The evolution of consciousness proceeds in stages…

…but it’s not linear.

If we think too linearly (like “A then B then C then D” in a straight line), we can start assuming that one stage of consciousness is better or more advanced than another. But that isn’t accurate. In reality, human spiritual growth develops in a much more complex, multi-dimensional way. The closest example I’ve found to showing how human spiritual growth reallly works is the nautilus shell.

Nautilus defined

The nautilus has fascinated thinkers for centuries because of its uncanny consistency. The nautilus is an ocean-dwelling mollusk — a coastal cousin of a garden snail. Like a snail, it develops a shell around itself for protection. As the nautilus grows, it builds a series of increasingly large chambers around itself to accommodate its expanding size. It also seals off the outgrown chambers behind itself. These sealed chambers form air pockets that offset the snail’s expanding mass and help it to stay afloat. The above photo shows the sequential chambers formed by nautilus growth.

The nautilus and mathematics

The fact that the nautilus creates these chambers for buoyancy is amazing enough. Even more amazing is the fact that the proportion, or ratio, of the nautilus’s sequential chambers never varies. I mean never. In the Renaissance, thinkers became particularly fascinated by this ratio and how it resembled the Golden Mean. The ratio had many special properties of harmony, so it was widely applied in the architecture of churches, residences, public spaces, in music.

Replicating levels of different sizes, all at once

Here’s the main point about the nautilus shell: It contains perfectly repeating chambers, all built to the same proportion but in increasing sizes, all evolving in sequence over time, all existing simultaneously in a unified whole.

That is how we evolve spiritually on Earth. Going through these same, six growth stages, but on different scales of human experience, all occurring at the same time, all in one unified organism called the human expression of God.

Now let’s see how the stages of evolving human consciousness play out – nautilus shell style – on different levels of human experience.

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