Consciousness, Part I: The Egg in the Cosmic Crack 


Here it is, folks, MY theory of consciousness!! 

I don't think most people get it: despite appearances, the rock-that-I-see is not out there, outside of me. The rock-that-I-see is part of a hologram generated by me. Let me call your attention to what happens when we wake up. Somehow, somewhere, a hologram which is our perceptual experience leaps into being from either nothing, or from a dream state. In this world over three billion people are currently awake, so there are three billion plus of these holograms interacting with each other, somehow, somewhere.

I arrived at this conclusion over fifty years ago. Consider what happens from a strictly physical point of view when I-see-a-rock. Light waves bounce off the rock and enter my eyes. The lens in my eye forms an image on the retina of my eye. Assuming I am awake and sighted, not sick and not distracted, under these conditions, I-see-a-rock. However, note: my mind does not, as far as we know, reach out along the light waves and engulf the rock. (Although if you have a good explanation of how that does in fact happen, I will consider it.) But, no, perception is generated most probably in my nervous system.

Now a realist would tell you that what happens is this. That rock stand in certain three dimensional relationships to surrounding objects, and what happens in my nervous system is that a visual three-dimensional matrix of varied colors is created which bears a similarity relationship to the external environment. However, they arrive at this conclusion because they have seen-people-seeing-rocks. The seen-rock that the realist sees is not the same seen-rock that the seen-person sees. This is especially true if you consider that both the rock-seer and the seer-seer see whatever side of the rock they are facing, not the whole rock. The whole rock is constructed in their respective imaginations. So technically, what we have is a seen-and-imagined rock, actually two of them.

We don't need to make the realist's assumption of an external reality in order to see that our conscious perception generates something very like , but not exactly like, a hologram. The thing about a hologram is that three-dimensional relationships are preserved as you move your observation point in a similar way that human perspective preserves them. When you change your perspective (walk around the rock), different aspects of the thing you are looking at appear (different sides of the rock).

The reason I say "not exactly like a hologram" is this. Our mind is in our perception in ways that our mind is not in the holographic image of a rock which we perceive. At least at this point in time, we can not reach out and pick up the holographic image of a rock and touch it and turn it over like we can pick up the seen-rock of our perception. Consider the seen-and-imagined-rock. It also contains possible seen-and-imagined-reachings-out-and-pickings-up. It is precisely when we can't match possible seen-and-imagined-reachings-out-and-pickings-up with actual seen-and-imagined-reachings-out-and-pickings-up that we declare the seen-thing to be a holographic image of a rock rather than an actual seen-rock.

I could go much deeper into this, but it is time to connect the title of this piece to the essay. Of course, it is for sure a play on the title of Pearce's seminal book, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. But it is more. There is no cosmic egg. There are only seen-cosmic eggs, 6 + billion of them, to be more precise, and not counting the cosmic eggs of other sentient beings. So, we have the presumed Universe, which in addition to all the rocks and trees and bodies we see in it, also, somehow, somewhere, holds all the perceived worlds of its observers. Or is the Universe held in these perceived worlds? Beware of giving too quick and too glib an answer. This is one thing philosophers have been talking about for millennia.

And what of the cosmic crack of the punned title? 'Tis a subject for another blog, but we who set the initial conditions of the regularities of the Universe, we salute you, Cosmic Crack. Meanwhile, deep in space, matter is being created out of and annihilated into the void. 

Posted: Wed - April 5, 2006 at 09:57 PM          

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