For example, can principles applying to physical matter or to cells have any analogs in human thought? Some holarchical theorists, such as Wilber, insist that they cannnot. I will address this issue later.

1. Woodger (1929), p. 306.

2. Quoted in Ingold (1986), p. 128.

3. Quoted in Lovejoy (1936), p. 60.

4. Barrow (1998), p. 99.

5. Luisi (1993), pp. 19-20.

6. Quoted in Allen and Starr (1982), p. 47.

7. Lima-de-Faria (1988), p. 18.

8. Quoted in Ruse (1999), p. 141.

9. Becker and Deamer (1991), p. 36.

10. Pettersson (1996) observes (referring to a higher level of existence that we will examine in Chapter 3): "Organs only collaborate, within multicellular organisms, while cells have a dual role; some exist independently, while others do not. This can be taken to indicate that the level of cell is a major level, while that of biological organ is not." (pp. 10-12). My holarchical arrangement is to a large extent consistent with Pettersson's, except that he does not recognize any holons within the cell that are analogous to organs within the body. He lists "molecules" as a separate independent level, but as I have just discussed, all but the simplest molecules in nature are not found free outside of cells, but only within cells. Thus they have a relationship to cells much the same as that which various forms of multicellular organization have to organisms.

Pettersson also lists as a separate level "intermediate entities", such as viruses, between molecules and cells. However, this arrangement is inconsistent with his own "compositional criterion": "each entity of any major integrative level (except the highest) materially consists mainly of entitites of the next lower level." (p. 12). Thus in his hierarchy, atoms are composed entirely (not "mainly") of fundamental particles; molecules entirely of atoms; viruses entirely of molecules. But cells are not composed entirely or even mainly of viruses, that is, of nucleic acid molecules (or more precisely, of nucleoprotein complexes).

In his "duality criterion", Pettersson recognizes that holons on some levels, such as organisms, are composed of holons of several different levels. Organisms, for example, are composed of multicellular organs as well as individual cells, and even free molecules. But again, as he has defined levels, there are glaring inconsistencies. Molecules and intermediate entities do not exhibit this duality criterion; molecules are composed directly of atoms, or in the case of complex molecules, of smaller molecules. Problems also become apparent in Pettersson's higher levels, such as families. I believe the only way to recognize these difference is to distinguish between stages and levels. When this is done, the duality criterion applies only to fundamental holons, the first holon emerging on each new level of existence

Finally, another reason for not regarding viruses as an intermediate holon between molecules and cells is because the evidence clearly shows that viruses evolved after cells did, not before. All the other holons in Pettersson's hierarchy, or in anybody else's that I'm aware of, appear in evolutionary order. I will discuss the relationship of viruses to the rest of the holarchy in Chapter 3.

11. Pettersson (1996), p. 12. See also footnote 8. While the duality criterion applies to fundamental holons, it does not apply to intermediate holons. To the extent that what Pettersson calls "major integrative levels" consists of stages as well as levels, this criterion does not fit his own classification.

12. Neurons can live much longer, as long as the organism itself (Preuss and Kaas 1999). I will discuss this further later.

1. Barlow (1998), p. 144.

2. Kauffman (1995a), p. 336.

3. There is now recognized to be a third class of cells, archaebacteria, and it has been proposed that they form a third fundamental division (Woese 1990). However, there is some controversy over this idea (Woese 1998), and in any case, eukaryotes remain as the only type of cell that organizes into higher forms of life.

4. Strictly speaking, this is not true. Cells can create a variety of slightly different molecules from the product of a single gene, by modifying that product after it has been synthesized (Creighton 1993; Lewin 1997s). Furthermore, many genes can synthesize several different kinds of proteins by a process of splicing, in which only parts of the coding sequence are used (Lewin 1997). Nevertheless, there is a clear correlation between size of genome and the number of different proteins that can be created.

5. Quoted by Lewis Wolpert in Bock and Goode (1998), p. 2.

6. However, neurons do not of course contain larger genomes than other cells in the body. In this case, their higher degree of communication must be explained in some other manner, as I will discuss later.

7. Quoted in Capra (1996), p. 287.

8. Teilhard de Chardin (1959), p. 104.

9. Raff (1996), p. 332.

10. In Chapter 2, I argued that atoms that are part of complex molecules in cells are--by virtue of their participation in the properties of these molecules--a higher form of existence than autonomous atoms. In the same way, cells that exist within organisms, and particularly neurons in the vertebrate brain, tend to be higher forms of life than autonomous cells. Some biologists might object to this conclusion. After all, there are many one-celled organisms that seem literally to be organisms--cells that can move about, make their own nutrients, attack or defend themselves against other cells, and do all manner of other things that most cells within organisms cannot do. How can one conclude that the latter are a higher form of life?

