My Theory on the Purpose of Higher Consciousness in Humans

| Articles

(Source)

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far, far away… It is the period of the dinosaur. Pterodactyls, striking from their hidden territory, have won their first victory against the evil Triceratops herds! During the battle, the Raptors stop to stare up at the sky, but not at the swooping Pterodactyls… They were looking up at a fiery comet, minutes from crashing into their home planet – Earth…

mezzatestaj1_html_m6d6d1a4a

Throughout the history of Earth there have been many extinction level impacts (See image 1, right) caused by comets and asteroids which, if impacted our planet today, would result in the destruction of our current civilization and history as we know it as well as change the face of the Earth, causing another ice age. And what is scary is the amount of small impacts the Earth still receives today from the debris of disintegrated asteroids and comets. As you can see from the bolide events documented by NASA between 1994 and 2013, we are still in the debris fields. (See image 2, below). These impacts cannot create an extinction level event, and thankfully we have our ozone layer to mitigate the impact damage. This doesn’t mean we are safe from a comet or asteroid impact.

How possible is it that there is another extinction level comet en route to Earth right now? (For the purpose of this theory I will just use the word comet), even if it takes another 80 million years, what can the Earth do to protect itself from these impacts? It has no arms to just brush them away, obviously. So how then, does a planet stop a comet from hitting it? What if Earth created higher consciousness for humans so we could help defend the planet? As crazy as this sounds, read on and I will suggest to you how and why humans could be the defence mechanism of this planet.

mezzatestaj1_html_12b9c63d

You can’t imagine what an extinction level comet impact would look like and the effects it would have on this planet. A more recent impact, which has been researched and documented, was from approximately 66 million years ago and is called the Cretaceous/Paleogene extinction event. It is believed that this event resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs and, ‘About 17% of all families, 50% of all genera and 75% of all species became extinct. In the seas it reduced the percentage of sessile animals to about 33%. All non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during that time’. [source]

Life is normal on the planet then in a split second, 17% of all life is gone… unimaginable… And if you can imagine it then feel your heart right now… You wouldn’t have had the opportunity to feel your heart beat during this event. Unless it’s possible some of us knew it was coming? The spirit world shares some interesting information. Anyway, I won’t go there, yet…

An impact of this size is large enough to cover the planet’s atmosphere with a layer of volcanic ash and dust. One layer, which has been researched, is known as the K-T Boundary, or now as Cretaceous–Palaeogene Boundary. During this time the skies would have been filled with volcanic ash and earth’s dust, blocking out the sun for years to come. During this time, mushrooms may have reigned the Earth and spread its mycelium throughout her vast, tangled and warm veins!

There is evidence suggesting that this was actually the case too. Fossils were found in Saudi Arabia, called Prototaxites, which appear to be (and this is still being debated over) a giant mushroom. Thearticle in this link in fact suggests it didn’t appear in 66 Ma but somewhere around 350 to 450 Ma, shortly after and before two of the extinction level impacts mentioned in Image 1. It seems more and more probable that at some point, or maybe several points in history, when these boundaries were covering the skies and blocking out the sun, that mushrooms were the predominant life form on the planet. Maybe their purpose was to ‘revitalise’ the planet? If you have read or seen any of Paul Stamet’s work with mycelium, you can easily see how this could be the case. This TED talk By Paul Stamet is a great intro to Paul’s work if you are new to it.

Many years pass during these dark days, debris falling from the skies, the layers of ash and dust had thinned enough and the sun broke through to hit the Earth’s surface once again! Most of the fungal life dies, the flora and fauna life being to thrive and take over again. The planet begins a new cycle of life where animals, trees, insects, bacteria, sea life, etc. begin to evolve (again?).

Over the next few million years, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, ‘all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive, and reproduce’. [source] I personally think there is a little more going on with natural selection, but I will discuss this in a bit more detail later on.

