Consciousness Series

Consciousness Part 1

   Why are we conscious, and what is consciousness? Your answer to these questions should have a tremendous impact on the way you see yourself, the world, and your responsibilities to each. 

   The prevailing scientific assumption is that consciousness is a byproduct of complex biological processes, arising only when matter reaches a certain level of organization, specifically, in a brain. This view, however, is based on an unfounded premise: that unconscious matter can somehow generate subjective experience. You can map every neural correlate of a given conscious state—such as the visual cortex activating when the eyes are open—and still have no idea why this produces the experience of seeing rather than just electrical activity in the brain. 

   Neuroscientists can stimulate the visual cortex and induce phosphenes (flashes of light), but this only shows correlation, not causation; it tells us nothing about why there is an inner experience of light rather than mere neural firing. Correlation is not causation, and no amount of brain mapping explains how electrical impulses translate into the vivid, first-person experience of sight, sound, and thought. Yet scientists continue to chase after the ever elusive golden goose, having been told that it must be the source of their golden egg—consciousness.

   There is no empirical evidence to support this claim though. This is the “hard problem of consciousness” and remains unsolved because no scientific model can explain how a purely physical system gives rise to awareness—how material can suddenly go from not experiencing to subjectively experiencing. Despite this, mainstream thought dismisses the idea that consciousness could be fundamental to the universe, labeling it as speculative—while failing to acknowledge that materialist explanations require an even greater leap of faith and just might have an even heavier burden of proof placed on them.

   The alternative is far more coherent: that consciousness does not emerge from matter but is a foundational aspect of it. This doesn’t mean that rocks are thinking thoughts or that every atom has self-awareness. But it does suggest that the same principle governing the minerals that form our brains—structures capable of sustaining complex thought—is present throughout nature in simpler forms. 

   Consciousness, in this view, is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon but a spectrum, appearing in various expressions to various degrees across life and matter. Just as we assume the presence of consciousness in others without direct proof, we should consider that consciousness exists throughout nature as an intrinsic property of reality itself.

   Science can’t prove this, so why believe it? Well, we can’t empirically prove that anyone other than ourselves is conscious either. There is no way to determine if another person is truly experiencing or merely simulating awareness. No matter how convincingly someone describes their thoughts, emotions, or sensations, we have no direct access to their subjective experience. We assume that they are conscious because they behave in ways that suggest inner awareness, but this assumption is just that—an assumption.

   This is known as “the problem of other minds,” a long-standing issue in philosophy and cognitive science. Although we take for granted that other people experience reality much as we do, there is no empirical test to confirm it. A sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence, for example, could mimic human responses perfectly, yet we would have no way of knowing whether it genuinely feels, kind of feels, or is simply running complex computations without any inner life. 

   The same applies to any living being—we infer consciousness from behavior, but inference is not proof. There might never be proof given the universal bars impeding our ability to experience the experience of others. There is certainly no means through the science we know today. Especially when considering we could be a brain in a vat, a Boltzmann Brain, or living in a holographic or simulated universe without any capability of knowing otherwise. If we cannot even prove that another human is conscious, how can we confidently claim to know where consciousness begins and ends in the natural world?

   Still, we don’t live as solipsists, as people who believe only their mind is sure to exist. We assume others are conscious because it is the best working model of reality, even if it is ultimately unfalsifiable. By the same logic, we cannot disprove that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Yet rejecting this idea outright is just as arbitrary as rejecting the consciousness of others when faced with all the evidence we are soon to explore in the series. 

   If our lived reality depends on assuming consciousness in others despite our inability to prove it, it’s not so unreasonable to extend that courtesy to the cosmos itself—if, of course, it exhibits certain properties of mind. And that will be the focus of this series… until next time!

Consciousness Part 2

   It must be like something to be another human. We don’t go around believing other people act the way they do without feeling anything about it. But it must also be like something to be a dog, or a cat, or a bird. We don’t struggle to admit that either. Move lower, and it must be like something to be a bee, or an ant, or a beetle, even if the experience is small and alien compared to ours. But does it need to have a brain for it to be like something to be that thing? What about a clam? Or a barnacle? Or a Venus flytrap that snaps shut when touched?

