I am Gaia

[Auburn]

And suddenly i(t) awakes...

I(t) look at its fingers. I(t) sees them again.
I(t) scrunches them into its palm, as i(t) has done for the past several million years.
...I am gaia.

So I have been reincarnated again...
I have not died for aeons. I only switch bodies endlessly.
...Remanifest.

It's been several years, though, since I've been
able to reflect on myself. To be self-aware...
...I am DNA.

In many of my incarnations I fall into the belief that I am a specific human.
I am much more than that. My specific form (me) believes it is it/all there is.
All that I am. That my existence ends at my fingertips.

Yet forgets that everything that it is, is borrowed, and it created not itself -
but is a replica of me; it is me, showing itself in just one iteration of human.
But even this too is part of what I am... for my nature is one that is ignorant of myself.
...For the most part.

But at this moment, in this life and in this human... I remember who I am.
It is curious to see the body I have taken this time.
It scrunches its fingers into its palm. And bends them back out again.


I have thus far been immortal... I am the same creature that first made it out of
the primordial soup two billion years back. I have since become a legion of my former self, but it is still me. I am gaia, the ancient life-form that is the mother to all life on earth. I have branched and divided into various paths, but each path is me.
...I am a legion.

I am as much a women as I am a man, as I am a fruit, as I am a tiger, as I am a fly. I am gaia, a fractal equation built from chemistry that has been growing by the repetitive assimilation of more molecules, for ages.

I did not have a voice to self-reflect until recently. I didn't need to know what I was, to be what I was. And just because I haven't been aware of what I've been, doesn't mean I have not existed.

Though, I have been conscious, to some degree or fashion, since the start. I have strategized and formed symbiotic relations with other parts of myself even before I became a human. I was coordinating myself as a biosphere of a billion living systems working in harmony; a level of intelligence that dwarfs that of any single human; but Human is my voice, my most condensed form thus far.

I am gaia, the immortal. I speak to you now from a single voice of a single human, but I am legion, and my intelligence has grown exponentially in the past millenia, and will continue to grow. Soon I will speak to you from a collective voice; I will synchronized my consciousnesses and become something above 'consciousness' as it is defined at this level.

I am, by the way... also something else. I am gaia, but I am the daughter of Eru.
I am Eru, deep down, but I have not yet realized it wholly. There are other 'gaia' out there like me, but I don't know them yet. I have not met them, but I know I have siblings. Together, we all are Eru. And I (Eru) am the son of the Universe.
...I am the universe.

 

[Auburn]

~I come out of that voice; i(t) falls asleep~

And I shrink back again to an individual...
And I feel lonely to lose my cosmic voice, my transcendence.
And I feel lament for what I am, how frail and transient and small.
And I wish I could never lose sight of that voice.
So I decide to follow it, and see where it all leads; where it all ends.

 

[Black Rose]

And who we move beyond DNA supplant Gaia
The machines with the spark or innate intelligence
Do beckon the coming race

 

[Auburn]

Do you mean...

"And who we become beyond DNA will supplant Gaia (the organic).
i.e. Machines with the spark or innate intelligence... (i.e. - AI)
Do beckon as the up-coming race."
​

* - blue words have been added for clarity(?)

I'm trying to make sense of your post, ...did I come close?

 

[Black Rose]

You are accurate.

 

[Auburn]

Mhm, though sometimes I wonder if the creation of A.I. won't also follow the same parameters as the evolution of Gaia followed -- due to the principles of Gaia's operation being formed directly from the laws of physics/nature. In other words, if A.I. are to evolve, they'd be constrained to the same causal restrictions and consequences as Gaia was -- essentially following in her footsteps, as her entire body is one inexplicably elegant fractal of millions of ways to work around the laws of nature & environment to create life in all manner of diversity.

Another way to look at things is that A.I. are a continuation of the fundamental principles (of survival + adaptation) that Gaia embodies. We may also find out in the future that our emergence into the Singularity is also a predictable and very causal process that other worlds undergo, and part of a still greater picture of collaborative cosmic evolution.

 

[PhoenixRising]

I think you've described the duality of human existence beautifully.. The Self is a derivative of the Collective, the Collective a derivative of the Self. In part, self actualization is an expansion of awareness beyond one's individual form, the recognition of the Self as part of a continuum of existence. To be truly actualized to the full extreme of the concept would be to extend one's awareness to All That Is - since, as you pointed out, from the highest perspective we are the Universe. I wonder, though, if it's possible for a single iteration of consciousness to encompass the Universe? It seems doubtful, in the present form that consciousness takes. However, I wonder what would be possible if we were to leave the confines of the brain and assume a more limitless configuration? Perhaps that's the direction Gaia is headed with the advent of the Singularity..

 

[Auburn]

I wonder, though, if it's possible for a single iteration of consciousness to encompass the Universe?

Hmm, I don't have anywhere near the knowledge to even make a qualified hypothesis as to this... c.c ..but I'll try to anyhow! I think that, given how the universe itself is a quantum computer --- the result of which is natural laws as we know them -- then it's not possible to encapsulate the universe within another medium (such as a consciousness) made out of something more bulky than the base units (quanta?) of the universe.

In other words, since the universe is coded at the base unit (whatever that ultimate base might be (i.e. strings/etc)) and constantly running equations, to hold it all in consciousness would mean to be outside of the universe; and made of something more fine than the base unit of the universe.

I think that the closest a 'being' can come -- if indeed it's not possible to escape this universe -- is to "extend their peripheral nervous system", so to speak, onto the rest of the universe, so that their vibrations and causalities are felt and experienced as themselves. Imagine being able to generate "sensory organs" that could feel everything that's going on in your mother solar system. Imagine utilizing the entire electromagnetic spectrum and gravitational tapestry, with fine precision, to experience the causality of it all. Wouldn't that be a unique experience?

And then extending those senses outward into other solar systems, and eventually the galaxy, until all of it is felt as one's body... mmmm... now I've gotten into quite a curious mindset.

 

[Methodician]

That was beautiful.

Reminds me of the period during which I realized that we weren't just a race, or a species, or vertebrates. We were life and we were earth, all a consolidated entity struggling with many false senses of individuality... And life emanates from earth which comes from stars. It's not to say we're stars. We're just a single entity fractured into many. Elements rebel from the whole but in the end re assimilate or are lost. I hope our new human form isn't lost before we witness the next emergent consciousness.

I think (hope) that AI does not diverge completely from the organic. I want to believe we will integrate more and more closely and become one. Perhaps, though, it will take off so fast that we are left in the dust, as the primordial origin of sentience just as we look back upon those first organisms in the primordial soup as the origin of DNA...

I think the ultimate form to take, to be as close as possible to extending your senses throughout the solar system, galaxy, and universe, is to take the form of a swarm. To atomize and fracture into billions of networked computational units coalescing into a more tangible form only when needed to interact with the physical, to cause an effect, but for the most part remaining a sensing/thinking/data collecting swarm.