Lately I've been thinking a lot about something that one of our frequent commenters, Matt Rouge, said a while back in one of the comments threads. He said – and I hope I'm remembering this correctly – that the basic stuff of physical existence is information, while consciousness is the "I-thought" associated with any particular matrix of information.
As I understand it, this means that what we call the self is a combination of our memories, observations, experiences, bodily form, inherited traits, environment, and all other relevant elements of our particular physical reality (this is the "information" part) and the I-thought, which is pure awareness.
The awareness alone would not yield a sense of self, because it would not be differentiated from anything. On the other hand, the physical elements on their own would not yield a sense of self because there would be no awareness, including self-awareness. Only the dynamic interaction of the two can yield the "spiritual being having a physical experience" that we think of as our "self."
Now, this raises an interesting question. When we speak of the I-thought, are we talking about a single undifferentiated awareness that simply attaches itself to different data matrices and achieves the semblance of individuation? Or are we talking about a constellation of separate I-thoughts?
Moreover, is there a cutoff point — a point on the evolutionary scale at which the I-thought no longer applies? Do lower animals, or insects, or microscopic organisms, or individual atoms, or electrons have an associated I-thought, or does the I-thought come into play only when an organism has achieved a certain level of complexity? How widespread is awareness?
I don't pretend to have the answer to these questions. But they're interesting to think about. Here is my best guess — subject, as always, to reevaluation.
I'm guessing that the I-thought is ultimately a single undifferentiated whole. It might be imagined as a very powerful, never-ending current of air sweeping across a field. Set up on this field is a series of pipes parallel to the flow of air. The air rushes through these pipes and produces a variety of different tones depending on the circumference, length, and material of each pipe. Each tone is unique, but it's all the same air. And while the air is momentarily divided into separate pathways as it travels down the pipes, it recombines as a single current once it leaves the pipes.
To put this in more spiritualist terms, we could imagine awareness, as such, as a vast unity that is temporarily divided and subdivided into individual expressions. These individual expressions are real, but they are not the ultimate reality. Of necessity, awareness narrows in order to be expressed in individual terms. At some later point in the process, it widens again. This does not necessarily mean that individuality is lost. The tones, once sounded, may persist forever. After all, time as we know it probably does not apply to the realm of pure consciousness, so anything that exists may be said to exist perpetually.
(Actually I think the pipes metaphor would be more accurate if we think of a vast system of ramifying pipes, similar to the roots of a tree, with the air flow being divided and subdivided and sub-subdivided as it explores the whole system. To change the image, the "higher self" may be like a series of nested dolls, and our particular level of awareness at any given time is just one part of the series.)
The metaphor of air and pipes makes me think of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the Gospel of John, the most mystical of the four canonical Gospels.
Jesus replied:
In all truth I tell you,
no one can enter the kingdom of God
without being born through water and the Spirit;
what is born of human nature is human;
what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Do not be surprised what I say:
You must be born from above.
The wind blows where it pleases;
you can hear its sound,
but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.
So it is with everyone who was born of the Spirit.
(John 3:5-8, New Jerusalem Bible translation)
Whether or not this rather obscure passage has anything to do with the notion I'm discussing here, I like its poetic appropriateness.
But how pervasive is the I-thought? Does everything, even a subatomic particle, have a degree of awareness? This idea would be in line with the philosopher Liebnitz's theory of monads. And at least it spares us the chore of trying to figure out what the cutoff point might be between sentient and non-sentient entities. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any evidence of awareness on the part of the simplest elements of physical reality.
Perhaps the simplest answer is that there is some degree of awareness to anything that exists, but in the case of an electron, that degree of awareness is so minuscule that it is hardly noticeable. Even in the case of a white blood cell or an amoeba, awareness may be present in only the most attenuated form. We could work our way up the scale to insects, which seem to have a kind of hive mind or group of awareness, and eventually to the higher animals. It's a possibility, anyway. The weakness of this kind of answer is that it's unfalsifable — if awareness in the simplest entities is so rudimentary as to be undetectable, then we can never know if it's there or not.
Is there any practical value to looking at things in this light? I think there is, and it involves enhancing our empathy for our fellow human beings and perhaps for other living things, as well. I'll give a specific example. A few years ago, back when I was still watching cable TV news shows, I saw an interview with a member of the Black Panthers. This fellow was extremely hostile and belligerent. He seemed to be poorly educated and capable of expressing himself only in terms of angry threats. His mind, it seemed to me, was a simmering stew of violent images and impulses. I took an immediate dislike to him, and found myself feeling something like contempt.
Later, however, I engaged in a little meditative exercise in which I tried to see things from his point of view. This was not easy, because his whole mindset seemed so alien from my own. But as I thought about it, I realized that the differences might not be so great, or at least the gulf might not be insurmountable. If I had grown up in his environment, I would have learned that only people who threaten and intimidate are likely to survive. I would have been surrounded by poverty and hopelessness, and would have developed an abiding fury at the perceived injustices of society. I would have had little or no opportunity to get a decent education, while peer pressure would have encouraged me to disrespect teachers, cut class, and roam the streets. Add to this the very real possibility that my mother used drugs or alcohol while I was gestating in the womb, thus diminishing my mental capacity from the onset, and suddenly it became very hard to imagine myself being anything other than this Black Panther, had I been in his place.
The differences between us, in short, had just about everything to do with physical factors, and little or nothing to do with consciousness or awareness as such. The same I-thought, bound up in these two very different matrices of data, would produce very different expressions, just as the same current of air, passing through two differently shaped pipes, would sound very different tones.
So it may actually be true that the I-thought, or pure awareness, is the same for all of us, and only the associated information matrix makes us different from each other. And an acknowledgment of this fact can serve to break down the barriers that appear to divide us.
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P.S. By the way, this viewpoint may possibly shed light on split-brain patients. After the commisurotomy, the I-thought becomes separately associated with each cerebral hemisphere. Since the hemispheres had been connected previously, they will share many of the same personality traits, based on earlier experience. But henceforth they will develop along separate paths. One might think of air rushing through a single pipe that then divides into two pipes. Again, the system is constantly ramifying in a complex network, but the "air flow" is ultimately the same air.