I see the human organism as a layering of different levels of consciousness. Each layer supports mostly automated processes that sustain the layers beneath it.
For example, we have cells that only know what it’s like to be a cell and to perform their cellular processes without any awareness of the more complex layers above them. Organs are much more complex than cells and they perform their duties without any awareness of anything above them either. And the complexity keeps increasing with various systems like endocrine, cardiovascular, etc. Then we have our subconscious and finally our conscious.
At our level, we do not consciously control any of the layers beneath us. Our primary task is to keep our bodies alive.
This got me thinking… isn’t it a little too self aggrandizing to think that we have a near infinite layering of consciousness beneath us and then it just stops at our level of awareness? What if there is some other conscious process that exists above us within our own bodies?
When people take psychedelic drugs they often describe achieving a higher level of awareness akin to ecstasy. Well what if this layer is always there actively ”living” within us but we are just the chumps that go to work, do our taxes, and exercise, while it doles out just enough feel good chemicals to keep us going (sometimes not even that)?
Well, this is kind of a different discussion, but I also find the modern consciousness concept self-contradictory, but the way that resolves for me is that I don’t think consciousness exists.
At best, it’s self-awareness. As in, we have the mental ability to recognize groups of atoms as objects. And we’re able to look in a mirror and realize that a given object is moving like we’re moving, so this object must be ourselves.
And with this horribly dry view on life, the next step upwards in your question is trivial: It’s nature.
Much like a cell plays its part in our body without understanding the whole, we play our part in nature without understanding the whole.
However, having said that, it’s not logical that there has to always be a greater, grander thing that everything else is a part of. That’s a significant logical leap from just having a grand thing that happens to have lots of parts.
All you describe doesn’t contradict the idea of consciousness at all. Indeed there is no consciousness in the systems and in the self-awareness. Those are the results of matter interacting in increasingly complex ways.
Consciousness is not the mind though.
It’s awareness itself. It’s the “experience of being”. You can’t direct your consciousness towards itself, it is the base. Existence is the base. Awareness, being.
This is more and more clear the more you do try to feel it, to “see” it. And more and more it’s clear you are it. You aren’t “you”, the clump of cells that spurt out random thoughts. You’re the one who sees the thoughts. Who hear the sounds. Who believed it was you. But you are it. The base. You are being, awareness. And nothing more. But it really is all there is.
The universe, the whole of reality, that we experience is consciousness. It’s a “dream” in a way. A simulation, but not a computer one.
At least this is a very very old idea. One of the oldest actually, that we have records for.
And coincidentally, physics and the study of consciousness through science are bringing us closer and closer to it again…