Cosmic Consciousness

The Moon hidden beneath clouds is the way I feel sometimes. Confusion puts a heavy burden on my soul. There is an unsettling truth to the idea of cosmic consciousness being independent of ours. Human consciousness is a wrinkle in the universal eternal Now. Death is a clock ticking inside us, and before the clock strikes, we are specks in the near-infinite field of the Universe. The three circles of dance in the observable Universe are inflows and outflows of a time that prevails over ours. A black hole is a gate to where our consciousness feels left out. Time is born in a void, lost in a black hole. The Universe at the present epoch is the single ontological ultimate there is and the definitive ground of all spatiotemporally localized centres of consciousness.

Clouds of yellow, purple, and white flora bring colors to the garden from one season to the next. As I feel its tangibility, time is no longer an illusion. All matter is time-experiencing or time-involving (1). Despite being closely related, time and consciousness are discriminable entities. Beyond the apparent lack of unity in consciousness, it is through time that all matter enjoys a little bit of consciousness. The mechanisms of integration that combine forms and dissociation that tear them apart are the colors of time.  

Although time's arrow is perspectival, every physical object feels time. It is the source of their identity (2). Consciousness is a subjective experience, the way time is a perspectival phenomenon. Time asymmetry reflects in all the seemingly irreconcilable perspectives or points of view. Individuality is an illusion. Differences in forms and contents are only aspects of time. In the physical Universe, where randomness and free will are dominant principles, I see them as equally essential to consciousness's emergence and evolution.

If time is reflected in the macroscopic irreversibility, it is no more than a consequence of the microscopic irreversibility. Streams of particles within the flow of time constitute the basis for complex and dynamically evolving physical forms. As the Universe expands and electrons interact with photons,  the cosmic microwave background isn’t unlike a snapshot of some form of consciousness. The interplay between electromagnetic waves and matter involves conscious actors in each scene. Whether it is a leaf of grass or the journey work of the stars, they all are conscious states from their point of view. 

 If a cell derives its energy from the transfer of electrons from one molecule to the next, are we holobionts hosting the consciousness of microorganisms? Are we, Homo sapiens, more conscious than other hominids? Superposed layers of consciousness lie in the texture of time and space. It is not because we do not know what it feels like to be an Adélie penguin in Antarctica or “any of the first animals whose lives felt like something to them”(3) that we are not from the same evolutionary cradle that involves consciousness. That I am helpless to feel what a hummingbird feels when it sticks its head into flowers of the trumpet vine is only evidence of a spacetime boundary that separates us. If individuality is an illusion, so is the divide between us. Hindered in its free flow by an army of armors, shells, and layers,  caught in the canvas of spacetime, whispered in our deaf ears, consciousness is still coextensive with the Universe.

Writing takes me to places I do not expect. If the term ‘realist’ applies to those who believe in seen and unseen physical matter, including the many species of particles, I am one of them. And if the word ‘magical’ implies that what we see and know is not the whole story, I am a magical realist. I believe consciousness is rooted in the physical side of things and that “the distinction between physical and mental is superficial and unreal”(4). Matter and consciousness go hand in hand.

To me, cosmopsychism is a bit counterintuitive because I see the Universe through the prism of process, time, and evolution that begins with the smallest constituents. I can not conceive the Universe as an absolute. As it expands, it becomes what it is. It is difficult to think of a “cosmic conscious entity as the absolute” given that I see matter and consciousness as co-emergent. The ocean of consciousness that is the background of the ever-changing physical reality is not an absolute but the object itself of process, time, and evolution. 

 The relevant mechanisms of integration merely serve to weave small islands of sentience into bigger and bigger landmasses. Although I do not see a dual nature in the Universe the way Itay Shani describes it,  I, too, see our Universe as a sentient medium. Are there restrictions applied? Are only organic boundaries permeable to consciousness? Are there aspects of consciousness concealed? Maybe, but the fact that there is a communication breakdown between the different parts of the whole is not a sufficient reason to dismiss such a theory as ‘bottom-up panpsychism.’ 

A fundamental question is whether there is an ultimate reality and where it lies. John Wheeler’s concept of observer-participant could be viewed in a different light as a “cosmic dissociation” that happens at the level of individual living organisms. Ultimately, our framework of reality is as good as our consciousness makes it to be. As we envision increasingly more complex forms of consciousness, will our thoughts and ideas, too, have a life of their own, merging into clouds of consciousness? Will fears and emotions do the same? As we peel layer after layer of physical reality, will we reach the layer of consciousness? Could antimatter be consciousness? Could there be a wave-particle of consciousness? Could consciousness just be another state of matter? 

(1) Galen Strawson, Mental Reality

(2) Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

(3) Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds 

(4) Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of matter