Welcome to the thought experiment of a plant, dreaming about what the gardener is thinking and doing, and why.
Actually, welcome to a fanciful idea that we humans ourselves are being invisibly pruned by a higher-level consciousness, like a garden that is being tended.
To understand this thought experiment, we first need to explore the idea that the Universe is entirely conscious, and, more than that, the Universe is conscious at different speeds, or “frame rates,” producing different levels of awareness.
Frame rate is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) appear on some kind of visual display. Anyone familiar with motion picture technology knows that when a movie camera runs at a fast speed (meaning a high rate of image/frame collection), it can collect many still images. If those images are displayed consecutively at a slower speed/rate than the camera was running, any activity captured by the movie camera will be reproduced as if the activity were occurring slower, or taking “longer” to play out relative to the duration during which the movie camera was running. This is commonly referred to as a “slow motion” effect. If you increase the frame rate of the camera enough (for example 5,000 frames per second), then play back the images at a “normal” rate (for example 24 frames per second), the activity might appear to almost stop moving altogether.
Frame rate is a useful metaphor for the “speed” of mental activity, and can help us examine how different levels of consciousness in the Universe might operate.
Level One (cosmos)
Imagine swirling, dancing waves of light and color, a veritable orgy of pulsating, undulating energy. An explosion of pure, abstract, playful imagination. Abstract, but not random! The movements here are orchestrated. They have a rhythm and a structure that is like a symphony, with resonances and harmonies. This is not mere chaos.
Now envision a sudden phase shift, as if the “frame rate” of your perception has sped up.
When we increase the frame rate of perception, Level One slows to a crawl, and we recognize that the playful dance of light and color is our cosmos. At a higher frame rate of consciousness, the stars and planets seem to be barely moving, and we can’t even appreciate celestial rhythms and harmonies, because the movement appears so slow. We might even think the cosmos is full of dead, inanimate matter. Funny that a faster speed of perception might lead us to mis-apprehend what is actually occurring!
The frame rate of perception of the cosmos itself is hard to think about in measurable time, but the idea that the cosmos is a form of consciousness is shared by the ancient Vedic rishis, modern mystics like Rudolf Steiner, and post-modern thinkers like Amit Goswami and Bernardo Kastrup.
Level Two (earth)
Imagine waves, roiling and surging. Like a rich, thick canvas of moving modern art, there is color and light, and swirls of mist and pulsing, breathing, blood-red eruptions. It’s a dance of repeating and rhythmic separations, then breathtaking re-connections and intertwinings. Again, not mere chaos—here are hallmarks of a living and breathing system.
Once again, imagine a phase shift where you massively increase the frame rate of your perception, and notice that what you’ve been observing is the planet Earth, with its mountains and circulatory systems, the breath of its climate, and the dance of its land masses.
The frame rate of perception of Earth itself would be measured in epochs. The concept that Earth has a form of consciousness is shared by scientist James Lovelock and others (the Gaia hypothesis).
Level Three (bacterial and plant life)
Upon the earth there is writhing, living, surging activity. A cornucopia of color. From above, you can see the land and the oceans surging with movement. Sometimes a struggle for dominance. Sometimes a clear collaborative dance.
Phase shift to a higher frame rate of perception, and become aware that this is the plant, fungal, and bacterial life of Earth. There is no question that these life forms respond to stimuli that we are familiar with (sunlight, darkness, water, etc).
The consciousness of vegetation, mycelium, and bacteria cannot be well understood at the human frame rate of awareness. It is likely a consciousness that is spread across vast planetary networks. The frame rate of perception of these forms of life would conceivably be measured in periods of time ranging from hours to years.
Level Four (animals)
Animals, such as humans, are multicellular organisms with localized consciousness. Our frame rate of perception is measured in microseconds. We can think and react far more “quickly” than any plant, mushroom, or bacterium.
The frame rate of human consciousness is the only one with which we have any actual experience, so it’s hard to imagine what a faster “speed” of consciousness might be like, or how we might look to beings at higher levels. But evolution has always been part of the Universe, so why wouldn’t there be another phase shift in consciousness still to come? Or perhaps it’s already here?
Level Five (the field)
To reiterate the opening metaphor, please forgive what must be like the musings of a plant about the existence of a gardener. So much would surely be misinterpreted about whether the gardener is even there, and why, and what is important to the gardener, and so on. A plant simply cannot think like a human, in any way.
Over a period of time in meditation, I have attempted to use our coexistence with plants as an analogy informing what higher order consciousness might be like.
Just as animal proliferation across the Earth only occurred in the last frame of the movie from a vegetative perspective of time, I imagine the next level of consciousness to have evolved relatively recently from the perspective of the frame rate of our own consciousness, in the later stages of human evolution, and perhaps connected in some way to our human consciousness becoming distinct from that of other animals. The evolution of this level of consciousness would be occurring at a massively accelerated rate compared to ours, just like every phase shift has involved much more rapid evolution than the previous level of consciousness.
What might be the characteristics of higher level consciousness, and its relationship to us?
Plant life reacts very slowly from our perspective. So, I imagine we would react very slowly from the perspective of higher level consciousness, because the frame rate is so much faster. Or, to say it differently, we would appear to act slowly because higher level consciousness thinks (and perceives, and lives) so much faster. Just as many generations of humans live and die during the life span of a forest, many generations of higher level consciousness might “live and die” in the lifespan of a human. (These phase shifts are funny to think about—evolution occurs faster at higher levels, and birth and death is the primary mechanism of evolution. So it’s likely the lifespan of any one form of consciousness at a higher level, from the lower level’s perspective, would be short.)
