Among the many mysteries in which we are embedded, one the greatest is consciousness. There are many types and levels of consciousness, which has led to countless debates about whether plants or animals have it, and if so, which ones and how much. Depending on the definition you choose, any living thing can have consciousness, or it can be assigned only to organisms with complex brains. Whatever level you choose, the existence of consciousness has remained a mystery even after thousands of years of investigation. Here, we will focus on what is often described as the aspect that sets human beings apart from other beings, “self” consciousness. The awareness that of existing as an individual self.
There is little question that various animals are capable of many forms of consciousness: preparing for the future, communicating complicated messages, and remembering past events while bringing those memories to bear on current actions. They can form strong, lasting bonds with other creatures, and even have the capacity for humor. But few animals seem to think of themselves as having an individual self that can stop and reflect. To us, most animals seem to proceed more on the basis of instinct. (I am not completely opposed to the argument that some advanced animals can do some level of the things we sometimes think of as uniquely human. It is not clear. I have wondered at times how animals might be thinking about us, but I will leave that to others to imagine. We know so little about our own consciousness, let’s focus on that here, and leave the “what animals do and do not know” question for others to consider.)
But I do want to deal with the issue of time. Our relationship with time is one of the most distinctive aspects of being human. As individuals, we see that our lives have a unique past, that we have a personal history. We can examine its trajectory and then think about where it is headed, our personal future. With that awareness, we can think about where we would like to go, we create goals and plans for our personal future. To help accomplish these plans and goals, we developed complex languages, and then ways to use symbols into patterns that led to written languages. Reason developed as a tool to help us decide the best way to bring about the future we wished would occur, and mathematics grew out of this reasoning process.
I do not mean to present the above developments in a direct cause and effect way, for know one knows how it happened, or why. I only wish to suggest that our relationship with time, and the human ability to imagine complex futures and organize resources in complicated ways to bring them about led to many things that seem uniquely human, such as the creation of science and engineering. And these, in turn, made possible sophisticated structures, magnificent buildings of all kinds, as well as complex transportation systems. And our relationship with time is central to our desire to pass on, including to future generations, the ideas we have developed, and this gave rise to the creation of literature, philosophy, art, and theology.
And all the above require that we make conscious choices to deny immediate satisfactions for the sake of future goals (goals that can even reach into future generations). This is true for our personal goals, and also for any long-term project involving the well-being or satisfaction of groups of people we care about. Whether any other animals make such conscious choices when they undertake building projects, I do not, but it seems clear that we humans have developed the capacities for the written language, art, building projects, and communication systems far beyond any other species. We are now, of course, recognizing that this can be a curse, as well as a blessing, and what we will do with the incredible capacities we have developed remains to be seen. Perhaps only if we learn to pay more attention to the wisdom traditions that developed simultaneously with our other capacities will a healthy future be possible.
One trait that might be uniquely human is our ability to contemplate our own death, to consider what it means that sometime in the future we will die. The philosopher Martin Heidegger said that this capacity was crucial for being human, that the awareness of our own death set in motion all kinds of thoughts and choices, fears and anxieties, possibilities and dilemmas. Crucially, knowing that we will die means that we will never be able to fulfill everything we can imagine for our lives, because we recognize that our lives are finite, limited. Further, we know that loved ones will suffer and die—even that our actions or inactions might be the cause their suffering and death, or our own. Because we are conscious of time in this way, we have to contend with the burden of anxiety.
One of the most complex levels of human consciousness is the ability to stop and consider, to make choices about which actions we will take or not take, to consider options and chose from different alternatives, and make choices about which actions are right versus those that are wrong. This ability is crucial for the functioning of healthy societies and to the belief that codes of law matter. It is essential for the idea of justice to have any meaning, and it is the basis upon which court systems function, except those in the hands of tyrants who operate on raw power alone. The ultimate expression of this capacity is that we can choose what we believe or do not believe. This leads to our ability to contemplate the ultimate purpose and meaning of our existence, and to make fundamental choices about how we will live in relation to what we believe.
Another dramatic consequence of the ability to view ourselves as separate beings is our capacity to realize that other people have their own, differing perspectives. The next step along this path is to recognize that others can legitimately have different points of view, rather than assuming we are right and those who do not agree with us are wrong. Many people do not take this step, but a significant number do.
