Our aim now is to discover more about the nature and intent of the intelligence seemingly lurking behind the scenes of the on-going reality process. This intelligence seems to be the causal force driving the formation of stable and enduring patterns of information throughout the fabric of Nature. These patterns of information appear to behave according to various systems of logic such as 'physico-logic', 'chemo-logic', 'bio-logic' and 'psycho-logic'. In every case, the patterning process is wholly natural and leads to phenomena like stars, molecular compounds, organisms and ideas.

The forms of logic cited above are language-like, computational and operate within and upon particular systems of information, the systems being enfolded within one another in a sort of nested hierarchy. The language-like logic of physics acts as a substrate in which the language-like logic of chemistry emerges. In turn the language-like logic of chemistry embodies the language-like logic of molecular biology. And so on. Eventually, highly advanced bio-logic leads to brains which embody patterns of information we call minds. Conscious minds are subsequently able to reflect on the intelligence which surely governs such astonishingly creative processes. All forms of logic must derive from some original and fundamental property of Nature, a property which is best explained by invoking some non-human wilful intelligence, the very same intelligence which entheogens like psilocybin bring into sharp focus.

We can boldly refer to this quixotic reasoning as being but one corollary of the fantastic hypothesis. The fantastic hypothesis views reality, or Nature, as a meaningful and intelligent system as opposed to some mindless accident going nowhere. According to the fantastic hypothesis, we are woven into an orchestrational tide of information, interconnected throughout, whose glorious and spectacular purpose awaits us. For if the natural tendency of the Universe is to foster the integration of more and more information, then, as with gravity in the 'physical' realm drawing together atoms and elements, the result of this tendency in the realm of human consciousness might be to draw some kind of 'truthful solution' into being like an ultimate pattern falling into place.

Such a fantastic hypothesis is waged against the prevailing null hypothesis, a morose state of affairs in which our Universe is accidental, but one of an infinity, and in which the earthly psilocybin experience is no more than a trap-like aberration distracting us from more pressing concerns. In which case pension schemes and the amassing of property do make good sense in a purely temporary way.

However, it really does seem evident (sometimes obviously so) that some mysteriously intelligent presence pervades Nature. We have seen that life and consciousness were destined to emerge out of the Universal Computation right from the start, maybe in many locations throughout the cosmos. Now that we are here, and now that we have realised the breathtaking situation in which we are so intimately involved, we can rightly demand that the mystery of the Other reveal itself to us in more detail. The momentum gathered by our enquiries is thus set to lead us into absolutely new territory. There is no point in backing down now. If I were to stop before making a last leap into ideaspace, then I would be no more than a psychedelic homme fatale, withdrawing supposition before a climax worthy of our subject matter had been attained.

That we have already posited an intelligent Other made of information which can manifest within an individual psyche through the medium of sacred plants and fungi is perhaps not all that controversial. In effect such an 'intelligence of sorts' has been a kind of abstract quasi-scientific pillow upon which to rest our stretched minds once the visionary effects of entheogenic compounds and the implications thereof have been acknowledged. Whereas the religiously minded might well be firmly acquainted with such a comfy and reassuring pillow, those of us who eschew traditional religion might only be willing to maintain the idea of some kind of intelligence over and above that of Homo sapiens as long as the idea can be properly fleshed out. This is especially true if one has not personally imbibed the numinous power latent within organic entheogens.

Anyone can suggest or imagine that some sort of wilful intelligence infuses reality. Many might intuit such. But to pursue the idea so as to resolve a coherent framework with which to understand the inferred intelligence and its possible aims is another matter entirely. Indeed, the risk of heresy and banishment from the scientific community can only escalate if one prosecutes such speculation to its farthest limits. However, since I have no scientific tenure to defend, no office to be summarily kicked out of, then I am at liberty to set forth some more 'millennial' ideas, ideas which will hopefully bind all that has gone before into some aesthetically pleasing whole, which is, after all, the way reality looks to be - an integrated whole. So, keeping our minds open, let us ponder the idea that the Universe be blessed with some kind of computational intelligence above and beyond that of our species.

If we accept, even if but for the duration of this chapter, that our species (or at least consciousness) is a preordained component of some immense computational system that was meant to be right from the beginning of time, then the future surprises in store for us might be great indeed. Since we are presumably the first species of earthly life to be able to fully confront the mystery of being (at least through science and art), then it seems likely that our conscious role within Nature's informational hierarchy must be of some functional import. If some of the radical ideas which I will shortly be introducing have any bearing upon this issue, then our collective future will be awesome to say the least. If we consider for a moment the dramatic leap in complexity and informational integration which separates the primeval emergence of a single-celled bacterium (in itself highly complex) 3 and a half billion years ago from, say, the emergence of Tokyo in all of its wealth of informational activity, then what would a comparable leap in evolution produce? If Nature is a giant information processing intelligence then what surprises still lie in store? What forms of integrated information await us? Can consciousness evolve to some new level, substantiating some new global pattern of integrated information perhaps?

Before we can assess such questions, it makes sense to look more closely at the type of intelligence that we are conceiving. According to all the information we have so far ploughed through, I can think of 3 basic options concerning the nature of such an intelligence: either that the intelligence exists outside of the dimensions of normal reality just as a programmer lies outside of a computer system; that the intelligence is representative of some extremely advanced form of life existing elsewhere in the Universe; or that the Universe is organism-like such that the intelligence exists throughout Nature.

Already we appear to have gate-crashed the pulp storylines so beloved of sci-fi writers. In defence of such a move, we should hold in mind that, whatever the case, reality is like fiction. Why things should be the way they are in this neck of the cosmos is decidedly strange with or without psilocybinetic speculation. Indeed, as Einstein pointed out before reality terminated his mortal existence, the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe would appear to be its very comprehensibility to the human mind.

To suggest that reality is anything but remarkable and mysterious is to be a victim of life's hypnotic aspect. Because we are so conditioned to reality, we are generally oblivious to the fact that, compared to most of the Universe, the processes of informational integration occurring here on Earth are astonishing and indeed science fiction-like. In fact I am prepared to go as far as saying that there is 'nowt as strange' as human history and human consciousness within the on-going reality process.

It is only because we are so used to being self-aware components of the historical process that we do not continually marvel at the fact. Upon careful reflection however, life and its evolution to the point of consciousness-embodying human brains is truly extraordinary and points to the fact that the Universe be purposeful, that information is continually re-forming itself in ways sublime and meaningful according to the way Nature is configured. In any case, we seem willing to accept plenty of other far more radical notions about Nature without as much as a murmur of disbelief. Not surprisingly, McKenna has made the point that a belief in the big bang in which the entire space-time continuum sprung out of nothing represents; "the limit case for credulity...if you can believe this then you can believe anything".

Quite. If you still don't see this strangeness to reality, then locate some pictures of galaxies and supernovae, study them closely, and then step into a packed train during rush hour. Do you not detect a curious twist to reality here? Is it not a trifle odd that the Universe should have yielded such bizarre arrangements of information, that it should have generated we sentient bipedal hominid creatures who patter busily around the surface of a rock circling a star? Above you lie billions of miles of space and billions of suns. So too below you and all around you. We are literally a suspended anomaly within a twinkling starry mystery whose solution remains suspended. If any scientist or philosopher tells you different, tells you maybe that conscious existence is some petty product of the Universe with little or no consequence, then almost punch him on the nose, or shove a custard pie in his face, for he is surely asleep or an automaton whose view serves only to seal minds away from the Mystery.

Given the very fictional quality of existence as it is, I feel not too unperturbed in outlining the possible nature of the intelligent Other in more detail. In the last analysis, it is no less crazy than to elaborate upon the null hypothesis which asserts that all this 'astonishingness' is without reason. Indeed, it is arguably nuts to suggest that all and everything exists for no rhyme or reason. One even suspects that such a mindless interpretation of life and consciousness stems from an ego-obsessed psyche hell bent on describing itself, and solely itself, in terms of high intelligence.