‘The nutritional requirements of contemporary humans represent the end-result of dietary interactions between our ancestral species and their environments extending back to the origins of life on earth’. [Source] If a species lives in and feeds from the trees for millions of years then ‘all of a sudden’ can climb down and explore, they have the benefit of finding new sources of food to survive. Once you find a spot with plenty of food and water you stay, right? At least until the water runs out then, you find more water, potentially finding new food that has never been in your diet before.

This is an example of a change in environment and diet, which could result in a significant step toward evolution. But what if part of your diet includes a mushroom that can help you survive both physically and mentally? A mushroom that increases visual acuity, inspires singing and dancing, increases sexual arousal, and can profoundly teach and heal you. How does eating mushrooms factor into the evolution taking place in humans during these times? Let us move on.

I cannot continue without mentioning Terence Mckenna’s ‘Stoned Ape Theory’. Terence’s theory in a nutshell: Around 2 million years ago, the great forests of Africa opened up and the tree dwelling hominids took to the plains to begin a new life. These humans significantly changed their diets and began migrating with cattle. Cattle would migrate to find water when dams dry out. As the humans lived amongst the cattle and prepared themselves for survival, they learned to hunt and gather (more like scavenge and gather). While surviving with the cattle, humans came across psilocybin containing mushrooms which, when given in different doses provides different experiences. (The specific psilocybin containing mushroom, assuming these humans were picking from cow dung, are Psilocybe Cubensis). After eating these mushrooms in very high doses, humans formed higher, or expanded consciousness and went from a mind capable of creating stone tools for millions of years, into the modern human mind… In a nutshell!

Here are some reasons why these mushrooms could benefit a human’s survival while living off the land. Low doses of P. Cubensis increase visual acuity. Being a hunter, having better sight potentially helps you catch or kill the animal you are hunting faster, and in greater numbers. As a gatherer, you can see fruit trees and berry bushes better than normal. A slightly higher dose inspires you to sing, dance and drum, has slight visual hallucinations (like the ground and trees ‘breathing’), heightened creative thought, as well as a feeling of love and unity with nature. As an example of this kind of love we consider partnership societies where men and woman bring up all children of their tribe as their own rather than segregating and dominating, as the men do now. Another survival benefit with this dosage is a higher sex drive. The population of these tribes would have increased significantly during this period.

In higher doses you have experiences which, to simply put it, expand your consciousness with extreme visuals which will include varying hallucination/visions, conversations with entities of ‘other’ worlds who can and want to teach you, geometric shapes and patterns, and amazing flushes of colours (to put it lightly), all on the back of your eye lids. (I could go on for hours about how psychedelic plant/fungi medicines like ayahuasca, iboga/ibogaine, mescaline, psilocybin, etc. have been used to heal and to teach, unfortunately I cannot write it all for you in this short space. If you are interested, I would suggest streaming some videos on ayahuasca and ibogaine. I will add a couple of links in the references to some great and informative videos about heroin addiction and ibogaine treatment.)

All of these doses of P. Cubensis ultimately increases survivability but also expands our consciousness. There is a point in history where modern humans began making new types of tools and started to be artistic in the form of cave and rock art. This ‘missing link’ is a very important part in our history. Terence McKenna’s theory claims that psilocybin containing mushrooms were this ‘missing link’ and responsible for this ‘sudden’ expansion of consciousness. I would suggest that you watch the ‘Stoned Ape Theory’ on this video, because it is a great theory and no one can articulate it better than Terence McKenna.

This is a theory which somewhat ties in to the overall theory of mine. Eating psilocybin containing mushrooms at the medium dose inspires humans to sing and dance, and generally everyone else joins in. After years of taking medium doses, humans learned how to sing together to create songs. Is it possible that we changed the way we communicated in general because of songs and singing? Singing uses many more tones than simple grunting. What if humans were eating mushrooms, singing and making songs until one of them figured out a new way to communicate using different tones rather than just grunts? Singing and song could be how we communicated until written language eventually came along to take the song out of communication.

