Questioning life, where did Earth come from, who am I, why am I, what is consciousness, have been fundamental human quests since before storytelling began. They have also been central to my own spiritual, intellectual adventure since my earliest memories.
After a lifetime of keeping up on the heartbeat of latest scientific findings about the dance between geology and biology and time creating Earth’s evolutionary cornucopia. I’ve internalized the understanding that I am truly an evolved biological creature, a product of Earth’s processes.
This has cleared my mind, opening new vistas toward a better understanding of consciousness, myself, other people, our human condition and how we relate to Earth (who, according to the full weight of scientific study, quite literally turns out to be the Mother of our existence).
This awareness has soured me on current popular philosophical discussions and conjectures about consciousness. They leave me cold because they disregard obvious details, such as:
… Consciousness is an interaction;
… Consciousness is a product of biological necessity;
… Consciousness is produced from within an organism via its body, needs, and experiences;
… Consciousness only exists within the bow-wave of the living “now” as it races down evolution’s cascade of time;
… Creature consciousness exists on a spectrum from the simple awareness of single cells, to the introspective ego that drapes over our biological human body.
As for failure of imagination. Consider the ink spilled upon pondering: “Why does a bat feel like a bat?” Well, think about it, a bat inhabits a bat’s biological body and lives a bat’s life. Why should a bat not feel like a bat?
“Why do you feel like ‘you’?” Because you inhabit your unique body with its unique heritage, and it is the vehicle you experience everything through. Why expect to feel like something else?
It is such failures of classic philosophy and its descendants that leaves me free to suppose a materialist science abiding bottom-up, evolutionary appreciating, way of exploring the mysteries of our human consciousness.
One that begins with taking on a deep appreciation for the Physical Reality ~ Human Mindscape divide and its various echoes, such as the brain ~ mind divide; biology ~ metaphysics divide; etc. Taking that a step further, viscerally appreciating that my biological body is the cumulative result of a half billion years’ worth of successful generations. Furthermore, that my mind is the cumulative total of all the experiences of my singular body’s particular life.
All that, coupled with personal experiences has led me to conclude that the best window into the mysteries of human consciousness is to be found watching infants grow. Discovering, then learning to manipulate their own body parts, in the process igniting their own awareness that grows into an active hungry mind, as the child’s body become ever more sophisticated inside and out.
Especially during that first “sacred period” lasting roughly a hundred days, when a newborn infant traverses from awakening awareness, through self-discovery, budding sense of self with its accompanying birth of ego, mind, consciousness as the toddler appears – who enables the body/brain/mind to continue developing toward full maturity and living its potential.
When meeting an infant, I am always astounded by the intensity of the Being within those infant eyes looking back into my eyes. It makes me feel that they are already searching. See how intently they examine surroundings, then head and eyes will move toward unexpected sounds and activity, which indicates not simply awareness, but also curiosity and problem solving.
That newborn baby has no clue about anything, but this thriving infant’s body possesses half a billion years’ worth of generations learning and experience and drive, engineered into its biology, and that is what’s expressing itself in every moment.
During waking hours the infant never stops moving, mouth, tongue, arms, legs, hands, feet, backbone arch, fingers, toes. First recognition, then increasing control, then goals and actions with ever greater coordination.
Then comes that angelic sleep. When on the inside, the body is abuzz with bodily construction activity including setting up neural networks along with other operations & communication channels, such as lymphatic system and the fascinating web of connective tissue and others. At every level the body needing to communicate with its various subsystems, along with processing the input it receives from the outside world.
In humans these interwoven connections reach a critical-mass, an escape velocity, and the self-conscious mind is ignited, fed and driven by physical interactions, experiences. My words. (For the serious scientific lowdown look up Drs. Mark Solms and also Antonio Damasio and others.)
We can witness as our helpless newborn develops the body, that builds the communication networks needed to continue growing the body of this sacred bundle of potentialities. Which in turn encourages the active body to push its bounds and build more body, and connections, and so on.
Our little Being shines through those intent eyes and with the weeks and months those eyes reflect the birth of human consciousness. The way an infant looks at one is quite different from a toddler’s, or five-year-old’s, etc. Consciousness and Ego grow as the child’s experiences multiply and this gets reflected through the window of our eyes. With the years the changes become less dramatic but continue through all our days. Moral of this digression? In my world the eyes are the window into the state of a person’s consciousness.
Here, I’m talking about witnessing the birth of human consciousness. The creation of the metaphysical world of our individual and collective Mindscape. The realm of all our thoughts and desires and everything else going on in our heads.
The newborn growing into a thinking, intentional toddler with an ego, and a driven biological body/brain that produces its unique mind (the inside reflection of your body communicating with yourself), all that will grow and expand as this toddler continues experiencing life on its way to childhood, collecting experiences and lessons that build one’s mindscape as this child is inexorably drawn forward to eventually disappear into an adult.
This, I believe, is where constructive insights into the mysteries of our ego and self-conscious mind reside.
I am, therefore, I write, and share, and invite comments.