On Consciousness (Pt II) – Lent 2025: Day eight

Your consciousness – my consciousness – is what makes you, and I, unique. The 'feel' of me being me is something that I alone can experience; it's what makes me individual to me. What makes me individual to everyone else is my appearance and behaviour – judged objectively within others' subjective experiences of me. Personality is indivisible. 

So – is each individual consciousness consigned to one biological body? Is that youness of you locked in your skull? Or is consciousness something that can transcend the physical? Can it facilitate communication with other consciousnesses (telepathy)? Can it allow one to see into the future (precognition)? Can it survive biological death? Can it resurface in a new biological container (reincarnation)?

British mathematician and cosmologist, Bernard Carr, talks of 'Big-C' Consciousness as operating across the universal level, while 'small-c' consciousness is what you and I experience subjectively. I see this is as a particularly useful metaphor that helps me construct my belief system, my way of looking at reality.

My big question is not so much whether, but to what extent, can our 'small-c' consciousness tap into and align itself with that 'Big-C' Consciousness, which as I wrote earlier in this series, I see as the Cosmic Purpose.

This brings me the concept of non-local consciousness. It challenges the current physicalist view that consciousness is solely a product of the brain, a by-product of biological evolution. The idea that consciousness may extend beyond the individual, transcending physical boundaries – even the limitations of space and time – sounds wild and heretical at first. It suggests a more interconnected and potentially universal nature of reality than that described by the Newtonian paradigm of cause and effect. A universe of billiard balls predictably colliding and predictably reacting. 

Non-local consciousness suggests that consciousness might exist independently, beyond the human brain. Before the scientific revolution which began in the 17th century, such a concept would have been commonplace; animist religions would ascribe consciousness and agency to animals, plants, places and celestial objects. The scientific paradigm would describe such beliefs as primitive superstition. Yet the development of quantum mechanics a century ago started to nibble away at Newtonian certainty.  

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where particles become interconnected and influence each other instantaneously regardless of their location (Einstein's "spooky action at a distance"), is seen as being a possible mechanism for non-local consciousness. However, for those less in need of a scientific explanation, philosophical concepts such as panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness is a fundamental property of all matter, align with the idea of non-local consciousness.

Did we humans once have greater powers to tap into non-local consciousness, powers that have atrophied as we came to accept materialist physicalism as the ground truth of reality? Quite possibly. Maybe the shamans that guided our ancestors to the best hunting grounds and called down rain to end droughts were more effective at this than science gives them credit for – above chance; your ancestors' tribes depended on it. They survived and reproduced successfully for over 380,000 years – something proven by your existence.

So – in summary: is there such a thing as non-local consciousness? It boils down to belief. My intuition is: yes, it is true, but weakly so. A cumulative succession of small, local miracles. A weak power, not something to attempt to quantify or to turn into data for scientific analysis, it just is. And, according to my intuitions about spiritual evolution, it will evolve over time.

A tiny percentage of humans may have extraordinary psi powers that amaze others. The more you believe, the stronger those powers become

One psi power you may wish to check out for yourself: scopaesthesia – the sense of being stared at. Take up a vantage point above a crowd and fix your gaze on the back of one person's head. Focus your conscious flow upon that person. See whether they start looking around to see who's looking at them. I've done this recently and it worked both times, surprising me with how effective this particular power is. What did it prove to me? Only that non-local consciousness is not something that can easily be dismissed. Below: "Can I make that person turn around and start looking for the person who's looking at them?" [Generated by Google Imagen 3.0]

Can you measure non-local consciousness using the scientific method? Many are trying, creating experiments intended to detect psi powers such as psychokinesis, precognition or telepathy. Check out Dean Radin (experiments into parapsychology) and Rupert Sheldrake (scopaesthesia and the four-friends telephone experiment); check out Ky Dickens' and Diane Hennacy Powell's The Telepathy Tapes podcast.

