“The universe at large is crammed to the brim with worlds of awareness, organic and inorganic.”

Carlos Castaneda

When I discovered Einstein’s quote, I was delighted, as I have always said that one should observe wildlife if one wants to be wise. If you think about it, every species follows its own existential orbit, forming a separate world that is organized by a specific set of rules. In the animal kingdom, each species has its own method of communication, behavior, and reproduction, following a strictly predetermined path from birth through maturity, aging, and death. This cycle lasts, for certain species like sharks and crabs, hundreds of millions of years. Crocodiles and turtles are not far behind. The million-dollar question here is, what drives sentient beings to act the way they do? The answer is a single word that contains all the world’s mystery: awareness. The problem with awareness is so crucial that, in my opinion,  biology is supposed to be founded upon it. Yet, science has no clear opinion on the topic, and scientists are so confused that they even have trouble defining the term properly. Therefore, they prefer to ignore the issue, for if they don’t, all these perfunctory speculations and hypotheses, which reign now in the public domain as “proven theories” and shape modern biology, would collapse and turn them into a laughing stock.

            But what is awareness, anyway? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as “knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists.” Longman offers a similar interpretation, adding,“The ability to notice something using your senses.”

And here is another one from Wikipedia: 

“In psychology, awareness is a concept about knowing, perceiving, and being cognizant of events. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of behavioral actions.”

As you can see, these definitions don’t shed any light on how the principal components of awareness (such as thinking, consciousness, and realization) work, although these processes are at the core of the adaptation and survival of living beings. 

Science’s explanation of this phenomenon often invokes the word “instincts” and tries to convince us that thinking and cognition are processes of simple interaction between neurons and synapses. Are they, though? What about feelings, which are also part of our consciousness? Are they simple chemical reactions triggered by our brain and happening inside our body? Pure nonsense! It’s what we observe as cause and effect in our visible level of perception, but there is certainly a lot more of this.

In my youth, biology was the science with which I was madly in love. Still, after one year of university studies in biology, biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, and anatomy, I realized there was no way to agree with some of the nonsense I was about to learn, and I dropped out (I am mentioning this episode in my life only to reassure you that I know what I’m talking about).

As a consequence, as I am not a graduate biologist bound by the shackles of our brain’s clichés, I will offer you another theory that nobody can reject, because it is as justified as any other scientific concept. I maintain that a higher power gives a particle of its superb intellect, called awareness, to every living being, thus establishing a connection to rule them. As a result, every species contributes to the puzzle of responsibilities, thus constructing the ideal balance in nature.

Most religious tractates and philosophical treatises support this statement. Let’s take the Bible, for instance: Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7). The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. (John 6:63).

Unfortunately, the sad truth is that, first off, only a few people read the Bible nowadays, and second, it would be interesting to find some other pieces of evidence aside from religious text. I remember I was thrilled when I first found one, which came from an exciting and controversial source that has nothing to do with religion.

Twenty-five years ago, I was young and stupid, an inveterate atheist, and a big fan of Carlos Castaneda. The books of this Peruvian anthropologist depict the teaching of Don Juan, a Mexican Indian sorcerer and seer, and they fascinated me. As Castaneda’s works (which later inspired Lucas’s idea of the Force in Star Wars) had nothing in common with any religion, they also perfectly fit my philosophical aspirations. However, his books confirmed two crucial concepts which dramatically changed my life’s trend: the existence of God and the existence of demons (for more about the latter, click here). 

Directly related to the topic of awareness that we discuss here is Castaneda’s 7^th book, “The Fire From Within,” where Don Juan explains this process and gives a stunning definition of the reason for our existence. Here I will briefly cite two main points of his teaching:

1. “Don Juan said that the old seers, risking untold dangers, actually saw the indescribable force which is the source of all sentient beings. They called it the Eagle… They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows awareness. The Eagle creates sentient beings so that they will live and enrich the awareness it gives them with life. They also saw that it is the Eagle who devours that same enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment of death…. one of the most dramatic legacies the old seers had left us was their discovery that the reason for the existence of all sentient beings is to enhance awareness.” (Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within. Simon and Shuster Publisher, New York, 1984, pp.50-51).

2. “Seers who see the Eagle’s emanations often call them commands,” don Juan said. “I wouldn’t mind calling them commands myself if I hadn’t got used to calling them emanations… ‘Commands’ sounds too human to me, but that’s what they really are, commands.” ( ibid., 55)

With a few phrases, Don Juan nailed the question of our existence that philosophers, preachers, scientists, wise men, gurus, and so on have discussed for thousands of years, a hamster wheel in perpetual motion while humans destroy everything around them. But let’s analyze the information you’ve just skimmed through.

 The first paragraph states that an indescribable force called “Eagle” (a ridiculous name that we easily can replace with God) creates every living being and gives them life and awareness, which it then takes at a later date, causing them to die. But the most stunning statement, which indirectly confirms the theory that Earth is fine-tuned for life, is that the entirety of living nature has been created to enhance awareness. What does that mean, in simple words? We come on Earth to learn, and our experience is the paycheck we earn during our stay in this world. At the end of our earthly days, we hand it to our Creator, who decides if we are worthy to continue or remain dwelling here until we learn how to behave. A form of evolution, so to speak.

The second paragraph is linked directly to the previous one. It discusses the commands of the same mysterious power, diffused as emanations, that make every species follow their circle of life, as I pointed out at the beginning of this publication. Don Juan’s explanation coincides with Hinduism and Taoism and Vanga’s affirmations I-II from my previous publication about “the obedience of the entire world to a strictly defined cosmic rhythm and order.”

So, we have accumulated three pieces of evidence from three sources, completely separate in terms of location and time: 1. Christianity and the Eastern religions, including Judaism; 2. Don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer; and 3. Vanga, a Bulgarian seer.

But no matter the evidence, science is not ready to concede that awareness is actually the connection of living beings with a higher mind, and that this incredible force, through its commands, is constantly ruling their destiny. However, even science cannot deny the facts and hide the truth. Speaking of which, we will explore some tangible examples confirmed by biology in the next three posts. They will refute the “indisputable” scientific assertion that thinking and cognition are simple interaction processes of neurons and synapses, and that the origin of life is a hazardous process arising from compounding chemical elements. 

Next: THE ENIGMA OF THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR