Gone Fishing In the Pond Underneath Time: An Alternate Theory of Evolution

The great Unshape lies beneath the crystal nows and countless sediments of fossilized yesterdays. It is a semi-sentient, primordial ooze of pureform and potential, from which the physical world secretes and coagulates into matter, logic, flesh and Newtonian principles.

Every individual shape and phenomenon in existence is an imprint, an echo – the spontaneous manifestation of this original formless totality, that writhing ocean of colorless mucus that fills the gaping mouth at the bottom of spacetime. Not in the sense that all things manifest are reflections of some distant metaphysical Universal in the Platonic realist sense of the world. But rather a relationship between source and creation akin to that of an original organism and the colossal tumour growing out of it – or that between an obsession run rampant, eclipsing every other facet of its host consciousness, and the mother-mind from which mania originally perspired. And it happens again and again and again, across a kaleidoscopic myriad of time-fragments. Let me explain.

Your run-of-the-mill Darwinite would probably agree with most of the basic premises presented above, perhaps preferring a different phrasing. So far, nothing of what I have said runs, in itself, contradictory to the theory of Abiogenesis that is currently considered consensus among evolutionary biologists. The same can be said about my opening statements and the theory of the Big Bang. Both Darwin and Lemaître would probably – to a certain degree, at least – subscribe to the notion that all that currently is emerged from a singular one, albeit with several intermediate steps separating the present state from the genesis point.

I would, however, like to present a hypothesis that rejects the notion of one-way causality – from A – B. It is true that the rational mind perceives time as a river that flows in the direction from past to present to future. But countless surrealist experiments suggest that other strata of consciousness are capable of grasping in other directions. It is therefore my belief that the subconscious mind – and indeed the rest of the cosmos – is in some sense connected – fettered, if you will, by unseen chains – to that original amorphous Unshape of pure, unrealised potential. Everything is a puppet at the end of protruding nerves, that reach out from deeps of all-encompassing unbeing.

Automatism, then, would be the act of pulling these strings, intentionally provoking a response and reply from the source with a capital S. It lets the automatist root around with sub-psychic timetacles, making the latent manifest in whatever shape it may take whilst completely disregarding any current, arbitrary notion of so-called sense. It’s unearthing the impossible anatomies that lie dormant in the undergrowth of geometry and reason. It is to go fishing in the pond underneath time.

That isn’t to say that there is no truth or merit to the idea of temporal forward-motion, or that thing/state A never could or never does become thing/state B. Here, I am in complete agreement with any evolutionary biologist, or Marx, Freud, Hegel, Newton et. al. Things seem to evolve and shift and morph, when contrasted, confronted and compared.

I am however, more or less convinced that the dimension of time isn’t so much the continuous flow of impermanent phenomena that our rational mind would like to perceive or imagine. I think of time as an endless field of autonomous moments. Jagged shards of glass seconds. Crystal scales across the infinite body of Leviathan – that immeasurable serpent that lurks in the depths under the material sphere.

Seconds are window door-ways, like liquid mirrors on the retinas of reality, through which the great Unshape leaks our current iterations, never cutting that subconscious umbilical cord. Perhaps we do evolve, but not from some preceding ancestor or version of ourselves, but from the biomorphic Brahman at the bottom of the abyss. Perhaps there are several layers of time, each working according to its own laws of motion and logic.

So my theory of evolution is just that of intelligent design, then? Hardly. The Creationist standpoint presupposes a rational architect – a demiurge with a thought-out plan and eager hands, steering life and matter along a preset path. And, again, rather than time being like a locomotive, or an arrow, I believe there is but disarray and fragmentation and continual, if each time ever-so slightly different rebirths and restarts of the universe. It is the sorcery of reason that makes Thursday follow Wednesday. An involuntary narrative – a story that we can’t help but trick ourselves into believing.

Therefore, we aren’t passive passengers, watching the rustic scenery pass through our carriage window. No, we are the unleashed impulses of the antediluvian overflowing void, and we are constantly being rattled into flesh. We are not pawns around across the chess-board, controlled by some all-knowing designer-player. Instead, we are the shapes that populate the dreams of that great beyond – and we jump between the receding moments, like stepping stones, that birth us. We are fever-silhouettes, fished out of the pond underneath time. And we carry with us the great Unshaped potential of molding the universe into whatever we please.