My personal belief is that such powers are not intended to be detected by (or within) the current paradigm of science. First, we need a paradigm shift as massive as the one from alchemy to science that began the end of the 16th century.

Tomorrow: the Ghost in the Machine, and is the Sun Conscious?

Lent 2024: Day eight
Spirituality for our (New) Age (Pt III)

Lent 2023: Day eight
A Universe into which life fits exactly

Lent 2022: Day eight
Body and Soul

Lent 2021: Day eight
Guilty of feeling guilty

Lent 2020: Day eight
Salvation - or peace of mind?

On Consciousness (Pt I) – Lent 2025: Day seven

I'm walking along in my garden. It's a beautiful morning; the sky is cloudless, the air is warm for the time of year; the sun is in my eyes, a southerly breeze cools my face. The crunch of gravel underfoot, birdsong and the scent of spring are in the air (again, early this year); all is serene and calm. My mind is entirely at rest; I am not thinking of anything in particular, just enjoying the sense of being. And then a memory flashes by – a similarly sunny spring day, Oxshott Common, out for a walk with my family, 60 years ago or more; sunlight, trees, birdsong.

This, dear readers, is pure consciousness. It is distinct from the act of thinking – the process of pushing thoughts around the brain, thoughts linked logically to one another. The train of thought is not the same as the stream of consciousness. Thoughts get thought; consciousness occurs. Consciousness is the experience of awareness of being in the moment. It is entirely subjective; it cannot shared by others; it cannot be reduced to a formal mathematical equation or generated by an artificial intelligence, nor can it be replicated by a lab-grown brain in a vat.

Described by philosophy of the mind as 'qualia', these raw subjective 'feels' of our experiences form a fundamental challenge to the existing paradigm of how science understands mind. How can physical processes, neuronal activity, give rise to the experience of awareness?

Defined in 1994 by Australian philosopher David Chalmers as 'the hard problem of consciousness', this has essentially stumped scientists and philosophers ever since, leading to a divergence of thinking. Either consciousness is an illusion – something we only think exists; or it one day it is destined to be discovered by mapping the neural correlates of conscious activity; or else it is something that transcends mere physics. 

Personally, I believe that the scientific method as we currently understand it is insufficient to explain consciousness in physicalist terms; physicalists, however, are of the opinion that it's only a matter of time before science cracks the hard problem.

Today it remains contentious, dividing physicalists and idealists. It is entirely possible that a complete answer to the question may require a completely new way of looking at the universe. A paradigm shift that would unite science and spirituality, maybe?

Based on my own 'feel' and intuition, I believe (and it is indeed only a matter of belief) that consciousness is something that transcends matter. 

This insight has had profound implications on how I perceive reality and therefore how I live my life, and the relative importance that I attach to things.

When you realise – often in moments such as I describe at the top of this post – that you are a consciousness temporarily housed in a biological container – then you can let go. Let go of the ego, which drives ambitions for status and material possessions. 

Do so, and life becomes simpler, more joyous.

Tomorrow: consciousness local and non-local.

Lent 2024: Day seven
Spirituality for Our (New) Age (Pt II)

Lent 2023, Day seven
A Universe hand-crafted for us all

Lent 2022, Day seven
Monism, dualism and non-dualism

Lent 2021, Day seven
How much spirituality do we need in our lives?

Lent 2020, Day seven
Build your own Religion – the Trappings of Faith

Defining the nature of reality – Lent 2025: Day six

Is the Universe made solely of matter? Or of matter and spirit (or 'consciousness' as is more popular these days)? Or is consciousness the fundamental substrate upon which the entire Universe stands?

There are three approaches to the question; the way one considers them defines to a great degree one's thinking on matters spiritual. These are (in simplified form) monism, dualism and non-duality; each has different and widely different interpretations. They represent fundamentally different perspectives on how we see the nature of reality – particularly concerning the relationship between mind and matter. 

