And where did the mind come from?
To an atheist or scientific materialist this question sounds nonsensical. To them, the mind dies when the brain dies. The mind is the brain and the brain is the mind. The brain, being a temporary and purely material object, takes the mind with it when we die.
But what if the universe itself were conscious, and a brain merely taps into that conscious web during its existence? Today I am going to discuss some ideas inspired by David Darlings excellent book, Equations of Eternity.
This is an idea that has merit not only scientifically, but spiritually. A biologist who was a scientific materialist would tell us that the brain is just a product of evolution, providing its owner with a tool that enhances survival. Organisms that have better brains are better suited to their environments, leave more offspring and so on. Over time, brains have become more complex because its advantageous to do so. Consciousness is no more than a mere accident, something that happened to come along arising out of complexity that happened to be very good at enhancing survival and reproduction.
But to see that consciousness might have a role beyond simply enhancing the survival and reproductive value of its owner, lets turn to the eastern religions. In particular some concepts from Hinduism can shed light on the nature and role of consciousness.
The first concept from Hinduism that is interesting to contemplate is that of "Maya". In a nutshell, Maya describes to what Hindus is an illusion: that is the world of objects and people around us are real. In other words, the material world you touch, see, and hear is an illusion. What is real if the objects and people of the world are illusions? According to this concept, our minds have made up and classified the objects we see in the material world. The universe does not really consist of individual, separate and unchanging objects. Instead the universe is one unbroken whole, and its is dynamic: the world is in constant flux.
In fact this idea is completely consistent with what modern science has taught us. As Lee Smolin wrote, the universe doesn't consist of objects, it consistes of processes. Everything around us is completely dynamic and in a constant state of change. Atoms and molecules assemble, dissolve, and reassemble in different ways. People are born, live, and die. Species evolve and change into something completely different as time passes. Even the sun evolved and will eventually die.
Not only that, but in reality there are no separate objects in the universe. Physics tells us that the universe can be seen as having a kind of dualism. This is not strictly the "Wave-particle" dualism of the quantum theory. Instead we call on quantum field theory, which tells us that the universe doesn't really consist of discrete, hard particles. What is really real, at a fundamental level are fields which fill all of spacetime. This is consistent with Maya.
That isn't to say particles, objects, or people aren't real. But we acknowledge that their particular form is transitory-and nothing ever really didn't exist or was born or ceases to exists or dies-instead "things" in the universe are part of an ever-changing process. The atoms and molecules in your body always existed-they have done so since the beginning of time. Could it be that the mind or and individual is part of a universal consciousness field, and that an arrangement of atoms can reveal it, rather than cause it to come forth through some vague concept like "emergence" from a materialist world?
So from the perspective of Hinduism, we face the fact that individuals are temporary and transient in nature, but at the same time we are part of an unbroken whole which has always been here-the universe. The Hindu calls this unbroken whole "Brahman".
Something else to think about is how can it be that consciousness just arose in a dead universe? For consciousness to arise from the universe, consciousness must be part of the universe itself. Nothing can happen in the universe that does not violate the laws of physics. Here are a couple of quotes from Darling's book to help you think about the ideas here:
"Each of us is a microcosm of nature, and in more than one sense. First, the same processes-the same types of particles and the forces that act between them-occur in our bodies as in the universe at large. Second, through our minds we reconstruct and mirror in abstract form that which lies outside ourselves. And third, most intriguingly, our own personal evolution parallels the evolution of life on earth."
I would like to add to that that our own brains mirror what the universe at large is doing. A universe that produces conscious minds has at its core consciousness and mind as one of its fundamental properies. This goes back to the Hindu ideas-God died and became the universe-which becomes God again.
Remember too the notion-no the fact--that the universe is an unbroken whole. Another intriguing quote from Darling:
"Whatever a newborn child does, the universe at large does also, because a human baby-like everything else-is an intrinsic part of the cosmos. That may seem like a strange claim to make, but it is logically and physically sound. A factory in which cars are made is a car-making factory. A planet on which there is life is a living planet because the life-forms are a part and a product of the world's substance. And, on the grandest of all scales, if there is sentience within the cosmos then the cosmos itself is sentient. So we may reasonably view an infant's dawning awareness on two levels: as a consciousness arising in the individual, and, simultaneously in the universe as a whole."
This is deep stuff here. Also think about this. As the population has increased and as computers become more intelligent, the universe at large becomes more conscious. Or was that concsiousness already there, and merely being mapped into the form of individuals?
Its hard to say what these ideas mean for life after death-that is discrete survival of the individual-but its clear that there may be a universal web of consciousness that exists throughout space and for all time.