Back to the chase. The aforementioned 3 options concerning the Other, should we care to elaborate upon them, have been explored in one way or another by the late sci-fi writer Philip K.Dick who used fiction as an unbounded medium in which to put across some decidedly mystical ideas about what he believed to be the true nature of reality. By looking at some of the relevant fictional scenarios he created, we shall be able to more clearly divine the feasibility of at least one of the options open to us.

For most people, P.K.Dick is best known through the films Blade Runner and Total Recall which were based upon his writings, the former movie being dedicated to him by director Ridley Scott. What is less well known is the fact that P.K.Dick was a bit of a latter-day mystic, a man who spent the last decade or so of his life struggling to come to terms with a series of visionary experiences (not related to psychedelics) which befell him in the early 70's. In these experiences, P.K.Dick felt as if some vast cosmic intelligence was communicating with him, as if a deity were on line and divulging secret information. Such was the impact of these theophanies that he chose to incorporate their thematic content into a number of novels as well as an eight-thousand-paged exegesis. To the consternation of his peers, P.K.Dick had begun to be not a little obsessed by ideas of 'divine invasion' and the like, his last books testifying to his escalating interest in theology and theistic philosophy.

Since his death it has been speculated that P.K.Dick suffered from what is known as temporal lobe epilepsy - a brain disorder that can lead to hallucinatory experience - and that this explains his mystical encounters. However, leaving aside the contentiousness of this claim, it does not deal with the burning issue of immediate mystical experience. To label an experience in order to explain it away is to avoid the very real nature of the mystical experience however it should arise. In fact, as Huxley noted in Doors, we should not be surprised if there was always unusual neuronal activity concurrent with a mystical experience, for, as we have seen, modified neuronal firing patterns are related to expanded forms of consciousness. Altered forms of awareness demand altered brain processes, and such a change in brain state can be achieved in many different ways whether through psilocybin mushrooms, endogenous DMT, yoga, meditation, fasting, or spontaneous epileptic disturbances. Mystical experience is therefore not to be conveniently disposed of with a label.

Even before his visionary experiences, P.K.Dick had long fought to discover the true nature of reality. It was his pet fascination. In a talk he delivered in the late 70's, he admitted that for all the years he had thought about the question "what is reality?", he had gotten no further than concluding that reality was that which remained even if you stopped believing in it. Admittedly a thin definition, it is nonetheless indicative that the true nature of reality is not so easily pinned down.

P.K.Dick juggled with countless explanations for his mystical experiences. Some involved the God of the Judeo-Christian variety, others involved the Logos outlined in some of the Gnostic gospels (these are the 'alternative' gospels dug up at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945), whilst others even opted for an advanced extraterrestrial intelligence. In either case, Dick was certain that he had been 'contacted' by some form of advanced supra-mundane intelligence-cum-Other.

One of his more enduring theories concerned VALIS, which is an acronym for vast active living intelligence system, a notion which accords well with our intelligent Other. According to P.K.Dick in the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, VALIS was a hidden entity of immense power and sentience which was in the process of infiltrating our reality by establishing communications with certain individuals. Such disclosures were experienced as theophany. For our purposes, the key point is that VALIS was essentially outside of our dimension, but able to penetrate our world. The question arises as to the feasibility that some superior intelligence exist in some other dimension with the capacity to move across into ours. This is one of our fanciful options concerning the Other.

To more fully conceive of what Dick was suggesting consider the plot of his acclaimed novel Ubik. In this story, the main set of characters are seriously blown up in an explosion at the start of the story and then placed in a kind of collective suspended animation machine which keeps some of their brain processes functioning. In this way, the characters enjoy what Dick calls a 'half-life'. What is more, the collective nature of their half-lives ensures that they experience a simulated reality, a reality so real that the half-lifers fail to realise that they are no longer in the 'real world'. Which is to say that they don't realise that they are really wired up in the half-life unit of the Beloved Brethren Moratorium. Indeed, they falsely believe that they survived the explosion with just a few scratches.

Our interest grows when we see what happens when someone outside of their simulated reality system attempts to communicate with them (via the standard headphones of course). At one stage in the tale, the protagonist Joe Chip, who is unaware that he now exists in a pseudo-reality, is contacted by someone from the 'outside'. This communication is experienced by Chip as an eerie sequence of synchronistic events in his simulated reality. For instance, he begins finding significant messages everywhere - scrawled upon washroom mirrors and turning up on matchbook labels and in bits of consumer junk. Personal messages even begin interrupting TV shows. In short, the communicator has invaded Chip's world in such a way that the communication gets distributed across different media, turning up in the most unlikely of places rather than as a big booming voice coming out of the sky.

I think that it was this kind of cunning idea, which P.K.Dick used to great effect on many fictional occasions, which captures his views on the nature of VALIS. VALIS was an 'outside' intelligence able to penetrate our world revealing itself through mystical experience and through the unlikely juxtaposition of meaningfully related events. Can we possibly utilise this notion and map it onto our idea of the Other?

If we were to do this then it would be tantamount to suggesting that the 'programmer' of the Universal Computation is able to 'jump into' the program, reaching in as it were in order to influence the state transition of the computation. Or perhaps this transcendental influence can only be felt in the psyche, in which case all theophanies would represent the manifestation of the Other as it penetrates our reality.

But what does it mean to be outside of the system, outside of the Universal Computation process? Can there be an outside? It is possible to imagine that in the future we will be able to create a kind of artificial computerised reality, perhaps a simulated universe or an elaborate Virtual Reality world in which one can enter for years if not a lifetime. And yet despite the fact that there will indeed be an outside to such a simulated reality, we cannot say with certainty that there is also an outside to our present reality. If we do entertain the notion of a dimension outside of our world, then we run up against the old infinite regress pit of despair, for surely the 'outsides' could be continued indefinitely. In other words, if the intelligent Other exists outside of our reality, then what lies outside of it?

It is these dilemmas, which would appear to be insurmountable, which lead me to think that the solution to the Other cannot be found by appealing to the 'outside of the system' option. Instead, the Other is surely more likely to be found firmly entwined within the Universal Computation along with ourselves. If we once more restrict ourselves to this one Universe, then at least our theoretical model will be somewhat constrained and bounded, and be more amenable to a single holistic explanation. This does not deny the existence of P.K.Dick's VALIS, rather it locates VALIS within our reality. Somewhere.

Could the Other be connected to a highly advanced extraterrestrial intelligence? I don't know about you, but I have a strong dislike of talk of precocious ET civilisations. Perhaps this is due in part to the often ridiculous depictions of aliens conceived of in sci-fi movies (notwithstanding the intelligent film Contact based upon a novel by the late Carl Sagan). Be that as it may, the notion that highly advanced life forms exist elsewhere in the Universe is far from being an unacceptable idea. As I briefly noted in an earlier chapter, NASA has spent millions of dollars funding SETI, the search for ET intelligence.

This use of the term intelligence is interesting. It is not the search for ET life, ET art, or ET real estate, but the search for the intelligent communicatory signals of some other intelligence apart from our own. The assumption is that intelligence is a universal phenomenon, a life capacity if you like, which will, wherever it should arise, be similar in kind. Furthermore, such an intelligence is presumed, like ourselves, to have a strong urge to communicate its presence across the vast depths of space in order to search for another such intelligence. Which is why the SETI program has sent out radio signals bearing mathematical formulae (like chemical formulae and atomic numbers), which are assumed to have a universal significance which would be appreciated by any advanced ET intelligence. If the Earth were to detect such signals from some other star system then it would indicate like-minded beings to ourselves. Alas, no such signals have been detected thus far.