In the same sense, I would argue, that members of modern Western societies are higher than members of tribes or bands. It's true that the latter people often possess skills that most of us do not--they are, in some ways, much more self-sufficient than we are. But as I emphasized in Chapter 2, a higher stage does not transcend a lower; when holons become part of a higher stage, they inevitably lose some of the properties they had when they were autonomous. The point is that what they gain in return is more than what they give up--what they gain is the ability to function in, and experience, new dimensions of existence. This notion, made here with cells, will become even clearer in the next chapter, when I discuss organisms.

11. Thompson (1993) has suggested that complex arrangements of cortical columns have a five-dimensional nature. Whether such holons are correlated with a five-dimensional type of experience remains to be seen. The next chapter will discuss both four- and five-dimensional perception as experienced by the organism.

12. Wilber (1995), p. 116.

13. Sheldrake (1989), p. 105.

14. The distinction between what I call the structure and the quality of experience corresponds to the distinction that some philosophers make between the functional and the experiential qualities of mind. The functional qualities can be observed, or inferred, from outside, while the experiential qualities cannot. The functional qualities might be regarded as exterior rather than interior, yet as Wilber and others use the term "interior", it is quite clear they are referring to functinal as well as experiential properties. (See footnote 14 for Chapter 4.) This distinction will be discussed further in Chapters 4 and 5.

15. See Dennett (1995), pp. 267ff.

16. Crick (1966), p. 34.

17. Lotka (1956), p. 357.

18. Chaitin (1974), p. 10.

1. Quoted in Ingold (1986), p. 228.

2. Habermas (1994), p. 111.

3. Manfred Eigen (1972) has suggested that the cell information pathway represented by DNA to RNA to Protein to Metabolism is like the social information pathway represented by Legislative to Message to Executive to Function. The biological analog of this pathway is Nervous Activity in the Brain to Nervous Activity in the Periphery to Muscular Contractions to Physiological Functions.

4. Quoted in Collins (1994), p. 190.

5. Berger and Luckmann (1967), pp. 53-54.

6. Quoted in Collins (1994), p. 198.

7. Marcuse (1964), pp. 3, 12.

8. Quoted in Outhwaite (1994), p. 21.

9. Marcuse (1964), p. 12.

10. Quoted in Outhwaite (1994), p. 41.

11. Quoted in Outhwaite (1994), p. 25.

12. Habermas (1994), pp. 101, 112.

13. Then again, many observations suggest the relationship is not so simple. In a famous series of experiments conducted about half a century ago, the psychologist Karl Lashley demonstrated that making numerous incisions in the brain--which would sever connections among different sets of neurons--had no effect on the ability of animals to learn (Gardner 1985). More recent lesion studies have demonstrated that different parts of the brain can often compensate for the loss of others (Mackel 1987; Merzenich 1998; Buonamano and Merzenich 1998). More generally, we know that many of our highest and most complex mental processes, such as artistic activities, can be performed similarly with different kinds of brains. See Changeux and Connes (1995).

14. Some philosophers, such as Karl Popper (Popper and Eccles 1977) have argued for a tripartite or "three-world" version of consciousness.

15. That Wilber intends his definition of interior to include the experiential aspects of mentality is clear in the following quote:

However, I think I'm being fair to Wilber when I say that his definition of interior also includes the functional aspects of mentality (indeed, he may not even make this distinction--many philosophers would not). Thus he describes the left side of his model as including human "culture". A tremendous amount of human culture is clearly mentality in the functional sense: not simply the experience we have when we think certain thoughts, but the observable consequences those thoughts have in the outer world. Consider language, for example. It may be that what we commonly call our understanding of language requires consciousness in the direct experience sense; this is basically the argument of Searle (1981), which will be discussed in Chapter 5. Yet even without any consciousness or understanding in Searle's sense, we could imagine two cultures based on two different languages that would mimic many of the observable features of those two cultures with conscious experience. Searle's argument itself, intended to show that human understanding is the result of just more than information processing, at the same time demonstrates that a great deal of human culture could be generated by such processing. Indeed, David Chalmers (1996), as we will see in Chapter 5, would argue that all observable features of culture could in principle take place among human beings with no conscious experience.

By "observable", let me be clear, I mean not simply empirically observable--through what Wilber (1989) calls the eye of the flesh--but even mentally observable. This entire argument I am trying to have with Wilber right now, for example, could (in Chalmers' view) be carried out by beings with no conscious experience (yes, even the very discussion of "conscious experience"--but if you don't buy that, you might buy the argument that discussions not about conscious experience could take place in this manner, which is nearly as good for my purposes). Surely such hermeneutic activities are part of culture, and surely Wilber puts them on the left side of his quadrant model.

