Tendencies

Considering Consciousness

“The universe appears as a single undivided whole whose patterns and forms emerge out of a ground, are sustained for a time, and then die back into the field. Consciousness, too, can be considered to arise out of a deeper ground that is common to both matter and mind.” Physicist David Peat As much as scientists have learned about the brain, they don’t know where to look when it comes to consciousness. The underlying perspective on reality matters. This is the starting model for building how we think, an armature to structure our ideas. If our starting model is based on machines, looking at everything as an organization of small parts, consciousness is expected to be found somewhere in the parts. But what if it isn’t? They are just the particles. It’s time to consider the wave nature of reality. David Bohm suggested that a more accurate way of approaching the universe would be as a continuous field. Connected within a field of consciousness, individuals might be like sense organs adding our knowledge and perspective within a larger consciousness that likewise influences each individual. An image that takes the wave nature into account might help us see beyond the limits of the machine model and open new ground for speculation. Just like science fiction can anticipate and inspire scientific investigation, there are many artists who are trying to include this interconnectedness in images of webs and networks that suggest what has influence but can’t be seen. How we might be embedded in intelligence that includes but goes beyond our own is an idea that cannot be properly communicated in words. Words can be the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. Art is not the moon either but is a portal that allows insight to develop that stimulates a deeper sense of the possible. Different modes of organization, relationship, and influence could be visualized more easily than described. We might be neural nodes of a universal mind, local inputs participating in an overall awareness, threads within a larger tapestry of mind. The Net of Indra is a beautiful image from Buddhism tracing back to Hindu that envisions cosmic unity and our interconnectedness as a net of reflective jewels, each of which reflect the whole and are reflected in all the others. There are many wonderful artists’ conceptions of this on the Internet. The net metaphor pervades the modern world, so it feels natural to the reality of being in a web of information. Looking at the natural order and enlarging the metaphors to include fields of influence and repeating patterns could illuminate new possibilities.