Long before the Cambrian explosion, the world’s genetic heritage had already begun its long, slow genesis. It was being built up, as it continues to be, through all forms of life, experiences and unfathomable memories, including the double embrace of DNA.

For more than four billion years, tenuous, repeated, tenacious and resilient genetic achievements and countless mutations have increased the common treasure, modified and transformed it, condemning dead-ends and rushing off in new directions.

All living things have contributed, to a greater or lesser extent, – fungi and oomycetes, amoebas and sea urchins, corals and earthworms, pterodactyls and stegosaurids, buzzards and bison, bonobos and aïsⁱ , hominids and hominins…

Planet Earth, a tiny drop of mud and fire in the cosmic night, shelters and transports these lives, like a noetic ark.

An ark, because it is facing the flood of millennia and the threat of mass extinctions (five since the end of the Cambrian, and a sixth underway since the start of the Anthropocene).

Noetic, because all biological life ultimately boils down to information, in terms of its transmission. This information carries a meaning that needs to be heard. DNA molecules are therefore more than just a series of nucleotides. They convey ‘meaning’, they ‘signify’ living forms, past and future, – plant essences or animal ways of existing. Each gene embodies a ‘mode’ of existence, and each gamete potentially contains a certain ‘idea’ of being. The global noetic ark takes with it all sorts of ideas about living beings, those whose memory has been preserved and transmitted. But it has no awareness of this. It continues, impassive, its journey through time, a wandering vessel, without end or reason, given over to unconsciousness. It is the fragile, floating symbol of life thrown into the cosmic void in order to survive.

It is not alone. The ark of life here below is the local, earthly figure of a vaster, universal, cosmic life. We know neither its origin nor its end. We only know that this total, unconscious life must have preceded the appearance of all the proto-conscious forms of life in the cosmos, because it contained them all in potential.

The arch is a very general idea, representing a paradigm, an image of the self, a figure of separation between the interior and the vast, dangerous and stimulating exterior. The smallest paramecium is already a kind of arch, enveloping the cytoplasm, macronucleus, micronuclei, vacuoles, peristome, cytostome, cytopharynx and cytoprotect with its plasma membrane… But this protective envelope is not watertight. The cell absorbs water by osmosis and evacuates it through the pulsatile vacuoles. It feeds on bacteria that it ingests through the peristome and cytostome.

Let’s use a metaphor. Yet another arch, made of iron and fire, occupies the centre of the Earthⁱⁱ.The enormous mass of molten metal in the outer core is continually stirred by convection; it interacts with the Earth’s rotation and influences its precessional movement.

In the same way, the arch of life, like a telluric power, but of noetic and even psychoid essence, metamorphoses in its depths and is constantly renewed over millions of millennia. In this living orogeny, life forms emerge in slow, subconscious extrusions. Since the dawn of time, deep, chthonic layers of subterranean life have been set in motion. They erupt in crustal flows; their subductions never cease to melt and remelt; they bring to light, as the case may be, gneisses or migmatites, nuggets of native gold or diamonds in their gangue – all poor metaphors for the infinite variety of proto-consciousness.

Perhaps it would take a Hesiod or a Homer to evoke the cosmogonic, original power of these forms of subconsciousness or proto-consciousness, criss-crossed by hadal strata, riddled with dykes and intrusions, cut by sills…

We imagine them populated by mental plutons, shrouded in strange dreams, half-liquid half-solid intuitions, slowly traversing metamorphic abysses, with no imaginable depth or origin.

Floating lightly on the ocean of these consciousnesses in gestation, like a wind or a vapour, we could call ‘spirit’ that which, in them, blindly seeks the light, that which always precedes them, that which comes from below and from the depths, that which wants the distant and the wide, that which binds itself to the future, that which dislaces itself from the past without tiring of it.

The ark is a local metaphor for the self. But we can of course assume that there are other consciousnesses scattered throughout the universe, proto-, para- or even supra-consciousnesses, of which exo- or xeno-biology gives us an initial idea.

These elusive, exotic, exogenous consciousnesses undoubtedly traverse worlds and universes, infusing them, spying on them, watching them, feeding on them or brooding over them, wounding them or healing them, and who knows? enlivening them, elevating them and transcending them. We begin to dream that, higher up, far above the cosmological horizon, unheard-of nebulae of supra-consciousness, sapiential layers, seraphic ethers, impalpable flashes of light, swirl silently like goshawks or pilgrims. From such a considerable pile of ontic leaps, from heavy magmas to starry gases, from DNA to the soul, from flint to cherubim, how can we convey in words the dynamics of the thrills, the power of the transformations?

The use of ellipsis, allusion and trope is an expedient. We form the hypothesis that throughout the cosmos all sorts of levels of consciousness and subconsciousness fold endlessly, rise or fall, disjoin or rejoin. As they lower, sink or rise, they bind together forgotten places. By unfolding or folding, by compressing their cores, made of dreamy granites or dreamy gabbros, the most stratospheric layers of supra-consciousness envelop all the intermediate strata like swaddling clothes; these celestial entities encompass within them chthonic fires, which pulsate far below, as well as centres of the void.

