In search of spiritual immortality

Lent 2019, Day 12

To live forever, you must forget who you are. The flashbacks are rare, but they happen too often to be dismissed; atavistic echoes, anomalous flashes of familiarity about times that have no right to be familiar. Continuity, a continuous whole, a metaphysical progression - our [current] bodies are but flimsy vessels, vectors carrying consciousness onward and upward, consciousness that has evolved through myriad creatures going all the way back to the earliest, simplest life forms on our planet -

- And then? Was there consciousness before life, or is consciousness an emergent property of life?

This, dear readers, science has yet to establish. My own instincts tell me that consciousness is as much a property of matter as mass or energy. Panpsychism: the notion view that consciousness, mind, or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of all things. [My brother reminds me to distinguish between panpsychism and hylopathism - the belief that matter is sentient. Hylopathism is opposed to the assertion that consciousness results exclusively from properties of specific types of matter such as brain tissue.]

Yet just as we can only perceive, at our human scale, the tiniest fraction of the difference between the radius of a hydrogen atom (5.3 x 10^-11 m) and the radius of the observable universe, (8.8 x 10²⁶ m), so our perception of consciousness is firmly rooted at the human scale.

We appreciate that lower-order mammals - our pets - display irrefutable hallmarks of consciousness as do cephalopods - octopus and squid. But just as we cannot peer into the inner shell of an atom with our own eyes, so our own consciousness finds it impossible to perceive consciousness innate within single-celled organisms. While biologists are beginning to appreciate that signs of consciousness can be found within amoeba and paramecium, which can show feelings and can learn. Very well. But below that level? If (and it's one of the greatest ifs we can ponder!) consciousness exists as a universal property - a proto-consciousness, a building block, like an electron or proton - then what's at that macro, galactic level? I would like to posit the notion of consciousness evolving, reaching ever-higher levels, and that such an evolution is nothing less than the purpose of the universe.

And the highest order of consciousness - that is what we humans have tended to call God.

What holds us back from moving towards greater proximity to God is our biologies, our complexes of inferiority or superiority, our ego, narcissism. The 'I' in our daily lives. Try to shed as much of this human baggage, experience the qualia that come from the observation of one's purest consciousness, and the way to spiritual evolution opens. It is a slow path of growth, yet we have all the time in the Universe.

This time last year:
Knowing and being and intuition

This time two years ago:
Rzeszów - capital of Poland's south-east corner

This time five years ago:
A tipping point in European history

This time six years ago:
Random sentiments from London suburbs

This time seven years ago:

Stalinist neo-classicism in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:

A week into Lent

This time nine years ago:
Afternoon-dusk-night in the city centre

This time ten years ago:
A particularly harrowing reality

This time 11 years ago:
Wetlands waiting for the spring