The Mystery of Bearing Witness | Consciousness and its Relation to Existence

“The key to growth is the introduction of higher
dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” — Lao Tzu

Despite being the most intimately known facet of our existence, our conscious awareness remains the ultimate mystery. Just what is it? It’s not “energy,” certainly not “matter,” and although it’s undoubtedly an information consumer, it is most definitely not a computer. So just what exactly is this curious non-entity that illuminates the world and brings it into being?

Awareness; it’s not even a thing, not even an object. You can’t put your finger on it. You can’t show it to anyone. And yet, it is the very “thing” that moves you about, decodes these words, and knows experience. Curiously, any attempt to define consciousness already presupposes it, and even after all that will be said of it in the coming paragraphs, it will still elude a concrete definition. Despite its mysterious nature, consciousness — and the worlds and knowledge that it gets us in touch with — remains the most critical aspect of our existence. Without it, we would be intellectually and emotionally inert automatons, lifeless info-zombies.

Although incomplete, we have a deep understanding of biological processes, physical principles, and chemical interactions. Even ethereal domains like morals, ethics, and socioeconomics are subjects with which we are pretty familiar. But the ‘what’ of consciousness — the curious “thing” that allows us to know all of these in the first place — remains an unequivocal enigma. Its immaterial nature places it entirely beyond the reach of science such that it has historically ignored it. But, we would do better to realize or remember that it is consciousness that is “doing” science. It is the inquisitive mind — embodied sentience led by an insatiable curiosity — that puts questions to nature in the form of experiments and the like. And it is only ever mind that is mindful of what it is doing. To go on ignoring it is blasphemy.

As such, we could say that consciousness is the necessary precondition for all meaningful existence. The word ‘meaningful’ is essential to the previous sentence. Because as human beings, we care about things. Things matter to us, and meaning can only be present to Spirit — to mind. Matter cares not for meaning nor purpose. Matter doesn’t even know about matter, and yet its dynamical interactions somehow “produce” consciousness. How?

Many usually claim the obvious and agreeable fact that the universe doesn’t seem to care about consciousness. It appears to be a late bloomer regarding its evolution and seems to be an entity — if we can call it that — that only humans and the higher animals possess. However, I would argue that all life — down to the single solitary cell — has some form of conscious awareness, not in the sense of knowing of one’s own existence as self-consciousness almost certainly belongs only to concept-forming and language-endowed homo sapiens. ‘Higher’ animals to be sure, but animals nonetheless. But more along the lines of blind and primitive sentience, an extremely primitive feeling.

There must be something “it is like” to be a cell performing bacterial chemotaxis, traversing the petri dish, acquiring nutrients — there is a kind of desire there. Or to be a blade of grass consuming the rays of the sun and reaching for the heavens. I would go so far as to argue that we share our primal sense of balance with plants as they orient and reorient themselves in relation to gravity. Primitive sentience is not something known but intimately felt. Considering the (possible) inner life of these strange creatures, we can consider the possible difference between the living and non-living and see it as a measure of inherent complexity and the depth of degree by which they vibrate or distort the mindfield. The mindfield is the universal field of consciousness that all unified objects access through the functioning of the sophisticated instruments that are their bodies. The ‘what’ of consciousness then, is that it is a timeless, universal field that we access through physical processes rather than produce. This field is timeless and infinite in sense such that the more complex the being accessing it, the greater degree to which it is activated, resulting in an “expansion” of consciousness. (Such is the view of consciousness I hold. For more on the mindfield check out the video on my YouTube channel — Sophia’s Ichor.)

With regards to human beings, consciousness is absolutely necessary and fundamental for our existence, as it is the what that reveals the universe to ourselves. As Erwin Schrödinger — one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics — once wrote: “The show that is going on obviously acquires a meaning only with regard to the mind that contemplates it.”

Consciousness, then, brings the universe into being such that existence itself can be known and only then can attain meaning. For only by its light do we find ourselves embedded within and in causal contact with the universe, able to affect it by our very touch. Further to this and in coming to know and understand others as we do ourselves, we also find that love exists in the universe. That love is in us means love is in the universe. Love exists, is real, and is no mere physical process, chemical reaction, or hormonal interaction. Despite the necessity of these factors for love’s coming into being, love is something wholly new and other and is above and beyond its antecedents. Love is a modality of consciousness.

Now you might be asking what is the meaning of existence if it presupposes consciousness? The answer I will give to Joseph Campbell, who said, “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” This quote encapsulates the core tenet of existentialism, the philosophy began by Friedrich Nietzsche. He argued that human life has no absolute or externally determined meaning but that it is we who must — in the contexts in which we find ourselves — instill it with significance.

Given that, the answer is always-already right here, inside all of us and illuminating this endless moment; it is awareness itself and its present relation to the world.

We have already noted that consciousness is not a thing, but it is not nothing either. In fact, regarding the most important situation in the entire universe, our presently lived experience, consciousness is indeed everything.

Why is presently lived experience the most important thing in the world? The truth is subtle but undeniable because the present moment is all we truly ever have. It is the ‘present’ because it is given to us as a gift. It is only through this temporal window we call “now,” that we can affect the world and leave lasting change, our actions echoing in eternity, forming part of a causal chain stretching in both directions to end at infinity. Of course, what we do with the time given to us will have effects we cannot foresee, but we should remember that they can only transpire in that precious and oft-forgotten timeless moment we call the present. A moment known only by that mysterious entity we live; consciousness.

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