Or, conversely, according to the topological archetypes of the ball, the sphere and the ‘whole’, it is the deep layers that fold in on themselves, that give birth to shreds of emerging consciousness, and at their heart give rise to the fire that engenders the subsequent spheres, which are difficult to decipher. In other words, whether the Self is at the centre of the sphere it has unified, at the heart of the total One, or whether it is itself the Encompassing, the Totalising, topologically amounts to the same thing. Like the mystical serpent, the Ouroboros, the Self (or the God who is its symbol) sacrifices itself by devouring itself through its end, and through its beginning. It feeds its centre from its periphery.

We need to see this process in its totality and understand it in its essence, and not just consider its local forms, be they fleeting, stacked, spherical, serpentine, metamorphic, spiral or perforated. This totality of consciousnesses in motion is clearly animated by an original, primal energy, albeit a conjectural one.

It can be represented as follows. All consciousness, the highest and most significant, as well as the smallest and most humble, is only the local, singular manifestation of a total, common energy. Human consciousness, for its part, is neither the highest nor the humblest consciousness in the universe. It is of an intermediate nature, combining a biological heritage (genetic, bodily and sensory memory) and the psychic, archetypal forms of the general unconscious, in the making since the time of Prehumansⁱⁱⁱ.

In every human consciousness there coexists the ‘conscious’ self and an ancient, deep memory, that of the Self. This memory comes partly from the proto-consciousness of generations of hominids and hominins. Added to this are memories of more assertive, more recent consciousnesses, for example those of generations of individuals of the genus Paranthropus, or Australopithecus, which preceded the genus Homo. This accumulated, additive, recapitulative memory is added to the body of unconscious representations, archetypes and symbolic forms that dot the consciousness of Homo sapiens. Symbolic, archetypal and ‘instinctual’ forms constantly mold the human psyche. The psyche is an immaterial substance that exists separately from the body. It even appears to be one of its organizing principles, a driving force for movement and metamorphosis. Other archetypal forms, known as ‘instinctive’, remain linked to the biological substratum, and derive their nature from living matter, insofar as it is more organized and teleological than non-living matter.

Tradition has bequeathed to us a great principle, that of the continuous transformation of psychic forms, analogous in a sense to the less perennial transformation of bodies. Ovid once sang of these metamorphoses:

I mean shapes changed into new bodies.

Gods, you who make changes, inspire my project.^iv

In its multi-millennial movement, human consciousness does not know the nature of its own matter, its intimate substance, even though it is constantly experiencing its effects. It does not know the nature and essence of the psychic archetypes that structure and orient it. It is trapped in its own reality, which links the biological and the psychic. It does not have the means to represent them clearly, since all its representations are obscurely based on them, induced by them, and not the other way round. It comes from a psychic mold whose nature escapes it entirely. How could a form taken from a mold conceive the essence of that mold, and the conditions of the molding? How could a ‘moving’ thing conceive of the essence of the ‘motor’ that moves and animates it?

Human consciousness can represent ideas, images, symbols and forms. But it cannot represent where these ideas, images, symbols and forms emerge from. It only perceives the effects of the psychic energy in which it is immersed. It cannot conceive of the nature of what nourishes it, or its origin, let alone its purpose. Can we draw comparisons between instincts (linked to the biological substratum) and archetypes (which belong to a sphere that encompasses the psychic, but is not necessarily limited to it)?

Is there any analogy between instinctive, biological forms and symbolic, archetypal, psychological representations?

There are two very different hypotheses on this subject. The first is that instincts and archetypes are energetic phenomena, and are basically of the same nature. Although of distinct origin, they could represent modulations, at very different frequencies, of the same primal, fundamental energy.

In contrast, the second hypothesis draws a radical dividing line between instincts and archetypes, between matter and spirit. In the first case, we can conjecture that an intimate fusion or partial entanglement is possible between instincts and archetypes, between the biosphere and the ‘noosphere’, within the Whole. They would only represent different aspects of the same reality, the same substance.

In the second case, the Whole would contain an internal rupture, a break in continuity, an ontological cut between, on the one hand, what belongs to matter and biology and, on the other, what belongs to spirit and psychology.

In both cases, the archetype of the Whole is not called into question. Its presence in the psyche is obvious. What is open to conjecture is its very nature: is the essence of the Whole entangled or broken?

In the first hypothesis, the Whole is presented as an entity in fusion, apparently inwardly mobile, but basically totally unified. The essence of the Whole, insofar as it is also the One, the only One, is a fine entanglement of the One and the Whole.

In the second hypothesis, the Whole is constantly renewed by an interplay of contradictory forces and partial, provisional, open syntheses. Nothing about its power, its metamorphoses or its end is known or knowable. Everything is always possible, and the surest hypothesis is that something new eternally transfigures the Whole into the Very Other…

Two ideas of the Whole, then: a unified (and globally perennial, self-sufficient) fusion, or a living, agonistic and dialogical polarization.