Dualism:

This posits that reality is fundamentally composed of two distinct and irreducible substances: mind (or consciousness) and matter (or the physical world). In the first half of the 17th century, French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes argued for a clear separation between the 'thinking substance' (res cogitans) and the 'extended substance' (physical matter or res extensa). This was a radical idea; the previous consensus was that all was one, the visible and invisible. Descarte opened the door to a worldview that could eventually squeeze out the spiritual, while for Christian theologians it created a way to portray God, Heaven and the Soul as entirely separate to the physical universe around us. Dualism raises the 'mind-body problem': how do these two distinct substances interact?

Monism:

This comes in two diametrically opposing forms. Monism asserts that reality is ultimately composed of only one fundamental substance, thus eliminating the mind-body problem by unifying mind and matter into a single reality. But this prompts the question – which one? Matter or consciousness?

Materialist (or physicalist) monism holds that only matter is real; consciousness merely being a product of material (in this case neuronal) processes.

Idealist monism, on the other hand, holds that only mind or consciousness is real – the physical world is a manifestation of mind (in the same way that what you see on your computer screen is a manifestation of zeros and ones). Consciousness is fundamental; from it arise matter, energy, space and time.

Non-Duality:

Going beyond the simple opposition of dualism and monism, non-duality stresses the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all things, transcending any separation between subject and object, self and other. Unlike dualism and monism, which emerged from Western thought, non-duality is associated with Eastern philosophies, such as Advaita Vedanta and some Buddhist traditions. It's not that there's 'one' thing, as in monism; rather, non-duality holds that the dualist concept of 'two' things is a false dichotomy.

Non-duality emphasises direct experience, intuition and insight, or 'gnosis', into the nature of reality, rather than through intellectual concepts. It often involves practices such as meditation, aimed at realising the underlying unity of existence by removing the removal of the illusion of separation.

Trinity:

Going beyond that, British scientist and philosopher, Rupert Sheldrake, sees space for a third entity, drawing parallels between the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Hindu trinity of Sat (the ground of being), Chit (consciousness) and Ananda (bliss). 

My personal take on this – I see a trinity of body, mind and spirit, the mind being the Biblical logos, the spirit being consciousness, the body – the physical world. The mind is the bridge that links body and soul. The mind questions, the mind constructs worldviews, the mind is a product of body. To use a simple analogy, I see ourselves as computers; the body is the hardware, the mind is the software, and the spirit is the wifi that connects the computer with the internet. The mind-body problem is solved by separating 'mind' into 'brain' and 'consciousness', the former being neuronal activity, the latter being a universal substrate permeating all, and being picked up by the mind rather as a computer picks up wifi signal. And yet if pressed as to the ultimate nature of the mind, the brain, the intellect – I'd have to lump it in with the body; thought (as opposed to consciousness) being neuronal in origin. Which would boil down my notion of a trinity as essentially being dualist in nature.

In the meanwhile, I asked Google Gemini Imagen 3.0 to chip into the debate. And for all those believing that AI is already sentient, the result is quite interesting:

So there we have it  – the secret to life, the Universe and  everything is either Matter, 'monsuhatter', 'raiverse', Uniguüese or Consciousness.

Still, these philosophical constructs, these differing epistemologies only help push forward our understanding of reality a little bit, acting as an intellectual framework that shapes our ontological viewpoint. 

On, then, towards the more practical applications of the spiritual...

More on consciousness tomorrow.

Lent 2024: Day six
Spirituality for our (New) Age Pt I

Lent 2023 Day Six
The role of consciousness in human spirituality

Lent 2022: Day six
Do you believe in life after death?

Lent 2021: Day six
How should we see God?

Lent 2020: Day six
Build your own religion – the tenets

Mysticism without God – is this possible? Lent 2025: Day five

Responding to my previous post, my brother Marek asked: "Where would you start with a mystic materialist who claims experience of ‘gnosis’ of the material nature of the world? An absolute knowledge that all is matter; that there is no spirit; that nothing is spiritual? And that this knowledge is beyond the logical, beyond the rational, far more than an intuition – this is a knowing – all is beautiful matter, and its beautiful interactions."