16. Wilber (1995), p. 61.

17. One could actually 'imagine' human beings at any exterior stage of evolutionary development without any consciousness. Philosophers of mind call such hypothetical creatures zombies (Chalmers, 1996; see Chapter 5). Such beings have all of the intersubjective properties that Wilber calls 'interior' or 'intentional', and appear, to conscious humans, indistinguishable from the genuine article. They simply lack any inner awareness. While such humans may be logically possible, however, they do not satisfy Wilber's argument of asymmetry, since that is based on the hierarchy as it has actually developed.

18. Koestler (1991), p. 89.

19. Of course, much of our understanding of lower forms of existence such as cells, molecules and atoms now comes from an interior view as well. Thus we create theories based on our observations of these lower forms of existence, and test the theories by experiment (an inter-subjective process). But our raw experience of cells, molecules and atoms is not complexed with all this knowledge we now have of them. Our direct experience of cell relationships is simply as bodies or tissues; our direct experience of molecular relationships is as materials. This sharply contrasts with our direct experience of the groups we participate in, which is manifested as thoughts, ideas and other interior qualities.

20. An exception to this rule is provided by zero-dimensional holons that are autonomous, that is, which are not part of higher stages. When such holons look up they see only themselves. But when they look down, they also see only themselves, i.e., the stages within themselves that they integrate. Therefore, for such holons, there is no subject/object distinction. This has some very important implications, which I will discuss in the Chapter 6.

1. Jaynes (1976), p. 53.

2. Dennett (1991), p. 406. He adds, "It would be an act of desperate intellectual dishonesty to quote this assertion out of context."

3. Recent studies of meditators have claimed to be able to identify, on the basis of brain wave patterns, other states of consciousness as genuinely distinct from our ordinary waking consciousness. See Wallace (1993); Austin (1998).

4. McGinn (1999), p. 52.

5. Deutsch (1997), pp. 272-3.

6. Goswami (1993), p. 175.

7. Pinker (1997), pp. 147-8.

8. Nagel (1986), p. 91.

9. McGinn (1999), p. 59.

10. Ouspensky (1961), p. 142.

11. Minsky (1985), p. 257.

12. Taylor ( 1999), p. 34.

13. Ramachandran (1998), pp. 227-228.

14. Jaynes (1976), p. 23.

15. Those who argue that Libet's experiments can be interpreted in such a way as to preserve the concept of free will seem to have missed the lesson that most of the time we are unconscious (see the earlier discussion in this chapter). So even if subjects report being consciously aware of aborting a decision to move their hand, for example, what they are calling "consciousness" is only a tiny fraction of everything that is going on in their brain at that time. It isn't that we are unconscious of certain information for a few hundred milliseconds, after which time we become fully conscious of that information. The real point is that we are almost completely unconscious of everything, almost all of the time. See Jaynes (1976) or Norretranders (1998) for a further academic discussion about this--or Ouspensky (1961), for a life based on this understanding! This, surely, is a much more compelling argument against free will than evidence about delays in consciousness.

16. Deutsch (1997), p. 263.

17. ibid., p. 264.

18. loc.cit.

1. Teilhard de Chardin (1955), p. 62.

2. Austin (1998), p. 17.

3. Wilber (1999)

4. Quoted in Fox (1983), pp. 20-21.

5. Peers (1989), p. 214.

6. Conze (1971), p. 178.

7. Kapleau (1980), p. 173.

8. Ernst (1997), p. 153.

9. Quoted in Watts (1975), pp. 54-55.

10. Shah (1970), p. 97.

11. Conze (1971), p. 169.

12. Wei (1983), p. 188.

13. Mitchell (1991), p. 99.

14. Peers (1989), pp. 88, 89.

15. Quoted in Wilber (1995), p. 303-304.

16. Quoted in Kennet (1972), p. 140.

17. Quoted in Capra (1976), p. 164.

18. This is clearly a gross underestimate of the time required. See the discussion in Chapter 5.

19. Mitchell (1991), p. 181.

20. Quoted in Watts (1973), p. 20.

21. Mitchell (1991), p.

22. Quoted in Khosla (1987), p. 196.

23. Shah (1970), p. 245.

24. Quoted in Fox (1983), p. 21.

25. Peers (1991), p. 177.

26. Ouspensky (1961), p. 333. Levels as defined in the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky holarchy appear more similar to what I call stages. "In one cosmos it is impossible to understand all the laws of the universe, but three cosmoses taken together include all the laws of the universe, as two cosmoses, the one above and the other below, determine the cosmos which stands between them." loc. cit. So three levels in the former may correspond to one level as defined in the holarchy developed in this book.

