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Prokaryote
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The most primitive organism on this planet is the prokaryote. Now, this prokaryote might be described as little more than a cell membrane surrounding a droplet of cytoplasm. I mean, you might think of it as something of a microscopic goo balloon. And yet this prokaryote eats, digests, breathes, excretes, and even exhibits neurological processing. It senses where food exists and it slimes its way toward dinner. It recognizes toxins and predators and it slimes its way toward safety. Said another way, our prokaryote displays something of an intelligence. Perhaps it can be said that those cells are smart.
"Let the God within you express itself through you in the world without."
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Charles Fillmore
And from that moment - say some 750 million years ago - that the earliest smart cells hooked up, they have continued to form ever more sophisticated communities, increasing their awareness of their environment exponentially, subdividing the workload with more precision and effectiveness than the organizational charts of Google, and allowing many more to live on much less. And these smart cells continue to learn from experience - creating cellular memories, or genes, and passing these genes to their offspring. And not only are these genes shared among members of the same species, but they are shared among members of different species.
This sharing of learned information is no accident. If genes are the physical memories of an organism’s learned experiences, then this exchange of genes is a sharing of memories designed to enhance the survival of the biosphere; designed to enhance all life on the planet. Yes, the Beatles may have had it right all along. We really do “get by with a little help from our friends.”
In this understanding, organisms can no longer be seen as disconnected; there are no walls between species. When we genetically alter a tomato, we potentially alter the entire biosphere in ways we cannot foresee. Scientists are acknowledging this invaluable role of cooperation in sustaining life in the biosphere in a newer field of study called Systems Biology.
It was the French biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck who presented a theory of evolution based upon such an instructive, cooperative interaction among organisms and their environment 50 years before Darwin’s work. While his theory of an evolution driven by community and cooperation was displaced mainly by Darwin’s theory of an evolution driven by competition and struggle, newer biology would suggest that the overlooked Lamarck was not entirely wrong and the celebrated Darwin was not entirely correct.
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The view that nature is inherently competitive is a misunderstanding of what “survival of the fittest” means. That phrase wasn’t even introduced until Darwin’s 5th edition of On the Origin of Species after it was coined by Herbert Spencer and applied to his own economic theories after reading Darwin. By “fittest,” Darwin did not mean the strongest. Instead, he meant “fittest” as in most adaptable and that which is most likely to “fit” in with the environment and successfully reproduce. This worldview has made us think and act as if we are in competition with each other, and thus we have created linear, top-down hierarchies in a zero-sum game with winners and losers that reinforce a power-over model rather than power-with.
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Today’s Dr. Bruce Lipton who wrote, “If we fail to apply the lessons of our shared genetic destiny, which should be teaching us the importance of cooperation among all species, we threaten human existence. We need to move beyond Darwinian Theory, which stresses the importance of individuals, to one that stresses the importance of community.” This belief in an evolution driven by survival of the fittest is incorrect and destructive – a primary cause of the problems that we face today.
James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis says the same thing in different words: that the earth and all of its species are one interactive, living organism, that the biosphere is a tightly integrated, holistic harmonizing community, and that tampering with the balance of this superorganism (or Gaia) threatens its very survival.
"God is the one perfect life flowing through us. God is the one pure substance out of which our organism is formed. God is the power that gives us motive power; the strength that holds us upright and allows us to exercise our limbs; the wisdom that gives us intelligence in every cell of our organism, every thought of our minds. God is the only reality of us; all else is but a shadow.
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Myrtle Fillmore
Ernest Holmes, of Religious Science, spoke to this same idea, and I paraphrase, that the infinite cannot oppose the infinite; that, in effect, God cannot oppose God. And this doesn’t mean that humanity can’t make unenlightened decisions. This simply means that humanity’s unenlightened decisions will ultimately be balanced in ways that may or may not support our collective addiction to pleasure.
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I would say that there is one thing happening here and it’s the Life we call God. And that each of us is an emanation of that one Life. And so it is that we honor God to the degree that we honor life – affirming its noble worth, celebrating its infinite potential, and supporting its inherent right to be; and that we dishonor God to the degree that we dishonor life – denying its worth, discounting its potential and disregarding its right to be. I would echo the words of the writer of the latter gospel in suggesting that to love God is to love life. To love God is to love each other.
So for our purposes today, while you might be tempted to think of yourself as an individual, I would suggest that you are better described as a cooperative community of some 50 trillion single-celled citizens, a cooperative of individual organisms that have evolved a strategy for their mutual survival; that from that moment that those earliest smart cells hooked up, the endless advantages of living in community led to organizations of millions, billions and even trillions of socially interactive smart cells culminating with you, sitting right here, reading these words.
You, in a sense, stand at the leading edge of life’s experiencing of itself. It calls to mind images of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on the bow of the Titanic. May our ending be kinder.
So, in any exploration of the three perineal questions, “Where did I come from?” “Why am I here?” and, “How do I make the best of it?” The suggestion of today is that we awaken from the perspective of Darwin which might have us answer with words such as, “I am a product of random chemistry, here with no real purpose so I’d better start competing,” to a perspective of that most primitive organism on the planet which might have us answer with words such as, “I am Life’s longing for itself, here to bring harmony and balance to my family of being, so I’d better start cooperating.”
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For some fun and consideration of evolutionary thinking and being check out Futurist Speaker Nikolas Badmiton.
Futurist.com | Futurist Speaker
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Futurist Speaker Nikolas Badminton - Futurist Think Tank
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The Futurist Think Tank is a world-leading team of futurists and thinkers brought together by Nikolas Badminton & Glen Hiemstra.
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Here’s a short video from Unity WorldWide EarthCare team member, Martha Powers, about one of her favorite ways to work with the power of Release.
Enjoy an additional short video from Cylvia Hayes, another team member, about Release and the Unity Village 12 Powers garden.