Our assumptions about ET intelligence determine how we go about trying to establish interstellar communications. Since we only know of human intelligence and human thinking, it is by no means certain that an alien intelligence should be exactly like our own. If intelligence is a capacity - moreover a capacity to exhibit purposeful behaviour and intentionally create things with some end in mind - then as intelligence evolves so too might the intent of intelligence evolve. The intelligence of an advanced ET civilisation, should one or many exist elsewhere in the Universe, might have evolved way beyond our ken, so much so that we would not recognise its presence should it be upon us already. Alternatively, such an intelligence might be so far away as to make it a practical impossibility to establish effective communications. Although there are estimated to be millions of planets potentially hospitable to life processes in the Universe, most are many millions of light years away. Should an intelligence on one of these planets have sent out a 'standard' radio wave message, by the time it is received elsewhere they might well have become extinct.

If we put aside notions of radio broadcasts, it may still be possible to conceive of other types of communication involving radically different means. Here, I can once more look to our old chum Terence McKenna who has suggested various alien scenarios to account for the psilocybin experience. Before I lay his ET ideas on you, I should stress that McKenna is one who likes to oscillate in his psychedelic speculation. On the one hand he has consistently pushed for an earthbound Gaia-orientated explanation for the Other (which I will deal with later), whilst on other occasions he has invoked the idea of an alien intelligence as lying at the heart of the visionary state. He has been led to entertain such extreme speculation because of the equally extreme nature of neo-shamanic phenomenology. This I understand and I completely support his claim that the Other often appears distinctly alien in nature, though I am less enthusiastic about attributing this alien quality of visions to an actual ET presence.

In True Hallucinations, McKenna speculates that alien probes might have once visited our planet in the distant past and injected 'seeded genes' into the prevailing ecology. These 'seeded genes' are the DNA portions of plants which code for the tryptamine alkaloids such as psilocybin and DMT. These alien genes will then be carried along in the terrestrial flow of evolutionary events until they are encountered by a species open to the information which they broadcast from the probes. The precise communications issuing from the alien probes will depend upon the intelligence of the species which encounter the 'loaded' plants.

The first point to make about this controversial suggestion is that interstellar automated probes with the ability to transmit information is not a new or crass idea. A number of SETI scientists, in thinking about ET communications and the major problem of galactic distance, have concluded that one solution would be to design self-replicating probes which are able to multiply at an exponential rate during their voyages throughout the galaxy. Through such replication over aeons of time, the network of probes would eventually cover entire galaxies. This is an intriguing idea which has its origin in the work of Von Neumann who, you will recall, proved that it was possible in principle to design self replicating machines. If such machines could be built by advanced technology, then it would offer a way to eventually make contact with other life forms in distant star systems.

McKenna has taken this idea a step further and argued that once Von Neumann probes of this sort locate a life-bearing planet, then they do not broadcast binary radio signals or a "How do you do?" signal, but carry out a much more subtle and long-term form of communication. In McKenna's view, the probes have engineered specific message-conducting genes whose signal becomes active in the entheogenic experience which results from the ingestion of those plants and fungi carrying the alien genes. In his final analysis, McKenna claims that once a species like our own has reached a certain point in its cultural development, then the probes will yield information on how to complete the contact.

Well, these are truly lip-smacking claims. I also detect the spirit of P.K.Dick in them as well, for in the book VALIS an ancient ET satellite (somehow connected with an 'outside' VALIS) circles the Earth selectively firing information into people's brains. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with such alien probe scenarios. To the contrary, they serve to remind us that advanced alien intelligences might well have radical technologies at their disposal - after all, we grant that they are alien and advanced - and that we should maybe think again about how we go about sending out signals and looking for signals.

The biggest problem I have with such an ET scenario is that it fails to account for the significance of the Universal Software which, as we now know, is bound up with our very existence and all forms of informational patterning. Furthermore, we are left without an explanation as to how the alien species itself came to be. It is also not clear why the alien intelligence would want to use seeded genes to conduct communications. Though they are potentially long-lasting, it still remains a rather haphazard and totally unpredictable method of information transfer and runs the very real risk of total failure through plant extinctions. If such an ET intelligence were indeed able to build sophisticated Von Neumann probes with which to scour the Universe, then surely when the probes have encountered an intelligence worth contacting they would use some direct and unambiguous method of communication rather than having to construct 'tailor-made' genes. And then there is the problem with the age of such probes and the distance of the probe senders. If such an intelligence were a million light years away, then is it really feasible that a useful contact could be made? Unless faster-than-light technology has been developed (which immediately introduces paradoxes) then any hope of interstellar communications as we know them across such distances is all but futile. And if the ET's had telepathy or some kind of advanced capacity like that, then why bother with cumbersome probes in the first place?

On other occasions, McKenna concedes that the alien is merely the Other in one of its many symbolic guises, and I think that this is more likely to be the case. As I discussed earlier, the alien or the advanced ET is a major symbol peculiar to the late 20th century. Perhaps this is one of the Other's 'favourite' metaphors with which to express its nature. If this is so, then we can dispense with all notions of ET civilisations millions of light years away and concentrate upon our final option, namely that the Other is somehow built into reality like ourselves and that its intelligence is not far away but all around us. What follows is a prelude to the final option.

One scientist who believes the Universe to be home to a vast and highly evolved intelligence is the unconventional British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. However, the intelligence conceived by Hoyle and outlined in his appealing book The Intelligent Universe does not belong to some ET species existing elsewhere, and nor does it refer to God for Hoyle is at heart an atheist. Rather Hoyle believes that there existed a non-omnipotent intelligence which preceded us and helped to create life on Earth. Let me explain.

Hoyle has suggested that life did not start in the turmoil of the soupy primeval oceans of the Earth as is commonly accepted. Hoyle argues instead that pre-life molecules and simple micro-organisms exist throughout the Universe amidst interstellar dust clouds and within the interior of comets and meteors. He bases this belief upon the known fact that comets contain the same proportion of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen as the Earth's biosphere and are therefore capable of giving birth to primitive replicating micro-organisms. Through their 'free lift', these micro-organisms come to be dispersed onto the planets which lie in the path of their cometary hosts. Since the Earth and indeed any planetary body is continuously bombarded with such cosmic bodies, it is only a matter of time before the micro-organisms and molecules surviving their trip find themselves in a sustainable environment in which to further evolve. Hoyle reckons this is how life started on Earth - from its being seeded by simple life forms and molecules formed throughout the Universe in interstellar dust clouds and inside comets.

To bolster his theory, Hoyle has pointed out that what appear to be fossilised micro-organisms have been found inside some of the various meteorite fragments which have been recovered here on Earth. Furthermore, it is also the case that many micro-organisms have evolved such a hard protective layer that they are able to withstand massive doses of radiation (some bacteria have even been found living contentedly within nuclear reactors!). Such a form of protection is an essential requirement should micro-organisms have formed in interstellar space but an inexplicable adaptation according to the conditions here on Earth. It has also been found that micro-organisms exist up to 45 miles above the Earth's surface, which is consistent with the theory that the Earth is being continually bombarded with life-bearing cosmic debris.

Hoyle goes further. He claims that not only did life originate from space, but that the evolutionary process on our planet has since been 'directed' through the continuous arrival here of such micro-organisms. Under a continual 'invasion' of micro-organisms, Hoyle suggests that some are able to attach their own DNA to the host organisms which they encounter, much as viruses function by incorporating their own DNA into the host's genome. With the continuous arrival of virus-like interstellar micro-organisms, although some might be harmful (think of the Aids virus or influenza viruses), some would be sure to confer an advantage should their DNA successfully incorporate itself into the DNA of a compatible host organism (think of mitochondria, the energy-producers of animal cells, which are thought to have once been free-living bacterial organisms which developed a symbiotic relationship with animal cells). In this way more and more genetic information is able to be integrated from the basically unending source of DNA reaching the Earth from space.

