Consciousness is a tough thing to define. We seem to have it, but so far there hasen't been any part of the brain that has been identified to create consciousness, if we knew what it was.

Ray Kurzweil in his book “The Singularity is Near” spends an entire chapter giving all the explanations he has heard of about what consciousness is. He finally gives up, but has come to the conclusion that it is an “emergent property”, in other words if enough neurons get together, consciousness is what occurs. This is a very materialistic viewpoint.

One of the other explanations is that everything has consciousness and this is called panpsychism. I am a panpsychist, always have been, even while a physics student at college. I believe in science and its laws, but think there is more. Of course that doesn’t explain anything.

My definition for consciousness has to do with a simple concept, “awareness”. I think that everything has awareness of its surroundings, but depending on the species, has various sensing equipment and various means of responding. Even a rock has consciousness, but is quite limited in the messages which it can output, not many degrees of freedom. A proton has consciousness, but its rules of behavior are quite specific and limited, even taking into account quantum theory. But we humans can respond in a multitude of ways in any situation.

Metaphysics extends this concept of consciousness into levels, 7 to be exact. But lets start with philosophy where we go from 0 to 2. This is Metaphysics 101. After describing the levels, I will get into the purpose, but it is hard to understand until the levels have been defined.

0—nothing. The thing about nothing is that there is no differentiation, so it is the same as everything which also has no differentiation. If you have ever been in a whiteout snowstorm, every direction you look is white. It is everything and nothing—can’t say anything about it.

1—identity. An entity with a name is what this is about. A species is an identity as is each member of that species. One is represented by a 1-dimensional dot.

2—duality. We can add a description to an entity with its characteristics. But a characteristic is always on a spectrum from one extreme to its opposite, a 2-dimensional variable. Light is the opposite of dark, and there is lighter and darker in between. Hard/soft, long/short, any characteristic is only known because of its opposite. It is a comparison. Even abstract concepts are in this duality, like good/bad. You can’t define good without also creating bad. It’s all relative in this world of duality.

So now we move from philosphy to consciousness, 7 levels

0—The top level is the “source consciousness”, everything. Some call it “God”, but that is such a loaded term, old man with white beard up in the sky. I prefer “source consciousness” from which all other levels come.

The next 3 correspond to the 1-dimensional dot, no description, they just are.

1—Entity. An aardvark is not a llama, nor is a rock a planet. It is the name of an entity. It is differentiated from the source consciousness. It is not everything, but it is a piece of the everything, a subset.

2—Energy. Just being an entity is not enough, it must be supplied with conscious energy in order to exist. This energy is part of the source consciousness, but again a subset belonging to the entity.

3—Soul. The accumulation of experiences.

The last 3 are part of the worlds of duality.

4—Mental. The concept of a thing including the descriptions.

5—Emotional. The motivation for the concept to be turned into existence. Desire.

6—Physical. The manifestation of the mental concept willed into existence by the emotional desire and appearing in the physical world where we can use the 5 physical senses to know it.

Now for the grand purpose. It comes down to 2 needs which the source consciousness has: 1) to know itself, and 2) to be loved.

You are probably aware of the fact that it is impossible to know yourself, impossible for any consciousness to know itself. What we must do is let others describe us, lots of others, because each other is seeing us through their consciousness.

So the source consciousness looked around for another to get the information about who it is, but since the source consciousness is everything, there is no other. So the trick, divide itself into subsets and let each play out its dance with the others and come to know itself from their interactions. And so we get the entities. Give them the energy to dance (level 2) and accumulate their experiences (level 3), which is what the source consciousness is looking for.

Of course there must be a stage for the interactions and that is the world of duality, with descriptions and attributes. Big fish eat little fish, lions kill zebras, and we play our survival and other games. And each interaction within a species and across species gets recorded at the soul level and the source consciousness comes to know itself.

Second, the source consciousness needs love, to feel appreciated. How to do that? Another trick. It creates a dance between the entities which is harmonious. In this case “harmony” means that everything fits together, whether hunter or prey. So where does the love come from? It gives each entity “free will”, the ability to accept the dance or to reject it.

And that’s it. the whole shebang. But there are implications from all of this which will be discussed in more detail.

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Posted by Chris Wilder September 7, 2019

Published by Chris Wilder

I have been studying how things work all my life, a B.S. in physics, then computer systems design, followed by years of studying metaphysics, and then life lessons. Now I am adding evolutionary biology to learning about our lives and consciousness. I am calling it "practical metaphysics"