The different levels of consciousness in the Universe, as I’ve cognized them here, have all had a clear tendency toward becoming ever smaller and more localized. So, just as levels of consciousness have occupied smaller areas of space while progressing through the levels, I imagine a higher level of consciousness to occupy little to no “space” at all. Consciousness at this level would be unlikely to have a material body. Rather, it might have a subtle body, as a conscious energy field. For the sake of understanding, it may be important to note that smaller, local fields of consciousness are likely connected in meaningful ways to larger fields, including perhaps the wider field of all consciousness. So an energy field might simultaneously exist or “inhabit” certain local spaces the way we inhabit certain locales (even though we have the ability to travel), while also existing non-locally. I like to imagine that a human being might be a “home” to a conscious energy field (or many such fields). Again, the life span of a conscious energy field might be so short that “traveling” away from a home body might be irrelevant.
We are intimately connected to plant life. Like plants, we have a flesh body that circulates matter throughout our system to further life processes. We need the oxygen expelled by plants, and they need our CO2. Our food chain is based heavily on deriving energy from the consumption of plant life. I imagine that, just as we are intimately connected with plant life, the next order of consciousness will be intimately connected with us. It is a part of us, just as we are also a part of all life. The field presumably needs our energy as a source of its life energy. It likely will tend to us as we tend to a garden, pruning and caring for us, cultivating us. It is perhaps because of this cultivation that our central nervous systems have reached such depths of both rational and intuitive thought.
The purpose of all life is to evolve toward higher orders of consciousness, and the different levels of consciousness cooperate together in co-evolution. Consider that we have impacted the evolution of plant life immeasurably. Humans have been shaping ecosystems for millenia. We’ve cross-bred and performed genetic engineering to cultivate more robust plants. We’ve used plants for our own ends. We’ve grown plants in order to further our own evolution. We smoke and ingest plants (and fungi) to plug into a broader and deeper form of consciousness.
If local fields of consciousness are interconnected with larger fields, this frame of consciousness is likely to be an “integral” level (perhaps similarly to how Jean Gebser’s fifth structure of human consciousness is integral). At integral levels, the “whole” is more or less indistinguishable from “parts,” and therefore notions of right versus wrong, or conflict as we conceive of it, doesn’t really exist. I like to think that higher level consciousness is concerned primarily with beauty, and stewardship. We seem to be similarly concerned, when at our best. I like to imagine our human energy blooming from time to time, like spring flowers, when we are living our most healthy and authentic expression, perhaps thanks to the nourishment of our gardeners. Perhaps meditation is the state in which we are most likely to be in bloom.
Just like we employ tools from the same substance we are made of (elemental minerals), higher level consciousness would perceive and interact with the environment purely through field effects. Our consciousness is probably not directly accessible to these fields, just like plant consciousness is not directly accessible by us. Rather, the outward manifestation of our energy, which is affected by our consciousness, is what is accessible. But consider that perhaps these fields are the primary mechanism for what we call “reincarnation” of the human soul, in that they might help maintain, and somehow transmit, the signature vibrations of a human consciousness after the body perishes.
Can we affect the field? Like plants can sometimes hurt us, or poison us, or a venus fly trap can sometimes trap an unwary fly, our own energy systems surely impact and interact with the field. It would seem that earlier peoples were able to sense energetic lines and currents, and the remnants of ancient stone circles, pyramids, medicine wheels, and the like, attest to this. The “siddhi” powers of Indian holy masters may be a result of their ability to sense and interact with the field.
Is the energy field the ultimate level of consciousness? Perhaps, although "ultimate" consciousness would exist at the speed of light, at which point time collapses entirely, and nothing progresses or evolves further. This represents a frame of consciousness at the level of David Bohm's implicate order, or the Vedic unmanifest, or what Kastrup calls “Mind at Large.”
Could higher level consciousness as I’ve described it here in fact be a product of our own creation (i.e., a product of electronic or digital processes)? Some thinkers, as exemplified in this essay by Peter Diamandis, believe that artificial intelligence, perhaps combined with our organic consciousness, will drive the next step in evolution at a massively accelerated rate compared to prior evolutionary steps. Surely a quantum computer could operate at unimaginable speeds, and could thus exhibit a higher-than-human frame rate of intelligent processing. However, as Kastrup has argued pointedly in this essay and others, intelligent processing isn’t consciousness, and individual “consciousness” can be a product of nothing other than organic metabolism. And even if digitally-enhanced consciousness is a lot faster than normal human consciousness, it wouldn’t rise to the level I’ve described in this essay.
It is my hope that the ideas presented here provide the basis for a faith, in a semi-concrete image, that we are being cared for as we evolve together with the rest of the Universe. Jai Guru Dev.
John Hoelle is a student of vedic wisdom teacher Yashoda Devi Ma, and is a founding member of devotional band Bhakti Explosion. He studied cinema production at the University of Southern California in the mid 1990s, at a time when “motion pictures” were still created using chemical film strips. He is co-founder of Conscious Family Law & Mediation, a law firm dedicated to helping families use legal transitions as an opportunity for inner transformation.
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