Hoyle does not give up there either. In accounting for the 'monstrous' series of cosmic coincidences which have facilitated the emergence of organic life, Hoyle suggests that the micro-organisms in interstellar clouds also serve to influence the formation of stars and planets (by means of physical processes). In other words, the universal processes we observe are the results of an active intelligence which is striving to survive in a Universe whose physical laws change. He writes:

"...the apparent coincidences which allow carbon-based life to exist throughout our galaxy and in other galaxies might well be temporary possibilities in a Universe where the applications of the physical laws are changing all the time. This point of view suggests....that in the future the Universe may evolve so that carbon-based life becomes impossible, which in turn suggests that throughout the Universe intelligence is struggling to survive against changing physical laws, and that the history of life on Earth has only been a minor skirmish in the contest."

Are we to believe then that the Universal Software gradually changes and that at some distant time in the past a powerful intelligence engineered things so that in the future carbon-based life would utilise the newly prevailing Universal conditions? This is indeed what Hoyle asks us to believe. He sums up his thinking in the following singularly profound sentence in which he states this about our species:

"We are the intelligence that preceded us in its new material representation - or rather, we are the re-emergence of that intelligence, the latest embodiment of its struggle for survival."

When I first encountered Hoyle's radical 'panspermia' theory, I was naturally perplexed. Shortly after this whilst my head was still spinning, some new scientific evidence coincidentally emerged which seemed to support at least part of his theory. A 'newsflash' in the New Scientist declared that "molecules of life" had been detected in space. Hawk-eyed American radio astronomers had spied glycine - an amino acid, and a potential building block of organic life - in a dense interstellar dust cloud near the centre of our galaxy just as Hoyle would have predicted. A few years later in 1997, the comet Hale-Bopp was analysed as it passed near the Earth and it too was found to contain the molecules of which amino acids are made. Therefore we cannot rule out all of Hoyle's theory, and we must consider his assertions more closely.

The compelling aspect of Hoyle's proposal is that it is assuredly grand, employing as it does a healthy mix of science and almost-mystical speculation. It attempts to account for the fortuitous nature of the Universe by arguing that the initial widespread presence of micro-organisms somehow influences star and planet formation. Everything was engineered by some previous intelligence. However, this does not explain where or how this previous intelligence emerged. In fact, Hoyle appeals to the so-called steady state theory of the Universe which he himself helped to develop in the late 40's as an alternative to the big bang scenario (it was, in fact, Hoyle who originally coined the term 'big bang' in order to make light of such an explosion-from-nothing theory). The alternative steady state theory holds that there was no big bang at all (only 'little bangs'), and that the Universe has existed indefinitely. Within this eternal Universe an intelligence has been forever modifying itself in order to survive the subtly changing laws of physics. Hoyle even concludes that the religious impulse of our species arises because we are born with an instinct which leads us to 'remember' our origins, an instinct written into our DNA by the intelligence which preceded us.

It all seems very neat and tidy, and I am sure that there is some grain of truth in Hoyle's 'eternal intelligence' theory. However, the element which is lacking is the role and effect of entheogenic agents, unless of course they were also engineered by the intelligence which preceded us. If they were, then Hoyle's theory might well offer us the ultimate truth about reality. Then again, we must accept that the Universe has been in existence forever with the caveat that the laws of physics continually change and force the intelligence to re-create itself. To my mind, this is not an aesthetically 'clean' solution. As I said, how did the intelligence develop such sophistication and creative power in the first place? And how and why should the Universal software change? If it was to continually change then the Universe might surely run the risk of losing its existence completely at some stage due to 'destructive' physical laws. And Hoyle has not convincingly shown how micro-organisms are able to mastermind the formation of stars and planets, nor has been able to deal a deathly blow to the big bang scenario currently accepted by most cosmologists.

As we have seen, it seems much more likely that all of the cosmic coincidences so necessary for life and consciousness to arise were written into the Universe in its original state at the time of the big bang. If this is the case, then we are again left with this one significant Universal Computation set up from the start. Or, to put it another way, we are left with Nature, a system in which the drive to always and everywhere integrate its information reflects some intelligent or intentional quality of the system.

Still, Hoyle's 'intelligent Universe' is certainly one of the most cogent scenarios I have yet come across which attempts to explain the mystery of reality in essentially scientific terms, even despite its failure to specifically address altered states of consciousness. I think it is possible to utilise some of Hoyle's ideas and rework them. The prelude to the final option is over. And so, armed with the fantastic hypothesis outlined at the start of this chapter, we are just about ready to focus upon what I consider its most likely and most brilliant implications.

On many an occasion I have referred to the Other as the Gaian Mind, a term coined by McKenna which captures the organic planetary character of entheogenic flora and the visions they often induce. Sacred plants and fungi appear like carefully distributed organic 'access codes' which allow a different set of informational relations to converge within the brain so that one's meaning in the context of the rest of Nature gets shifted up a notch. In this way, as if tuning into the otherwise occluded 'higher frequencies' of Nature, one can come to behold the numinous and intentional presence of the Other. Can we therefore locate the Other here upon the Earth, somehow woven into the living fabric of the biosphere with its jungles, oceans, and electronic cities?

The fine-tuning of the Universe really comes into being through the evolutionary process which has dominated the Earth's surface regardless of whether this process originally began on Earth or in space (we can concede that Hoyle maybe right in his panspermia theory). Either way, organic evolution can be looked upon as an information-gaining process for life has gone from simplicity to astounding complexity, from relatively simple arrangements of organic information to highly organised arrangements, and all due to the fact that the Universal Software is fine-tuned to permit the evolution of carbon-based life at least somewhere in the Universe. That evolution is essentially an information-gaining process is an important concept to bear in mind for what follows, for information-gaining is strongly associated with intelligent systems and I am from here on arguing that Gaia, or the biosphere, is just such an intelligent system.

In its broadest sense, the evolutionary process is currently being channelled through human culture. Information/knowledge acquired by our predecessors can be stored in books, folklore, music, dance, computer networks, spoken language etc, and this information accumulation - the growth in advantageous wisdom if you like - can be passed on directly to each successive generation. In this way accurate information about the world grows as uncertainty decreases, such informational accretion allowing our species to dominate and understand the planet in next to no time compared with the otherwise slow rates of (biological) evolutionary development which preceded our species.

With the swift evolution of computerised telecommunications acting to connect up the Earth's store of information, Gaia looks to be wiring itself up into a bio-electronic superorganism. Our bodies may no longer be evolving, but our culture and our technology is, especially our digital communications technology. Just as the neurons in our brains are able to transmit information to one another at astounding speed, so too are we now able to electronically 'synapse' with each other across the globe.

This leads me to think that the assertion that the human brain is the most complex organ we know of is in fact a fallacy and that the biospheric Gaian system in its interconnected totality is far and away more complex and integrated than a single human brain. It must be. A brain cannot be understood properly unless the context in which it exists is taken into account. This context is the environment with its vast network of language-like relations. Nothing remains isolated within the environment. All organisms derive their meaning and their function according to the role they play in the entire Gaian system. The point then, is that Gaia is unimaginably more complex than the parts of which it is composed.

Since the human brain is complex enough to embody intentional intelligence and since much of its firing activity can only be understood in the light of its intentional intelligence, I believe it tenable that, in an analogous way, evolution itself represents the on-going intent of an intelligence somehow distributed throughout the biosphere, or at least concentrated within the biosphere (or any biosphere for that matter). In other words, somewhat like Hoyle has suggested, the evolutionary process which has dominated the surface of the Earth is the focussed manifestation of an intelligence of some kind.

This is not to deny the reality of natural selection within the evolutionary process. Far from it. After all, to argue against natural selection (the process whereby certain genetic variations and mutations are favoured due to their ability to eventually produce more offspring) is to commit perhaps the cardinal sin against the life sciences. I would not dare embarrass myself like that. No, what I am inferring is that the 'natural' component of natural selection represents a natural intelligence (hereby Natural Intelligence) as opposed to, say, human intelligence.

