On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind

On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind

alists might suggest it to be a two-edged sword: that
essentially remorseless nature also has expressed
some other quality by giving Homo sapiens the edge
of imagination with which to shape religious behav-
ior and perceptual realms of immortality—and to re-
shape “the self”.

For perhaps the first time in human history, there
is now a significant community of materialists who
are facing the hard empirical evidence with regard to
human life and death, without imaginative exten-
sions of that evidence. The potential impact of this
reversal of imaginative thought with regard to “the
self” has barely been touched on in public discus-
sion. Einstein felt that “the true value of a human being
is determined primarily by the measure and the
sense in which he has attained liberation from the
self” (1954, p12). However, this value system re-
mains largely unexplored. This expression of Ein-
stein’s mind must be viewed against the backdrop of
some five billion minds that, in some form, are
chained to traditional religious beliefs and to the an-
cient self of which Einstein speaks. Each of these
minds has a survival need.

Human survival is, in and of itself, a dual affair.
There is all that we do that, in
form, is just as any other ani-
mal does in making a living.
There is also and-not-by-
bread-alone behavior, survival
behavior that distinguishes us
from all other animals. There
are psychological states, apparently unknown to
other animals, in which life seems impossible or not
worth living. In such states, although the body may
be healthy, humans die: the mind dies, or the self
commits self-slaughter—well named since it is only
for the aware self that life has become impossible.
The animal part (if only the self could be severed)
could—and sometimes does—survive. These psy-
chological states are imaginative states but they are
as vital as the bodily states. If one accepts the logic
of this dualism: animal survival and not-by-bread-
alone survival, then science, in its search for human
origins, must continually look beyond stone tools,
economic forms, and other evidence of smart brains
engaged in making a living, to the imaginative as-
pects of human presence, difficult though these may
be to detect with hard evidence. I suggest that these
imaginative aspects evolved to engage in a unique
struggle based on unique awareness humans had—
and have—of their environment. We are witnessing
the current dynamics of that struggle.

Much of my argument here is conjecture, with
some of it beyond the possibilities of unearthing
hard evidence. For that, I appeal to the reader’s
mind to join mine in this ex-
ploration of the roots of imag-
ination. I hope to encourage,
in the biological and behav-
ioral sciences, further investi-
gation of the role of imagina-
tion.

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Evolution and Cognition ∣ 18 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1

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