   At what point do we stop assuming that there’s an inner experience to these things? Where do we draw the line between the stuff which it is like to be and the stuff which it is not? The truth is… nobody knows. They draw it arbitrarily—usually, according to what they most easily empathize with. But there is no real reason to assume consciousness neatly switches on with a brain and only a brain. Instead, it scales and takes on many different forms.  

   Think of consciousness more as the code governing the formation of all things. A 1 or a 0 can be on or off, but strings of them can paint pictures across our screens or form human-like AI. Except, in this view, consciousness is intrinsic to both code and plant, and what we call “higher” consciousness in humans is simply the result of many smaller conscious processes coming together to form something greater. We see undeniable examples of this everywhere in nature, but we struggle to see past the stories of our culture and the biases of ego. 

   Have you ever watched a neuron move? It doesn’t just sit there—it squirms, reaches, and latches onto its target as if it has a tiny little will of its own. When billions of them connect, they create the vast network we call a brain. But a brain isn’t the only way—this happens across all scales of life. Take a siphonophore, for example: this ocean-dwelling jelly-looking sea tube looks like one entity, when it’s actually a colony of many little organisms called zooids, each with its own role. Yet together they function as one being.

   There are many examples that can quickly dismember our “individual versus collective” way of thinking about consciousness. The brain itself isn’t one unified machine—it’s more like a vehicle, with layers of smaller systems, each with particular goals, intentions, and processes. What we experience as a single mind is really the local perspective of this larger orchestration, like the picture on a screen of pixels informed by code. It’s far more reasonable, then, to think consciousness isn’t something matter magically generates out of nothing, but rather something matter organizes and amplifies—like circuitry or legos.

   We already accept this reality when it comes to animals. A bat definitely doesn’t experience the world like a dog, and a dog definitely doesn’t experience it like a human, but we still recognize that all are conscious in their own ways. Oddly, we stop short when it comes to plants, fungi, or microbes. Yet the evidence is all around us. 

   Trees communicate through underground fungal networks, warning each other of threats and even sharing nutrients, though always favoring their own survival first. Venus flytraps and mimosa plants react to touch in ways that suggest awareness of their environment. Sunflowers quietly track the sun across the sky, adjusting themselves toward the light. Scientists have even trained pea plants using the breeze of a computer fan—teaching them to associate the airflow with the arrival of light and grow in its direction, much like Pavlov’s dogs. Bacteria swim toward food and away from toxins. Slime molds—just single cells without a brain—can solve mazes and find the shortest path to nutrients. Jellyfish and clams move, feed, and protect themselves with no central nervous system. Even barnacles sense the tides and close themselves off from danger. Strip away our human bias, and it’s obvious: consciousness doesn’t suddenly appear at the level of complex brains. It scales. It takes different forms depending on the structure, but it’s always there.

   The moment we accept that consciousness underpins our material reality, we’re forced to change our relationship with the world—from one of ownership to one of kinship. If consciousness runs through all, then the world isn’t just a stage for us to use—it’s a community of minds we belong to. And everything—from the whole of the earth to the grass beneath our feet—deserves our consideration. But what an unpopular idea! One which might leave us all with more responsibility. One which might ask us once more to look beyond our self. 

Consciousness Part 3

  We’ve been talking about consciousness and have suggested that many more forms of life than we often realize are likely having an inner experience. Now we will go a step further! Our opinion is that consciousness is not an isolated phenomenon confined to brains. In fact, it is woven into more than what we even call life! 

   We’ve already touched on the long lasting debate between physicalism and dualism, and we’ve offered a middle ground—a view where consciousness isn’t so much preceded by matter, as it is the organizing principle of reality. But if this is true, it shouldn’t just be a philosophical guess. The fingerprints of consciousness should be visible in the very structure of the world around us…and we will see.

   From the bird tracking its flight path through unimaginable senses conscious of Earth’s magnetic field, to the trees' communication with one another, to the venus flytrap—each are outstanding examples of something which is experiencing in a way far unlike our own, even if that means non-localized sensation, devoid of thought. 