If we selectively breed dogs or cats then we are carrying out a process of artificial selection whereby we select those animal features which we would like to see strengthened. Therefore, in the case of selective breeding, human intelligence governs the process. In the Gaian system at large, natural selection governs the process of evolution over longer stretches of time than those involved with artificial selection. Whereas this is taken to mean that Nature is essentially dumb, random and purposeless, I believe that we can view Nature in its entirety as being a form of active intelligence, though of an order of magnitude well above that displayed by our species. And by 'Nature in its entirety', I mean that we should view the biosphere as a complex continuum within which individual organisms are in fluidic connection with each other and the environment. Influences pass all ways. There is but one interconnected system in which evolution occurs. Remember our River of Life metaphor where all forms of the water were part of a coherent integrated whole? This is how we can think of Gaia now; as representing a single intelligent system in which information is integrated into greater and greater patterns of complexity. Moreover, Natural selection can be interpreted as Natural Intelligence at work, quite literally a response of Nature to its own significant contextual configuration.

If Gaia represents an on-going intelligence at work, in other words, an intelligent response of Nature to its own intelligibility, then perhaps this explains those fortunate environmental circumstances which constantly serve to elicit evolutionary change. When minor new abilities, minor physical variations or minor behavioural capacities are expressed via random mutation/variation, then the inherently meaningful aspect of Nature ensures that a fraction of those variants will be selected for through reproductive advantage (the inherently meaningful aspect of Nature also ensures the emergence of DNA upon which life and its evolution depends). The key word here is 'ensures', for what this means is that Nature is literally determined to yield life and its evolution. Which, in turn, means that the living environment, as a context, always serves to make sense of certain variants and thence evolve sensible changes within any gene pool. Because Nature represents a meaningful and ordered contextual system (it is intelligently configured) then evolutionary events can thence unfold in response to that meaningful context. Indeed, the very tree of life germinated in accordance with this significantly prefigured context.

To get a firm handle on this highly salient notion of intelligent context consider that well-worn story of the monkey at the typewriter. We are asked to imagine this monkey typing feverishly away at random for ages and ages, most of the time producing gibberish. Eventually we can see how, by pure chance, the monkey manages to type some Shakespearean sonnet or at least a meaningful sentence (in which case any grinning on the monkey's part becomes suddenly apt).

Now, although this story is assumed to show how meaning can be generated from a non-meaningful system by pure chance (meaning out of nothing and for free), this is patently not true. Indeed, if one can grasp why such reasoning is false, then one will alight on the previous point I was driving at - namely that Nature is an intelligently configured contextual system guaranteed to grow the tree of life by making sense of DNA and subsequent genetic eventualities.

In the monkey yarn, we do not get meaning out of non-meaning at all. Far from it. Firstly, we have 2 meaningful systems to start off with i.e. the monkey and the typewriter. Secondly, and more importantly, it is the context of the human psyche which gives meaning to the typed responses of the monkey. This means that one is not getting meaning out of nothing, but that there was a priori meaning present in the monkey/typewriter/us-as-observer system. It is precisely this a priori meaning - in the form of an intelligent and patient observer - which serves to highlight that tiny fraction of the monkey's typed responses which make sense. If there is no meaningful context surrounding the monkey and its typed output (i.e. no intelligent observer is present), then no meaning can be begotten and thus nothing that the monkey types will ever make any sense.

The same holds true for evolution of course. If Nature were not an already sensibly configured system, if Nature were not highly organised in terms of its laws and its lawful logical relations, then organisms and DNA-writ structures would not make any sense. That they do make such good sense and that more and more sense can be made through organic evolution, reveals the a priori intelligent context provided by Nature. If the reader can grasp this then the notion of Natural Intelligence - the ultra-smart quality of Nature - becomes self-evident and everything we take for granted changes.

Since more evolved life-forms are generally more organised in their structure, and since DNA likewise increases its informational content as life continues to evolve in complexity, then the environment of the Universe and the environment of the biosphere can, together, be viewed as the sensible and contextual impetus which drives evolution to produce more and more organised and integrated forms. This had to happen. Nature is imbued with meaning and is coded so as to make sense of itself. This sense becomes manifest in the organisms wrought by evolution and in the evolutionary thrust towards more and more complexity and informational integration.

I should point out that I am not suggesting that the numerous life forms we observe in Nature were all bound to arise through evolution as if every single species was programmed to emerge. It is rather the case that more integrated forms of life had to emerge due to an inherent property of Nature. This inherent property of Nature (i.e. Natural Intelligence) is its unfailing contextual capacity to select more organised biological forms, a fact which is unfortunately taken for granted by most evolutionary thinkers. In other words, it is not usually remarked upon just how much a role Nature/the environment plays in the evolutionary process. It surely did not have to be that way, for we can imagine a state of affairs in which Nature is such that it does not continually foster the evolution of complexity - in the same way in which we can imagine a monkey typing away at a typewriter for eternity and never ever making written sense because there is no context available with which to highlight any sense.

It seems though that Nature is arranged in way that literally demands that a real kind of self-stimulation occurs in which information - in the form of genotypes in this instance - continues to organise itself due to continual contextual feedback from the environment i.e. the combined system of interacting organisms and the environment feeds back upon itself and provokes yet more evolutionary progress. In this way new organisms can continually evolve because the natural environment surrounding them is able to act as the context which highlights their sensible structure. By making sense in the light of Nature's sensibility, organisms can be selectively evolved. The point to bear in mind is that sense and meaning of one kind or another are clearly required in order to elicit further forms of sense and meaning. Only meaning can beget meaning, only intelligence can beget intelligence. Again, this implies that Nature is replete with a priori sensibility and meaningfulness (some of these qualities are those discussed in previous chapters and which were referred to as the Universal Software).

To take another example, if we think about the unusually rapid evolution of the human brain, then each incremental increase in size (presumably derived via mutation/variation) must have met with many specific environmental circumstances with which to immediately highlight those slight increases in capacity so that a reproductive advantage was achieved. Each mutation in hominid brain size was therefore nourished by a contextual set of environmental conditions in order that its new capacity had an edge over the hominids with non-mutated brains. In other words, Nature was able to make sense, or highlight the sensibility, of these mutational/variational changes in the hominid brain. If this were not so then it is difficult to imagine why so many small changes in brain size were so rapidly selected for by the environment.

One assumes that the sort of cerebral capacity we humans have is a highly neat adaptation to living in the world. Indeed, if more and more refined methods of sense-making are the stock and trade of natural selection, then consciousness and language are capacities which almost certainly had to evolve somewhere and somewhen since they are capacities which enable good sense to made of the environment on a moment-by-moment basis. And the only reason consciousness and language were able to evolve, the only way they manage to make sense, is because Nature is already sensible and can be made sense of. This is most apparent when thinking of language. Nouns, adjectives and verbs exist in Nature - old leaves fall gracefully to the ground for example. The language we possess merely reflects a logical linguistic property of Nature. This means, in effect, that Nature is, and was, always sensible, this sensibility, or Natural Intelligence, coming to be reflected within organisms through the equally intelligent 'angle' of bio-logic as it were.

What I am really driving at is that evolution must be understood as one single system of programmed intelligence which feeds back upon itself, stimulating itself into progressive action and the progressive synthesis of meaning. A bit like bread dough being kneaded. The dough corresponds to DNA and organisms, the kneading action to the contextual effect of the environment or Nature in driving evolution. Through evolution, meaning is expressed through the language of DNA which constructs precisely those structures, organs and behaviours which make sense in the 'kneading' context of Nature (like lungs, livers, bone structure, light-sensitivity, semi-permeable membranes etc). Not only are genome variation and genetic mutations crucial for evolution, but the intelligent configuration of Nature must also play a key role - if not the main role - in supporting the advantageous potential of a tiny fraction of the mutants/variants whose altered genes are not deleterious. Eventually, nervous systems and brains endowed with consciousness were destined to emerge somewhere along the evolutionary line. This line happens to be the primate line and our species Homo sapiens.

