It is not that mammals did not have consciousness when we still thought of them as being just lumps of flesh for humans to use and abuse (game to shoot at,…). Some people who had relationships with their animals/pets knew better, but generally anything “below” human was not considered to have any significant intelligence or consciousness. Joy and George Adamson’s work with the lions in Kenya (“Born Free”) started to change that perception. Not because lions suddenly became conscious but because humans started to perceive, become aware of, their inherent intelligence. Paleoanthropologist, Dr. Louis Leaky realized the possibilities of this new area of research and facilitated both Dian Fossey to study gorillas in Rwanda and Jane Goodal to study chimpanzees in Tanzania.

As humans increase their awareness of the world around them and develop the technology & strategies to measure intelligence, we can increasingly perceive it – Not because Nature has suddenly developed intelligence.   Before we had developed the microscope, anything that was invisible to the naked eye was considered unreal – non-existent. The concept of invisible virus’ and bacteria being pathogens was unacceptable to thinking, rational people.

Technology that has extended our physical senses of perception has brought us into a new possibility – to explore the hitherto unperceivable realm. Now much of our daily life involves depending upon invisible energy such as electricity, sound/radio waves, electro-magnetic waves, … Yet, many of these old limiting attitudes still reactively shun any new ideas and research revealing the extraordinary intelligence in Nature/the Creation. Why? Why are we not more open to just ask and see what thorough research reveals, without deciding beforehand what is/will be acceptable and what is not?

There is so much exciting research ongoing into the sensitivity and intelligence of other life forms and I’m sure it will expand into the hitherto, perceived-to-be, inanimate forms.  Tapping into this intelligence requires a different aspect of our intelligence. We mainly rely on our intellect to analyse and decipher the world around us in a rational, logical manner. This is a tremendous tool and has brought us huge leaps in terms of human capability. However it is just one of our tools in our intelligence toolbox and just like a scalpel is brilliant at doing its job to cut precisely, it would be the wrong tool for stitching a wound. And as always, an instrument can be used as a helpful tool or a destructive weapon depending on the mentality/consciousness of the person using it.

When I interviewed Professor Ivor Browne for my MA thesis in 2002, he said that the most important concept that he was trying to impart is the way that evolution always goes towards ever-greater complexity through the joining of parts of the whole to form a new more complex whole that functions at a higher level of intelligence.  He emphasized how this is now humanity’s greatest challenge – to evolve to our next possibility as the next “supra-ordinate”, or super, organism.  This involves integrating all the individual parts so that we can collaborate at such a level that we can co-create a whole new level of being, together.

In my next blog, I will explain this process in Prof. Browne’s words, from my interview with him in 2002.