The are two central concepts or perhaps conceptual gestalts that I have been working with as I attempt to develop a Gaian philosophy. The first I call the "Gaian Mind". This is the conceptual matrix that orbits around such questions as: Does the Earth have a mind (or at least a brain)? If so, then how does it all go together and what are its parts? The second could be called the "Gaian Soul". This term can be misleading when stated in as brief a form as it is here my use of "soul" is to denote the essential nature, meaning, and purpose of the terrestrial system, but this will be discussed further momentarily. The idea of a Gaian Mind betrays the notion that there is intelligence at work in Nature. Indeed, I see the Earth to have phenomenal Natural Intelligence. Most people deny such a conception of things outright because it conjures up the idea of a supernatural brain that pre-designs the Earth's creatures and systems. People feel this is too close to creationism and the ordained will of God, and I completely agree with this analysis. It is a primitive conception because it removes the intelligence from the system and lifts it into an unreal superspace from which all the earthly acumen is said to come.

The error in thinking here carries through to the false conception we have of our own intelligence. We believe it all resides in the several pounds of grey matter we each have inside our skulls. I will argue instead that this is another version of the above "unreal superspace", and that all intelligence is instead, in actuality, relational. To see what I mean by this, I invite you to ask yourself questions like these: Would an atom the size of a house be an intelligent structure in our universe? Is a peacock or any creature an intelligent creature in outer space? Would you still be as intelligent if you were stuck smack dab in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest? If you answered to this last one, "Yes, but I just wouldn't be able to use it in these unfamiliar surroundings", then you have precisely struck on my point, though not yet made the switch in perspective I am trying to show to you. Your intelligence is only as good as it matches that to which it is being applied, and intelligence can intelligently be said to be diminished when the match is poor. Nothing is intelligent in a vacuum: a dazzling knowledge of Boolean algebra is a dazzlingly useless artifact in the rainforest, a peacock's elaborate plumage is a tragic laugh in the depths of space. When any of us looks at Nature, we are almost forced to admit that there is a phenomenally "intelligent design" to its elements and systems. Just look, for example, at the fact that the hexagonal structure of a honey comb holds the single greatest volume possible for using the least amount of structural material, a fact discovered by higher mathematics (perhaps even using Boolean algebra) - and you will know what I mean. And yet we will also refute that Nature is either intelligent or designed. Gaian negentropic hand grenade of the succulent kind Well, intelligence doesn't have to have an ego behind it; it can be distributed, relational, and design can emerge from the process of things as they go along. We humans are intelligent because we are highly adaptable and creative creatures, that is, we can enter into intelligent relations with an enormous variety of the things of the world for our survival or prosperity - and not because we have a neocortex of a billion interconnected cells.Our neocortex merely allows us to be intelligent. It does not hold intelligence within itself. The brain is not all that intelligent at birth, though it is in a gross sense formed in its completeness, and infants are correspondingly helpless. The same is true for the greater body of Nature, Gaia herself. As a living system, as a planetary meta-organism, Gaia is unequalled in her adaptability, in her resilience, in her continuous creativity. She survived the asteroidal impact which killed the dinosaurs and 80% of all life on Earth, rising from the ashes to creatively bring forth the staggeringly rich Gaiacopoeia of creatures we know today. One could say she was intelligent in her response to this planetesimal impact, although she acted as such without so much as a trace of a thought.

