It is undeniable that there can only be one truth or story about how and why we, as human beings, have come to be here. By this I mean that there is only one way that it all happened, not two, three, or more. Yes, there are innumerable ideas, theories and even guesses, but there can only be one ultimate truth. To demonstrate; if we consider the development of anything, let’s say that of the modern motor car, then it is clear and inarguable that it is a creation that has come into existence via a very specific order of events. It was a process that involved a lot of people over a period of one hundred years or so, and it happened for good reason; meaning, that it wasn’t entirely accidental. There was a desire or need for such a creation in the sense that it was something that provided greater mobility for people, which in turn facilitated a greater exchange of ideas and increased creative opportunity.

Because of our recent ability to record information accurately, the way in which the automobile came into existence can be relatively easily tracked, i.e. who did what first and when, how that influenced other people, successes and failures along the way, etc. In fact, if someone wanted to, they could write down the whole story in great detail and it would be more or less the unquestionable truth of the matter.

By this same measure, the development of the Universe, the human body, and our appearance as creative creatures is the same―there is one story that is essentially true. However, because it is such a vast story that begins before humans even existed or worked out how to record information, to determine exactly what happened is an extremely challenging task. But that doesn’t mean that there is not a true story, or that it is not possible for us to discover what it is. At some level, the information―the story―has been recorded because it exists as knowledge in the Universal mind. 

Just as memories are ‘stored’ in our human minds and can be extracted at will (like remembering where you went on holidays when you were a child) so, too, memories are stored in the Universal mind―that place, remember, that lies behind and within the appearance of what we call the ‘physical world’. Accessing these memories, however, is deep inner work that takes focus and commitment. The information that is there will certainly never be discovered while we continue to look outside ourselves for the truth, which, unfortunately but quite understandably, is what we are extremely well-conditioned to do.

So, until we can come around to including this kind of research in our quest to piece the puzzle together, a good way for us to come to understand the conditions that birthed us as creative, self-aware human beings and bestowed upon us our ‘sapience’, is through analogy. Additionally, to put ourselves in the place of the Earth Being itself will afford us new and greater perspectives on the reason for, and process of, our becoming. We can do this quite easily and accurately because the Earth is an intelligent creative Being, just as we are intelligent creative Beings. What I mean by this, once again, is that the Earth is a non-physical, conscious creative Being, and its body is the physical reality that we know as the Earth. I want to be clear that this is not merely an idea or a concept, but a true reality. In the same way that we go about our lives, creating and doing the things that we are moved to do, the Earth Being operates similarly.

It is possible to get a very clear picture and understanding of how and why we emerged as humans by analogising the whole story with the technological development of machines. This should not be a difficult analogy to accept or make because our bodies, after all, are biological machines themselves.

One of the drives behind science and technology today is to develop machines to the ultimate expression as autonomous, intelligent robots―something similar to, and fashioned against, ourselves (a case of making a ‘machine in our own image’). The exact analogy I am making, then, is that the intellectual creation (by which I mean creativity directed through humans) of such a robot is akin to the creation of the human form by the intelligence of Consciousness.

Considering the challenge inherent in creating a robot that would be capable of operating intelligently and independently in any given environment, it is obvious that it is not something that could just be made suddenly without any prior knowledge. A few million years ago, it would have been impossible for anyone to conceive of something like this, although at that time, unawares to all, the groundwork for it was being laid through the discovery, understanding, and development of the simplest tools by Homo habilis (‘handy’ man) and refined a little later by Homo erectus. A few thousand years ago, although the possibility of creating robots was still far from consideration, the development of more complex machines (water wheels, windmills, carts, pumps etc.) to serve needs at the time also provided a greater knowledge base that would allow the development of ever-more complex machines in the future.

It was the industrial revolution of only a few hundred years ago which rapidly progressed an understanding and development of mechanisms of all kinds. It is most likely that during this intense period of experimentation and invention, the idea to develop a humanoid type robot of some kind first dawned upon somebody as a serious possibility. This period of experimentation and growth in our human history was, in many ways, equivalent to the explosion of new ideas in the Cambrian Period that we talked about previously. 

Later, in other areas of human interest and investigation, experimentation with sound and visual sensing, hydraulics, pneumatics, and servo motors, along with gyroscopes, actuators, and accelerometers were also being conducted. It has only been in the last forty years or so that the discovery and use of advanced electronics has enabled the emergence of artificial intelligence. In turn, this facilitated the very real possibility of creating intelligent robots that could move confidently and reliably in an environment, and it was therefore an undertaking that could now be focused upon with unwavering intent. 

There are a few things we can see and learn from this creative development to help us understand the emergence of human beings. The first thing to note is that although there was no idea or awareness around creating a ‘robot’ a million years ago, there was an unconscious movement towards it as an exploration of possibilities given the knowledge at the time. This was passive creativity at work. At no point was there a conscious movement towards it until sufficient discoveries had been made, and then someone, somewhere, saw the opportunity. From that time onwards, things began to move faster as the reality of bringing such a creation into existence was, and currently still is, being consciously explored and developed as an active creative process.

This development accurately analogises the development of the human being. At first, life on Earth was simply an intelligent exploration of possibilities at a basic chemical and biological level. A ‘human’ could not have been made straight away because there was no idea that such a thing could exist, although the groundwork was being laid as a function of the exploration taking place at the time. At some point, there had been sufficient experimentation done with form, mobility, and sensory perception that the possibility for something greater was seen by the Earth Being―a creature that could move, explore, and express in a way that would reflect the deepest nature of the Earth’s own intelligence. And so, from that point onwards, the focus swung around to developing a creature of this nature, which would, as it turns out, become the bodies through which we live today.

