Darwinian Evolution And Its Relation To Spirituality
The universe is fundamentally mysterious. How is it that anything exists at all? Since the dawn of humanity, our best answer to this question has been "God" — and there hasn't been much of other ideas — apart from lately, ideas of a quantum fluctuations — yet still, where would these quantum mechanical equations emerge from? Any ideas of a big bang, or even eternal inflation — this simply pushes the question one layer deeper.
As mysterious as this mystery is, we also have another one —the emergences of consciousness. As conscious beings, we are seeking to find our place in the universe. Since the invention of the telescope (and microscope), astronomy and physics has multiplied the size of our universe by thousands of orders of magnitude — discovering fast sizes and miniscule ones alike. Similarly, the theory of Darwinian evolution is of the same spiritual magnitude as the big bang. Darwin's theory does not actually explain where life came from — much the same as the big bang doesn't explain the origin of anything. But both of these discoveries adds an immense richness to our spiritual place in the universe.
Studying the process of evolution is endlessly fascinating. The more I think of it, and the deeper I ponder, the more impossible it appears. How can DNA, simple molecules, express itself through the entire richness that is life. It is the most alien, most beautiful, and most horrific invention of the universe.
Who can deny the beauty of a flower. The beauty of a woman. The beauty of colour — which your own mind fabricates. And who can deny the horrors — of a baby deer being eaten alive by a bear, a kind hearted man being unloved due to his poverty, a baby penguin starving to death as a result of its parents being preyed on, and disease stealing a child from its mother. Yet, this brutality is also the mechanism that creates the fine tuned mechanisms of the animal, plant, fungus and bacterial realms. Survival of the fittest created the beauty of a jaguar, the speed of a cheetah, the eye sight of a falcon, and even... you, and your mind. In the wake of this game of the fittest; there has been the countless failures of the un-fittest.
These Darwinian mechanism have not left us. Humans have created a civilisation that rises above the animal kingdom, and more importantly, many of us humans have kindled kind hearts that want the best for all conscious creatures. At the same time, we also carry the selfish aspects of our animal selves — the result is war, thievery, backstabbing and a plenitude of other injustices.
The primary mechanism of evolution is the natural variations and mutations of DNA. Darwin did not know about this DNA at all — but these days it is common knowledge. DNA is again wonderful. How it unites the mushroom with the octopus to e-coli and the human. But also, this natural variation is causing humanity to devolve — biologically speaking. Myself, my vision is not perfect — luckily contact lenses fix that issue. But if I lived 100,000 years ago — my short-sightedness would be deserving of death — and not reproducing. Our medicine and technology has made the lives of humans easier, but we are no longer living on the ruthless knife blade of evolution either. As such, humans are not as fine tuned as a wild lion, a wild bass, a wild eagle, or a wild boar.
The ancients knew nothing of this — and lived in total mystery. We know all of this, and I find it so profound! Yet we still live in total mystery — but a mystery that is more rich than the ancients ever speculated of.
When I think of evolution — our heritage and relation to it — our DNA — our human condition — it is the most terrifying and ruthless concept I can imagine — and also one of the most beautiful. If you want an example of God transcending 'good' and 'bad' — then evolution is exactly that.
Now — with spiritual awakening — another dimension opens up yet again. You see — the animal kingdom — and us symmetrical vertebrates in particular — are a vehicle of consciousness. Since the dawn of fishes, and maybe earlier, consciousness has been slowly, slowly opening its eyes — opening its eyes from the perspective of an animal. If a prawn is conscious — it is not very conscious. A crocodile also, is not very conscious. Birds are more conscious. Dolphins and elephants even more so. Humans even more so — at least some humans — not all! Consciousness is actually traversing through evolution, towards something magnificent. This journey is an evolutionary process in of itself.
This process — involving millions of years of evolution and countless generations — can culminate within you! In this lifetime! All it takes is for you to sit down, introspect, meditate, and seek for those esoteric ways to unravel these mysteries.