A species of Drosera. Insects are caught and eventually digested by the sticky leaf tendrils. A fantastic example of Natural Intelligence which botanists did not fully appreciate until a century after the plant was first documented

What the Gaian Mind shares with the human mind then is an unparalleled degree of interconnectedness and inter-sensitivity, we with our neurons, she with her creatures and other systems. Such interconnection, such self-sensitive complexity, always generates actions and motions with this mysterious quality we call intelligence. The difference can be said to lie in the fact that the majority of Gaian intelligence is focused back within the system and not directed towards outer space, while the majority of human intelligence is instead focused outwards and thus writ large across Nature as the things of our cultural space. Nonetheless, both have what can be termed thoughts. For the Gaian Mind, these thoughts are genetic variations and the creatures they describe. Some thoughts are good and live to prosper because their nature relates to the rest of the Gaian system with a strong degree of intelligence. Others have genetic mutations which cripple their abilities to relate and contribute, and they are thus selected against. The Gaian mind is much like the human mind, but the Gaian Mind must incarnate every thought it has (an exhaustive approach to problem solving where all possibilities are tried and tested). It must incarnate to think, whereas our minds are ostensibly more clever than this, and faster. Such a Gaianesque conception of Natural Intelligence may seem outlandish and beyond the pale, but it is really no more than the reverse of an idea that is currently gaining quick acceptance in many intellectual circles. I speak here of neo-Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins's conception of thoughts as memes, that is, thoughts are capable of displaying behaviour that mimics life. He speaks of new thoughts as mutations, addressing adaptability and natural selection of certain thoughts in the environment of different intellectual milieus. His notion is essentially that thoughts or ideas or creeds display properties heretofore thought of as pertaining only to life. Mine is that creatures display qualities heretofore believed only to pertain to thoughts. In my conception of things, both perspectives seem equally valid and even perhaps wedded to each other. The brain is very much like a global ecology of neurons which is ever going through thought mutations and, slowly, cognitive evolution. The Gaian Mind is a vastly distributed, highly interconnected mind whose genetic evolution is the backbone of our human existence within it. The two are more similar than most would think, and indeed, one (the human) emerged from the other and is an integral part of it. There is a great stigma in the sciences - especially within biology - put upon the notion of teleology, or purposeful behaviour. It is thought to be unscientific heresy and a clear case of anthropomorphisism. This response, considered together with the undying fact that each and every one of us experiences ourselves as purposeful, is clearly a contradiction fraught with conceptual errors. Orthodox scientific positivism would insist on convincing us that all the purpose and most of the meaning in our lives is an illusion. Are you convinced? In the modern conception, when a person feels their life to be devoid of purpose we call them "depressed", "cynical" and even "nihilistic", presume they suffer from "a lack of self-esteem", and thence put them into psychotherapy. Then again, when the scientific worldview expresses the exact same sentiments and conclusions, we all insist on its truth and exonerate their efforts at "objectivity". So who then is really in need of therapy? The fact is, we humans and many other of our fellow creatures on this Earth experience ourselves as purposeful and display purposive behaviour. How is this possible if such things just plain don't exist? As I said above, humans are an integral part of the Gaian Mind just as they are an integral part of Nature herself. Three and a half billion years ago the chemical elements from which we are now made, the vast interactions of intricate molecules of which we are a part, were nothing but the hard crust of a planetary conglomerate without any atmosphere. We are of the Earth, we come from the Earth, we are the Earth. We are ourselves genetic thoughts of the Gaian Mind, thinking our own thoughts within. If we are not separate from the Earth, then the qualities we have as humans are creative products of the endless organizing and complexifying of the Gaian system throughout terrestrial evolution. That is, our purposeful behaviour is not only real, but it has likely been elaborated to ever more evolved forms as the axis of evolution transcended and re-transcended itself. Immortal coils of DNA - Nature's 'machine code'. illustration Eric G. Suchanek, Ph.D."DNA under glass" Nature is not devoid of teleology but is veritably replete with it. The Gaian Mind, as a whole, has acquired great purpose through all its component creatures and seems focused on refining this purpose evermore so. Moreover, Nature and the Gaian Mind are not only purposeful through us and other organisms, but conscious and curious and a whole host of other qualities we humans share. Humans, presumeably being the most complexly sentient creatures on Earth, can then be said to be the Gaian consciousness, though the most sentient element of mind in many less evolved species also participates in this Gaian consciousness. As with consciousness in a human mind, the Gaian consciousness rests on a corresponding planetary unconscious and is forever involved with dredging its depths. The Gaian unconscious is what Jung called the collective