Michael Mitchell: Archive

Have you ever noticed how ironic and tragic it is that most humans fail to understand the nature of consciousness? I mean, we're the only species that is conscious of our own consciousness, but most of us don't even realize it and even less of us understand what it is and how it works.

How many people believe there are two worlds: the material and the spiritual? How many people believe when we die our consciousness (or spirit or soul) lives on or goes to a "better place" or to a "higher plane of existence" or whatever? It's not only religious people who have resigned to such mysticism, but also great scientists and philosophers and even many atheists, all of whom are generally considered to be more grounded than others. Some people even think consciousness is an illusion! They don't think they are conscious at all. They have actually convinced themselves they are conscious of the fact they are not conscious.

Why do so many people with differing and somewhat opposing world views have so much trouble with such a simple problem? I don't know. But I do know you don't have to be a logic professor or a modern physicist or a neuroscientist to understand consciousness. You simply have to use it and think about how you're using it.

For instance, you don't use it touch things or to see, smell, taste or hear things. So, you know it is not a sense, a means of experiencing sensations. You know you can't use it to pick things up or to kick things across the room. Some people might refer to it as a sixth sense or claim to believe it is possible to affect things with it (telepathically), but have you personally ever actually experienced either phenomena? Of course not.

You know that only material things can be affected causally by other material things. A rock can smash a window or skip across a lake of water, but it can't create a concept in your mind or change an emotion, at least not directly. Your ears are affected by sound waves and your eyes by wavelengths of light, but your consciousness is incapable of such interactions because it is immaterial. It is not a thing at all.

This is where almost everyone gets confused and ends up evading the issue or searching for a supernatural solution. How can we be conscious of the world around us? How can the spiritual interact with the material? Of course, the question of whether consciousness exists or not is absurd, because only a self-conscious being could ask such a question. But it does make sense to wonder how it works and to try to explain it, especially the relationship between it and the brain, which obviously makes it possible.

Scientifically speaking, however, it isn't necessary to understand how consciousness works in order to know that it does. For instance, if you understand any part of what I'm saying, even if you blindly disagree, then you are relying on the efficacy of your own consciousness to do so. The nature of it may escape your mental grasp. You may be unable to define it or to fully comprehend what it is. Nonetheless, you know it is and you know it works. Also, whether you want to accept it or not, you know it doesn't exist in another world and it won't live on after you die.

It's self-evident, if you stop and think about it. To what are we referring when we use the term "consciousness"? We can speak of it as something we have. It is perfectly acceptable to say: "Man is an evolved animal that possesses self-consciousness." But more often than not we speak of it as something we do. We say: "I am conscious." or "I know she loves me but she just doesn't know it yet" or "I saw that car in front of me but I wasn't paying attention to it." So unless you do not understand such statements, you are aware of what consciousness is. You know that it is something you do and that if you take yourself away, if you die, you can't do it anymore.

Consciousness isn't a material thing, it is a state of a material thing. Like sitting or running or sleeping or flying, consciousness is a state of being. If you take away the physical object, then you also take away the state it is in. There is only one world, the material one. Just as you don't suddenly jump into another reality or "plane of existence" when you are sitting down or walking along the beach, so also you don't jump into a different, spiritual realm when you are thinking or imagining or feeling depressed. Your physical existence can't be in one world while its actions are in another. An object and its actions are inextricable. With regards to consciousness, the brain is the object and awareness is its action.

How the human brain functions and interacts with the senses may be so complicated that we'll never fully understand it (though I'm sure we will eventually), but the consciousness it makes possible is very simple to understand. It's so simple we use it everyday and it works perfectly and most of us don't even know it. We may use it incorrectly, of course. We may even use it while denying it exists. But that's the nature of it.