27. Capra (1976), preface.

28. Pert (1997), p. 287.

29. I use sensory awareness and consciousness interchangeably here. Though sensory awareness is just one component of increased consciousness, it follows it closely.

30. The dry statistics of a table, I hasten to add, do not begin to convey the profundity of this observation. It's one thing to say that one's level of awareness drops under some conditions; it's quite another to experience that drop. In fact, certain types of activity result in a drop so precipitous, and so great, that I refer to it as a "crash". One falls through a large number of states of consciousness, losing in a matter of seconds what took hours, days or weeks of relentless effort and suffering to gain. Such experiences, more than any other, mold a person's life. Once one begins to gain sensitivity to them, it's no longer possible to live in the way ordinary people do. One cannot just walk, talk and carry out ordinary activities when, where, how and as life seems to demand that we do, because everything one does--the speaking of a single word, the motion of a single finger--has an effect on one's awareness. If one is not prepared for this effect--even when one is prepared--one can suffer in a way and to a degree that is quite incomprensible to people in the ordinary state of consciousness. For further discussion of this, see also footnote 3 for Chapter 10.

31. Anyone familiar with the literature on meditation will find this term defined in many other ways. Beginners are often advised to focus on watching their breaths, for example, or to visualize some object or symbol in their mind. While such practices, if carried out with great discipline, may also be successful in raising one's consciousness, they don't seem to provide any particular advantage over simply concentrating on stilling thought. The goal of all spiritual practices, after all, is not to expand one's capacity to control respiration, or to visualize, but to awaken. Furthermore, techniques such as watching one’s breathing or visualization/imagery have the great disadvantage of tending to draw the individual excessively inward. This may be acceptable when one is sitting quietly, but it becomes very difficult to relate to other people, tasks, and other responsibilities in the ordinary world--something anyone not withdrawing completely from society must do--while practicing techniques of this kind.

In contrast, stopping thought, if carried out correctly, is always accompanied by an enhanced awareness of the outer as well as inner world, which helps the individual to make her way in both. In addition, as we will see, changes in one's outer-directed experiences provide an important tool with which to guide one's progress, and help in the struggle, which every meditator must constantly wage, against self-delusion, the belief that one has realized a great deal more than one in fact has. Other techniques may be useful in certain unusual situations, for example, to calm an angry, unsettled mind, or to kickstart a torpid, depressed one, but I don't consider them a satisfactory basis for everyday meditation.

32. Most mystics have shown little awareness of this relationship. They withdraw from society not to preserve energy, but to avoid distractions. Such distractions--such as seeing or interacting with other people--do require some energy, but actually far less than is routinely expended in the most isolated and austere monasteries. The physical activity of daily chores has far more of an impact on the level of (as opposed to the quality of) one's awareness than interactions with other people.

33. Quoted in Watts (1989), p. 139. This energy, when applied to ordinary activities, is the source of great power, the source of superhuman efforts (see also footnote 3 for Chapter 10). Michael Murphy (1992) has suggested a number of ways in which such powers might be manifested by human beings in a higher state of consciousness. It must always be remembered, though, that these powers come at the expense of awareness. Power (in this sense) is ultimately something one must give up in order to advance.

34. Wilber (1981), p. 323.

35. Wilber (1998b), p. 248.

36. This is a complicated point, the subject of a lot of anti-Wilber writing, and Wilber himself has gone to some lengths to address it in his most recent writings (e.g., Wilber 1999). The thrust of his argument (and not having read everything this incredibly prolific mind has written, I may well be missing something) seems to be that just as people today can have occasional experiences or flashes of a state of consciousness higher than their ordinary one, so could people of earlier eras. Thus he says: "In a peak experience (a temporary altered state), a person can briefly experience, while awake, any of the natural states of psychic, subtle, causal, or nondual awareness, and these often result in direct spiritual experiences...Peak experiences can occur to individuals at almost any stage of development. The notion, then, that spiritual and transpersonal states are available only at the higher stages of development is quite incorrect." (Wilber 1999)

I can't categorically disagree with this statement, particularly when Wilber adds: "Nonetheless, although the major states of gross, subtle, causal, and nondual are available to human beings at virtually any stage of growth, the way in which those states or realms are experienced and interpreted depends to some degree on the stage of development of the person having the peak experience." (Wilber 1999; see also the Wilber quote in this chapter referenced by footnote 3). Understood in this way, the existence of peak experiences is clearly compatible with the idea that human beings today are more capable of realizing higher states than those of earlier eras. However, I suspect that genuine peak experiences are far rarer than the rather casual use of the word today implies. I myself never had any (without the use of drugs) until I began a life of continuous meditation. I did occasionally experience moments of great peace, but my later progress on the spiritual path quickly disabused me of the notion that these were anything more than relatively rare emotional states, quite within the range of ordinary consciousness.