If eating the psilocybin containing mushroom did cause this major change in the way we communicate then the mushroom is much grander than the ‘stoned ape theory’ suggests. If this how communication progressed then it is a very important factor in my theory that consciousness has a purpose.

Being able to communicate, ‘do not eat that berry’ is very important. In a normal day for us we might say, ‘Watch out for that car!’ or ‘Don’t eat there, they have rats!’ or, ‘Holy crap! That comet is en route to Earth!’ We can help defend each other and ourselves by using communication, but we need a linguistic form to be able to communicate certain messages accurately or articulate them well. We need to point out chaos and communicate our thoughts in a way that can lead to progression.

I cannot move on without mentioning art. This will probably create some arguments, but to me, this is one of the most important topics in the study and research of consciousness.

Art, in my opinion, has been the most important work done, during deep altered states of conscious, ever! But for some reason science does not take it as seriously as I believe it should be. No scientist can answer the question ‘What is consciousness?’ without pulling a stupid face and saying, ‘No idea!’ Why? Because they just don’t know. So why not take the psychedelic experience a bit more serious and analyse these artists?

mezzatestaj1_html_76d6a960

Art is expression of the mind. What the mind sees can be manifested through the artist’s physical being into physical reality. It is very difficult for most of us but for a select few, painting an image of what you are experiencing, or have experienced, is not so difficult. For example, Alex Grey’s visual art, inspired by DMT, and an Amazonian Shaman called Pablo Amaringo’s ayahuasca visionary art clearly depict an ayahuasca or DMT experience. Pablo’s artwork illustrates the many dimensions of the ‘Spirit realm’, which he was able to bring back from his lifetime of experiences with ayahuasca in the Amazon rainforest.


But visionary art is not only reserved for the older, more experienced artist. A 22 year-old university student called Joel Easson in Sydney, Australia, painted this image to the left, which is called Perennial Scaffold. (More of his art can be found on Joel’s Tumblr page). Psychedelics helped to inspire Joel with his art and he is now an advocate for visionary plants and fungi. Visionary experiences can inspire us to create like this and eventually beyond. Only the mind of the artist, so far, can articulate deep altered states of consciousness this well. Consciousness is yet to be quantified, so why not take a serious approach to researching the mind of artists and, more specifically, visionary artists?


Humans see, think, feel, and then draw. We have expressed it on paper, cave walls, rock art, we have even built 6 million ton pyramids using perfectly cut (up to) 70 ton stones. When I see a grand piece of art in front of me and find myself at it for a while, and the first thing I ask myself is, ‘why?’. When something takes so much time and effort, is it just for it to look pretty? Is the artist egotistical and feeling a need to show off by coating temples in amazing hieroglyphs or erecting giant 300 ton obelisks? Are we trying to replicate significant points in our lives? Are we trying to ‘cement’ a certain time in history? The answer could be ‘yes’ to all. I think what is happening is the mind is trying to manifest itself into this physical realm we occupy. Consciousness made flesh, so to speak.
There is something important going on here… And I don’t think it was a matter of seeing a sun set and becoming an artist. Most good art comes from large individual or worldwide problems, like war, for example. A lot of amazing music and art came from the wars. Medicine changed dramatically after WWI and WWII. Chaos was a part of many lives but what was important is how we overcame it through conscious thought.

Chaos is very important to the artist and to the progression of consciousness because, and let’s be honest, who cares about seeing a painting of a sunset… We want chaos! We thrive on chaos! We progress through chaos! Without experiencing pain, how can we truly appreciate love and beauty? Chaos has always been and will always be a part of humans, and life in general. Which is another important factor to my theory.


Chaos. I don’t only mean ‘chaos’ in the way of death and destruction. I am referring to the everyday forms of lesser chaos like being stuck in traffic, all your servers turning off in the office, power tools failing on construction sites, dropping a tray of sterile tools in an ICU, our relationships with family and friends, etc. Having to deal with lesser chaos turns on our minds so we can overcome the problem at hand and continue with business as usual.

