Look, here is a tree in the garden.

And every summer it produces apples. And we call it an apple tree, because the tree apples. That's what it does.

Now here is a solar system, inside a galaxy. And one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that, at least on the planet Earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples.

🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎

Now maybe, two million years ago, somebody came from another galaxy, in a flying saucer, and had a look at this solar system. And they looked it over, and shrugged their shoulders and said, "Just a bunch of rocks." And they went away.

Later on, maybe 2 million years later they came around, and they looked at it again. And they said, "Excuse me, we thought it was a bunch of rocks but it's peopling. And it's alive after all, it has done something intelligent!"

Because, you see, we grow out of this world - in exactly the same way that the apples grow on the apple tree.

If evolution means anything, it means that.

But you see, we curiously twist it. We say, "Well, first of all, in the beginning, there was nothing but gas and rock. And then intelligence happened to arise in it." You know, like a sort of fungus or slime on the top of the whole thing.

But we're thinking in a way, you see, that disconnects the intelligence from the rocks.

Where there are rocks, watch out, watch out!

Because the rocks are going eventually to come alive.

Alan Watts