The Awakening of Awareness
On the Origin and Evolution of Neurons
Nearly 14 billion years ago, the local universe emerged as an 11-dimensional spacetime continuum. This then differentiated into two separate domains, consisting of inner metaphysical space as well as outer physical space. This simultaneously gave rise to both an immaterial and a material plane of existence. These are the realms of qualia and quanta, respectively, from which internalized subjectivity and externalized objectivity manifest. Simply put, there is both a physical plane of existence and a mental plane of existence and the two overlap. As part of this, there are two kinds of dimensions, internalized and externalized. Moreover, the compactified spaces of the former are wrapped up in on themselves, being closed off, while that of the latter unfurl into a continuous expanse containing three degrees of freedom.
More importantly, since the internalized dimensions give rise to 7-dimensional subjects, while the externalized dimensions produce 3-dimensional objects, neither the immaterial nor the material can be reduced to the other because they are not emergent properties, but in fact fundamental features of existence. This is also why subjectivity and objectivity coexist as independently constrained phenomena that function in such different ways. However, there is a 4th-dimensional interaction between the physiological systems in dimensions 1 thru 3 and the psychological systems in dimensions 5 thru 11. As such, ontologically speaking, there are two separate kinds of substances, the physical and the metaphysical. Furthermore, quanta, being the smallest unit of objects, builds up to form external phenomena like digestion, respiration, and circulation. Meanwhile, qualia aggregate into internal components concerned with things like cognition, emotion, and volition.
After billions of years of natural selection, by about six hundred thirty million years ago, the first communities of higher organisms had sufficiently established themselves in the shallow waters surrounding a massive tract of unstable land, known as Rodinia. As time went on, the Vendian Period tended to be characterized by a wide range of soft-bodied metazoan faunas as well as a number of tremendously diverse lineages of phytoplankton, although most of the organisms alive at the time were still composed of individual cells. However, the Ediacaran biota did include the first multi-cellular organisms with tissues. Some of these creatures soon became the first animals to develop nerve cells, and this was incredibly significant because every neuron emerged as a specialized impulse-conducting cell that served as the functional unit of the nervous system in all eumetazoans.
In line with this, every neuron became electrically excitable, thereby maintaining voltage gradients across their membranes by means of metabolically driven ion pumps. These structures were then combined with ion channels that were embedded in the membrane to generate intracellular and extracellular concentration differentials regarding the elements sodium, potassium, calcium, and chloride. Moreover, this 3-dimensional phenomenon was driven by 7-dimensional vantage points that had begun to emerge in the enfolded realm of metaphysical space. Furthermore, in order for those independent frames of reference in the noosphere to coevolve with the biosphere in this way, synapses had to arise as the places where axons and dendrites could reach out to each other, on the physical plane.
After that, membrane junctions became the points at which neurons could transmit signals to other cells by way of specific chemicals. During this process, if the net excitation received by a given neuron was large enough, then the cell would generate an action potential. This moved rapidly along the axons, activating synapses on other neurons as they propagated, and this phenomenon depended on the specific properties of each neuron’s plasma membrane. This was because each bilayer of lipid molecules had many different types of protein structures embedded in it, including ion channels that permitted electrically charged ions to flow across the membrane and ion pumps that actively transported ions from one side of the surface to the other.
In this way, ion channels could either be electrically or chemically gated, such that in the former process they could be switched between open and closed states by altering the voltage difference across the membrane. Conversely, in the latter process, the gates were switched between open and closed states by interactions with elements that diffused through the extracellular fluid. In addition to this, the specific geometries that were formed by axons and dendrites began to determine the physical shapes of neurons and the connections that they could make. This helped to determine the role that these cells would inevitably have. Along with this the latter of these structures typically branched profusely, getting thinner with each branching, whereas axons tended to maintain the same diameter as they extended in the physical plane of existence.
This was important because thinner axons required less metabolic expense to produce and carry action potentials, although thicker axons could convey impulses more rapidly. As such, natural selection ultimately minimized metabolic expense while maintaining rapid conduction by producing insulating sheaths of myelin formed by glial cells. This adaptive innovation enabled action potentials to travel more quickly than in axons of the same diameter that had not been insulated, simultaneously using less energy in the process. So, although full-fledged brains did not yet exist at this time, there were select groups of animals that eventually began to have cerebral ganglia. This was significant because, in invertebrates, most ganglia are on the nerve cords so the most anterior pair is analogous to the vertebrate brain. What’s more, this developmental trend toward greater physical complexity, from plankton to nekton, was accompanied by the first complex coherent psychological experiences.
In line with this, an array of different neural connections helped to generate stable, complex non-periodic states exhibited by and toward which physiological and psychological configurations could be ordered through chaotic modes of behavior based on strange loops and attractors that resulted from self-referential level-crossing feedback. This included, but was not limited to, various different connections such as one-to-one neural tracts along which information was processed serially as well as more sophisticated networks in which tens of thousands of neurons would become interconnected in bundles which then produced modules. As part of this, these nerve cells cooperated in a number of different ways depending on the specific kinds of tasks that were to be performed, causing all of the associated structures to be active at the same time under the same conditions.