   And if we follow the trail of breadcrumbs far enough, the same principle seems to reach deeper, into even the very fabric of matter. The smallest units of the cosmos seem to carry the same mysterious signature we see in living things: the ability to register, to respond, to change when noticed, to organize and act according to certain rules, and eventually the same minerals which form our rocks come to play a role in the processes of the brain.

   The behaviors indicative of the consciousness found in people can be found everywhere. Having been recently inspired by one of the friends we’ve made, I will say the motif of “as above so below” is downright palpable here. Our minds mirror the behaviors of the cosmos just as much as they are made of the same stuff and processes of the cosmos.

   The same branching seen in neurons is found in tree limbs, river forks, lightning, ice crystals, bronchi, and blood vessels—geometry. The same fractal rules, the same efficiency-in-search-of-flow, the same path of least resistance, the same underlying math—it all keeps showing up at wildly different scales. 

   A great example is that of cymatics. Check it out! Geometry can literally be seen forming in sand on a surface playing music at certain frequencies! 

   You can explain this by saying “those are just physical laws.” That’s true… and it’s also rather thought terminating. We might not be able to experience other forms of consciousness, but that is no more reason to believe they aren’t there as a dog's inability to tell you it loves you is reason to believe it doesn’t love you. All that we can truly know about our reality and the matter outside ourselves, relegated to the local experience we are, is that some of it is experiencing—because we are.

   Dismissing the same organizing principles which results in your experience vof being, as “physical laws,” is a grossly reductive interpretation. Another interpretation is to treat these laws as the habitual patterns of a universe that is—even if not in the same ways we are—in certain ways, aware. Living systems maintain balance, cells regulate temperature and chemistry, forests recover after fires... and as a part of it, our brain mirrors the very nature of nature itself. That same loop—change, test, correct—shows up in evolution, ecosystems, and planetary cycles. The similarity of form and processes across mind, organism, and planet, when looked at from the top down, at least suggests to us that the idea of consciousness as an on/off switch is missing something foundational. 

   So here’s our modest hypothesis: perhaps consciousness is not a fluke that blooms only inside nervous tissue. Instead, our egoic lens simply limits our ability to see the likeness of mind in it all, when it is in fact the nature of the universe to form structures of purpose that sense and respond. As complexity increases, systems compound and eventually produce the familiar forms of subjective experiences we more easily empathize with. Not emergent out of nothing, but expressed differently at different scales and in all manner of form; a continuous thread, however—a thread which if touched, just might let you glimpse the whole tapestry. 

Consciousness Part 4

   We woke up this morning, watching the leaves sway in the breeze. Conditioned as I was by the religion which I was, as a younger man I would have seen nature as an expression of the mind of God—a mind outside our material world. Later, conditioned as I was by the academic consensus, I would write off my perception of the reaction and intention of the universe as subjective projection and bias. After years of meditation, one explanation seems to be reaching, while the other seems to be burying its head in the sand. 

   Now, as I look out at the trees swaying, I see mind in it all. Not a dead universe, ordered without reason. Not a reason outside the universe, magically governing a bunch of little bits differently. But a reason baked into the universe itself—a reason which might be consolidated and intensified within certain systems, up to and beyond the level of our human consciousness. The same reason inherent to us, manifest within so many human expressions, is inherent to the universe—expressed through us as one of its contents. We have not come out of nothing, so much as we are the reformation and reimagination of everything else that was before. 

   The question of consciousness has long been divided between two main explanations. Physicalism will tell you consciousness arises from material processes. But physicalism fails, because it cannot explain how qualia (subjective experience) emerge from purely physical processes. Even if we mapped every neuron in the brain, every molecule within each neuron, and every atom within each molecule, we still wouldn’t have explained why experience itself exists. We would only have identified the material correlates of that subjective experience.

   Dualism posits that the mind and body are fundamentally separate, with consciousness arising from an immaterial soul or spirit rather than the physical brain. This view most often appears in religious and philosophical traditions that argue for an afterlife, self beyond the body, or a higher, non-physical essence that defines oneself.

