On consciousness…
*See ‘Notes on Universal Consciousness’
Who is it that is aware that I am thinking?
The nature of consciousness remains deeply mysterious and profoundly important, with existential, medical and spiritual implications.
We are put in the awkward position of having to rely upon the tools of intellect to comprehend and describe a realm of consciousness which transcends reason itself.
Anyone who has ever had a mystical experience or taken a powerful psychedelic drug can attest that there are dimensions of awareness which far transcend our ability to render in mere language.
We know what it is like to be conscious – to have awareness, a conscious ‘mind’, but who, or what, are ‘we’ who know such things?
How is the subjective nature of phenomenal experience – our ‘inner life’ - to be explained in scientific terms?
What consciousness actually is, and how it comes about remain unknown.
Life and consciousness are emergent properties.
An emergent property is a property which a collection or complex system has, but which the individual members do not have. A failure to realize that a property is emergent, or supervenient, leads to the fallacy of division.
In chemistry, for example, the taste of saltiness is a property of salt, but that does not mean that it is also a property of sodium and chlorine, the two elements which make up salt. Thus, saltiness is an emergent or a supervenient property of salt. Claiming that chlorine must be salty because salt is salty would be an example of the fallacy of division.
In biology, for example, heart is made of heart cells, heart cells on their own don't have the property of pumping blood. You will need the whole heart to be able to pump blood. Thus, the pumping property of the heart is an emergent or a supervenient property of the heart. Claiming that an individual heart cell can pump blood because the heart can would be an example of fallacy of division.
The general assumption in modern science and philosophy - the ‘standard model’ - is that consciousness emerges from complex computation among brain neurons, computation whose currency is seen as neuronal firings (‘spikes’) and synaptic transmissions, equated with binary ‘bits’ in digital computing.
Consciousness is presumed to ‘emerge’ from complex neuronal computation, and to have arisen during biological evolution as an adaptation of living systems, extrinsic to the makeup of the universe.
On the other hand, spiritual and contemplative traditions, and some scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intrinsic, ‘woven into the fabric of the universe’.
In these views, conscious precursors and Platonic forms preceded biology, existing all along in the fine scale structure of reality.
One theory says that consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in protein polymers called microtubules inside the brain’s neurons, vibrations which interfere, ‘collapse’ and resonate across scale, control neuronal firings, generate consciousness and connect ultimately to ‘deeper order’ ripples in spacetime geometry.
Is consciousness pure energy?
Energy in its finest form is spirit, the energy behind prana, also called ether, which then forms vibration and light, and divides into the spirit of peace, the spirit of love, the spirit of power and the spirit of insight. As energy becomes more dense, the four elemental energies each subdivide into a myriad of qualities, which express themselves as spirit beings of various ranks, thought forms and physical matter.
Energy by its very nature is a wave, with crests (high points), troughs (low points), amplitudes (varying intensities), frequency (concept of time) and superpositions (can be in the same place at the same time).
Does consciousness flow in consciousness fields similar to energy in electromagnetic waves?
Is there a consciousness field similar to an electric or magnetic field?
Is an organic organism somehow a conductor for this consciousness field similar to a conductor for an electric field?
At a basic level there may be a common vibratory plane that connects all consciousness.
Consciousness fields then may interact and effect each other based on multiple variables.
This could explain things such as reincarnation, extra sensory perception, group prayer effects, subconscious connections to others, etc.
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
- Max Planck, father of quantum theory
So in that case, it would mean that consciousness would not necessarily be dependent on a physical brain in order to survive and could continue after the physical brain and after the body dies.
The law of conservation of energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, just transferred from one form to another.
If consciousness adheres to the first law of thermodynamics then consciousness can change forms but never be created or destroyed.
“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there’s no such thing as death, life is only a dream & we’re the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather”
- Bill Hicks
There are 100 billion neurons in the brain of varying types and over 100 trillion connections between those neurons. They are responsible for everything you do and are, but are still largely a mystery.
Many think that the physical brain creates the mind hence consciousness which are just different names for the same manifestation.
An intriguing, alternate suggestion is that the brain (or perhaps any organism) is a receptor for the consciousness and in humans, the mind is the melding of the brain and consciousness.
Under this theory, the brain is essential to the full functioning of the mind and consciousness, and damage to the brain can affect this functioning.
An analogy is between a radio and music. The radio does not create the music, it transmits it. However, damage to the radio can impair transmission.
Maybe we are like windows or apertures or vortexes through which the universe is conscious of itself for a brief moment.
Obviously, the brain and the mind are linked.
Damage to the brain can affect the functioning of the mind. Meditation can impact the brain. The materialist conclusion is that the brain produces the mind.
There is certainly a correlation between the brain and the mind. However, correlation does not mean causation.
It may well be that our brains are conduits for consciousness.
Ferdinand Schiller proposed that the purpose of the physical brain was to limit consciousness, to focus it on the physical realm. According to Schiller, "Matter is not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it and confines its intensity within certain limits."
Simple and coarse machinery allows simple and coarse manifestations of consciousness, i.e. animals and insects.
In this way, matter is like a circuit that conducts the energy of consciousness in a certain way.
Consciousness is a rudimentary feature of any life form that uses a brain to process its environment.
Consciousness varies in degree from brain to brain.
My dog is conscious of hunger, fear, pain etc. but he's not conscious of Mozart.
Only a pretty sophisticated (complex) conscious system gives rise to sentience (a bat is more able to apprehend what it senses than a slug).
Sentience is a level or subset of consciousness.
The root of the word sentience is the Latin 'sent' which means "to feel".
You cannot unconsciously be sentient. But you can be conscious without being sentient.
Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.
A Tibetan teaching says that sentient beings are all beings that have mind and mind is found in all beings that breathe.
In Buddhism, sentient beings are composed of the five aggregates, or skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness.
Generally, in law, a sentient being is one with the faculty of sensation and the power to perceive, reason and think.
And then, from sentience, sapience emerges. The conscious, sentient system begins to think about itself (meta-cognitive feedback loops).
Perhaps the question of what consciousness is simply cannot be resolved by humans.
If there are other dimensions/realities that never or rarely interact with us, we would have no basis to even have a concept of them, much less dismiss or believe in them.
They would remain a mystery.
Can we even ever know consciousness as we are the observer and can only know what we observe?
Does observing ourselves invoke the uncertainty principle?
Who is it that’s aware that I am thinking?
A field of energy, conscious awareness dancing with itself.
“I used to be a guy experiencing the world and now I feel like the world and universe experiencing a guy.”
- Jim Carrey