Data

Sharing Consciousness

Roger Penrose- “Seeing is the essence of consciousness.”

When we open our eyes, we let in a vast channel of information. What we know we recognize, what we don’t we compare to other things until we find revealing similarity. In this way, the brain accumulates information for identifying and anticipating what happens in our surroundings. Our life experience builds layers of analogy on similarity of form. Perception of form is the first layer of understanding.

Explaining the brain does not presume to explain consciousness. Much is understood about the brain’s plasticity, creating circuits, strengthening those reused, while unused paths wither. How we store and retrieve and associate our personal library of life has been thoroughly investigated. Not consciousness. Though there are scientists that argue that consciousness is a phenomenon that arises from the brain itself, a localized consciousness inside a particular body, it’s a theory with nothing yet to back it up. But those not locked into a mechanical model, like the late David Bohm (quantum physics) and Rupert Sheldrake (biology) see the brain more like a receiver, the medium through which consciousness flows, just like the heart pumps the blood but didn’t make the blood and the lungs breathe the air from outside. We are vessels through which all the elements of life flow. Experience crafts the frequencies we receive so individuals experience consciousness according to the brain’s tuning occurring as a result of personal life, and learning may tune us to a broader spectrum of information in the overall field of consciousness.

When Sri Aurobindo says the “practical currency of (one)self” is not “the thing itself” he’s encouraging us to look beyond the body/mind to an enlarged realization of consciousness.

 Alan Watts says the Christian “good news” Jesus delivered was that we had God within us, never separate, the actual seeing Self. The awareness within may be a feature of the animating life force. Many artists have a sense of being a conduit for ideas that may flow from beyond the personal self. To consider ourselves as collaborators, participants in a larger mind is humbling but opens us to our connection to the human species, offering what we see to the whole.

Without a philosophy that unites us, we drift apart. Chaos theory suggests that what appears chaotic will show a beautiful order if we step back to see a bigger picture. The encompassing metaphors of various religions should not be barriers when stepping back shows the universal structure beneath them. Just like we all share the earth we may also share the consciousness that flows through us.