   However, dualism collapses under scrutiny because it fails to explain how an immaterial mind interacts with the physical world. If consciousness were truly independent of the body, why does every change in brain chemistry or structure alter thoughts, emotions, and personality? Traumatic brain injury can erase memories, shift temperament, and even change our moral values. So too with genetics. Greater or lesser development in certain brain regions correlates with empathy and other traits. Even neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself—shows that psychological structure is shaped by environment and experience.

   This raises an impossible question for dualists: which version of “you” persists beyond the body? The one at 20? After decades of experience? The one with dementia? Some ideal, perfect version? And what is that even, if all that we are is the result of continuous, physical processes? If consciousness were separate from the brain, it should remain intact regardless of physical changes, yet we know that altering the brain alters the mind. The evidence, in our opinion, overwhelmingly supports a model where consciousness is, in some way, intrinsic to matter.

   The best resolution is somewhere in the middle, where matter and consciousness are two aspects of the same fundamental reality. Consciousness doesn’t suddenly emerge from matter but is inherent within it. The brain does not generate consciousness but organizes and intensifies it, just as a lens focuses light.

   The gradual nature of consciousness from its simplest atomic and molecular forms up to and across biological systems invalidates its designation as an anomaly and reorients it as a universal property, if you ask us. Because if consciousness is universal, its presence in forms such as we experience as humans requires no leap in logic, and the structural and functional parallels between human cognition and natural processes are seen as a shared underlying principle—not superstition, but continuity. 

   I know some of these terms are likely foreign so let’s do a really simple breakdown of our arguments: Physicalism cannot explain qualia—what it is like to experience something. Dualism cannot explain the interaction between physical changes as they relate to experience. The continuity of consciousness across forms suggests it’s not an emergent anomaly but an intrinsic property of reality. Therefore the brain is better understood as an intensifier or organizer rather than the originator of experience.

   Essentially, we have been sold a false dichotomy: physicalism vs. dualism. And it caves when we recognize that consciousness is not something separate from matter, but at least part of the very nature of matter itself. The beauty of this understanding lies in its ability to dissolve our illusion of separation. If consciousness is not an isolated anomaly but an intrinsic feature of reality, then we are not strangers in a dead, indifferent cosmos—we are at home as inhabitants in the mind of the same fundamental force that animates all things. The intelligence we perceive in ourselves is not apart from the intention of nature but continuous with it, woven into the fabric of everything. 

   Recognize this and you will shed the egocentricity of dualism and the emptiness and nihilism of physicalism. There is no hard boundary between self and world, no exile from the flow of existence. We are participants in a vast, interconnected unfolding—thinking, perceiving manifestations of the same consciousness that stirs in the wind, roars through the oceans, and chatters among the countless systems and networks that sustain not only the life we recognize, but the vast expanse of all material forms. We can feel at home, not like isolated minds adrift in a foreign universe, but as a people belonging to the same unified mind—together, part of something whole, enduring, and alive—cells of a larger organism.

   As much as we rationally see the utility in this understanding, its best use can be had shattering the illusory veil of a profane universe and realizing you are already enveloped by the warm embrace of the sacred.

Consciousness Part 5

   Remember how I ended my broken sign post? Of course you don’t! Here’s a recap!

   “My broken sign is…just another reminder that everything…elements giving rise to worlds, worlds to life, life to perception, perception to conception, conceptual to material and back again—everything owes its existence to the very same principle that ensures its eventual disappearance…”

   I wrote it initially as: “worlds to life, life to awareness, awareness to thought.” That is to say, I wrote it as if awareness were the final bloom on the long stem of matter. But after writing it, I caught myself. That’s more conjecture than academia would like to admit, and here I am babbling conditioned rhetoric when I should know better!

   So I pose a seemingly simple question: Must awareness follow life? Or might it precede it?

   Don’t throw the “mysticism” write off at me just yet! Even molecules sense and respond in the form of bonds. A plant grows toward the sun. A bacterium swims toward nutrients and away from danger…

—Oh god, it’s going there again isn’t it?—  

That’s right dear follower! We’re finally wrapping up the consciousness series! 