Wow! The mystic materialist. Well, I don't doubt that such people exist, it's just that I'd imagine them to be very few in number. The philosophical tension between holding the position that "all is matter, matter is all", while saying that you've experienced this as an absolute truth implies tapping into non-local consciousness – tapping into what Christianity would call the Holy Spirit, Hindus Atman, or Buddhists the Buddha-nature.

Can you know that all is matter on the basis of an intrinsic, absolute knowledge, rather than through logical deduction, experiment, data and rational thought? [Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0, prompted to produce a cartoon of a mystical scientist, came up with this:

Neuroscience is starting to explore the neural correlates of mystical experiences, such as those brought on by meditation or psychedelics, with researchers attempting to explain these subjective experiences in terms of brain activity and neurochemical processes, rather than as evidence of non-local consciousness.

I would argue that most of Western society is so deeply marinated in reductionist materialism that it is difficult to scramble out of that mindset.

Certainly, there are scientists and thinkers who come at the paranormal with a mindset that denies a divinity. The arch-atheist Richard Dawkins has self-identified as a 'cultural Christian', emphasising his appreciation for Christian heritage and traditions, such as hymns and Christmas carols, while not embracing Christian religious doctrine. Another public intellectual noted for his atheism, Sam Harris, engages in Buddhist practices such as meditation. And it must be said that Buddhism appeals to many modern-day atheists, drawn towards it by mindfulness, yoga and breathing exercises – without necessarily having to accept the existence of a divine presence. 

I can also observe that we humans are increasingly drawn to the spiritual and numinous as we age, as we begin to feel the intimations of our mortality. Many Western teenagers brought up in conventional Christian tradition rebel against the dogma and stop going to church. As young adults, spiritual concerns are entirely pushed aside as the demands of getting materially established take absolute precedence: career, mortgage, the costs of child-rearing. Reductionist physicalism becomes the established mindset by default. Only later in life does space emerge that can in some be filled by spiritual thought.

There is the so-called 'Winner's Curse' that affects Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Having reached that pinnacle, they disappear down speculative rabbit holes. One example is Sir Roger Penrose and his work on the Orch OR theory, linking consciousness to quantum effects within the brain, something once dismissed by the scientific mainstream, but that is slowly gaining traction. Another example in quantum consciousness research is Brian Josephson, awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on superconductivity, who has since ventured into areas considered pseudoscientific, drawing criticism for failing to produce rigorous evidence.   

On the other hand, there are many scientists in the psi-research field who dismiss supernatural explanations of phenomena such as precognition, psychokinesis or telepathy, claiming to be rational atheists exploring the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

But can spirituality be 'cracked' by science? There are three broad views. I'm somewhere between the first two.

One is: "Yes, consciousness exists across the universe; one day we'll prove it by detecting its presence with as-yet unimagined ultra-sensitive instruments that can pick up waves/particles of consciousness." [Spirituality incorporating science, advancing together, creating a rounded picture of reality.]

Another is: "No, you are destined never to truly know the nature of reality through scientific inquiry. That deep understanding comes only through gnosis, through a divine intuition that defies matter, energy, space and time." [Spirituality that considers science to be a story we tell ourselves, but in itself insufficient to truly define the nature of reality.]

The third, the one I reject, is: "Consciousness is a mere construct of matter, an emergent epiphenomenon of biological evolution; there's nothing to 'crack', it's just an illusion, it's just a story we tell ourselves." [To me, this is empty, hollow; intuitively wrong. Yet this is the mainstream paradigm.]

Returning to the mystical materialist, this would be a fourth view. "All is matter – and I've come to know this not through scientific inquiry, but through gnosis (no divine intervention necessary)." Rare. A tough position to defend.

Whichever view you hold, I believe it boils down to belief.

All of which ties in nicely to my blog post on the fifth day of Lent last year...

