Life

 Figure 1 showing how innumerable genetic mutations combined with intergenerational inheritance of phylogenetic memory naturally shape the brain and behaviour of different life forms as they evolve from the original single cell life form that inhabited the planet 3.4 billion years ago. Brain is the physiological correlate of the mind. (Courtesy: Scientific American)
 

All forms of life did not originate at the same time. Life evolved from matter in time when the environment of earth was conducive to sustain it. Cells are the building blocks of all forms of life, see Figure 1 on the right.

The additional forces or tendencies also termed instincts are preprogrammed by nature in the genetic memory of each cell, the building blocks of life. They are a subject of study in social and life sciences.

We understand the need for these forces if we understand the need for life to survive. Life is temporary, certainly much more so than matter. It is born, it sustains for a period and then it dies. Life span is the time between birth and death. It is incumbent on every life form (1) to secure its survival, and then (2) to consider the quality of survival, if able. Most life forms are limited only to the former. Human beings certainly possess the ability to consider the quality of survival as well.  

Primitive single cell forms of life, that began inhabiting planet earth some 3.4 billion years ago, were programmed by nature with survival instincts in their genetic memory. Survival implies sustenance and procreation of species; it means that survival instincts are three in number:

  1. Self-protection against death,
  2. Sustenance, and
  3. Procreation

The original single cell life forms had a primitive form of cognitive and active senses. As life evolved with genetic mutation to develop towards sensory and active organs, the processes of sustenance and procreation created bodily sensations of pleasure and pain adding emotions of likes and dislikes to existential fear of death. Likes get repeated gaining strength to become wants, desires, habits and addictions. Dislikes avoid repetitions to morph as aversions, hatreds and bigotry. Fear of death gets company from anxiety of getting what we dislike and not what we like. This development led to experiential epigenetic programming being added to the original survival programming inherited phylogenetically. Thus, a fourth force got added to our survival programming:

  1. Sense enjoyment

It took 2.8 billion years for life to evolve enough to develop light sensing eyes to create a feeling of safety of survival together in a herd of the same species. In humans who evolved almost half a billion years later, this simple animal herd identity became sophisticated ego identity with the addition of a mixture of religious faith, race, caste, gender and gender orientation etc. to the form of species. This, developed another survival-related natural force programmed in our genes:

  1. Herd or ego identity.

These first instinct acts with full automation leaving experiential trail only in our unconscious genetic memory with no conscious recall. The next two were fully automatic like the first for a long period of early evolution. Then, when life evolved enough to develop experiential memory open to conscious recall, their stimuli overcame life unconsciously while the response left an experiential memory capable of conscious recall. Thus, a subconscious ability of mind gets added to its original unconscious faculty. The instincts of sense enjoyment and herd identity also work in a subconscious or semi-automatic manner.

Figure 2 shows how humans relive the entire 3.4 billion years of evolution in our individual life. We begin the journey of our life as a single cell and grow to an adult body containing 23.2 trillion cells. (Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute)

While fully automated or unconscious instinctive stimuli demand instantaneous response, those that are subconscious or partly automatic demand immediate response. The natural stimuli that can wait require a higher degree of evolution with that of mammals.

Mammals evolved on the planet some 200 million years ago. Humans, the most evolved form of mammalian life, arrived only around 200 thousand years ago.  Although humans are the newest kids on the block, their mind started to take shape 3.4 billion years ago with the origin of life on the planet as primitive single cell life forms.

What do humans have that the other life forms don’t? Unevolved or little evolved life forms had no subconscious or conscious mind. Their stimulus-response behaviour was totally unconscious or fully automated by the unconscious genetic memory defining their mind. Automation is associated with high speed. Unconscious stimuli demand instantaneous response. This automation is genetically inherited by developed life forms also. Human nervous system is equipped by reflex loops generating instantaneous response with the brain stem acting like the final reflex loop. 

Some evolution added a subconscious ability to mind. Subconscious emotional stimuli generate automatic stimuli but they leave a conscious memory trail of the experience of the response. In humans, the subcortical part of the brain located between the brainstem and the cerebral cortex, called the limbic brain, is responsible for responding to our emotional stimuli without any prior consideration. There is not a chance of any pre-consideration of the response because of the instantaneous nature of the automation of the stimuli.

Humans have the most developed cerebral cortex. Because of it, the human cerebral is given a special name — neocortex. Neocortex is what we humans have that no other life form has. In fact, we can be human only because we have a neocortex; Genesis refers to the conscious faculty of the human mind as human soul while it refers to the subconscious as animal soul and the unconscious as creaturely soul.

Refer to Figure 2 for a high speed replay of the 3. 4 billion year history of human evolution in each lifetime.