At its highest levels, this human capacity to recognize others have their own separate lives, and struggles, can lead compassion, forgiveness, and mercy, even to sacrificing own own physical well-being for a cause we believe in, or in service to people in need. And it can lead to a conscious commitment to love another person over time, even to try to love all others, through a decision that love is itself a virtue to be cultivated, practiced, and honored. Instincts sometimes lead to protecting our immediate family, or tribe, but having recognized our separateness, we can begin to consciously choose to honor and respect our connectedness with other people, far beyond anything that instincts alone can provide.
Most of us seldom stop and consider all these ramifications of the existence of consciousness, but we should. If we only take it for granted without realizing its power and possibility in our lives, we will be enslaved to our own whims and subject to the manipulation of others. No wonder Socrates said almost 2500 years ago that “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
Where did Consciousness Come From?
But let’s back. How did we come to be conscious, aware of our existence? No one knows. Did we create it, or was it there from the beginning? How did we come to think of ourselves as separate from the world in which we are embedded? Again, no one has any idea. Listen to the experts, such as Alva Noë, one of today’s leading thinkers in the field of consciousness studies (a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences):
After decades of concerted effort on the part of neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers, the only agreement about how the brain can make us conscious, how it can give rise to “sensation, feeling, and subjectivity” is: “We don’t have a clue.”
And Jerry Fodor, a cognitive scientist and leading philosopher of mind:
Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.
Although we have no idea what it is, without consciousness there would be no science, no art, no religion, no friendship, no true romance, no questions to answer, no human life memory, no self-awareness, and no modern technology (at least as we usually think about these things). In fact, without consciousness, could there be a universe?
Skeptico:[A] Of course there could. I can imagine a universe in which there is no life or consciousness, but stars and planets and such floating in space.
Wisdom Seeker: With what are you imagining such a universe? Doesn’t this “imagining” require consciousness? If there were no conscious beings to imagine, what makes you “think” there would be a universe? And where would it be? Imagine that universe of yours for a moment. Then imagine you did not exist, and that no other conscious being existed to observe or imagine a universe: The lights go out, the theater goes dark. Where would a universe now be? Add to this the fact that modern science is telling us that space is a construct of the human mind. So if there were no human mind, where would a universe be?
The difficulty of these questions has led some reductionists to embrace the absurd, saying that consciousness does not exist. A strange argument, for anyone who makes it—who questions the existence of consciousness—is using consciousness to create an argument rejecting it.
Skeptico: What does that mean?
Wisdom Seeker: To question whether or not consciousness exists requires someone being conscious of existing, as well as someone who assumes there are other conscious beings who can hear and understand their arguments.
Skeptico: Why?
Wisdom Seeker: If a person is not conscious, how would he or she formulate an argument? And if a person did not believe there were other conscious beings to understand the arguments, why would they take the time to formulate them?
But leaving aside the absurd theories, for thousands of years the greatest minds in history have grappled with the question of consciousness, producing speculations ranging from the religious to the philosophical, from the scientific to the psychological. Besides the basic question of what it is, another eternally intriguing question has been: What does it “mean” for us that we are conscious? But although this question has been studied and debated for thousands of years, no answers have been forthcoming upon which the majority of people can agree. What is more, we do not seem to be making much progress toward an answer: we do not seem to be closer to agreement than we were two thousand, one thousand, or five hundred years ago. In fact, there is probably more disagreement today about what consciousness is than there has ever been.