These two models of the Whole also present two archetypal models of the divine: the oceanic model (final fusion), and the dual or bipolar model (the internal, ever-creative dialogue of the Theos with the Cosmos and the Anthropos). In the oceanic, fusion model, we need to be able to explain the irreducible presence of evil as a neighbor of good. We need to understand whether evil can ultimately be ‘reabsorbed’ or metabolized by the ultimate victory of unity-totality. In the dual model, we might consider that the dialectics of good/evil or God/man are only provisional representations of a dialectic of a much higher order: that of the Divine with Itself.

The very existence of such a dialectic, internal and proper to the Divinity, would imply that it is neither perfect nor complete (in its own eyes, if not in ours). It would always be in the process of becoming, in the act of self-fulfillment and always progressing in the illumination of its own night, in the exploration of its abysses and its heavens.

We could then add that the Divine eternally includes in itself, in its source, in its depth, in its very origin, entities such as ‘nothingness’ or ‘evil’.

From this we can deduce that It draws from this nothingness or evil in Itself the reasons for Its becoming – in other words, the means to exercise Its ‘will’ again and again in order to consolidate Its ‘reign’.

Since Jung, we have known that the psyche lives essentially through and in theexpression of the will. It is the will that is the essence of consciousness, the essence of the mind. If we suppose that the Divinity is ‘Spirit’, then is the essence of this Spirit its will? Let’s look at human consciousness. It cannot take an external view of itself. It can only observe itself from its own point of view. If we analyze our own consciousness scrupulously, we quickly realize that its nature changes at the very moment it becomes aware that it is observing itself. Like the instant, it cannot grasp itself as such; it can only grasp itself insofar as it is withdrawn from itself. It is difficult for consciousness to see its limits, its scope. Where does its power of elucidation end? Will it be able to move freely, carrying its light to the highest summits and to the depths of the abyss? It doesn’t know. Will it be able to determine whether this very bottom, this abyssal goal, actually exists, or whether it is in fact endless? It doesn’t know. As it explores itself, will the psyche reveal itself as ultimately ‘infinite’, ‘in the image’ and ‘likeness’ of the creative divinity who created it, according to Tradition? The answer is unknown.

It is equally difficult for consciousness to determine the conditions of its anchorage in living matter, which forms its biological substratum. To do so, it would have to be capable of placing itself outside itself, in order to consider objectively what, within it, makes possible the articulation between the biological and the psychic, between living matter and living consciousness. Are their respective ‘lives’ of the same nature? Or are they two distinct forms of life, similar in appearance but in reality distinct in essence?

The psyche does not clearly represent itself; it does not clearly represent the blurring of its boundary with matter, with the world of instinct, with the realm of archetypes, nor its ambiguous interface with the realm of spirit. It has no clear idea of who it is, what drives it, or the nature of its will.

The will that unfolds in consciousness would need to reach a supra-consciousness in order to ‘see’ itself at work, to become aware of itself, to consider itself in its choices, and if necessary, to be able to modify or confirm them.

The conscious will must have within itself, and for itself, a representation of what it ‘wants’ but also a representation of what it ‘does not want’, or of what it ‘no longer wants’, representations that it must keep subconsciously in its memory, in the flower of its consciousness, to give itself the means to regain its freedom at any moment, if the urge takes it. But where would this desire come from, from what source would it arise?

How does self-awareness, this higher supervision of consciousness, this conscious ‘knowledge’, emerge? How does it forge a purpose other than instinctual? How does some ‘desire’ for freedom actually take over again? Consciousness appears as a kind of continuous flow of energy, flowing upwards, downwards, in all directions. An endless flow of waves and ripples. Magma folds and unfolds. Consciousness twists and turns around itself, curls up, folds up, unfolds, and its deep levels, kneaded, mingle in new ways, knot into new forms, from which psychic potentials are suddenly discharged, unexpected sparks dazzle, instantaneous flashes of light illuminate, rapid conflagrations erupt…

Every consciousness lives its own Odyssey – it weaves and unweaves its desires, its dreams. Consciousness is at once a wanderer and a voyage; it is a ship made of light and obscurity, both an Argo and a Jason, constantly inventing its bearings, its brilliant constellations, its shadowy abysses and its golden fleece.

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i Aï: Three-toed sloth. South American quadruped, mammal of the toothless family, of the genus Bradypus, which moves extremely slowly.

iiWe know that the Earth’s core, which is liquid on the outside and solid on the inside (called the « seed »), is separated from the Earth’s mantle by the « Gutenberg discontinuity ».

iii« The lineage of the Prechimpanzees and that of the Prehumans separated some ten million years ago, the latter settling in a less wooded environment than the former. Here we see these prehumans standing up, walking and even climbing. Six genera and a dozen species illustrate this extraordinary radiation that flourished between 7 and 2 million years ago in the intertropical arc, from Chad to South Africa, via Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi. » Yves Coppens and Amélie Vialet (eds.). Un bouquet d’ancêtres. Premiers humains: qui était qui, qui a fait quoi, où et quand? Pontifical Academy of Sciences and CNRS Éditions. Paris, 2021

ivOvid. The Metamorphoses. Book I, 1-2. Translated from the Latin by Marie Cosnay. Ed. de l’Ogre, 2017