neonascent

I am passing through the park on a sunny Wednesday afternoon on my way back from studies. A cool breeze intermittently plays against my face as I amble along a well-worn dirt path between islands of palm trees. There is a small chestnut on the ground, and I pick it up. I think about how I could plant this seed wherever I felt like, and have made a difference to the future of the tree that may germinate from it. On closer inspection I notice that there is a borehole in the nut, and that there must be a small bug in it.

I have effected this bugs existence in a profound way, and it is in no way aware of my existence. If anything, it may see - in some limited awareness - its change of environment as natural or coincidental - Its sphere of phenomenological perception is almost totally alien to mine and vice versa.

We exist within a vast spectrum of consciousnesses. Some are approaching our own and are significantly aware of us, the consequences of our actions, and thus can communicate and socialise with us to a limited degree, but many many cannot. As a species we measure ourselves as having the highest awareness to our environment: the most inclusive, most reflexive, most coherent sphere of awareness.

Just as it is highly unlikely that we are living on the only inhabited planet in the universe, isn’t it equally unlikely (given the enormous collection of creatures that are unaware of even our direct influence on their existence) that there is no greater entity than ourselves? An entity that would have implicit access to our motivations (as we may understand that a dog wants to eat, procreate, receive affection, etc.) and significant ability to effect our lives in one way or another? There are many unexplained and so-called supernatural phenomena that could be the unrecognised shadow of their actions. Not ineffable Gods, but an alien and transcendental* consciousness and existence.

It is possible that we have epistemological access to these beings within our world, but just do not know it; as like other sensible creatures we see the world through a filter of our expectations. This gives us a foundation on which to perceive the world, and allows us to operate under pragmatic assumptions. In Psychology, this effect is manifest through our schema-based interpretation and memory of events. What we do not understand or expect we interpret as something that fits into our worldview; leading native islanders to not see colonial ships arrive, or fitting cars into such understandable templates as animals being ridden. This also seems to occur with animals as part of a reconciliation inherent in human-animal interactions; cats see people as cats, gorillas as gorillas, etc, and understandably interact with us in the only mode they have access to. (I do not think it unreasonable to declare empathy the basis of communication.) This could suggest a paradigm in which these transcendental beings are very much a part of our lives, and with which we interact as far as humanly possible.

However, why must these beings exist in the form of a big-giant-headed organic individual with a big-giant individual brain? Why can it not be that, as the muscles in my finger or bacteria in my stomach or indeed neurons in my brain are unaware of the workings and existence of the whole in any real sense, that these transcendental beings are not formed from constituent parts of the world we would consider separate? As a termite colony exhibits intention vastly beyond that of a single termite, we as a whole could form an intentional and intelligent consciousness.

The issue of scale becomes problematic. As I have examined earlier, there is no basis for our arbitrary delineation of conscious entities, and most definitely if we are to suggest a transcendental being made up of ourselves (eg all humans) or even beyond our reckoning within the physical world then the delineation seems totally arbitrary – should we not just do away with these purely pragmatic approaches to understanding our specific, limited sphere of consciousness, and think the act of delineating consciousness as absurd?

The conclusion you may arrive at when you start doubting the Cartesian duality (first disassembling the fallacy of atomic, coherent self, then working your way up) is this:
That consciousness is everything, and an intrinsic part of a necessarily connected world.

*By no means transcending “natural” determination or the consequences and relationships within the world, but of our limited understanding of the it.