37. Wilber (1995), p. 538.

1. Ouspensky (1961), p. 333.

2. Quoted in Mitchell (1991), p. 97.

3. Wilber 1999. The arguments that follow are drawn from the several online postings by Wilber and Combs in the "Reading Room" section of Ken Wilber's Webpage. Some of Wilber's material now appears as footnotes to Volume 4 of his Collected Works, while all of Combs' ideas are elaborated in his book The Radiance of Being. All of the quotes that I use of either of these two authors, however, are taken from the Webpage postings.

I want to add that I find this kind of debate an outstanding example of how internet technology can enhance human understanding of certain issues--particularly ones that receive little or no attention from the popular press. While scholars have debated each other on numerous ideas for centuries, the internet makes it possible, for the first time in history, for these debates to be made available to the public rapidly and in all their immediacy. Whatever these postings suffer from not being polished or edited (and aside from some wordiness, I don't see that they need much editing), they more than make up for in communicating not simply the ideas but the emotions of these two men (and others with whom Wilber has debated). Every historian understands that there are few more intense passions than that an intellectual has for his ideas, but rarely are we allowed such a glimpse into this passion as we are here.

There is a very profound lesson developing here. Wilber and his critics profess to be interested in the spiritual development of humankind, and many with a similar interest are protesting that in such debates we all have a responsibility for avoiding the kind of acrimony engaged in by intellectuals of the past (some of whom were unapologetically nasty, a character trait not in the least inconsistent with the ideas they were arguing for). See, for example, McDermott (1998) whose criticism of Wilber I find a shining example of how to discipline someone publicly while never showing that person anything but the most profound respect. But Wilber counters--and I agree with him to some extent--that spirituality does not mean we are not allowed to be intense about our beliefs. There is nothing "unspiritual" about insisting, in the strongest possible terms, someone's ideas are wrong (though the stronger the terms, the more certain you better be). On the contrary, I agree with Ken that the greater sin is acquiescing with ideas that one feels are profoundly misleading. I do think Ken could make these points a little more wisely sometimes. In Sex, Ecology and Spirituality, for example, he repeats the same buzzwords, like "Flatland" and "weak noodle" ad nauseum, when I think a single very firm, even harsh, paragraph (or even section) would have done much more. Say it once, as strongly as you want, then move on. But Ken is learning (having a great sense of humor certainly helps him in these debates), and at any rate, he is light years ahead in the politeness and respect deartment of some of his critics. Just check out this site for details.

4. ibid.

5. ibid.

6. ibid.

7. Transitional structures are those that one exists in temporarily, before passing on to a higher structure. Thus human children today pass through a number of transitional structures of consciousness, before completing their development in a more permanent structure of rationality. I don't feel the distinction is important in this discussion, because transitional is a somewhat relative term. We could say that a cell is a transitional structure--all of us began our lives as a single cell. But cells can also be permanent structures. Likewise, most if not all structures of consciousness that are transitional for us are permanent for some otherr forms of life, human or lower animals.

In another sense, on the other hand, all structures of consciousness, in Wilber's sense, might be considered transitional. If one adopts an evolutionary view in which all of life is returning to its origins from a universal consciousness, than any structure of consciousness other than this is transitional. This idea will be discussed further in Chapter 12.

8. ibid.

9. ibid.

10. ibid.

11. Wilber (1995), p. 192.

12. ibid.

13. ibid.

14. Wilber apparently believes that deep sleep and dreaming sleep are states of higher consciousness: "The Three Bodies of Buddha are similar to the three bodies of Vedanta–gross, subtle, and causal, and they are all explicitly correlated with waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states, respectively." (Wilber 1999). I find this idea, frankly, nuts, and quite uncharacteristic of the usual rigor of his thought, though he has on rare other occasions expressed beliefs that I consider to be monumentally foolish (e.g.: regarding Da Free John--or whatever name the man is currently going by--as one of the most highly evolved people on the planet).