We experience different forms of chaos on a daily basis including what happens inside and outside of our bodies as well as inside and outside of Earth. Experiencing and observing is how chaos is used by artists, inventors, doctors, etc. who come up with new surgery techniques and medicines, engineers designing new computers and tools. Without chaos we would have no reason to progress.

The conscious mind and chaos are very important for each other, a symbiotic relationship if you will. Chaos has caused the human mind to bring the world some amazing, and some deadly things. We would not have learned how to mass produce penicillin without war, for example. Without war we would never have created the many new tools and medicines used in surgery. Cured meats may have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for starving humans during winter, etc. Unfortunately, we also have chaos that leads to negative progression.

Albert Einstein’s academic genius contributing to the development of the A-Bomb was a step toward very negative progression. Without this bomb, Germany may have won the war and life, as we know it, would be very different. (Some argue better, we’ll never know).

Nukes work as a defence mechanism now. If you hold the most nukes, no one messes with you. Horrible way to go about life, we should all love each other rather than have a need to defend ourselves from each other, but this is how life has panned out. Is there a way that the nuclear bomb, or whatever bomb comes next, and next, can help us? Perhaps we could argue that nuclear power was the saving grace of the A-bomb, despite how poorly we treat nuclear waste. (Let’s not go there…)

Some destructive tools, regardless of the evil they can be used for, have helped us progress for the better. Gunpowder, for example, has been used for many years to break stone, hunt meat, and entertain us during New Year celebrations. Mining – even though so much negativity has come from the mining business – is a huge part of western progression and heavily relies on technology progressing. The problem, as usual, if we give the wrong person power, evil can manifest… Like the problems with guns in America today, terrorist bombings, the tanks (amongst other deadly things) in Iraq, atomic bombs used on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The biggest bomb used on humans was in Japan at Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945, killing at least 130,000 people as well as thousands of deaths post impact due to cancers, tumours, and birth defects. (The deaths during, and birth defects following the early Iraq war, are even more of an impact on the human race than the A-bomb landing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and its aftermath, and it’s still going…)

The attacks on Japan were one of the most horrid and disgusting points in human history and the aftermath of birth defects was probably more horrific. And to top it off, the UN orders Japan to abolish all military and military training.

What would you do as a nation if this happened to you? I would make a secret organisation where we train small amounts of high end military soldiers and come up with new, high end military technologies to defend us from similar previous external attacks, much like how the solar system and our bodies work to defend themselves after being attacked. I would test and sell new technology through civilian people and use the funds to create new computers and chips for the use of secret, high-end military technology, specifically for defence purposes. The type of tools which can track a nuke en route to X location and vaporize it using mega particle beams, vaporizing sound canons, super lasers or hyper uber gamma combobulation rays (which turns comets into a Nano sized platypus). This is not real, obviously, but who is to say that someone in the infinite universe hasn’t created something well beyond our known technology, which could vaporize a comet? Or make a ray which controls gravity and can shift a body of any size and of any physical make up? Is it possible that these can be made, or have been made somewhere in the universe already? Who knows! And who knows what the future holds

My point is, if I was in control of a country, which had been nuked in the past, the last thing I would want is to have another nuke dropped on us. I would do anything possible to avoid another event like this and I think a major step would be to focus on technology rather than war.

Chaos has its place but it does not create progression without the conscious mind. Perhaps part of the ‘plan’ the Earth had was to create a higher conscious mind, to learn from chaos, in order to progress?

In Graham Hancock’s book, Supernatural, he talks about a small percentage of the population being capable of entering into ‘supernatural’ realms, without the use of visionary plants and fungi. These would be the same realms humans visit when taking the largest dose of psilocybin containing mushrooms in Terence McKenna’s ‘Stoned Ape Theory’.


The small percentage of the population, or approximately 2%, includes severely mentally ill patients in western culture, alien abductees (based on 6000 or so alien abductees’ reports which had to fit into a strict criteria), and the shamans of the Amazon in South America, amongst others.