In both cases of development, the growth and ‘effectiveness’ of the creation was directly related to its ability to move within and sense the environment in which it existed. This is perfectly reasonable because without such sensory faculties a life-form is very limited in its ability to explore, interact and express. Something that cannot move, see, hear, smell, taste, or feel is not capable of expressing the deepest and highest nature of the Consciousness that is behind its existence. 

The development of sense perception is a key factor in the development of a vehicle that can accommodate and express the fullness of Consciousness. Indeed, without sense perception, the ‘physical’ dimension would not really exist, and there would be nothing much to discuss. This is because the things that we see ‘out there’ in the world and are collectively moved to name as being 'physical' are a sense perception of the Earth psyche itself. I will elaborate on this as we proceed, but for now it is enough to understand that as creative Beings we rely upon our senses to inform us that our ideas are taking place. Without our senses, it would not be possible for us to gauge this or know anything about the world we live in, and our experience would be one of an eternal, meaningless moment. 

Remember our ‘making a cake’ analogy from before? In this creative undertaking, we had the intention to make a cake and then our attention to that brought it about as a physical reality. But how did we know this?

The only reason that we knew our idea had become a reality is because we sensed it. In fact, all five senses were engaged in giving us feedback when making our cake. Sight and touch allowed us to find and select the ingredients and navigate around the kitchen so that we didn’t bump into things or put the wrong ingredients in our mix. Smell informed us whether the cake was cooking well or, if we had miscalculated somehow, that it was burning. Hearing alerted us to the fact that the timer was sounding, inviting us to check the status of our creation. And finally, of course, it was the sense of taste that allowed us the final triumph of enjoying our delicious masterpiece.

What all this amounts to, is that our senses are a feedback mechanism that allow us to interpret and interact with what is going on ‘out there’. In terms of creativity, it is only through the senses that we can come to know that what we intend is actually happening, or not. And it is the same with the Earth Being. Just as you are the Being that expresses and, through the senses of your body, experiences your ideas as creation and event, so too the Earth is a Being that expresses and experiences all things that have been created and happened since it first formed.

In this way, the Earth is a sentient Being having the total experience of everything that exists as it and on it. This experience is therefore sensational as the culmination of everything that is going on at any moment, in the same way that you are the one having the sensational experience now of everything that is going on in your body and your world.

So what then, you might ask, is the difference or relationship between the Earth experiencing the reality of your body and life, and the ‘you’ that is experiencing the reality of your body and life? That would be a fair and also brilliant question, the answer to which can only come from fully understanding the conditions that birthed us as self-aware creatures, which we are well on the way to doing.

Armed with this new information―that the Earth is a sentient Being and all the creatures on it are sensory receptors that take in and feed back information to inform it of its own creativity―let’s now go back to the early days on Earth and view it through this lens.

At all times, and at any given time, whatever exists in the world we could say is the body of Consciousness and represents an expression of the ideas and intentions of the Being behind it which, in this case, is the Earth Being and the extension of itself through every creature it has made. In the early days, however, there was virtually no awareness of this. Even today, there is little awareness of this. Wind the clock right back to the beginning of the Universe itself and we would find that there was absolutely no ‘awareness’ of this or anything at all, simply because there was nothing to be aware of. After the first emergence of matter, there would have been the first glimmer of awareness―a faint inner sense of beingness, but no knowledge of what that was at all. Accordingly, things took a very long time to get going in terms of the development of life-forms on Earth because until the creation of the senses there was no way that Consciousness could ‘see’ and know what was going on. Without that kind of feedback, the Earth was ‘in the dark’, so to speak, with regard to having any real understanding of itself. 

As sense organs developed, new and more complex life-forms came into existence. It was in the early Cambrian Period that the eye began to develop, and it is this that fuelled the ‘explosion’ of creativity and the appearance of all kinds of creatures and forms. The Earth could now see through certain life-forms, and consequently learned a great deal in comparatively little time. It could now play around with―and bring forth―many different expressions of itself as creatures that could interact with the environment and each other to form elaborate ecosystems, which we could equally call specific plays of Consciousness. It would also have been around this time―perhaps towards the end of the Cambrian period―that the Earth’s basic awareness first stirred and turned towards the beginnings of consciously creating a vehicle for the higher expression of itself. 

Over billions of years of continued experimentation and growth, the magnificent human body began to emerge as the Earth’s answer to providing this vehicle. Human-like creatures lived on the Earth some four million years ago, SST, but the earliest humans appeared in the order of a hundred thousand years ago. They lived as hunters and gatherers, and much later as farmers up until about 10,000 BCE, and from that time until now, creative man has developed at a tremendous evolutionary pace. 

It was in the period between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago that humans first began to get a sense of who or what they were and their relationship with the environment, and this was the precursor to what would culminate as the dawn of human consciousness. It is generally agreed among anthropologists that it was around this time that art, as cave drawings and paintings, first appeared. This is a clear sign that early humans were beginning to identify with the things they encountered in their world. Consequently, this indicates that the faculty of memory was there or emerging, as these people could obviously refer to imagery that was not in their ‘present moment’, i.e. the bison they saw while hunting that day was not posing politely beside the artist painting its picture. So, it is evident that around this time, humans were beginning to develop memory.

This is an extremely important point because it is memory that allows us the self-awareness that we have and are so familiar with today. Without memory, this sense of self could not have ever begun to develop, because a large part of what we know as our ‘self’ is an image, or thoughts, of who or what we think we are. And those thoughts are based upon a mix of identifications with various things that are not in this moment, i.e. things in or from the past, which is memory. Understanding memory, and how it came to be, is key.

In the next section we look at how memory in the primitive human animal began to develop, and the consequences of this new evolutionary tool.