From that point on, neural modules in physical space continuously interacted with each other to help form coherent frames of reference from which sophisticated states of awareness could then occur in metaphysical space. So, unlike modern-day transistors and resistors that are composed of inert silicon polymers, these modules were constructed from organic carbon molecules that worked together to produce assemblies of information-processing circuits composed of neural tissue. This wetware could then generate systems of computation designed by natural selection and specified by a genetic program to better assist organisms in solving the problems they faced in trying to survive. These psychological complexes then allowed animals to display those behaviors that were the most conducive to their well-being, effectively in accordance with logical operations that were directed by comparisons based on loops and branches embedded in subroutines.
Since the internalized subjective process of having an experience served as the underlying purpose of complex neurological structures, in this way, the various different forms and functions of nervous system tissues necessarily governed the ways in which an individual mind could function as a useful frame of reference from which meaningful relationships could be established. As a result of this complex interaction, every conscious animal was then able to generate intangible mechanisms that acted to stimulate mannerisms and characteristics into outer actions and reactions under specific life conditions. This allowed select eumetazoans to develop the habits, attitudes, and standards that collectively constituted their mode of living as unique creatures. Thus, in the simplest sense, every experience a mind has is a particular instance of an organism undergoing something and being affected by it.
Of course, in order for this to occur, a conscious organism’s sense organs needed to be aroused by meaningful bits of information that all competed for attention based on specific standards of discrimination inherent in the mind. At that point, perceptions could then be used to identify and arrange qualia into useful patterns, thus allowing an animal to understand the various different circumstances and conditions of their particular life. For instance, the sensation of spatial location produced the recognition of one’s immediate surroundings and this phenomenon became important relatively early on in the evolution of complex life due to its necessary relevance to survival, especially with regards to both individual and territorial boundaries concerning the distinction between self and others.
What’s more, since the physical region of the universe consists of a large-scale four-dimensional open space superimposed over a small-scale seven-dimensional closed space, this means that although the brain is only three-dimensional wetware operating through time, together a body and a mind can actually function in as many as eleven different dimensions simultaneously. In this way, the degrees of freedom of the latter far surpasses that of the former, allowing for the emergence of consciousness within the confines of a cranium. As part of this, when an animal, such as an ape, experiences a mental state, interactions within different brain regions create complex patterns, producing networks with constantly changing structures. This allows for tremendous amounts of information to be processed very rapidly and also accounts for some of the more mysterious aspects of metaphysical systems.
Regardless, having been endowed with the ability to conceptualize a unified perceptual reality, our original eumetazoan ancestors were able to experience a streaming consciousness of thought-forms. This was because each metaphysical system remained on a particular strange attractor while the associated path along a corresponding strange loop would change more significantly. As such, this incredible evolutionary advantage enabled eumetazoans to model and even to manipulate the environments they inhabited, based initially on the fact that select pelagic organisms needed to swim independently of the ocean’s currents. Thus, in no time at all, there were hundreds and hundreds of intelligent invertebrates throughout the seas of the ancient underwater Earth.
This was important because these animals had to navigate through their environment while dealing with numerous unpredictable events, given that certain primitive animals were able to perceive and thereby respond to the selected features of a particular ecology, thus making them aware of those specific characteristics. Therefore, based on the complexity of their rapidly evolving minds, ancient invertebrates were able to interpret incoming information, order and integrate countless unforeseeable signals, and then purposely perform tasks within a certain limit of choice based on particular concepts. As a result, those creatures were the first organisms to truly possess the ability to consciously decide and act, in the way that these things are normally understood to occur.
Ultimately, there was simply a point when determinate states became too insufficient on their own, so minds came into existence to provide animals with a better way to live more productively through the use of decision-making processes. This diminished the ability of complex organisms to fulfill the requirements of survival solely on the basis of physical actions by adaptively giving rise to mental properties in those particular biological systems. At that time, actions became more than just effects necessitated by preceding causes, through the development of agency, giving self-determining organisms responsibilities. So, following the emergence of agent causation, certain actions became free in that they could be brought about by the animal that performed them, provided that there were no antecedent conditions sufficient enough for the organism performing just that act, making each agent the cause of its own behavior through origination.
In other words, the advent of volition made it possible for conscious animals to generate new causal chains based on the decisions they make and the actions they take. Prior to this, the future was just as fixed as the past because the state description of the present necessarily determined all of the subsequent state descriptions of the entire universe. Hence the need for a teleological mechanism that allowed minds to come into existence and provide organisms with a better way to live more productively through the use of decision-making faculties. After all, by then determinate states had become insufficient on their own. Thus, an increase in an animal’s abilities began to require far more than a passive correspondence between internal representations and sensory data, allowing them to choose between different possible futures by selecting actions on the basis of their predicted results. Ultimately, this is how and why consciousness evolved and will continue to evolve, for as long as intelligent life lives on.