unconscious, but here extended even deeper into the living within, such that it encompasses the inner states of being extant within all creatures. The Gaian unconscious is also the intelligence of form and function that exists in the externality of Nature, both of which are explored by human curiosity and endeavour, the external unconscious through scientific method and the internal through the inner vision quest in one form or another, the two paths of course co-informing each other. It is almost impossible for us to have a sense of the entirety of being immanent in the Gaian Mind, existing as we do with awareness that seems bound to only come from our one bodily perspective. It is hard enough even to feel and grasp the enormous and shining uniqueness that lives in one other person, much less the whole host of people on Earth or, indeed, the sum total of planetary biota. It is so overwhelmingly complex that it is a tribute to human intelligence that we can comprehend it at all, and even, as it sometimes seems, quite well. The Gaian Mind is intelligent beyond our wildest dreams, far exceeding the pithy intelligence encompassed by one human brain. To this mind a human brain is but a cell, a neuron, part of its eco-cognitive architecture. What we are witnessing today then, is the linking of we human neurons into a global communications network of ever expanding bandwidth, the self-initiated effort to link ourselves through the axonal growth of our technology into an utterly interconnected Gaian Superconsciousness, a nexus into which the Gaian unconscious can unfold and be liberated. Humans, and all the creatures that have led up to our degree of sentience, represent the acceleration of Gaian thought through the creation of interconnected webs in which information becomes evermore present and impressive. The Gaian Supermind we are so busy building will be a huge leap forward in this regard, bringing on a huge change in the speed at which the planet is becoming aware of the nature of its being, heralding a phase transition of some kind. We humans are creatures of the in-between, being entities of both matter and mind, substance and information. We participate in the Gaian Mind, incarnating our ideas as inventions and creations of every sort we ever have imagined. We are organisms who take in air and nutrients, sensory information and raw materials, and then turn these into things like space shuttles and Mona Lisa's, electron microscopes and Faberge eggs. It is incredible really. But less and less we will incarnate our ideas as devices and things - more and more we will come to live and move and have our being in the realms of information which will eventually even reach deep, deep into the heart of things, the nerve center of the planetary matrix. Which brings us to the second conceptual gestalt that has become central to my work with a Gaian philosophy; the concept of the Gaian Soul. Such a concept as the Gaian Soul designates a realm that is highly nebulous to many people, that is, if they at least have some sense of what these words might point to. I have substantiated above that a belief in the Gaian Mind stands on fairly stable epistemological ground, so how can this stability be brought into this next area, that of the Gaian Soul? If you are someone who has had access to realms of experience that bring to mind words like "soul" and "spirit" and for which they feel appropriately descriptive, then you are likely to be at least open to the possibility that our Earth may as well have a soul. If you have not, then this may be a harder perspective to make real for you. Think of how the intelligence of one neuron is transcended by the intelligence of many neurons linked together into a brain. Be aware that many people have access to inner realms of visionary and ecstatic experience through this densely interconnected organ, that they feel able to travel into other realms, perhaps "within" the mind or even elsewhere, depending on how it is conceptualized. Remember that we each travel, almost involuntarily and almost always unconsciously, into several such realms each night in our dreams, and know also that the human collectivity on Earth has a total of over 30 billion dreams each day! This amounts to about 7.5 billion collective hours spent exploring the labyrinthine dimensions of the collective unconscious, or as I called it above, the Gaian Unconscious, every day!!! As we link the externality of ourselves together with information technologies, we are also linking the inner realms which inhabit our depths, allowing us for the first time to see how even at these levels the world is an ecology of connection and inter-relation. These are the realms of the Gaian Soul, the inner world of information that dwells within the Gaian Unconscious. The development of human minds is informed by their souls, their deepest kernel of meaning and purpose, and the Gaian Mind is likewise informed by the Gaian Soul. For us this happens consciously and unconsciously through our dreams, our visions, our trance states. In other creatures the process is different, perhaps less complex, but no less vivid, for most creatures dream. It is a vast and profound process that shapes the actions, the motions, the patterns and movements of our days, the way we are and the way we become what we become. When I feel what this process may be rooted in for the Earth, when I search about for a metaphor, more than a metaphor, that will really get at the nature of the Gaian Soul in a profoundly significant way, I am met by the inner-arising conviction that the Earth is no less than our true Mother. If the Earth is our mother and her essential nature or soul is one of motherness, then we can learn of her from what we know of motherness as we encounter it in the human realm. If the Earth is a Mother, and