Flying Mother Nature S Silver Seeds

“Flying Mother Nature’s Silver Seeds...”

The Church of All Worlds is a religion with roots deep in the Earth, and branches reaching out to the stars. Our favorite mythology is science-fiction, and this article presents a non-apocalyptic vision for the future... by Otter G’Zell

(This is a revised and updated version of an article originally titled “Cosmobios: Evolutionary Destiny,” which was published in GREEN EGG Vol. IV, No. 42; Sep. 21, 1971. It is presented here at this time both in the context of the ongoing dialog in these pages regarding Gaean analogs and correspondences with the human body, and also as an attempt to offer our own solution to the arms race...)

Does She or Doesn’t She?

In formulating a world-view based on a creative synthesis of science, religion and art, we have made a monumental discovery on the nature of Life. In observing the processes of evolution and cellular reproduction, we have come to realize that what we have called evolution is simply a descriptive term for the embryonic development of a single living creature: the entire planetary biosphere itself. The macrocosm referred to by occultists, to which the individual human organism corresponds as a microcosm, is this vast Being, to which novelist William Golding has assigned the now well-known name of “Gaea,” the ancient Greek Goddess of the Earth. We find now that we are not one of many separate and distinct creatures inhabiting the inanimate planet, but rather that we are mere cells in the living body of She whom we have intuitively recognized since time immemorial as Mother Earth. In this context many of us involved in Gaean studies have concluded that what Teilhard de Chardin identified as the “noosphere,” or planetary envelope of sentience, consists of Earth’s aggregate population of Homo Sapiens, comprising the as-yet-unawakened brain and nervous system of our planetary biosphere. We have speculated that it is the evolutionary destiny of humanity to develop telepathic communication to the extent that people eventually come to share a single global consciousness, which will be the awakening conscious mind of Gaea.

But let us examine some of the other qualities of living systems as they apply to what we now realize is actually the sole living creature on our planet: the biosphere Herself. Obviously, growth and maturation are manifest in the very phenomenon of evolution, wherein an original gamete divides and multiplies into countless trillions of cells (plants and animals), groups of cells ultimately specializing into various tissues (phyla, classes, etc.) and organs (biomes). Metabolic processes, including respiration and digestion, are manifest in the carbon cycle and the water cycle, each ultimately dependent upon Solar radiation for their initial energy, which is converted into living matter through the process of photosynthesis. We see how every plant and animal on the planet has its unique role in the greater body— scavengers, for example, functioning as phagocytes. Understanding these processes in this context, as the basic life processes of any living creature, from a single- celled protozoan to an entire planetary biosphere, should we assume then that the most essential of all functions of living creatures, that of reproduction, would not also be exhibited by Gaea? In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “Eeeh, could be!”

Birds, Bees and Biospheres

All lifeforms must eventually reproduce themselves, else they ultimately cease to exist. In recent years an awareness of the importance of this mandate has caused biologists to interpret virtually all behavior and adaptations of both plants and animals in terms of reproductive strategies; maximizing the continuation and proliferation of one’s own genes seems to be the primary “purpose” for which every creature strives. Regarding Gaea as such a creature, then, we must ask the question: How would a planetary biosphere reproduce Herself? If we examine the structural nature of such a creature, we immediately recognize Her dependence on a planetary body of inanimate material, with an atmosphere containing the necessary gasses and free radicals for Her respiratory processes as well as protection from various potentially lethal forms of Solar and cosmic radiation, some of which, however, are equally essential. She also requires an appropriate liquid to convey metabolic chemicals and sustain the cellular structure throughout. These essential but non-living Elemental components are as much a part of the body of a living planet as they are of our own human bodies: Earth = Lithosphere (stone) = skeleton; Air = Atmosphere = breath; Fire = Ionosphere, Sunlight & Van Allen Belts (radiation) = aura; Water = Hydrosphere (oceans, lakes, rivers, clouds) = blood. Thus a maturing planetary organism actually is the entire planet, including the non-living matter as well as the living. Now, if one biosphere occupies one planet, She can never reproduce Herself on that planet, for each biosphere, by definition, requires an entire planetary body for Herself. (We might here note that, since any life inhabiting and evolving on a planet is, by definition, a planetary biosphere, planetary biospheres might be considered to be the only forms of life in the universe— excluding the possibility of some sort of pelagic deep-space creatures drifting through the void on the cosmic wind...)

