PANPSYCHISM AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS-ONLY MODEL
The understanding that only awareness is aware is one of the most challenging aspects of this approach and, at the same time, the most important to grasp.
If we start with the belief that it is ‘I, the body’ or ‘I, the person’ that is aware, everything we subsequently know will be conditioned by that belief. I would suggest that the reason contemporary science has so much difficulty fitting consciousness into its model of the universe is precisely because the investigation is founded on the assumption that consciousness is a property of the body.
Having made the assumption that the body or the person is aware, most people in general, and scientists in particular, legitimately assume that animals are also aware. If we tread on our cat’s tail it screeches, and from this it is reasonable to conclude that the cat is aware, in this case aware of the pain. The belief that the cat is aware is simply an extension of the belief that the body is aware, or that awareness is an attribute of the body or person.
Reasoning in this way, the scientist who is open to the possibility of fitting consciousness into his model of the universe continues down the animal chain, granting various degrees of consciousness to birds, fish, snails, flies, amoeba, and so on, eventually wondering where to draw the line between what is aware and what is not. Wherever they draw the line poses an uncomfortable question: How do inanimate objects on one side of the line evolve into aware beings on the other? In other words, how does insentient matter give rise to consciousness? This question, known as the hard problem of consciousness, lies at the heart of the debate in science and philosophy today.
The idea that consciousness is derived from inert matter is profoundly inimical to our deepest intuition. Recognising this impossibility, many physicists conclude that a degree of consciousness must be present throughout the universe, and this conclusion leads to the statement, common in the field of Consciousness Studies, that consciousness is fundamental to the universe. This formulation eliminates the need to explain how the universe generates consciousness – that is, it seems to solve the hard problem of consciousness.
The belief that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, which is known in philosophy as panpsychism, does not in fact solve the problem. It simply posits that consciousness is fundamental to matter, thereby doing away with the problem of how matter generates consciousness. It doesn’t address the relationship between consciousness and matter but merely postpones it. I would suggest that the belief that consciousness is fundamental to the universe is still a subtle form of materialism.
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Panpsychism, the belief that consciousness or mind (in philosophy these two terms are equated, unlike in the non-dual tradition, where they are distinguished) is an essential and fundamental property of things, is not a new idea. It was prevalent in early Greek philosophy. The word ‘panpsychism’ comes from the Greek pan-, meaning ‘everything’ or ‘all’, and psyche, meaning ‘mind’ or ‘soul’. Aristotle, for example, believed that ‘everything is full of gods’.
The belief that all things are full of gods, or that consciousness is fundamental to all things, depends upon the existence of things. It starts with a multiplicity and diversity of things! It is equivalent to saying that the screen is fundamental to an image. Although this appears to be a true statement, it contains a misunderstanding, and it is in this subtle misunderstanding that the real problem for contemporary philosophy lies.
To suggest that the screen is a fundamental property of the image is to credit the image with more existence than it deserves. It is to start with the image and work backwards from there to the screen. Likewise, to state that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe is to start with the universe and work backwards from there to consciousness. In other words, it is to start with the materialist assumption that there is something called a universe.
If we start with the assumption of a universe and try to fit consciousness into that model, we end up with the classic panpsychist statement that all things have a degree of consciousness or, more simply, that the universe is conscious. However, from the perspective of consciousness there is no ‘all’. From consciousness’s perspective there is just its own seamless, indivisible, unified, infinite whole.
The belief that the universe is conscious is New Age non-duality, and it is this confusion that leads so many people who would otherwise be open to the consciousness-only model to reject it. The belief that the universe is aware is simply an extension of the materialist belief that the body is aware. Fleas are not aware; fish are not aware; dogs are not aware; trees and rocks are not aware; human beings are not aware; the universe is not aware. Only awareness is aware! Only consciousness is conscious.
The word ‘universe’, from the Latin uni-, ‘one’, and versus, ‘turned’, means ‘combined into one; whole’. What is it in our experience of the so-called universe that is whole, one, undivided? Only consciousness! Everything else we know about the universe comprises a multiplicity and diversity of objects. The only element of experience that is one, undivided and whole is consciousness itself, or self-aware being. The universe is not conscious; consciousness is the universe!
In fact, the more scientists look for a universe, the less they find it. The more they look for matter, the less like matter it seems to be. Why? Because they are looking for it in objective experience. Sooner or later science will realise that consciousness is the reality for which they are seeking in objective knowledge and experience.
If we want to build a model of reality, we must start with first principles. What is the primary element in all experience? Consciousness! To build a theory based upon anything other than consciousness is to build a house on sand. No matter how well the house may be constructed, it will sooner or later collapse due to the insubstantial nature of its foundation.
The belief that consciousness is fundamental to the universe credits the universe with too much existence. The universe does not exist! That is, it does not ‘stand out from’ consciousness with its own independent reality.* Only consciousness truly is. The apparent existence of the universe is consciousness itself – indivisible, self-aware being – refracted through the activity of the finite mind. The universe borrows its apparent existence from consciousness, just as the landscape in the movie borrows its apparent reality from the true and only reality of the screen.
Matter is the way consciousness appears to itself when viewed through the prism of a finite mind. The finite mind always knows experience in duality, that is, in subject–object relationship, so the object must appear in a way that is distinct from the subject. Without this distinction there could be no manifestation. In other words, manifestation must appear as something other than consciousness. In order to distinguish it from consciousness, manifestation must have qualities that consciousness does not have. Consciousness is transparent, empty, non-objective, formless. Therefore, manifestation must seem to be solid, full, objective and with form. This is why the rocks and trees in our dreams seem to be solid.
The reason we believe that the universe exists as an object is that we believe the self exists as a subject. That is, the belief in an external universe is predicated upon our belief that our self, the knowing element in all experience, lives in and is a property of the body. The sand upon which materialism, and by extension panpsychism, is built is our belief in ourselves as temporary, finite minds or entities living in and sharing the destiny and limits of the body.
The scientists and philosophers who subscribe to the materialist assumption that dominates our world culture, as well as those who have moved closer to the consciousness-only model and propose panpsychism as the answer to the hard problem of consciousness, will never find the answer to their questions until they discover the ultimate nature of themselves, that is, until they discover the essential nature of the mind.
Everything that is known by the mind appears in accordance with its own knowledge of itself. As long as we start with the belief that ‘I, the body’ is aware of experience, we are conducting our investigation on a faulty premise. All our subsequent discoveries will contain this fundamental error more or less subtly concealed within them. Materialism and panpsychism both start with things and proceed from there to consciousness. Both approaches try to graft new understanding onto an old model; they put new wine into old skins. We have to start with the understanding that only awareness is aware. Only consciousness is conscious.
Whilst the panpsychist view may be a welcome and necessary intrusion into the prevailing materialist paradigm, it will, I would suggest, sooner or later have to be abandoned. Of course, new paradigms are not born overnight. It was over a hundred years ago that it was first suggested by Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and others that the observer may affect the observed, opening the debate as to the relationship between consciousness and matter. Although this debate fell into decline during much of the twentieth century, it is enjoying something of a renaissance.
Panpsychism is a stepping stone that will, hopefully, at least usher in a new paradigm in which our model of the universe starts with and is built upon consciousness itself. Sooner or later our culture must wake up from the dream of materialism, of which panpsychism is a subtle extension, and establish consciousness in its rightful place as the absolute reality of all that seems to be. The universe is consciousness itself: one seamless, indivisible, self-aware whole in which there are no parts, objects, entities or selves.
* The word ‘exist’ comes from the Latin ex-, meaning ‘out of’, and sistere, meaning ‘to stand’.