15. If dreaming sleep is associated with a lower structure of consciousness, it seems to follow that some lower organism, for which that structure is the highest structure of consciousness, should live its ordinary state of existence in a dream-like state. I think this is true, but this does not mean that the contents of its "dreams" are anything like ours. Because we have the higher brains, our dreams can include thoughts and emotions that might not be possible in a "pure" dreaming state. It might be further objected that an organism in a dream state could not survive, since its perspective would be manifestly at odds with reality. I'm not prepared to speculate on either what type of lifeform would be in a purely dreaming state, or what it would actually experience, but if existence at some level is compatible with a deep sleep level of consciousness, it surely is compatible with a dreaming level.

16. ibid.

17. Quoted in Dennett (1995), p. 394.

1. Williams (1995), p. 43.

2. Gatlin (1972), p. 202.

3. Taylor (1983), p.

4. Peterson (1998), pp. 197-198. The first quote is Peterson's; the second Chaitin's.

5. Darwin (1998b), p. 67.

6. Cohen and Stewart (1995), p. 290.

1. Sober and Wilson (1998), p. 100.

2. Pinker (1997), p. 52.

3. Dobzhansky (1998).

4. Preuss and Kaas (1990), p. 1283.

5. Darwin (1998a), p. 227.

6. If the cell had two copies of every gene, like a modern somatic cell in any organism, then the mutation would be passed along to only one of its two immediate descendants. The latter, however, would then begin a new line in which every cell contained two copies of the mutated gene.

7. This is the idea, of course, for which Chomsky is best known (Chomsky 1985; Pinker 1994). The point I'm making here, however, does not depend on the truth of Chomsky's claim. The point is simply that there is some potential, some deep structure, in the brain that enables us to learn language. Regardless of whether this potential is in the form of rules of grammar or syntax, or something even more general, there is no question that it's universal in our species. Experiments with other primates make it quite clear that no amount of cultural exposure can transmit language as we use it to other species (Gill, 1997; Tomasello and Call, 1997; Parker et al., 1999).

8. It's well recognized that many of the molecules that cells use to communicate with one another are homophilic--that is, they bind to other molecules of identical structure (Edelman 1984). So if a group of cells each contain the same homophilic molecule(s), they can associate with one another. It's also known that such surface interactions can alter the expression of specific genes in the interacting cells. It has not been shown, to my knowledge, that the genes so affected may code for the same molecules interacting on the cell surface, but this is certainly a reasonable hypothesis.

9. This will be discussed in Chapter 13.

10. Wilber (1995), p. 314.

11. Quoted in Pinker (1997), p. 300.

12. Quoted in Dennett (1995), p. 390.

13. Pinker (1997), p. 301.

14. Sober and Wilson (1998), p. 88.

15. Gould (1991), p. 65.

16. Pinker (1997), p. 209.

17. I don't wish to imply that the process of random variation and natural selection only occurs on such a small scale of time in cultural evolution. As discussed in Chapter 2, on higher levels of existence, processes generally occur over longer, not shorter, periods of time than do the equivalent or analogous process on lower levels. The holarchical view predicts that the actual establishment of what Pinker calls a "complex meme"--for example, a new idea or a new form of technology--should take weeks, months, years or decades. And so they do, with random variation and natural selection occurring over this period of time. That is, even a completed book or symphony or painting or other cultural product can be viewed as a single, random event, which has been selected. But it can be viewed in this way only from a higher level of existence. From our ordinary point of view on the same level, the process appears directed, for much the same reason it appears to us that we have free will (see Chapter 4)--because we identify with the meme, are unable to see anything above it. It is only when we look below ourselves in the holarchy, focussing on the lower-order components of the meme--rapid events in our minds--that we can appreciate the operation of randomness. Likewise, I contend that to the extent that a cell has awareness, it experiences variations in the surface structure of its genome as directed, not random. It believes it is changing itself, not that it is being changed.

I should add that viewing even the highest, most creative accomplishments of humanity as products of a Darwinian process does not denigrate them, nor imply that there is no way to rank or comparatively evaluate different ideas or technologies. On the contrary, that argument can be turned on its head, and used to make the point that Darwinism, far from being a blind process with no predictable outcome, inevitably leads to higher forms of existence. I will make this case in Chapter 12.

18. Dennett (1995), p. 250.

19. For example, Dennett (1995) suggests that in the inconceivably vast universe of all possible books--all possible combinations of letters or words in different languages--there may well be one that provides a satisfactory explanation of the hard problem of consciousness. Anyone prepared to believe that can surely believe that there is also a book in that set that explains evolution without all the problems that Darwinism has.