Thus the answer to our question begins to reveal itself: Gaea is but a single representative of a galactic (perhaps universal) species: Biospheria Planetaria. All planetary biospheres must of necessity follow a similar course of development, starting either with the spontaneous generation of life from amino acids or their equivalent synthesized by Solar (stellar) radiations and atmospheric electricity from various naturally-occurring compounds; or, alternately, seeded in some way from the outside, either naturally, as by carbonaceous condrite comets carrying spores from clouds of cosmic dust, or artificially through “directed panspermia,” the deliberate seeding of a barren world by spacefaring colonists. Once initiated, by whatever means, the development of a planetary biosphere, which we call evolution, should eventually culminate in a mature phase, characterized by the awakening of a single great planetary consciousness. The preliminary stage of this awakening, what we might call late adolescence, requires the development of a noosphere (a kind of planetary “brain” and nervous system) composed of a world-wide network of individual representatives of one or more sentient species of high intelligence. Now, there are certain things that an intelligent species might be presumed to develop inevitably in the course of its history: It must develop forms of communication, both immediate, such as speech, and permanent, such as writing (indeed, many researchers currently believe that such communication creates a feedback loop, actually stimulating and accelerating consciousness itself). An intelligent land-dwelling species (as opposed to aquatic) might be expected eventually to develop metallurgy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, machines and civilization. Such a species would ultimately learn to harness and manipulate the electro- magnetic spectrum (radio, x-rays, etc.). And eventually, however long it may take, if it can avoid destroying itself along the way, every technological species can be expected to develop space flight.

Starships and Starseeds

Each space-faring species will eventually establish colonies on available habitable planets. They will of necessity take with them a large selection of their own plants and animals, both for food and ecological balance, and as these new colonies gradually spread over the faces of their adopted homes, new mutations will occur in the transplanted flora and fauna, causing them to adapt and evolve to occupy all the various ecological niches of the new environments, thus becoming, over time, all the various tissues and organs needed for the full functioning of a new and growing biosphere. Indeed, such activities are now being deliberately planned by our own space engineers, to “terraform” Mars, Venus, and even the Moon. Thus, from a few noospheric reproductive cells, new planetary biospheres will be born on new worlds throughout the galaxy. Thus does a sexually mature biosphere seed the stars with Her own spawn. It is even to be considered that, should a colonized planet already be inhabited by its own biosphere, the colonizing Organism could become a parasite, or perhaps be repelled by the biospheric equivalent of antibodies, as in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds.

And so we may reconsider our own role in the body of Gaea. Our natural human hubris inclines us toward the view that we are, of course, the pinnacle of evolution; and since we regard our own brains so fondly that we have even named our own species Homo Sapiens— “thinking man” —it is perhaps inevitable that we should conclude that our designated function in the overall body of Gaea is to serve as Her brain. I have personally come to dispute this lofty vision of my species, and have come to regard the great whales as more appropriate candidates for a planetary cerebral cortex. (For more on that, see my essay, “Mind Beneath the Silver Sky,” Earth First!, May 1, 1983.) For it is an error born of our human priorities to assume that cerebration is the primary goal of most living organisms. The most universal priority of lifeforms is in fact, reproduction. I hereby offer the suggestion that we as a species have not been evolved primarily to be Gaea’s brain, but rather Her gonads. The one thing we can do that cannot be done by any other of the countless cell-creatures comprising the body of Our Mother Planet is to cast Her seeds upon the Solar wind. We are gametes, eggs, spores; and the drive that lifts our eyes from the mud to the stars goes far beyond the urge to explore the unknown; it is the primal lust of reproduction itself! The launching of every spaceship from Mercury to Discovery elicits a thrill in us Earth-bound observers akin to that of orgasm. As Neil Young sings in “After the Gold Rush,” we dream of “flying Mother Nature’s silver seeds to a new home...”

“And They Shall Beat Their Missiles Into Spaceships...”

Werner von Braun, the late German rocket scientist who developed the V-2 rockets that nearly destroyed London, and the subsequent generations of rockets that launched our first artificial satellites, chimpanzees and men into orbit, used to explain his working for the Nazis in the same way that contemporary SDI researchers justify their work: he wanted to reach for the stars, so he took the only jobs available that seemed to aim in that direction. For the past forty years, America and Russia, with the aid of defected German rocket scientists like von Braun, have been building mightier and mightier missiles to carry greater and greater loads across the high horizon of “the final frontier.” Unfortunately, now as in Nazi Germany, the technology of rocketry and spaceflight has been subsumed under the aegis of the military, which, fueled by the post-war paranoia of the Stalin era, seems determined to direct all new advances into preposterously overblown weaponry. At this moment, rocket power and technological refinements which could launch the starship Enterprise are sitting buried uselessly in missile silos lurking beneath America the Beautiful’s “amber waves of grain.” And the same thing is true over in Russia, where trillions of dollars worth of the resources of an impoverished people are invested in massive weapons no one dares ever use. Many people on both sides of the Iron Curtain have been agitating for decades to disarm and disband the factories and laboratories that produce these insane weapons of overkill. But this, I submit, is not the answer. “It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools.” There is no need to close the missile factories and put people out of work; what we need to do is use those same factories, that same technology, to build spaceships. Everybody keeps working, but for an objective they can be proud of. And to ease up on the international tensions and paranoia that have kept us on the brink of a nuclear apocalypse for three decades, I propose a joint international space program, led by the United States, The Soviet Union, and Japan, all working in concert, pooling resources and knowledge, until someday the Starship USS Enterprise really will depart our solar system, with a captain from Iowa, a Russian navigator, and a Japanese helmsman.