Will we ever understand consciousness? It is hard to say. Will the answers come from modern research into the activities of the physical brain? Maybe, but as neuroscientist Sam Harris says, “There is nothing about a brain, studied at any scale, that even suggests that it might harbor consciousness.” [1] And Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, is even more explicit:
Science knows surprisingly little about mind and consciousness. Current orthodoxy holds that consciousness is created by electrochemical reactions in the brain, and that mental experiences fulfill some essential data-processing function. However, nobody has any idea how a congeries of biochemical reactions and electrical currents in the brain creates the subjective experience of pain, anger, or love. … We have no explanation and we had better be clear about that.[2]
What we know, so far, is that researching the physical brain has not led to answers to the core questions, but only to wildly differing opinions (as well as to the frustrated response by a few researchers mentioned earlier who say that since our mechanical instruments can’t find consciousness, it must not exist). Maybe in the end we will discover that the great 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was exactly right when he said “Even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life [and therefore consciousness will] remain untouched.”[3]
The hopes stirred by brain research with regard to consciousness are similar to the hopes fueled a hundred years ago by the incredible sweep of success in physics. Then, the idea became fashionable that with its awesome powers, physics would provide an answer to all the riddles of the universe, including consciousness. But such was not to be the case. Rather, the tables were turned, for the deeper physics went in its exploration of the material world, the more mysterious the world it discovered became, and the more consciousness escaped its grasp. Gradually, many physicists came to believe that consciousness would never be explained by physics, because consciousness was the starting point, the very source of the material world. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, for instance, commented:
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.[4]
Many others joined Planck in this view, such as Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner: “It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”[5] Sir James Jeans, thermodynamicist and astronomer, observed quite pithily the direction many physicists were going: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.”[6]
This theme, that consciousness gives rise to, lies behind, and is necessary for the physical world to exist became a powerful idea among many physicists in the 20th century. British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington reflected this view in Science And The Unseen World, saying that he had come to believe that more was necessary to explain the world than what was being discovered in physics and that he and many of his colleagues were turning to the one place “where more might become known,” to the “starting point,” which was “human consciousness.” Eddington felt consciousness was the crucial place to look for a deeper understanding, for “the stuff of the world is mind stuff.”[7] He was joined in this conclusion by the great mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who stated emphatically that in the continuing development of physics, “I am arguing for some kind of active role for consciousness, and indeed a powerful one.”[8] Nobel-winning biologist George Wald put the matter succinctly: “Mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always.” It is “the source … of physical reality.”[9]
The purpose of this book, however, is not to focus on the many differing opinions about consciousness or the conflicts between science and theology concerning it. Neither is it to analyze the different philosophical positions regarding consciousness, nor to consider the many theories generated by current brain research, although we will do a little of both. But the main goal will be to explore and expand upon an idea articulated by Nobel-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli:
It would be most satisfactory of all if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.[10]
Psyche as Pauli was using it here is the totality of the human mind, soul, and spirit. Pauli and Carl Jung were close friends and had discussed the relation between Jung’s ideas about the psyche and physics many times, and Pauli was very interested in how these two seemingly divergent streams in human understanding could be brought together. This will also be one of the main themes of this book.
Another exploration will be an idea going back to ancient times that became an important question to many of the greatest physicists of the past century: What is the connection between “consciousness” and each one of us? Are there many separate, individual consciousnesses, or are they connected in some way? In fact, are they really separate at all? Nobel-winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger didn’t think so:
To divide or multiply consciousness is something meaningless. There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousness … in truth there is only one mind.
And if this is even partially true, was Einstein correct when he concluded:
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe,” a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings, as separated from the rest … but (this is) an optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
I, for one, feel great excitement at undertaking Einstein’s challenge and widening my circle of compassion as far as possible. But whether that is the most important challenge of life, we will have to understand ourselves as well as the nature of our own consciousness much better that most of us do now. We will have to decide whether we believe we actually have the capacity to make conscious choices before it makes sense to ask the question of what might be the best path for our lives. And before we can develop sufficient determination to live toward whatever we conclude to be the highest and best possibility for our lives, we must come to believe that our choices will make any difference.
[A] If you haven’t met him in my previous books, let me introduce you to an old friend who often asks questions and sometimes challenges what I am writing. His name is Skeptico, and he is often in dialogue with Wisdom Seeker.
[1] Sam Harris, Waking Up, 60. (need more detailed information)
[2] Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus, 108-109. (need more detailed information)
[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951, 187.
[4] J. W. N. Sullivan, “Interview with Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck,” Series of Interviews with Leading Men of Science, no. 6, The Observer, January 25, 1931.
[5] Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma: Physcis Encounters Consciousness (Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2011), 237.
[6] James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 139. First edition 1930.
[7] Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1928), 276.
[8] Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 446.
[9] George Wald, “Life and Mind in the Universe,” International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, vol. 26, Issue Supplement 11, March 12/15, 1984, Abstract.
[10] Wolfgang Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, Springer Science & Business Media, 1994, 260