not merely feminine, then she would rightly undergo the central creative act of all mothers; that of giving birth. In the primeval mythic conception of this matrix, the planet itself gave birth to life, including human life. As well, life gave birth to the human species and we have felt ourselves to be separate ever since. These are perspectives I find to be valid. In fact, I have great reverence for them as ideas and truths, but I also find myself pulled toward a greater conception of this same mythic matrix. The Earth, in that she is all creatures that live and breathe on her shores and in her oceans, gives birth without end biologically, thousands and millions of times each day. She also gives birth when the self wells up out of the unconscious and integrates into a whole, when the artist paints a newfound creation, or when a scientist formulates a bold new theory in a moment. But, if the Earth can be said to give birth just once, and only once, a birth of which all others are a part, then the profound realization of our times is that she has not done so yet. If this is really the case, then our Earth is conceivably a pregnant terrestrial Mother, her child aching to be born, and soon. The myth that lies embedded in these things is one of sexual conception, embryonic growth in a womb, and eventually birth outwards into a new world. We can trace this both in the planetary evolution of life itself, and in the cognitive evolution of the mythic realities of humankind. Creation begins with the father, a statement which in no way privileges masculinity or alters its equality and reverent co-creation with the feminine. Mother and Father are cosmic partners and cooperate completely in this essential endeavour. Nonetheless, it seems that it begins with the Father. At the beginning of the solar system, the sun was central and formed first. Before the planets it was of most essential importance. This is mirrored in the fact that the most archaic of peoples alive on the Earth today, though not linked geographically, share a belief in what Mircea Eliade called the "deus otiosus", the "All-Father" who retreated into the sky and became no longer numinous. Soon after the sun began its atomic fusion, creating light, the Earth and the other planets formed, marking the movement of the most numinous to being planetary, to being within the Earth. The Earth was impacted and the moon created, an event that is quickly followed in the fossil record by the first faint beginnings of life. The Moon is also a part of the maternal Earth system and began pulling life to it out of the oceans and into the sky the moment it formed. It is like the external mother and the Earth is then the womb, for it is the moon that draws the tides, draws the menstrual blood, the nutrients for a possible child, outwards and to it. In the mythic progression, the most primeval All-Father was replaced by the Great Earth Mother, and the time of the Great Goddess, now substantiated fully in the archeological record, was begun. Life was in the oceans, the womb waters, and it was a time of great peace and harmony - billions of years were passed in this fashion on the Earth, and the time of the Great Goddess lasted for thousands - as the child swelled in the womb, humans took to agriculture and life became too complex for the primeval seas. Finally, this period was broken by the beginning of birth however, and we have the myths of the flood which mirror the breaking of the amniotic sack and the spilling over of these waters, making birth immanent. Genetically, life made the bold step onto dry land at this point, an almost Promethean act of heroic courage. Matriarchy ended then with the rise of patriarchy and the mythic beginnings of heroic mythology. Violence and war were discovered by Man, an event that, while tragic, becomes eminently comprehensible when one sees that this was more than metaphorically a birth that was ensuing; a passage down the uterus while being repeatedly and traumatically squeezed by uterine contractions. It is no wonder that this period is fraught with feelings of violence and destruction. Nonetheless, the hero/heroine triumphs repeatedly throughout this period, completing the heroic cycle which, it has been established, is metaphorically a process of rebirth. As birth rushes forward, growing ever closer, these contractions come quicker and quicker, closer and closer together, and Nature finds itself with human beings on Earth, human beings find themselves in an ever-accelerating culture, in which things change from one moment to the next, and still the contractions quicken....   This process eventually leads to the creation of the Gaian Child, the child of wonder and mind and intelligence and imagination and information which is to be born out of this planetary matrix, the Gaian consciousness born out of the preconscious body of Nature, the Gaian Supermind concrescing together, uniting all consciousness and all of the unconscious. Jung called this the quaternio, the unity of the four elements, of the conscious and the unconscious. We are racing for it as a planetary metasystem, feeling deeply the crisis to our womb-like terrestrial environment that birth suggests, feeling deeply all the pressure in our being, in the being of our planet, feeling deeply the tearing of membranes, the rending of tissues, the flowing of blood that birth always demands....But we are feeling too the nearness of peace and calm beauty to be found soon, nursing at the breast of our Great Earth Mother Gaia in the New Age, the profound and numinous promise of being born from this simple world-womb we inhabit into the complexity and awe of the greater world beyond, whatever it may come to be. So I say, "Cheers, may you be alive at the birth of the world....." currentlly emailable at: sapphire@ricochet.net