—But my brain!—

Shhh… it’ll be okay… just let it happen… 

There’s another way to think of consciousness and awareness: you can imagine awareness as the space in which all of the contents of consciousness are stored. Some are incredibly complex. Some are simple. Most are entangled with one another. But add or subtract, awareness remains the same. 

   In this view, awareness precedes all manifestations. This would be the case for both our inner reality and our outer reality—if there is such a thing, objectively. This is because awareness in its most basic form must be fundamental, as the space in which the determination is made to react. We were just talking logic, so let’s lay it down!

Premise 1: Reaction requires the ability to distinguish between states—“this and not-this,” “if this then that.”

Premise 2: To distinguish between states, a system must register difference; it must, in some sense, be aware that change has occurred.

Premise 3: The act of registering difference—however primitive—is indicative of some form of awareness.

Conclusion: Therefore, any system capable of reaction expresses awareness in at least a minimal sense, whether in molecular bonds or neuronal pathways.

That doesn’t mean a molecule feels emotion or “thinks.” It means the principle of awareness—the container of experience and sensation—is present even at the most fundamental levels of existence. As woo-woo as it sounds, it’s a completely rational inference that deliberate response requires awareness of relation. 

   This argument neatly dissolves the divide between “conscious” and “non-conscious” matter. What changes is not the presence of awareness, but the degree and complexity of consciousness contained therein, because as we know—all matter is reactive. 

This isn’t a new idea—but an ancient one. Advaita Vedānta, one of India’s most profound philosophical schools, has been saying something strikingly similar for over 2,500 years! Its central claim is simple, but radical: Consciousness does not arise from matter; everything arises within awareness.

   Where Western thought tends to see awareness as a product of the brain—an emergent property of complex biological systems—Advaita inverts the assumption entirely. According to the Upaniṣads, Awareness (Brahman) is the only constant reality. The world of forms, sensations, and thoughts—everything we call “experience”—appears within that awareness, much like waves upon the surface of the ocean. 

   They aim to reach that universal space of awareness through meditation. In doing so, the differentiation we perceive between “self” and “other” can begin to be seen for what it is: an appearance on the screen of awareness. 

   The guru aims to say: You seem to have forgotten you were watching a movie. Here’s the remote (meditation). Now stop forgetting it’s a screen. It’s not real, silly.

   But it’s deeper than that! You and I, in this view, are not simply people experiencing the universe, we are the universe experiencing life as a person; we are the screen. The Upanishads read:

“One God is hidden in all beings,

all-pervading, the inner Self of all.

He is the overseer of actions, the dwelling place of all beings,

the witness, the inspirer, the one, without attributes.” Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 6.11

The witness (awareness) remains constant while its expressions—life, thought, perception—rise and fall like images on screen or waves atop the surface of the ocean. Physicists might want to shank me for saying so, but even modern physics parallels this paradigm: forms condense and dissolve, energy transforms, but the underlying, eternal field(s) from which everything emanates remain.

…Have I sold you yet? 

***RECORD SCREECHES TO A HAULT***

But if awareness pervades all things, where does individuation begin? That is to say: at what point in the hierarchy of material assimilations does it become like something to be your own thing? We feel like a self, right? Not our bodies. So is an atom aware, not of itself but unto itself? Is a cell its own entity, or does sensation of individuation only emerge when systems become complex enough to observe themselves to some degree? 

   Think of mycorrhizal networks. That has to be like an entirely different experience altogether—where self and other exist in a sort of synesthesial hyperspace.

   And existentially, why do we feel so separate from the whole? Buddhism would laugh at this dualism altogether—there is no independent witness, no eternal observer behind the curtain—only interdependent arising, the ceaseless play of cause and effect we call karma. Buddha would probably say something like:

   You call it the formless witness. I call it a mirage. What you see as the screen behind the movie is still contained within the movie of consciousness. Look closely, and you’ll find no screen at all—only movement, interdependence, and release when you stop clinging to permanence.

   He might argue that everything observable—body, sensation, perception, volition, consciousness, as well as the observer themselves—arises and ceases to our eye. Do we not experience the cessation of awareness under general anesthesia? And if the “witness” were truly changeless, what good does that do us? It could never know change, because knowing requires conscious aggregates, complexity, cognition. Therefore, an unchanging knower is a contradiction in terms.