Lent 2024: Day five
Believers and the unbelievers

Lent 2023 day five

Reality, the New God

Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil

Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God

Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism

Where is God? Inside or outside the Universe? Lent 2025: Day four

 Assuming you believe in God (either as a person or as a universal force and purpose), the next question is – where is God? Inside of everything? Or standing outside the physical universe? Is God behind the scenes, or is God part of the scene?

Here we come to the split between the notions of pantheism (God is present everywhere – the Divine and the totality of the universe being identical) and panentheism (God extending beyond space, time and matter). Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0, prompted to illustrate the difference between pantheism and panentheism, comes up with this, and the pantheistic view is seriously trippy (click to enlarge)...

I have pondered over this distinction for a while, and have come to the conclusion that it is not at all important. Ultimately, it's just one of those things philosophers like to indulge in, having no practical impact on our daily lives. Just like my cat doesn't need to know whether cat food comes a factory in Poland or is imported from abroad – a meaningless abstraction.

God is very much present in my life; in my little daily rituals, in my thoughts and observations; I seek to align my way of life to the Cosmic Purpose as I see it – a path of continuous spiritual evolution, away from the beastly towards the angelic in small steps, one life at a time. But does God extend beyond space and time – and indeed, beyond matter and energy? Or is there even a question?

My worldview hinges on the primacy of the subjective conscious experience, on consciousness being fundamental, preceding space and time, energy and matter. God as 'Big-C' Consciousness, the prime mover and purpose of everything.

But whether God is present within every single particle field across the entire cosmos, or dwells within and without of the observable universe, is something beyond our intellectual grasp, and believing in one or the other, or neither, or both, does not make us better or worse human beings. If I were to have to express a preference, I'd go for pantheism, considering 'small-c' consciousness to be omnipresent, though I could not rule out a Deity (though not a personified one) standing above and beyond a pantheistic universe.

Lent 2024: Day four
Metaphysical powers – woo-woo or fact?

Lent 2023: Day four
The nature of reality, Pt III

Lent 2022: Day four
The Ego: what is it good for?

Lent 2021: Day four
Would the Universe exist without God"

Lent 2020: Day four
Conscious Life after Death

Is God a person or a force? Lent 2023: Day three

How do I see God? As a connectedness, a power, a purpose, a reason... Replace the indefinite article with a definite article and capitalise. The Connectedness, The Power, The Purpose, The Reason. 

There's more... The Ineffable. The Numinous. The Continuous Whole. The Prime Instigator. The Journey from Zero to One. The Ultimate Unity. The Awareness of All.

I see God not a person, but as a ground of being, the underlying substrate, infinite and eternal, a web of consciousness touching all matter. God doesn't have to be a person; we made God one. The very concept of personhood is one limited by our human understanding; God entirely transcends human comprehension. Only a few mystics ever get close. For most of us, we can only approach God through metaphor – and a none-to-accurate one at that. Which is why some religions prohibit the mention of God's name. This makes sense to me.

Ther personification of God requires that God be given a gender and a pronoun (male, he/him). This is folly – a universal God cannot possibly have the biological attributes of masculinity or femininity. Pronouns for God should therefore be God/God's – not God the Person. Not 'he', 'she' or 'it'.  Not 'his', 'hers' or 'its'. God the Divine Process.

The Taoist philosophy, with the Tao being the path of life, the divine field, does not exhibit personhood of itself. Again, this squares more with my worldview than 'God in three persons, Holy Trinity' of Christianity. [I shall be writing about the Holy Trinity in a future post during this Lenten series.]

But in your personal quest, should you feel the need for a person-God – then OK! Everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way. If they don't – fine. This is an important tenet of mine. I won't be proscriptive as to say that it's wrong to imagine that God is a person. But then militant atheists should not build straw-man arguments to mock those who believe in God by creating a simplistic caricature and knocking it over. And here, Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0, prompted to illustrate the question whether God is a person or a force, comes up with this (rather simplistic caricature).