In effect then, the environment is just as much a part of the evolutionary process as are the organisms which are elicited. This means that Gaia is a self-stimulational informational system able to achieve highly integrated forms of information (organisms) because all the information needed for this process was written into previous states of the Gaian system. Once more, if we think of Gaia in terms of an information processing system, then it was clearly set up with an amazingly creative capacity which has emerged over time. With hindsight, we realise that every creature around us and every organ or behavioural capacity we care to think of was written or coded into the ancient conditions of the Earth. Every form of life, including conscious Homo sapiens, was latent within the Earth's organic chemistry (or within interstellar chemistry), just as the organs composing bodies are latent within the DNA of a fertilised egg cell. And, just as a complete functioning human being is latent within the language of the human genome, so too was the process we call evolution written as an immanent faculty into the entire field of conditions here on Earth in the distant past. And the emergence of these earthly conditions were themselves written into the Universe at large. Nature is thus sensibly coded with the all information necessary to bring forth life, its evolution, and the subsequent emergence of consciousness in some form. Such a sublime state of affairs can be understood as reflecting an innate and intelligent capacity of Nature, namely Natural Intelligence. Natural Intelligence can therefore be formally defined as a contextually derived property of Nature which is most clearly expressed through evolution and the organisms which evolution produces.

As long as Nature is set up so that there are continuous mutations and variations within replicating DNA, and as long as a fraction of the mutations are favoured through some set of circumstances at some time, then that is all that really matters. This is reminiscent of an exhaustive search approach to solving a problem, a fail-safe method guaranteed to work in the end. Although all possibilities are tried, only one or a few will gain ground.

In fact, this might be the very essence of natural selection and evolution. The certainty that such exhaustive search approaches always work and always produce results is evinced in the popular science of genetic algorithms. Much loved by the Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence fraternities, genetic algorithms are computational procedures employed to evolve smart programs that humans could not hope to write and design on their own. You start off with a variety of trial programs (binary strings) written to achieve some end, you run them on a computer in some sort of software-governed trial in which their success can be measured against some criteria, then you breed from the most successful of the programs. Repeated millions of times within a fast computer, genetic algorithms eventually yield highly smart programs, programs which have quite literally homed in on making sense of their pre-configured computational environment. In a virtual environment set up within a computer, as long as there is sense of some sort to be made, genetic algorithms will ensure that programs evolve able to reflect that sense.

The lesson of such an exhaustive search option to building smart structures is that evolution works. It represents a simply magnificent process able to yield, eventually, smart things (actually, evolution is not exhaustive in the absolute sense since it builds upon each success, moving step-by-step fashion towards more evolved forms). However, the most important lesson is this: The only way such evolutionary events can happen - whether in a computer or within a biosphere - is if the entire system be imbued with meaning and sensibility to begin with. For it is precisely this axiomatic contextual effect which allows meaningful phenomena to be selected. It was, of course, this very axiomatic contextual property of Nature which so intrigued Einstein.

Life and its auto-catalytic evolution then, can be seen as the manifestation of an immense intelligence which has, willy-nilly, built up forms of integrated information to the level we see in the world around us today. In order for this to have happened, factors which induce mutation are constantly required (mutagens like cosmic radiation which are 'handy' in the long run) as well as conveniently malleable DNA, and as well as a sensible environment able to continually ensure that a fraction of the mutations which arise are fostered due to their ability to match the sensible context which surrounds them. Once again, it is most fortunate that the Universal Computation is such that all these components are met. Although these fortuitously creative factors are commonly considered to be 'brute facts' about Nature and not worth a second thought, they can be also be interpreted as evidence for the presence of Natural Intelligence throughout the contextual fabric of the Universe.

That some form of highly organised carbon-based life was always poised to emerge from out of the Universe is a remarkable fact which I have not seen documented in much detail anywhere else (notwithstanding Santa Fe complexity scientist Stuart Kauffman whose 1995 book At Home in the Universe admirably highlights the self-organisational and life-bearing potential of molecular chemistry, a potential I would explain by invoking Natural Intelligence).

I once remarked upon this immanent aspect of life to a university philosopher. "Look," I said eagerly. "Here's this nucleic acid stuff which, when put together in digital strings, causes precise amino acids to form. And these cause precise proteins to form. And the proteins combine to form fully functional organs more complex than computers. Why is that? From whence cometh this astonishing linguistic capacity of Nature, this remarkable computational precision? Why should Nature be endowed with such latent creative magic?"

Well, this academic chap thought little of it, declaring that the things humans invent are just as much latent within 'matter' as is life and that we do not marvel at that. At the time I was unable to come up with a rejoinder to his careless dismissal. Now however, it seems clear that his impressive salary was undeserved in that moment for most of our inventions are based upon principles already expressed by Natural Intelligence. Aeroplanes were preceded by natural bird flight. Electrical telecommunications were preceded by natural electrochemical communications occurring in nervous systems. Sonar technology was preceded by natural echolocation in bats. Solar energy technology was preceded by natural photosynthesis. Nuclear power generators were preceded by natural stars. Information processing computers were preceded by natural information processing systems of which the Universe is made. The list goes on. In fact, had Nature not provided us with the above examples, then we might never have been prompted into developing our own technological equivalents (surely no-one would ever have conceived of flying if it were not for the tangible presence of birds or winged insects?). Not only has Natural Intelligence taught us all we know, the evolutionary process is itself a manifestation of this intelligence at work. What we are witness to here on Earth then, is the emerging constructional capacity of Nature, a process completely determined by the way Nature is contextually configured. The evolution of life is no less than a wondrous promise woven into Nature and, over time, orchestrated and delivered by Nature.

Despite the above reasoning, the notion that Nature represents a self-responsive intelligence working over immense time scales is an idea, I am sure, that many of us will probably find hard to swallow (unless swallowed with a dose of psilocybin!). Yet to assert, say, that evolution is not an intelligent process is to rate the process which allowed this assertion to arise to be less smart than we are. In other words, over 3 and a half billion years, the evolutionary process has managed to forge conscious human intelligence (the capacity of the human cortex) which is then able, if it so chooses, to deny that such an evolutionary process is itself intelligent. Think about it. Can a non-intelligent process really yield profound intelligence? Can a genetic algorithm instantiated within a virtual environment deliver neat programs without first ensuring that the virtual environment be specifically designed to facilitate this? Or, could one of Conway's Life games have yielded a virtual computer able to exhibit artificial intelligence without having first been set up in an intelligent way? Can we really explain all and everything without recourse to invoking intelligent contexts?

Clearly, the neo-Darwinist alleges that the evolutionary process is not intelligent. Yet life is undeniably more complex, organised, integrated, and 'naturally smart' than we can possibly grasp. Indeed, it has generated our species who can appreciate that fact. Science, especially biological and genetic science, is still coming to grips with the elaborate complexity of living systems, and this pays homage to the intelligence which both elicited life and which is inherent in all living organisms from bacteria to badgers to buzzards. Natural selection undoubtedly happened, yet how we interpret the meaning of 'natural' is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. To suggest that natural selection is the manifest methodological intent of Natural Intelligence is merely a new way of approaching and appraising the reality of evolution in the light of contextual considerations .

Scientific discoveries whether in biology, chemistry, neuropsychology or in physics invariably point to the smartness of Nature. Indeed, the entire edifice of science is built upon the discovery of the intelligibility of the reality process. Every university science department in every city of the world owes its existence to the smartness of Nature - a smartness which science merely reflects. Almost every scientific researcher, almost every PhD student, is sailing on a sea of accessible knowledge provided by Nature. Whether a geneticist marvelling over replicating mile-long compact strands of DNA, a botanist spellbound by bee-mimicking orchids, or an entomologist fascinated by fungus-cultivating ant colonies - all are caught up in the magic woven by Natural Intelligence over billions of years.

Similarly, almost every science book available owes its existence to Nature's intelligibility. Science is therefore to be understood as an attempt to mirror or reflect the intelligence of Nature in a worded form. And yet whatever facet of Nature we care to investigate, whether this be the intricate structure of a single cell, the elaborate grip of the Venus Flytrap, or the delicate balancing mechanism of the inner ear, science is always committed to accounting for such phenomena as being no more than the end products of a natural but purposeless process, a process which just happens to be extremely constructive, and which just happens to result because the contextual laws of Nature just happen to be of a kind which allow interesting evolutionary events to unfold at some time and in some place. Things just tend to happen that way. And a lucky thing it is too, for if Nature did not possess intelligible and sensible contextual qualities, then the scientists would be out of work and out of life.