Oh my gawd! Which is it, then!? Is awareness the unchanging screen the film plays out on, or is the screen just part of the movie—another mirage born of comparison!? Get ready for the next one! We’re about to step into the paradox! 

Consciousness Part 6

   Let’s all go on a little road trip to la la land! Everything you’ve ever experienced is a controlled hallucination, convincing enough that you call it “reality.”

   I used to think matter was just matter…until I started asking the kinds of questions that ruin dinner parties. Enough inquiry, and you’ll soon see there is nothing solid beneath the surface of experience. The reality is: your carpet is just confused stardust pretending to be floor decor. And that dust? It’s not even particulate!

   Matter only feels like matter because our senses are super low-res abstractions. Start prying into it though, and what we call “physical” dissolves into: probabilities, relativity, patterns, mathematical constraints, and non-physical information systems which are self-regulating and semi-intentional if your head’s some distance above the sand.

   But if the foundation of the universe is not chunks of stuff or even stardust, but relationships that respond, then the world isn’t dead material at all.

   Every branch of science keeps unveiling the same uncomfortable truth:

Newton gives us sturdy mechanics: balls bumping balls. Einstein says space bends and time stretches. Quantum physics laughs and tells us everything is a wave until we look—kind of. Bottom line? Reality behaves differently depending on scale, speed, gravity, and observation; and we still have no single story to stitch it all together.

  Atoms aren’t little billiard balls. Electrons aren’t anywhere until everywhere collapses into one possibility. Entangled particles are correlated in a way that looks instantaneous, as if information outruns space itself. That is to say—for those of you who don’t know—because of quantum entanglement, an electron’s spin on one side of the universe can simultaneously correlate with the spin of another electron on the other side of the universe! Tell me that doesn’t sound more like computation than a physical reality.

   Responsiveness is the beginning of mentality.

If a thing can register change, update its state, and propagate information, it is participating — however minimally — in something like experience. It doesn’t need narratives, emotions, or even thought — but a proto-mind is built into the fabric of existence. Some interpret this as intelligent design. Some interpret it as lifeless systems that just “are.” No further explanation extractable without the confines of falsifiability.

   I don’t need to know what it’s like to be another thing to know the same “physical” stuff that results in my experience is equally involved in the rest of the show we call the universe. Matter becomes math. Math becomes code. Code becomes form.

   But that flips our usual picture upside down:

Consciousness is not the last weird miracle to emerge from dead debris. Physical form is what emerges from universal proto-consciousness doing the math it does with everything.

   From everything we understand, we could rearrange matter in any number of ways.

We already do primitive versions: computers simulate worlds, 3‑D printers extrude designs into existence, but imagine a quantum intelligence — a system smart enough to remix the universe’s building blocks directly. A 3D printer that disintegrates and reintegrates:

“Break this down into the right ratios of quarks and leptons and rebuild it into something new.”

Carpet → granite

Mountain → engine

Everything → anything

There’d be material waste, obviously, but no laws forbid the dream. Walk to a mountain. Gather a forest. Sweep up a river. Feed that data into the machine. Now output a person. Perhaps, even a continuation. Not just Torin, but Torin as of April 13th, 2019 at 2:30 pm.

Someone who remembers living as you up to a branching moment… and then diverges into their own path. A new consciousness stamped from the cosmic code.

   Weird? Absolutely. Impossible? Nothing in science or physics says so.

   Okay, I’m getting a little lost in the sauciness. This is why it’s important!

   We’ve spent centuries insisting:

   “Mind arises from matter.”

   Centuries asking:

   “Does essence precede existence, or does existence precede essence?”

   But the evidence keeps screaming:

   ITS A FUCKING FALSE DICHOTOMY!

   Mentality doesn’t appear late to the party, nor does matter exist in a state of true physicality. Mentality is the party, and matter is what the dancing looks like from the outside.

   What we call “reality” is a moving thought. It’s not all ours. We’re not just a mind hallucinating other conscious agents. It is all mind. We are mind, and what we see are the incarnations of mind.