Biospheria Galactica

But let us return to our vision of spaceflight as planetary reproduction. Recalling how a biosphere evolves from a single original cell in the process of its own embryology, we observe that the organic unity of a single organism cannot be broken in the process of reproduction through mitosis, or cell division, no matter how long the process continues or how many descendants may ultimately be produced, because each cell, in reproducing, literally becomes its own offspring. This is why the trillions of cells in the human body continue to comprise a single organism, and it is why the aggregate population of all plants and animals on a planet comprise the body of yet a single more vast organism: the planetary biosphere. Now, when such a biosphere reproduces, Her daughter colonies will still carry the same protoplasmic thread of life as did the Mother. Thus the original biosphere and all of Her descendants throughout the galaxy will still comprise but a single living organism! That is, each Biospheria Planetaria will eventually, inevitably, evolve into a Biospheria Galactica!

Now, we have previously speculated that the ultimate maturation of a planetary biosphere may culminate in the awakening of a global consciousness through telepathic union among all the individual “cells” of the planetary “brain.” Insofar as humanity may participate in such a coalescence of consciousness, this may yet be the destiny of those billions of us who will never tread the High Road among the stars. And when the original organism, Gaea in our case, reproduces Herself, evolving from a mere planetary biosphere into a galactic entity, we may speculate that this same single consciousness may extend among all the daughter colonies, eventually resulting in a single vast Galactic Consciousness, of which there may ultimately evolve quite a few in each galaxy.

With this stage, of course, the concept of Divinity, which I have previously defined as “the highest level of aware consciousness accessible to each living being, manifesting itself in the self-actualization of that being,” takes on an entirely new level of meaning; one much closer to the traditional monotheistic concept of a universal Deity. As at each previous level (“Thou art God;” “All that groks is God;” “Mother Earth is Goddess”), this definition remains valid, but I must remark again that with the appreciation of Divinity on the level of a reproducing planetary being— Mother Earth —the masculine term for Deity, “God,” no longer applies, and we must use the more appropriate feminine “Goddess” to avoid the logical absurdity of a male mother. This restructuring of terminology continues to be appropriate from that level on, so that the aware consciousness of a galaxy-wide lifeform would still be “Goddess” rather than “God.”

...In Our Wildest Imaginings

Let us indulge in a bit of speculation, perhaps generating some story-ideas for writers of science-fiction. Einstein’s famous equation tells us that energy equals mass times the velocity of light squared (E=mc2). This means that the energy that would be liberated from the total conversion of all the matter in your body would be enough to virtually destroy the Earth, and the energy obtained from the conversion of all the matter in the Earth... the figures boggle the imagination. There is evidence that para-psychic phenomena derive their energy from the direct conversion of matter (assorted sub-atomic particles, perhaps) throughout the body of the para- psychic him/herself into some hitherto-unidentified form of bio-energy (related, perhaps, to the aura) uniquely characteristic of living things. By this process, a conscious planet would have at Her disposal incalculable power— certainly enough to control the movements of other planets in Her vicinity of the cosmos. Utilizing the double gyroscopic dynamo of a rotating planet, including a magnetized iron core spinning off-center from the axis of rotation of the planet itself, all within a magnetic field, the planet may be moved closer to or further from the sun, or tipped on its axis, or even sent wandering through space. Plenty of energy could be generated from the “body” of a conscious planet by direct controlled conversion of matter to sustain all necessary heat and light, and even send forth broadcasts of radio waves into the aether, all independently of the once-essential sun. Indeed, we may imagine that the sun itself could then be used as a kind of cosmic signal device, being artificially darkened or brightened in accordance with the will of the nearest conscious biosphere. Since biospheres are by their very nature immortal (barring accidents or disease), and time means little to a being who lives forever, the many years required for messages of light to be flashed around the galaxy by artificially pulsing stars would be of little consequence. In fact, there are already a number of stars in our galaxy and in our neighboring galaxy in Andromeda which pulse in incomprehensible rhythms... Some of these seem to emit no visible light at all, only strong pulses of radio waves. Many scientists believe that these “radio stars” may represent directed attempts of extraterrestrial intelligence to contact us, but it seems more reasonable to suppose that we are merely intercepting messages intended elsewhere, from and to beings we can no more hope to comprehend than a flea may comprehend the Encyclopedia Britannica. There is, by the way, evidence that the Earth has in several times past drastically shifted Her magnetic and geographic poles. These shifts seem to coincide with major upheavals in the Earth's climate and geography (ice ages, mountain-building). Is it possible that the as-yet-unawakened consciousness of Gaea is nevertheless capable of making small adjustments in the position and condition of the planet for Her own comfort or better development? As a babe kicks and moves around in the womb? We might then expect to see other manifestations of Her manipulation of the environment for Her better development, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, or hurricanes aimed at particular sore spots on the planet—striking back in Her own defense; “scratching where it itches...”

“And we who reach for the stars in the heavens, Turning our eyes from the hedges and rows, Still live in the love of the Lord and the Lady— The greater the Circle, the more the love grows!” —Ann Cass

1989 (Green Egg Vol. XXI, No. 84; Feb. 1, 1989)