1. Thompson (1966), p. 16.

2. Quoted in Eigen (1992), p. 17.

3. Perhaps the foremost advocate of the application of complexity theory to consciousness is Allan Combs (1997), who has described "a state of consciousness as a chaotic attractor, that is, a stable pattern of ever-changing mental processes that braid together into the resilient process fabric of that state" (see Wilber 1999). While I believe Combs has some very valuable insights about the phenomena of consciousness, there is still very little evidence for understanding it in terms of chaos. A more interesting question--at least to me--is why so many people interested in higher states of consciousness are so attracted to nonlinear theories (e.g., Capra, Varela). Part of the reason, I supppose, is that these theories are currently perceived as cutting-edge science (though to many if not most scientists they're already passe), and the use of them gives pronouncements on higher states more authority (or so those who make these pronouncements imagine). But I believe another reason may be that for most people, direct experience of higher consciousness has come fleetingly and often rather abruptly, through the use of drugs or other get-rich quick schemes like hyperventilation. Such experiences can make it seem as if these states must be described in some manner as complex if not chaotic phenomena.

As someone whose introduction to higher states of consciousness was through drugs, I empathize. I once felt the same way. But having subsequently spent thirty years pursuing higher consciousness the slow, painful, hard way--meditation moment after moment, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year--I am now much more sympathetic to that horribly old-fashioned, politically incorrrect Darwinian view of change. In my experience, higher consciousness has come gradually, in a manner that can be described to a large extent in a linear fashion. The amount of progress one can make from day to day is not only very limited, but can be calculated, to a high degree of precision.

Yes, there have been sudden, abrupt, mind-blowing experiences--far more mind-blowing than anything ever experienced under drugs--but these have never (never, never, never, never!) been realized by leaping far above (even a little above!) a previously experienced level. On the contrary, they are always realized by falling to a lower level, a process in which an enormous amount of energy is released and made available to ordinary mental processes of thinking, feeling, etc. It's this energy, flooding into areas of the brain from which it was previously excluded, that fuels the fireworks, making possible experiences that are truly superhuman, yet sub- the stage realized prior to the experience.

Does this seem paradoxical? Think of climbing a mountain, inch by inch--a very boring, linear process, most of the time. When do we start having fun? Well, sometimes when we look down and see the view, of course. But the real fireworks occur when we slip and fall. In the process of falling, we see in a flash much more of the mountain than we were able to comprehend when we were making our way up. We know it in a different way, not as much in detail--this little pebble that chipped off here, that outcropping we had to go around there--but in a much broader, more encompassing fashion. We are not, in any purely linear sense, higher than we were before--we are lower. Yet at these times we increase our incorporation, so to speak, of everything we passed or transcended on the way. In somewhat the same manner the experience of falling (what I call "crashing" in consciousness) increases our spiritual development. We consolidate our gains; we will have to make our way back up to where we were before, in a frustratingly slow and painful way, but when we do get back up to where we were, we are, in some sense, higher than we were before, because our understanding of what we are transcending is greater.

Thus higher can have two senses in spiritual development. On the one hand, higher can be understood in a purely linear fashion; how far up the mountain we are. On the other hand, the way we have gotten to this level--how often, and in what manner, we have been exposed to the mountain--also contributes to our level of realization. Another way of expressing this is to say that we must both climb the mountain and become the mountain. In the second sense, I concede, it is possible to have sudden leaps of development, but I don't believe any theory of complexity is required to understand them. I can now predict with a high degree of precision under what conditions a crash in consciousness will occur (not to say I can always avoid these conditions, or even want to!), how far the fall will go, how long it will take to climb back up to the original level--and how much development in the second sense will take place. This kind of knowledge is not through thoughts, but through a faculty transcending thoughts.

For this reason, I tend to disagree with Combs's statement--seemingly so obvious--that "the weather provides an excellent metaphor for our inner lives...[consciousness] is itself a process that is constantly changing, ebbing and flowing in a fashion that cannot be predicted in detail." (Wilber 1999). To one willing to endure the enormous efforts and suffering required by a life of constant, moment-to-moment self-observation, most of what transpires in consciousness is quite predictable: the particular thoughts and feelings one has, for example, and especially the length of time they last. One of the keys to realizing this is to simplify one's life. When the kinds of outer experiences one has are limited, one tends to experience the same kinds of thoughts and feelings, again and again, at the same time of day, at the same place, and for the same length of time. What confuses the issue is when one brings in more and more outer stimulation, for the mind naturally responds to different forms of stimulation in different ways. But when one has the solid understanding provided by a simplified life--as a baseline, so to speak--the ways in which the mind responds to a more complex life become easier to understand. And to repeat: I have never found complexity theory necessary to this understanding.

