The Yew Tree

What is consciousness?

Some people see consciousness merely as a by-product of neurons firing - but it must be more complex than that. Another definition of it is knowing that you know - self-awareness - but there's more to it than that. What about the subconscious mind, products of which arise into the conscious mind? Apparently two new genes have recently been found which are linked to brain size. One emerged about 50,000 years ago, and the other about 5,800 years ago. Their appearances coincide with major cultural shifts - allegedly - though such things would be hard to date. Philip Pullman has a similar idea in Northern Lights, that individual consciousness began with the arrival of Dust (particles of consciousness, or conscious particles).

I don't find the idea that everything is genetically determined very plausible. For a start, there must be some interaction with the environment, the social and cultural context, and so on. Which came first, the gene or the need for it? And does brain size actually matter? What about the complexity of the cortical folds? Does mind arise from brain, or is the complexity of the brain the product of the mind that inhabits it? Are they even separate? In the West, we are taught to see everything and everyone as separate - small islands in a sea of empty space, across which no influence can permeate. We are places in the landscape of mind, not islands in a sea of unconsciousness. But we clearly are not part of some indeterminate whole either - we feel ourselves to be distinct from our surroundings. The way I see it is that our consciousness arises out of the social interactions we engage in and the environment in which we live. The soul is reincarnated, but it is like a grain of sand that lodges in an oyster (the unformed human psyche) and as experience accretes around it, it becomes the pearl of consciousness. Consciousness (as Pagans tend to use the term) is like a substance that pervades the Universe. As scientists use the term, it means self-awareness. As mystics use the term, it implies a link to the ultimate source:

Lennier:   If I project a beam of light at the wall, you see the light on the wall, but the wall is not the source of the light. It comes in from somewhere else. The soul is also a projection. It does not exist inside us any more than the light exists inside the wall. But this shell [indicates his body] is the only way we can perceive it.
 
Delenn:   We believe that the universe itself is conscious in a way we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning. So it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the universe, trying to understand itself.

What is its origin?

In some mystical and occult traditions, the soul and the spirit are seen as separate; the soul is the eternal part of us, that returns to the source upon death. The spirit is the individual consciousness that arises in each incarnation of a human soul.

Behold we arise with the dawn of time from the grey and misty sea, and with the dusk we sink in the western ocean, and the lives of a man are strung like pearls on the thread of his spirit.
- The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune

The Egyptians believed that the soul had five parts, the Ka (corporal presence/life force), the Ba (soul/personality), the Akh (the aspect of a person that would join the gods in the underworld being immortal and unchangeable), the Sheut (shadow), and the Ren (name). During life, the soul, including those of animals, and of gods, was thought to inhabit a body (named the Ha, meaning flesh). Many other cultures had similarly complex beliefs about the soul.

The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the ethereal substance — spirit (Hebrew: ruach or nefesh) — particular to a unique living being. Such traditions often consider the soul both immortal and innately aware of its immortal nature, as well as the true basis for sentience in each living being. The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what happens to the soul after death. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it possibly material. ... In [the] early years of Christianity, the Gnostic Christian Valentinus of Valentinius (circa 100 - circa 153) proposed a version of spiritual psychology that accorded with numerous other "perennial wisdom" doctrines. He conceived the human being as a triple entity, consisting of body (soma, hyle), soul (psyche) and spirit (pneuma). ... Kabbalah (esoteric Jewish mysticism) saw the soul as having three elements. The Zohar, a classic work of Jewish mysticism, posits that the human soul has three elements, the nefesh, ru'ah, and neshamah. A common way of explaining these three parts follows:
Nefesh
the lower or animal part of the soul. It links to instincts and bodily cravings. It is found in all humans, and enters the physical body at birth. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature.
The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but are slowly created over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually:
Ruach
the middle soul, or spirit. It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. In modern parlance, it equates to psyche or ego-personality.
Neshamah
the higher soul, Higher Self or super-soul. This distinguishes man from all other life forms. It relates to the intellect, and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. This part of the soul is provided both to Jew and non-Jew alike at birth. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God. In the Zohar, after death Nefesh disintegrates, Ruach is sent to a sort of intermediate zone where it is submitted to purification and enters in "temporary paradise", while Neshamah returns to the source, the world of Platonic ideas, where it enjoys "the kiss of the beloved". Supposedly after resurrection, Ruach and Neshamah, soul and spirit re-unite in a permanently transmuted state of being.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

Some traditions see the soul as having always existed; others see it as coming into existence at birth. Wordsworth subscribed to the tradition of a pre-existing soul:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.
(Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality)

Because consciousness is intangible, an epiphenomenon, we can only describe it by using metaphors. We cannot see it, touch it, taste it, smell it, or hear it, but we know it's there. It's like love - we cannot define love either, but we know it when it happens.

Can consciousness exist outside the human brain?

The way I see it, consciousness pervades the universe, but is more dense and focused in certain locales. (Compare matter, which is also unevenly distributed.) We are foci (or perhaps nexi) of consciousness, and so are deities. We arise out of the underlying consciousness of the universe, which has been described in a number of spiritual traditions: the Neoplatonic "one god", the Tao in Chinese thought, the Pleroma in Gnostic thought, and Wyrd in Northern thought, are related concepts (though not interchangeable). I see it as an omnipresent impersonal underlying energy. But precisely because it is omnipresent, it cannot be locally focussed, and its awareness (if it has one) is entirely other, and incomprehensible.

Neoplatonism was a late development in classical paganism, probably in response to Christian monotheism. Most of the ancient classical mystery traditions were either henotheist or polytheist (though the one that has come down to us via Lucius Apuleius was syncretist) It is interesting to speculate why there was a shift in the focus of religion towards the underlying energy instead of the beings who arise from it (apart from the obvious one of people being forcibly converted to Christianity). And now there is a shift back to polytheism proper (i.e. believing in many deities as individuals, rather than regarding them as aspects of a greater unity). Perhaps this is because people are having more in-depth encounters with the gods and goddesses.

Consciousness (both incarnate and discarnate) arises out of the underlying energy, and can dissolve back into it. But while it is manifested, either in its own realm or ours, it is distinct and individual (I am talking about both human and divine consciousness here). Can gods die? I don't know. Certainly the gods of Valhalla are said to need Iduna's golden apples in order to maintain their immortality. I quite like Terry Pratchett's theory of how gods occur, expressed in the book Small Gods, that gods start out as a small grain of consciousness buzzing around, then pass through someone's brain and acquire more worshippers and more power.

There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see & never get worshipped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria. (Pratchett, 1992)

But I think gods are entities who have continued to exist for thousands of years. However, the way we perceive the gods may well not be what they actually look like, just the "clothing" we put on them when we encounter them. Also I think that we need gods in order to get a gods'-eye view of the world - infinite and holistic; and they need us to get a human view of the world - focused and finite.

Discussion of consciousness dissolving back into the underlying energy reminds me of the question of what happens when we die - there are many possible theories here:

Discussion points

Bibliography

The Nature of Consciousness by Alan Watts - http://deoxy.org/w_nature.htm
The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_soul
Terry Pratchett (1992), Small Gods
J M Straczynski, Passing through Gethsemane (episode of Babylon 5) http://www.visi.com/~wildfoto/synopsis/305.html