The old God – the old Story – has become a difficult one to believe in in these times of scientism. A new vocabulary is therefore called for. The language of science offers us terms in which we can phrase the divine reality in a way more fitting to the way we see the universe today; a force, an energy, a field, an entanglement, a law, a dynamic.

Do we need a God in our lives? For some, a personal God is essential. For me, not so; it's more a case of sensing the Cosmic Purpose and aligning my path with it; seeing something higher than the day-to-day demands of simple materialism and the ego. A connectedness with the flow of cosmic consciousness, on its way to an ultimate oneness.

Lent 2024: Day three
On spiritual evolution

Lent 2023: Day three
The Nature of Reality, Pt II

Lent 2022: Day three
Gratitude and Consciousness

Lent 2021: Day three
Would the Universe exist without us?

Lent 2020: Day three
Define your Deity

The language of science, the language of spirituality – Lent 2025: Day two

 I woke up at quarter to four this morning with the following words on my mind:

{{ Belief shapes reality }}

[For new readers, double curly brackets in my blog are used to denote an unbidden thought, channelled words or insight that came in a dream.]

Today, I want to go further into the topic of the scientific vs. the spiritual worldview. The spiritual can be regimented and packaged into religion, whilst the scientific outlook also tends to be packaged. And once boxed up, a mind tends to be set in one worldview or the other. To religious fundamentalists, dogmatic adherence to a structured belief system precludes the possibility of any other way of thinking about things, set out literally in their holy book. And physicalist materialists, wedded to the scientific system, can be equally dogmatic in how they see reality – nothing more than the interaction of forces upon matter across space and time.

The language of science and the language of religion frame our mindsets. We can describe ourselves as 'rationalists' and decry any room for the paranormal or metaphysical in our universe. Everything can be defined within the Standard Model of particle physics, the four fundamental forces and Relativity. Or else we can explain the universe as the creation of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God.

Two completely separate worldviews. The religious one goes back to the dawn of humanity. The scientific worldview has a far shorter heritage going back to the beginning of the Enlightenment, when alchemy gave way to a more systematic approach to studying the physical world. And yet the advances in technology and the benefits it has delivered to our quality of life since the 18th century have been so astonishing that many humans have lost all contact with the spiritual, as they pursue purely material goals. [Image by Google Gemini Advanced 2.0 Imagen 3.0]

It's easy to mock New Age spirituality (healing crystals $50-$400, Native American dreamcatchers $75), yet it was New Age mystics that started introducing scientific terms ('vibrations', 'frequency', 'harmonics', 'fractals') into the context of human spirituality. Books such as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (1975) or Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979) blended oriental spirituality with modern physics. By using the language of both religion and science, first tentative steps were taken to reconcile the two. 

The interface between science and spirituality is to be found at the mystery of consciousness. The word (which appears only once in The Dancing Wu Li Masters!) is now on the tip of the tongues of particle physicists and cosmologists, more and more of whom are convinced of the importance of the conscious observer in the measurement process. And philosophers are more comfortable in tackling the 'hard problem' once shunned in academia.

But as we get beyond consciousness and deeper into the spiritual questions ("is there a God?" "is there life after death?"), again we stumble into difficult territory. For example, take those scientists at the cutting edge of paranormal studies, who are determined to prove, scientifically, that precognition, telepathy or psychokinesis are real, but who deny the existence of a divine power. 

I am happy to use the language of science as a metaphor, one that resonates with people who have grown up in a materialist mindset. But intuitively I can't accept that a physicalist version of science can end up defining reality to my satisfaction. In the same way that few take the Biblical account of the creation of the world literally, but most are happy to accept it metaphorically, we should take the language of science metaphorically (how else can we see 'spin up, spin down', 'colours' of quarks, wave-particle duality, dark matter and dark energy?).

In a 1931 interview with the Observer newspaper, Max Planck, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, said: "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." And my big question for today is: is that consciousness God? An aspect of God?