   “Matter” is a momentary expression of a deeper intelligence (or information processing if we want to frame it more scientifically) that will soon be transfigured anew with enough time and influence from other mental constructions.

   And once you truly grasp that—I should maybe say: when you FEEL it—the scope of possibility changes. Walking across a nation, crossing deserts, changing lives—that’s not impossible! We are all ideas playing against each other, influencing each other, some more solid than others.

   We are not isolated minds adrift in a cold, indifferent universe; we are the universe waking up to experience itself through our eyes—eyes perceiving its many other expressions and forms—eyes open to the logos underlying the food we eat, all the way to its transmutation to human brain and abstract thought, once digested.

A Summary on Consciousness

The previous essay initially concluded the series, but some time after finishing it, I wrote this essay which I believe summarizes the many ideas we covered well. 

   Sometime before the walk, I had this 5 hour long, blindfolded meditation. I reached this point where it became so easy to parcel up my inner experience, and the resulting insight seemed to be dropped on me from above. Now, I think it might have actually come from below.

   Throughout most of our existence, we walk the earth witnessing this unified synthesis of experiences we consider to be “reality.” But through meditation, or various extracurricular methods, that experience can be divided into infinitesimal bites. 

   I wasn’t merely watching my inner monologue and letting go of my attachment to the narrative; I was giving my attention to one particular sound and dissolving into nothing but the experience of that sound, with no associated memory or concepts to apply to it. I wasn’t saying to myself, “that’s dripping water.” I was the reverberation itself (not literally, but experientially). 

   And this became true of the various sensations I was navigating within my awareness, be it sound, breeze, pressure, or pain. There is even this space where archetypal iconography reminiscent of a variety of religious traditions might manifest. But nothing miraculous was happening. I wasn’t “freeing my true spirit from egoic control,” or something like that. 

   No, I have no doubt that if you were able to sneak me under an MRI, you would see all the neural correlates associated with my inner activity, as surreal as it may have been. The default mode network would have been largely inactive compared to our typical waking state, the visual cortex flickering on and off in conjunction with the imagery, while my auditory and somatosensory cortex were lighting up like a Christmas tree as my attention touched sound or sensation. 

   Alarm goes off, and I suddenly exclaim, “consciousness is an emergent property!” I swear to God, I didn’t even know the nomenclature at that time. They were just the best words to put to what I meant. And… I was painfully wrong though touching the periphery of something this world needs to hear. 

   “I” am the emergent property. “I” IS the emergent property, and so are “YOU.” But consciousness? THAT is foundational. 

   Do me a favor, and try to forget everything you’ve been told for a moment. You’ve been dropped into this world as a first-time experiencer. All you actually know is that EXPERIENCE is real, because, lo and behold, YOU are experiencing. 

   On top of that, it seems like there’s physical stuff outside of you, and you need that stuff (food, water, shelter, etc.) to avoid a kind of suffering that seems like it could result in the end of your experience (think passing out from hunger, heat, or blood loss).

   Suddenly someone comes along with a description of the way all the “physical stuff” outside of your experience behaves. And it is breathtakingly precise, even predictive. They tell you how it moves, when it moves, and where it moves. When “this” interacts with “that,” it will DO this and that, all the way down to the relational web of mass, charge, and spin. 

   But what IS any of it? “Well, it’s matter!” they say. Okay, but what IS matter? You’re handed the vocabulary again. Mass, charge, fields, forces. Yeah, yeah. But those, again, are only descriptions of what things are in RELATION to one another. WHAT are they INTRINSICALLY? 

   Physics does not, cannot, and will not EVER answer this question. Why? For the same reason the MRI cannot tell you what it’s like to experience ego dissolution or “become the sound you hear,” while it CAN accurately map the neural correlates of those states of consciousness. 

   We have become drunk on physics, assuming it can answer all things. But this is presupposition of the worst kind. Physics, and science for that matter, are near-perfect tools… for a particular job. 

   Science can describe the mango from every angle. It can tell you about its molecular and atomic structure, pigment, lifecycle, sugar content, and maybe even one day turn that mango into an entirely different fruit with the kind of technology capable of atomizing, exchanging, and reconstituting all of its ingredient protons, neutrons, and so forth. It can never give you the experience of its flavor, or for that matter, what it is like to be the mango. 

