Our Mysterious Awakening

We never even think about our origin—which is the subject of our meaning—until our consciousness is able somehow to separate itself from the turbulent flow of our experience. Something in us must detach, something must reflect—or catch a reflection.

Consciousness thus becomes a mystery in turn. In one sense it is a partial description of a feeling—the feeling of our agency, the feeling that we are a Self. We couldn’t feel that we are individuals, people, responsible beings if we remained unaware. Neither could we choose to act this way or that without awareness. Thus the other major element of our fundamental nature, our will, is possible only through awareness. Indeed the very concept of an agency includes both at the same time and irreducibly so.

But our nature is paradoxical. Muted forms of agency—and therefore of consciousness and of will—are everywhere displayed for us in living creatures from birds to lions to giraffes. And most of the time their behavior is equivalent to ours. What divides us from the animal kingdom is our ability to become holy or evil. Neither path is open to a mule. And the paradox itself is murky and reveals additional degrees.

Thus, for instance, I genuinely wonder about the “humanity” of a pair of thugs who, under orders from a boss, kill two innocent people in an attempt to extract information from them (an actual case). I wonder about the “humanity” of the boss as well. I wonder about the human label applied to shady financiers who obtain houses from the desperate by fraudulent schemes they know will soon end in forfeitures. And on. In these people consciousness is present at levels well above a mule’s. They must know that they are causing harm. Are they really conscious? If they are they’re deliberately choosing evil. Is that possible? I assert that it is on the basis of personal experience—and I rather think that all of us have chosen evil knowingly in the past, finessing the acts by rationalizations. The difference between the criminal and Everyman lies in the degree. Evil does not always qualify as crime; it is a sliding scale.

Thus consciousness and agency in animals continues at a heightened rate in humans, but still on a certain scale, the difference in us now being that we deliberately choose. And when our choice is real—and if not real it’s not a choice—we use our will to lean now in one direction and now in the other.

The situation just described is a central feature of our meaning—must be. How it fits into the scheme of origins must still be developed.

Genuine consciousness really arises as a “separation” from the general flow of turbulent experience. Something must detach, something must reflect—or catch a reflection. More and more I’m coming to see awareness as a force or as a structure that emerges out of a material casing—not in the modern scientific sense of an “emergent phenomenon” but rather as a seed that catches on and begins development until at some point it reaches the light. It’s not an achievement but requires a favorable environment or endowment nonetheless. It seems to me that once it’s present it will assert itself thereafter—not because a person is virtuous or diligent but simply because this soul-force is strong and sovereign. It is not equivalent to intelligence but without its presence in awareness, intelligence is limited in reach.