However, it does not matter what science comes across in its pursuits, for no matter how smart some animal, plant, or biological process is, it can always be reduced to a 'mere' aspect of natural selection, where 'natural' means only 'the way things tend to happen'. If we were to discover, say, some new plant which yielded a massive fruit out of which popped an organic flying machine complete with handlebars and a comfy seat, then two things would probably happen. Firstly, scientists would immediately account for the machine in terms of 'mere' natural selection, by inferring that such a fruit was a potentially advantageous adaptation. And secondly, the machines would be seized upon by people and exploited to the hilt without a second thought as to the nature of the process which led to them. In no time at all, both scientists and the regular community would be completely used to this useful new production of Nature. It would have become yet another 'mere' incident of the natural world.

The imagined state of affairs above parodies the often blithe attitude of the science community toward the creative processes exhibited by the natural world. All organisms, no matter how intricate, no matter how refined and sophisticated, no matter how well adapted, are 'merely' the products of a blind process which just seems to produce smart and enduring structures over vast spans of time. Brains certainly carry out intelligently driven processes, but not so Nature we are told. But, as I consistently point out, natural selection is indeed a process, and since it is the most efficient and successful information-gaining process we know of, then it can be interpreted as being the manifestation of an intelligence.

Perhaps Nature should be awarded Nobel prizes and not the scientists who discover the mechanisms and pathways of its intelligence. If a scientist begins a detailed discussion about the double helix structure of DNA, then we might be taken aback at his or her grasp of the subject matter. We would say he or she is someone very intelligent who understands the complexities of DNA, deserving perhaps of prestigious respect and admiration. Yet he or she is in actuality merely reflecting the intelligence of Nature. Thus it is the discoveries of science which should be described with a liberal sprinkling of the popular adjective 'mere', and not the actual processes which science documents. Nature is ultra-smart, and it is we who 'merely' reflect the fact.

Similarly, terribly thick text books detail the physical and mathematical processes underlying cosmological phenomena like star formation and supernovae. Again, the neat equations and so on which govern precisely these phenomena are in a real sense written by Nature. Consider also the text in a leather-bound book about the highly organised micro-structure of paper and leather - the integrated and mathematically precise atomic configurations of carbon and other organic elements of which leather and paper consist. You would certainly require a highly refined intelligence to really understand such a book. But, surely the book itself (the actual paper and leather) is more representative of intelligently constructed units of information than the text it carries? Science serves only to reflect the intelligent structures already 'out there' in reality.

The living proof of Natural Intelligence is everywhere around us and inside us. Our bodies are spun from it. The text found in a biology book detailing the fantastic biologically constructed 'inner wisdom' of, say, the immune system, is merely a reflection in the formal system of words of the formal system which we call biology. Both forms are intelligible. And a hallmark of intelligent systems is precisely their intelligibility. Which means that both biological systems and their evolution can be regarded as a manifestation of Natural Intelligence. Thus, NASA's hubristic SETI program in which communicatory cries are broadcast out into space reveals a distinct failure to look more closely at organic life itself, for it is Gaia and Nature in their totality that is the highly advanced intelligence we are so keenly interested in locating.

If we find it difficult to accept that Nature is intelligent then perhaps this represents a too limited view of what it is that constitutes intelligence. Don't be fooled into thinking that intelligence is something to be measured solely by IQ tests. These are mere inventions of the psychologist designed to tap specific aspects of intelligence. In its strictest sense, intelligence means the capacity to understand. But such a definition also implies the capacity to increase information such that uncertainty is reduced. If you use intelligence you can work things out and increase your internal state of knowledge/information. Intelligent processes foster the integration of more information. Consider the following definition of intelligence by the neurophilosopher P.M.Churchland:

"A system has intelligence just in case it exploits the information it already contains, and the energy flux through it (this includes the energy flux through its sense organs), in such a way as to increase the information it contains. Such a system can learn, and this seems to be the central element of intelligence."

As I consistently maintain, evolution is precisely an information-gaining process and this can be considered a form of natural learning. As information is built up within Gaia, so too is uncertainty reduced, the result being specific organisms with specific capacities and specific relations to the environment. Natural Intelligence has learned to express itself through the language of DNA, has learned to utilise the sun's energy through photosynthesis, has learned to fly through wings, has learned to breathe, sleep, dream, think, communicate, reproduce, recycle, and so on. The evolution of living organisms therefore represents a natural learning process inscribed in DNA, and emerging in response to an environmental context which serves to elicit the learning. Ultimately, it would appear that Nature is in the business of making sense of itself, the human cortex representing a particularly fine and focussed method of so doing.

Although Natural Intelligence becomes apparent everywhere we care to look in the natural world, the modern version of Homo sapiens seems to miss it. If, say, we venture into a desert and stumble across some strange whirring solar-powered machine that converts sand into circuit boards so that it can, say, replicate itself, then we will certainly take notice and infer that the machine has been designed by an intelligence. Yet if we later stumble across a hardy cactus quietly converting sunlight into useable energy and eventually sophisticated reproductive organs that cunningly engage insects into transferring its pollen, then we immediately infer it to be 'merely' the design of natural selection and not of an intelligence. No doubt we would probably pass over the cactus and return to the ostensibly more interesting artifactual machine. To date, science stubbornly refuses to equate the process natural selection with intelligent information processing, despite the fact that the most complex things we know of are living organisms.

Recall Mr Von Neumann. He was considered a highly intelligent man because, amongst other things, he showed that in principle self-replicating machines could be built. Von Neumann was himself a replicating machine, albeit of the organic kind. Why should he be considered intelligent whereas the process which generated him is not? Given the fact that, like us, Von Neumann was built of billions of cells tightly woven into an orchestrational triumph of organic engineering, the case for Natural Intelligence becomes even more conspicuous. Nothing Von Neumann did came anywhere near matching the genius of evolution itself. Only the human ego can deny this. And yet the human ego is itself dependent in some way upon the human cortex for its existence. And we already know how brilliantly designed the cortex is.

Let us also consider photosynthesis a tad more closely, embodied as it is in the green film covering the Earth. Without this downplayed biomolecular wizardry (which has yet to be technologically mirrored in a globally viable cost-effective way) there would be no life at all, for all life stands upon this ultra-smart process. Yet it is easy to play the imagination game and hypothesise a reality in which organic chemicals could not in any way form themselves into neat negentropic energy-utilising organisms. For life to flourish it had to reside as an immanent capacity within organic chemistry, and the context of the Universe at large had to be conducive in eliciting such a capacity right down to the formation of suns which eventually go super-nova. In short, I would argue that it is valid for us to wonder at why reality is so amenable to the process of evolution, just as it is valid to ask why the Universe is intelligible at all.

Traditional Darwinism cannot adequately answer such questions. As stated, it can only shrug and state with nonchalance that Nature just happens to be that way, that Nature has been, well, jammy or lucky - lucky in the sense that it eventually brought forth conscious brains able to grasp the processes which led to conscious brains. However, if we conceive of evolution as reflecting Natural Intelligence, then we can connect up this process to those other fortunate aspects of the reality process which have allowed interesting things to happen in the Universe, and we eventually discern that reality is, at heart, a smart process. Don't forget, I am not implying some new process here, rather I am suggesting that overall, in its entirety, Nature is smart and that this smartness is part and parcel of reality. Such a view, such a new angle through which to conceive reality, is not merely a case of words, rather it is to re-define our place within Nature and to re-perceive the significance and meaning of our conscious existence.