I believe this type of mind exists for a reason, as a part of a ‘plan’ that Earth has. In fact it is a part of the survival of the Amazonian tribes. Without a shaman the tribe would cease to exist very quickly. Considering this, is it possible the Earth ‘designed’ a certain mind set with a purpose? One of those purposes could be for humans to take the visionary realms of the ayahuasca experience to the next level of thought and productivity. From personal experience with reading and listening to hundreds of people’s experiences with visionary/psychedelic plants or fungi, as well as my own, most people just take the experience as it comes, or as a party drug. But for the select few it has profound, life changing benefits. Friends who lost touch with their art had new urges to paint, I started writing for the first time, and others would start thinking about their current paths in life and generally make significant changes. Was this happening 50,000 years ago as well?

My suggestion here is that the Earth designed a defence ‘plan’, and part of this ‘plan’ was the need for early humans to eat psilocybin containing mushrooms (or other visionary plants, cacti, or fungi) to expand their consciousness so they could have a higher possibility of turning chaos into order, progress, and/or evolution of a species, while living harmoniously with animal and plant life.


Humans can digest psilocybin (and many other psychedelics) because of something in our brains called the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB), which is connected to the circulatory system. The BBB does not allow all compounds through, only those the brain can use as purely beneficial.

Among these compounds allowed through the BBB are psilocybin, THC from marijuana, DMT (the active compound in ayahuasca), mescaline (the active alkaloids in the peyote cactus of Central America), iboga/ibogaine (a brew made from the root bark of a shrub in Africa), and LSD. Why are these allowed through the BBB? Why is there a mushroom containing a compound which is allowed through the BBB, inducing intense visions of entities from ‘other worlds’? Why would this exist? Especially when you factor in that Psilocybin Cubensis only grows out of cattle dung when humans interact with the cows. This relationship, which relies on cattle, humans, the sun and the moon, cannot be as simple as natural selection. I am suggesting that the Earth and perhaps even the universe are conscious and are designing and performing great plans. Are we purposely hardwired like this? Was it an accident? Is it possible that evolution isn’t all just natural selection? Is it possible there might be a bit of a ‘plan’ out there? Could it be that the Earth, perhaps the entire universe, has a ‘plan’? My theory suggests that there is a ‘plan’, and that it is much more than just natural selection at play.


Things fell into place quite nicely here on Earth. I always thought as a kid that there had to be another planet next to us with other kids on it! But as it turns out, we were the lucky ones. (That we know of…) It is pretty lucky that we have survived on this planet for as long as we have. We have survived here for a very long time and not much has changed, in the grand scheme of things. The fact that we can plant a seed and have it grow is more amazing than we realize. Our sun and moon are responsible for this being able to happen. If one of them was to die, or was a little closer to us, if the sun was a bit larger, or moon smaller, we probably wouldn’t exist. I think the solar system had a ‘plan’ and perhaps through tapping into the information of the universe, this ‘plan’ was understood and carried out. But the point is, I wouldn’t be typing this right now if it weren’t for the moon and the sun. Not just because we need them but also because plant and animal life also need them. In fact the whole solar system does.

I question what would be the implication on the solar system if a comet wiped out the Earth? Would it survive? If the solar system were a conscious, intelligent being, would it be capable of overcoming chaotic events by thinking of ways to do so and doing them? And would it progress and build a defence mechanism against similar occurrences? Perhaps this is why Jupiter formed. If Jupiter didn’t exist, comets would probably have destroyed the Earth, and other planets, millions of years ago. Jupiter is like a giant defence mechanism for the solar system. Which brings me to the next and final part of my theory, defence mechanisms in all nature.

mezzatestaj1_html_257ff82f

Our solar system has a defence mechanism in place in the form of a planet, Jupiter. This was a point given by my brother and first mentor, trying to prove my theory wrong, but he actually helped to strengthen it. Jupiter has a massive gravitational pull and occasionally pulls in huge comets. In this footage taken by NASA, you can see where huge fragments of the comet, Shoemaker-Levy, smashes into Jupiter. If one of these were to collide with Earth it would be certain destruction of our planet. The images to the right are actual NASA images of the fragments of Shoemaker-Levy 9 before impact. [source]