   To make it really simple, physics cannot describe the inner experience of anything and assumes no inner experience of anything. Apply physics to the human condition and you will describe our behavior and composition, you will never FEEL HUMANITY. 

   Rather than starting with: there is no intrinsic nature, the lights are off, and nothing is experiencing, there is an alternative starting point.

   We can start with: there is certainly an intrinsic nature to some of the physical stuff, some of it is experiencing, because “I” am the intrinsic reality of this body, and “I” am experiencing. 

   If the stuff we touch and see is physically real (which we might INFER, since physics has such predictive, productive, and accurate descriptions) and conscious experience is a part of the physical world (which we KNOW, because we are experiencing as physical bodies) then consciousness and experience are a part of at least some of the physical world. FOR SURE. 

   The issue is, we can’t know where experience ends, because we can’t step outside of ourselves to experience as anything other than ourselves. If I can’t even know that your experience of red is the same as my experience of red, I certainly can’t know what it’s like to be a thing without a central nervous system. BUT I don’t need to be able to empathize with something to assume it's like something to be that thing. Here’s why. 

   Most hypotheses on the issue assume that at a certain level of complexity and structure the lights miraculously come on. But IF the intrinsic nature of physical matter were wholly non-experiential, no amount of rearranging it should produce experience. This isn’t simply presupposition and assumption; it’s painfully incoherent.

   Structure, shuffle, and manipulate away! If none of the pieces have anything to do with “what-it’s-like”ness, their rearrangement won’t either. EXPERIENCE isn’t an emergent property, like liquidity from H2O, because you're describing the appearance of an ENTIRELY NEW substance from ENTIRELY DISSIMILAR substances. 

   Water still has hydrogen and oxygen, and you can still separate them and turn it back into either. But with experience? You're talking about deriving the subjective from the objective, immaterial experience from material non-experience. This would be a brute miracle, known as radical emergence. And if philosophy has taught us anything, it’s that when in doubt, we should favor the most parsimonious conclusion, rejecting the greater miracle. 

   Physicalism doesn’t allow this kind of miracle in any other situation; it just checks out in the doorway of consciousness. Physicalism literally says “new phenomena must arise from what was already there in some intelligible way.”

   Now we’re forced into a different conclusion. And I’m going to build a semi-sloppy, yet formal inductive argument for it. 

   If experience is both real and physical,

   And since physics only describes behavior, relation, and structure 

   And because you know the intrinsic nature in at least one instance of the physical as experience (since you are experiencing)

   And radical emergence from the wholly non-experiential stuff is off the table in favor of the most concise explanation with the fewest ad hoc hypotheses,

   The most reasonable conclusion is that the intrinsic nature of matter was never non-experiential to begin with.

   Consciousness doesn’t show up when physical stuff gets complicated. That’s… again, forget what everyone has told you… it’s ridiculous. But to be sure we understand each other, let’s clarify what consciousness IS NOT. From our own experience we can deduce that consciousness doesn’t require memory, concept, cognition, self-reference, thought, or anything like that. You can be reduced to the mere sensation of being. 

   Consciousness is not emergent.

   The self is emergent.

   Narrative is emergent.

   EGO is emergent.

   This unified perspective I currently experience is emergent. 

   The fact that there is something it’s like for physical processes to occur? THAT goes all the way down. This is the only way we can reconcile the self-preservation and reactions of those things which must certainly be experiencing, yet have no central nervous system, neurons, axons, or dendrites. It’s the only way we can make sense of clams, barnacles, venus fly traps, zooids, jellyfish, mycorrhizal networks, the communication between plants via pheromones when under attack by insects and the like, and so many more naturally occurring phenomena that we are all turning a blind eye to.

   Consciousness is not something that suddenly pops into existence. Consciousness goes all the way down to the minerals, molecules, and atoms which feed what we call life. Consciousness is simply what matter has been like from the start, viewed from inside. 

   CONSCIOUSNESS is the underlying substratum of all that is and will be.