4. Lyon (1993), p. 173.

5. Behe (1996), p. 191.

6. Pinker (1997), p. 162.

7. Casti (1992), p. 213

8. Quoted in Behe (1996), p. 156.

9. Behe (1996), pp. 191-2.

10. Kauffman (1993), pp. xiii-xiv

11. Eigen (1993), p. 46.

12. Dawkins (1976), p. 12.

13. Kauffman (1993), p. 354.

14. Dennett (1995), p. 228.

15. Dennett (1995), p. 226.

16. Eigen (1993), p. 46.

17. Eigen (1993), p. 37.

1. Seager (1999), pp. 230-234.

2. Maddox (1981). It should be added that in the two months following publication of Maddox's editorial, six responses were received, all critical of Maddox, and most at least partly supportive of Sheldrake.

3. Sheldrake (1989), p. 108.

4. Sheldrake (1989), p. 102.

5. As discussed in Chapter 10, there is some evidence, largely from studies of bacteria, that genetic mutation may not always be random. No one questions, though, that most mutations are random, or at least are not directed or adaptive.

6. Sheldrake (1989), p. 105.

7. Sheldrake (1989), p. 114.

1. Davies (1983), p. 216.

2. Penrose (1989), p. 416.

3. Campbell (1959), p. 6.

4. Quoted in Campbell (1959), pp. 9-10.

5. O'Brien (1964b), p. 62.

6. O'Brien (1964b), p. 66.

7. Kauffman (1993), p. 11.

8. If organisms or other holons are competing for limited amounts of energy, then efficiency may become difficult to distinguish from survival. Kauffman (1993), however, has raised the very interesting argument that most scientific theories--not just Darwinism--may be tautological, and that this is not really a problem.

9. It should be emphasized that even an understanding of evolution that sees efficiency as the central driving force does not predict that the forms of life we see today are maximally efficient. Junk, in the sense of wasteful or unnecessary structures or adaptations, may be preserved simply because at a certain point it's more difficult for evolution to discard them than to maintain them. To identify a certain force or goal for evolution does not imply that the process follows it perfectly.

10. Tattersall (1998), p. 206.

1. Hillis (1995), p. 385.

2. Ouspensky (1961), p. 310.

3. Popper (1977), p. 208.

4. Wilson (1992), p.272.

5. Simon (1996), p. 581.

6. Ouspensky (1961), pp. 57-58.

7. Wilber (1995), p. 255.

8. Based on what we know about evolution at lower levels of existence, it's hard to believe that at this late stage, a completely new form of existence could replace human beings as the "cells" of the planetary holon. One possibility, however, is that computers (or computer-human hybrids?) might function in this manner. My novel The Moment of Truth (Smith 1997) was an exploration of this idea, among others.

The notion that humans could have a sort of dual identity--living their lives as individual human organisms while yet identifying with the planetary holon--does suggest an important analogy of the planetary level with the next lower level of existence. Most cells in the brain, unlike cells in other parts of the body, don't reproduce and don't die, though they may do so under extraordinary conditions (Bossenmeyer-Pourie et al. 1999). Many of them live as long as we do, though as we age, some of them, chiefly in the lower, subcortical regions, do die off (Preuss and Kaas 1999). A higher level of existence organized around this principle, therefore, would be consistent with human beings who lived very long lives, as long, perhaps, as the earth itself. Such individuals might function on both levels, in the world yet not of it.

But this scenario, too, has ethical as well as technical problems. The ethical problem is rooted in the fact that aging and death are fundamental to all higher forms of life. Without death, the earth would soon be overrun by human beings, unless we banned all reproduction. Beyond the obvious opposition to a ban on reproduction, this would mean an end to the changing human gene pool. Our genetic makeup would be frozen in time.

The technical problems are also daunting. How are human beings going to extend their lifetimes so dramatically? While the process of aging is not well understood, the currently most widely-accepted view is that it results from genetic mutations that have gradually accumulated over the history of our species (Kirkwood 1999). These mutations are not harmful to us in our early years--and therefore do not affect our reproductive fitness--but do have a deleterious effect on our body as we get older . In other words, these mutations have remained with our species because like a delayed lethal disease--which is exactly what they are--they don't manifest symptoms until long after the next generation has been born. The problem is thus a very old and very deep-rooted one. Perhaps some future society will manage to identify all of the genes associated with aging, and remove them from our gene pool. But even if this becomes technically possible, genetic engineering on such a radical scale may not work. Many of these genes may play important, even essential, roles in our earlier years. Indeed, Darwinism strongly implies that they must have, or they would not have been selected in the first place. Thus it may prove impossible to remove them without having deleterious effects on ourselves. To prevent human aging, we might have to recreate the genome from scratch.

9. This is not the proper way to meditate. See note 31 for Chapter 6.

10. Moore (1992), pp. 18-19.

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