How would the Earth be able to defend itself from a vicious external attack like a comet? It has no arms, the ozone layer is too weak to break down massive comets enough to mitigate impact damage, and it doesn’t have a button to push that sends out some crazy bomb or laser that would destroy the massive rock… Or does it? Let’s move on…

The Earth is full of life and every bit of life on Earth has a defence mechanism in place. From the thorn of a rose, sting of a bee, tusks of a rhino to the brain of a human, even on a molecular level we have defence mechanisms to protect our bodies from illness. Think about how vaccination works. We inject something dead into our bodies, it responds as if whatever was injected is alive and creates an immune response to defend the body from the real thing if ever we do come into contact with it. Our bodies are learning how to defend themselves from these external attacks, all of life is doing this.

So if the Earth is living and conscious, then she should have defence mechanisms in place too, right? The ozone layer helps protect the earth from meteor, comet, and asteroid debris, but an extinction level comet is another story. So how then would something like a floating rock in space be able to defend itself against a comet? Consider this, if today we were told that there was an extinction level comet en route to Earth, and we would surely perish if it impacted, what do you think we would do? I’ve considered a lot of the possibilities here and they are not all pretty, as you would expect. But there is one possibility that I think we would consider and at least try before all the looting and pillaging begins.


What I think would maybe happen is, the super power governments combine to discuss a military strategy and possible ways to destroy or shatter the comet to mitigate impact damage. (Which could result in a government or global governing body that works for the betterment of mankind and defence of our planet!) But if we fail, Japan would come out with their secret military, exposing the world to their amazing technology, which they use to destroy the comet.


Whether we fail or succeed is irrelevant. Trying is all that matters. Considering the distance between the major comet impacts the Earth has had, we should still have time to come up with the technology needed to destroy these comets in the future. I think the key is to start forming these global governing bodies now, do it for the benefit and protection of the Earth and life on Earth, and stop hiding information from the public, in fact share all information!


If you think this scenario of humans protecting the Earth by destroying an incoming comet is a possibility, now or in our future, using human technology, then you should agree it is a part of the earth’s ‘plan’ to create its own defence mechanism. I believe that humans, because we are the carriers of higher consciousness, are the Earth’s defence mechanism!

To summarize; all of life on Earth has a defence mechanism and when this life is threatened it builds a stronger defence or dies off. If Earth is a living, conscious being then we need to assume she has a defence mechanism too, or is developing one. What I am suggesting is that part of Earth’s ‘plan’ was to create the circumstances where humans would ingest visionary plants or fungi, with the purpose of consciousness expansion, giving humans an innate ability to extract meaning out of chaos, eventually developing higher technologies, allowing humans the power and means to destroy an incoming comet. The Earth cannot physically take down a comet or asteroid, so why not create an animal with a mind capable of doing it? I believe humans are this animal, and because of this, humans are the Earth’s defence mechanism.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article! I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed coming up with pieces of it over the last 15 years or so! More to come if all goes well 😉 Feel free to give me some feedback, negative especially! I am always open to having this theory challenged, or added to with new information.
I know there was a lot that wasn’t explained in detail. For this reason, I would love to open a dialogue to discuss some of these topics a bit more and discuss them further. I didn’t want to fill this article with too much information and hundreds of links etc. Rather I would prefer to discuss any holes or anything specific in the theory with people in an open discussion. I didn’t want to just throw a bunch of ‘useless’ information in your face and move on. As I like to say to friends and debaters… Let’s discuss!!

Feel free to add me on Facebook or drop me an email! I am super easy going and love talking and discussing so please don’t hesitate to add me for a good ole chin wag 😉
– Facebook – Giacomo James Mezzatesta

– Email – [email protected]

 

References:

Quote sources

Links in article

Image sources

Extra links