Time ticks away, marked by an increase in entropy (things breaking down, falling apart, rotting, rusting) but also by an increase in syntropy (new life coming into being, new stars and galaxies forming, awareness growing all the while).
If you accept that Consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe, from which space, time, matter and energy derive, then it becomes far easier to accept that your small-c consciousness is eternal.
The theological question, then, is to define the word 'your'. Pure consciousness, untainted by ego, the driving force behind our quest for status. The pure consciousness of subjective experience, of being in the moment, unmotivated by any material plans, just being aware of existence. Your consciousness is not boastful, it seeks not status; it observes, it feels.
The discrete units of consciousness are qualia, defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. We live them – but do we notice them? Do those moments imprint themselves upon our memory?
Memory is our past living on in the present. Indeed, the past that exists in the present does so solely through memory. And our memory is far from perfect. Our memories of events are analogue, rather than digital. They get coloured and mutate in the retelling. The ones that evince positive responses from the listener are kept, the ones that fail to impress are forgotten. As the ego-storyteller retells the story to ever-greater effect with each retelling, the boring bits are skipped, and the focus is on the wow! moments, that tend to aggrandise the storyteller's ego.
But qualia flashbacks are different; they remain constant. Your ego wasn't involved; you were just the conscious observer. Qualia memories – not of events but of instants of being – do not fade, do not transmute. They feel as real as they did when you originally experienced them. The memories snap you right back into the moment. They may be experienced weakly, like a déjà vu, but they're absolutely genuine. They do not change in the retelling, because they are never retold, they are refelt.
PAFF! I felt one just now, preparing lunch – a flashback from childhood; reading Look and Learn magazine on the sitting-room floor; an advertisement for a Scalextric model car racing track. The feel of the dark-green carpet; sunlight streaming in from the window; cooking smells. Cosy, happy, engaged in my imagination. Qualia flashbacks such as this can be conjured up from memory, but more likely they're triggered by sensory inputs such as light, sound (music), smell, taste or feel.
If consciousness is syntropic, defying the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it would suggest that qualia memories could be eternal, borne into Cosmos – by who knows what mechanism – into the Akashic record, to be replayed within a different biological container's mind at a later date. As triggered or unbidden anomalous qualia memory flashbacks or else in dreams.
And now onto the questions. The anomalous qualia memories that are clearly not those experienced by my current biological self. They come from another place, another time, and experienced by a different biological self – and yet feel as real as qualia memories that I can put a finger on.
The experience is real, it's genuine, I've had this since childhood, it is my quest to learn more about these anomalous qualia memories, exomnesia or xenomnesia (memories from outside, or foreign memories). Can these be scientifically explained? If so, what is the vector? Some as-yet-undiscovered field of consciousness? Or is searching for scientific explanations essentially futile – the answer being metaphysical in nature?
Tomorrow: more about the Ego
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