Can belief shape reality?

Lent 2024: Day two
How much spirituality do we need?

Lent 2023: Day two
The Nature of Reality Pt. I

Lent 2022: Day two
Objective/Subjective, Ego and Consciousness.

Lent 2021: Day two  
Your life: a miracle? Or something that just happened?

Lent 2020: Day two
The Physical and the Metaphysical; the Natural and the Supernatural

Lent 2025 Day 1, Ash Wednesday

 "In the beginning was the Will – the Will for there to be Something, rather than Nothing." 

Science elegantly postulates the beginning of space and time as being the Big Bang. But what caused the Big Bang? A cyclical universe is one possible explanation offered by physicists and cosmologists, though a prime mover is still needed to jumpstart the process.

And here materialist science falls back on belief – the unfalsifiable belief that no belief in Belief is required to explain the existence of existence.

"It just is." "It just was." "It always was."

Is that the best that materialism can do? You may be satisfied with those answers, you might be comfortable living a meaningless existence in a random universe – but I'm not.

Have you considered the alternative – that the Universe was willed into existence – that will being an manifestation of consciousness?

If we're looking for first principles, I would posit the need for a purpose for there to be something rather than nothing. And here, consciousness is key. A grand awareness. The Big 'C' Consciousness that is the fundamental property of the universe, preceding space, time, matter and energy. And not a byproduct of biological evolution.

There are only two ways of looking at existence, both of them unfalsifiable. One way requires a higher purpose, a reason; the second way denies that reason. 

An alternative way is not to consider existence at all, to ignore the big questions, and to plod on through life as a człowiek, który się nie zastanawia – the person who contemplates not. "Philosophising about these questions changes nothing," they will say. Oh, but it does. It brings purpose to your life, which in turn brings about existential joy.

So – here we are at the start of Lent, once again I am eschewing drink and meat, and writing daily blog posts of a spiritual nature, my contemplations on the meaning of life and the universe, and what it's all about. The Big Questions. Is there a God? Is there life after death? How should we live our lives?

As Lent begins, so I consider the Beginning. Two points of view, two narratives – the spiritual and the physicalist. [Reminder: physicalism posits that everything in the universe is composed of matter, of atoms, and the phenomenon we call 'consciousness' is merely the byproduct of biological evolution, notions of 'soul' or 'spirit' being merely stories we told each other in the days before science.]  

The spiritual creation story requires a prime mover. There's one in every religion. Christianity has its creation story in the Old Testament (Genesis chapters 1-3), created by Jews, adopted by Christians. As  stories go, it was as good an explanation as any up to about the 18th-19th centuries, when the Enlightenment and the scientific method – geology, biology, cosmology – began shedding new light on the beginnings of life on Earth. Physicalism's creation story is the Big Bang – just don't ask what came before. Stephen Hawking's answer is "it's as irrelevant as asking 'what's north of the North Pole'?". An unsatisfactory answer. Cosmologists may postulate a cyclical cosmos of an infinite number of Big Bangs (each preceded by a Big Crunch or else a heat-death of the previous universe). But that still doesn't answer the question "why is there Something rather than Nothing".

Here we need to dive into three philosophical concepts: Ontology – the study of the nature of existence and of reality; what is? Then we have epistemology – the study of knowledge; how do we know what we know? And finally teleology – the study of purpose or goals; the idea that things have a final aim or destination; what is it all for?

I need an ontology that is based on an epistemology based on both scientific and spiritual ways of looking at reality and truth, and this calls for a narrative arc that sweeps upward from Zero to One, an end-point of final unification, of our individual small-'c' consciousnesses merging into the Large 'C' Consciousness, the Will, the Purpose, the Awareness of All.

How all of this affects the way we live our lives, how this gives joy and peace of mind – more over the next 45 days!

Lent 2024 Day 1

Lent 2023 Day 1

Lent 2022 Day 1

Lent 2021 Day 1

Lent 2020 Day 1