I think there are three principal reasons why evolution is not generally viewed as an intelligent process. Firstly, intelligence often has connotations with consciousness, and many of us would doubtless find it hard to attribute consciousness to Nature. Secondly, evolution happens over lengthy time spans, as opposed to the relatively short spans of time over which human intelligence operates. Thirdly, we are a terribly proud and arrogant species who like to imagine that we ourselves are the smartest thing on two legs. Intelligence belongs primarily to us, and not to the more abstract systems of which we are a part (I presume that this outlook is connected to the human ego as alluded to earlier).

However, intelligence, when understood as being a process, does not necessarily entail consciousness (at least not of the sort we are familiar with), nor does it have to be limited in the method and timescale over which it operates, and nor should it necessarily be confined to brains alone. If intelligence is tied up with information-gaining processes and learning, then clearly evolution is Natural Intelligence at work. Life, in all its manifold organismic glory, has learned to live, cope, behave and act appropriately in what is basically a tough reality, though one which is just the right toughness to engender evolution. The only real difference between Natural Intelligence and human intelligence is one of magnitude and duration of effect.

Reductive science will not discern Natural Intelligence because reductive science looks to isolated entities and attempts to seek explanations for their existence on lower levels. To glimpse Natural Intelligence is to view the larger systems of which the components are a part. This larger system is the entire Universe, an algorithmic backdrop which provides the essential physical and chemical conditions necessary to foster the digital computational procedure which is evolution. These essential conditions are things like the convenient formation and enduring presence of 'free lunch' suns, the facilitated formation of DNA with its conveniently plastic and linguistic nature, the continual presence of factors which conveniently induce DNA to vary and mutate, and the conveniently inherent feedback nature of ecological systems upon genotypes. If we think in Gaian-sized terms then Natural Intelligence emerges. Darwin's groundbreaking legacy therefore resides in his discovery of the procedural intent of Natural Intelligence.

It might be objected that to infer that evolution represents an intelligent process is to introduce superfluous and scurrilous gossip-making baggage to what is already a sufficient theory. In other words, why infer Natural Intelligence when it is not absolutely necessary to use such terminology for our understanding of the mechanisms by which evolution proceeds? Well, this might be true, yet to refuse to elaborate upon evolutionary theory is to impose limitations upon our understanding, especially if we want an holistic and ultimately metaphysical view of Nature. Perhaps this is why there have been so many attempts to do away with Darwin's theory (like the theory of vitalism for instance), not because it is wrong but because there is some conceptual element missing, an element which can more properly capture and appreciate the amazing power of evolution.

As far as I can see, without inferring that evolution is smart is to be unable to explain why exactly Nature should be such that it allows and indeed fosters evolution. As I said, why should organic chemistry be so plastic in the face of the environment? Why should the emergence of DNA coding be inevitable? Why should certain prevailing influences continuously mutate DNA composed genes? Why should life forms, composed as they are of multicellular functional organs, be latent within organic chemistry? Why should sensitive patterns of consciousness inevitably become focussed within nervous systems? The questions go on. The fortuitously creative brute facts mount up. The self-organisational properties of Nature abound. Something important is clearly happening everywhere.

Allow me to reiterate upon previous reiteration: Your own self-repairing body, your acute visual system processing these words, your autonomic breathing system and autonomic digestive system; all are far more smart than any man-made computer or man-made software program currently in existence (especially when one considers how these functions are integrated into a tight and enduring unity). Perhaps you are familiar with some latest piece of Microsoft software, some program embodied in several megabytes of computer code. You will certainly concede that this code is smart. Yet reflect upon the 700 megabytes of digital DNA coding etched into almost every one of your many billions of body cells and you will realise that human-derived programs pale in the face of those written by Nature.

Regarding the evolution of the human organism and how we have yet to fully conceive of the extraordinary complexity involved, here is what noted Artificial Life and genetic algorithm expert T.S.Ray has to say:

"It is generally recognised that evolution is the only process with a proven ability to generate intelligence. It is less well recognised that evolution also has a proven ability to generate parallel software of great complexity. In making life a metaphor for computation, we will think of the genome, the DNA, as the program, and we will think of each cell in the organism as a processor (CPU). A large, multicelled organism like a human contains trillions of cells/processors. The genetic program contains billions of nucleotides/instructions.

"In a multicelled organism, cells are differentiated into many cell types such as brain cells, muscle cells, liver cells, kidney cells, etc. The cell types just named are actually general classes of cell types within which there are many subtypes. However, when we specify the ultimate indivisible types, what characterises a type is the set of genes it expresses. Different cell types express different combinations of genes. In a large organism, there will be a very large number of cells of most types. All cells of the same type express the same genes.

"The cells of a single-cell type can be thought of as exhibiting parallelism of the SIMD kind {SIMD = single instruction multiple data - all CPU processors do the same things upon their data, even if data is different for each}, because they are all running the same "program" by expressing the same genes. Cells of different cell types exhibit MIMD parallelism as they run different codes by expressing different genes {MIMD = multiple instruction multiple data - CPU processors can be executing different code but all are orchestrated towards a common goal}. Thus, large multicellular organisms display parallelism on an astronomical scale, combining both SIMD and MIMD parallelism into a beautifully integrated whole. From these considerations, it is evident that evolution has a proven ability to generate massively parallel software embedded in wetware."

(my italics)

A good point worthy of astonishment. Somewhat paradoxically though, I would suggest that it is precisely because Nature is so very, very smart that we do not acknowledge it. Biological processes, in the main, are so perfected in their natural execution that we fail to comprehend just how much complexity is involved (recall my detailed discussion of neuronal events for instance). It is only when biology goes wrong that we suddenly become aware of just how smart it usually is in its operation. Similarly, if computers were so perfectly designed that mankind was to utilise them en masse for a thousand years without one single breakdown so that repairs were not needed, then we would soon lose sight of just how smartly they were designed. We would become completely accustomed to computers and take them for granted without a thought as to their intelligently designed infrastructure. However, should malfunctions begin to occur then we would suddenly wake up to their underlying contrived functionality.

Returning to human biological processes, they are generally so impeccable that they take care of themselves. Which is to say that Nature is a pretty smooth operator. For most of us, we grow from babies to adults faultlessly, yet the myriad steps in such a morphological feat are absurdly sophisticated, and this is a creative manifestation of what I am calling Natural Intelligence - a natural process which has yielded as part of its output we beings endowed with consciousness, a process moreover which has been operating over an immense stretch of time. Yet just because the information-gaining evolutionary process which led to you and I took billions of years does not mean that the process was non-intelligent, as we have been led to believe. To infer that high intelligence exists only in our species is to be blind to both the tremendous Natural Intelligence which facilitated evolution and the Natural Intelligence embodied in all biological systems. Moreover, this non-human intelligence extends into all of reality, since, as we have seen, Nature was always poised to 'grow' an eventually conscious tree life. The entire meta-context of Nature is therefore replete with intelligence.

Again we have arrived back at the idea of the Universal Computation (or cosmic seed even), for it would appear that all the information necessary to construct suns, planets, molecules, amino acids, cells, micro-organisms, plants, animals, and conscious brains, was written into the contextual fabric of Nature, lying dormant as it were until the right conditions had developed somewhere in which this information could be 'read out'. This is a breathtaking idea, and if it should generate a small gasp of wonder, this is but nothing compared to the awe generated by entheogens like psilocybin, an awe which is intimately connected to realisations of our potential significance in the reality process.

Nature thus emerges as being incredibly smart as well as deadly and I can close this chapter with an apt Einsteinian quote, this time pertaining to the reverence felt by at least some scientists toward the Universe with which we interface. Einstein openly notes that this emotion:

"....takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

I almost second that emotion. Human thinking might not be an "insignificant reflection" at all. Far from it. Indeed, I presume that if we divine Natural Intelligence, acknowledge it, feel it, then this quite literally represents a significant reflection of that intelligence. Which suggests that such a cortex-embodied reflection has some functional import, a sort of self-realisation factor of Natural Intelligence as it were. We explore these issues in the next chapter.

Go to Chapter Ten