A few days ago, over lunch, I had an enjoyable conversation with a good friend who is a geologist. We talked about football (my friend supports Liverpool, and I Manchester United ... it was a one-sided conversation if you know the current league standings). We moved on to talk about work stuff, and eventually our chat veered into deeper things. We talked science, and philosophy and religion. I suppose we were some ways different in the conclusions we draw about life, but we shared in common a sense of wonder. I had no desire to make my friend think the way I do, nor he me. We both listened intently to each other, and we talked and we wondered. And I was richer for the interaction.
During our meanderings, my friend happened to say, "Consciousness? I don't know what that is." "Neither do I," was my retort. Two PhD's, two department chairs, two experienced scholar-teachers and all we could come up with was "I don't know."
That we think about things from the mundane to the complex; that we feel the gamut of emotions from fear and anxiety to love and tranquility; that we make decisions and choose between alternatives; that we, from time to time, glimpse the noumenon and experience transcendence—in other words, that we are conscious in a wonderful and intricate way—is something to wonder at.
I suppose Descartes' famous cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am," was his way of wondering. If all can be doubted, the one thing beyond doubt is that I am here thinking about doubting. In other words, Descartes' bottom line was consciousness.
To the ancients, and many folk today, consciousness is the human connection to the divine. For many, God is conceived as the ultimate conscious being—thinking, feeling, deciding—and this God is the model for humanity who are created in the image and likeness of God. This God-like consciousness is what separates humanity from the other animals—humanity being caught between the animalistic and the divine, sharing properties of both, but not fully or finally either.
This is a powerful telling. For me, though, it separates humanity from the other animals in too stark a way. So far as we know, the other animals share consciousness in similar and dissimilar ways to we humans. I sometimes see more of the divine in our little pugs than I do in my human friends!
What if what we call the divine is consciousness itself? That wherever we find thinking, feeling, deciding there we find the "spark of the divine"? Who knows!
I wonder. A lot. And life is richer for wonderment.
+Ab. Andy