98 — PLOT LINES IN THE UNIVERSE STORY
Truth be told, the universe story of evolution has at least five core trajectories, or plot lines. Taken together they are the central drama of the cosmos and of our lives.
The first trajectory is the movement of existence to higher and higher forms of complexity. Let’s look, for example, at what is often called “the evolutionary chain.” The evolutionary chain moves from atom to amoeba (single-celled organisms) to plants to early animals to mammals to early humans walking upright to an awake and enlightened human being. But this is only an exterior description of evolution. What is the interior experience of evolution? The interior of evolution is yearning. If you could feel the inside of evolution, you would feel its yearning.
What does evolution yearn for? Well, just look at its exterior trajectory of evolution and you will know. Atoms to amoebas to plants to animals to mammals to early humans to enlightened humans. What is the trajectory of evolution that we see in this snapshot of the evolutionary chain? We see first that evolution moves from simplicity to complexity. But that is just the outside, objective view. Felt from the inside, we might say that evolution yearns. On the inside, evolution feels yearning. Evolution yearns to evolve from simplicity to complexity.
Remember all of reality, all the way up and all the way down, has interior and exteriors. Seen from the inside then, with the faculty of perception that Integral theory likes to refer to as the eye of the spirit, we can access the felt interior quality of evolution itself. Remember again that we are not separate from evolution. Rather, evolution, when it becomes conscious, awakens as us in person. That is precisely what we mean by conscious evolution. That means that we can access the interior of evolution’s longing through our own deepest yearnings.
To see what evolution yearns for we need only to see the trajectories of evolution.
Let’s look for a moment at four more trajectories. One of these trajectories is the movement to more and more consciousness. This is easy to see in our snapshot of the evolutionary chain. The more complex a life form is, the more conscious it is. For example, an amoeba is more conscious than an atom, a plant is more conscious than an amoeba; a dog is more conscious than a plant, and a human is more conscious than an animal. Finally, an enlightened human is more conscious than an ordinary human, who goes about life asleep to her true nature and true situation. Felt from the inside, we might say that evolution yearns for more and more consciousness.
The third trajectory of evolution is the movement to more and more creativity. A dog is more creative than an amoeba, and a human being is more creative than a dog. Felt from the inside, we might say that evolution yearns for more and more creativity.
The fourth trajectory is the movement toward more and more uniqueness. An atom is unique. An amoeba, however, is more differentiated and unique than an amoeba. This is a natural truth because an amoeba has an atomic structure — that is, it is made up of atoms — but it also has a more advanced property of uniqueness, which is called “cells.” Cells add a level of differentiation and uniqueness to atoms. A dog is more complex and more uniquely differentiated than an atom. A human being is more complex and uniquely differentiated than a dog. A spiritually awake human being, living consciously and focused on sharing his unique gifts, is more complex and differentiated than a person who is unconscious and spiritually asleep. Felt from the inside, we might say that evolution yearns for more and more uniqueness.
The fifth trajectory of evolution is toward deeper and higher levels of love. By love we mean not merely ordinary love, but outrageous love. Ordinary love is often a human strategy to get more security and comfort. Outrageous love is the movement of all of reality — including human beings — to more and more contact, more and more care, more and more union, and more and more embrace. Romantic love, at the human level of reality, is absolutely love. But it does not live alone in the universe. Romantic love is the human expression of the outrageous love that permeates the universe.
Let’s look at just a snippet from the evolutionary chain — how a plant displays more love than an amoeba. We have an enormous amount of literature today on the love life of plants, as we saw in our discussion of the cosmo-erotic universe. A dog shows more love than a plant. A human being is capable of more love than a dog. Now, dog lovers always object to this sentence. I am madly in love with dogs, but the sentence stands. Dogs do not build hospitals to care for disadvantaged dogs. That is a human capacity of love that does not exist in the animal kingdom.
Humans don’t just build hospitals because they have the cognitive ability to do so, which is lacking in dogs. Rather, humans have the capacity to love and care for those who are not their kin or master and to whom they have no relation of any kind whatsoever other than their common humanity. Advanced humans with this kind of evolved world-centric consciousness are regularly willing to sacrifice everything for their fellow humans. Neither animals nor mammals have yet to demonstrate this consistent quality of love for other animals or mammals to whom they have no relation. Felt from the inside, we might say that evolution yearns for more and more love. Rumi referred to this longing when he said, “I never knew that God, too, desires us.”
THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE
How do you feel the yearning that is the interior experience of evolution? You trace your own desire back to its source. You realize that your yearnings are not small or petty or pathetic. Rather, your pathos is the pathos of existence itself. Your pathos and Eros participate in — they are not apart from — the cosmos. Your longings are not rooted only in your personal psyche. Rather, your pathos participates in the Eros of reality itself.
Evolution is not an objective process happening out there. It is happening in you. When you evolve, then evolution happens in you as an individual. When you realize your personal yearning is part of the yearning of cosmic evolution — of which your personal evolution is a fractal — then evolution awakens to itself as you in person. Evolution becomes conscious of itself through you. This is the great movement from unconscious to conscious evolution. Your yearning participates in the yearning of evolution itself. Trace your yearning back to its source and you will know that this is true.
Another way to talk about yearning is to call it telos. This Greek word means that something has direction. It is a yearning to go somewhere, to get closer, to be more, to go deeper, and to feel more. All of these directions are part of the telos of reality. Yearning, then, expresses both the Eros and the telos of reality. If you put the words Eros and telos together, you get what our beloved colleague Barbara Marx Hubbard calls teleros. We live not just in an erotic universe but in a telerotic universe. Eros in its true nature is always teleros.
Thus, the third face of Eros is the yearning force of being. Said differently, the third face of Eros is to participate in the telerotic nature of reality. To live an erotic life is to know that you are personally implicated in evolution. It is not a process out there but the nature of reality awakening in you and as you. To live an erotic life is to realize that your personal transformation is but a form of evolution taking place within you. Your drives for contact in sexuality, for innovation, and ultimately for transformation are all expressions of the evolutionary impulse of all that is awakening as you. The evolutionary impulse is but another expression of what we have called Eros. It is the heart of existence itself.
— An excerpt from the book “A Return to Eros” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid
