Mysteries of Consciousness, page 1

There's something called 'systems' theory, also called 'complexity' theory, 'chaos' theory, or non-linear dynamics theory.

If you really understand the phenomena of nature and natural processes, you will understand the necessity of whats called "far-from equilibrium' states. Homeostasis is an idea about how organisms (or even inorganic systems) seem to incline to a particular way of functioning, "choosing" that functioning, as it were. However, if the system becomes 'too energetic', new states will emerge that "depart" from the previous dynamic.

Schizophrenia is what happens to a human consciousness when it has experienced a) too much emotional trauma, defined as experiencing too many 'shocking' affective states, feeling over-aroused in your body, and generally losing the capacity to psychologically orient yourself to the world around you. An added complexity is the way the organism, or self, seeks to "equilibrate" by seeking other, and better emotional states. But with so much unresolved trauma - still unreflected upon, and thus still "dissociated", still energetically "locked" in the neural sub-systems of the right hemisphere. The brains "homeostasis" thus requires a therapeutic relationship, either between self and other people, or self and God (and imagined other); talking allows the suffering we experienced become more 'comprehensible'. Our minds ACTUALLY NEED some form of left brained, linear, sequential way to 'understand' and thus 'hold' the trauma we experienced.

This is an amazing fact and provides interesting grist for thinking about Homo Heidelbergensis, who marks the time-period when humans developed bigger brains. In this context, and the day to day suffering associated with trying to survive, humans etched out and evolved relationships with one another built around care, empathy, and companionship. Our brains became as they did, because to survive, we needed to help and encourage one another. We needed to share a common "intentional state", as seen from the outside, "objective perspective", but more realistically, it was the emotional realities, suffering, and pain, that motivated psychological strategies of coming into "sync" with other people, to know them, and in knowing them more deeply, feeling more comforted. It is essentially the logic of conscious activity - not mere "brain-processes" - IN RELATION to other people, that we 'find' the psychological state, or equilibrium, of comfort, joy, and peace, with ourselves and with others.

I cannot stress this point enough, but it is the complexities and dynamics of CONSCIOUSNESS that is causally 'affecting' the direction of physiological (neuronal, chemical, atomic) processes. It may of course be argued that all this 'information' reflected upon in consciousness is itself generated from the brain, and in addition, by the information the brain receives from the body. I agree with this, but it is still nevertheless a 'process' of psychological perception, and relation, that is related to meanings that organize it's perception and activity.

Still the brain? Many would think so. But I cannot persist in over-asserting one perspective relative to an opposing one. Each position, when seen from that vantage point, seems true. As a mind, I relate to my past traumatic experiences with a felt conviction of selfhood - some essence - that feels like it emerges from my physiological core - my heart - which may in fact be related to neurons in the heart. Logically, the expression of will is a FORCED increase in physiological activity. Some "essence" decides to EXERT energy according to some deliberate intention. In doing this, and in reflecting on the physiological sensations that co-occur with it, it makes sense that the heart would be a focal point: after all, our heart powers our entire body, including our brain. If I consciously exert myself, my heart is being 'activated' by direct innervation between the vagus nerve and the sinoatrial node. The heart is being made to pump 'harder', which also generates subtle sensations in the chest region (this, at least, is my theory).

So will comes from the core. And the 'core', of course, seems to be some mysterious center or oneness in the world. When we express our 'will', we experience it in our chest, a seeming symbolic allusion to the "core" or "middle" of reality.

Equilibrium - a state an organism must find to maintain life - is essentially a 'middle point' between two extremes of expression (in mammals, depression, anxiety, fear, shame, vs. laughter, joy, peace, awe). The middle expresses itself symbolically; if this world speaks so consciously to us, that is, to a consciousness that can perceive an intelligent, though mysterious meaning in the patterns of reality, how can someone speak so little of consciousness - when - if you happen to be a teleological "romantic", the universe very obviously seems to communicating a deep mystery, not merely as the physical patterns, but more properly as meanings MEANT to be understood by self-aware, suffering, existentially aware minds.

Faith is a word that some people detest - but why? Nature is so freaking non-linear - so circular - so difficult to PREDICT WITH CERTAINTY: its core lies beyond our capacity. Yet some among us arrogate the 'right' that the universe can be reduced to mere biology, and all that interesting phenomenology that really matters (since it shapes your awareness, you might want to pay attention to the relational psychodynamics of our species evolution).

I can say that I'm a "mysterian" - apparently a person who is enraptured by the world, in awe of it's mystery, and ok with the paradox created by being a conscious 'subject' experiencing the "fact" that my body has evolved in 'cells', themselves combining to create super-structures like ourselves. A holistic view of self needs to think about the nature of time, and how time gives expression to one 'great reality', with humans as a construction of biological process that began inconspicuously from inorganic processes. Since life can never be perfectly distinguished from non-life, why should consciousness be treated as merely 'epiphenomenal' to biology? The same process has created it: the same raw physiological 'fact's, swarming energy, 'designs' the universe to appear overtime as it does. And that it screams to us, conscious, intelligent beings billions of years later: look at the meaning in this! How brazen it is to 'choose' a more 'rational' view by dissecting and analyzing something as wondrously natural as accepting the sheer consuming reality of being a conscious being that experiences awe for natural reality. It is right - and it what it may imply to our cognitive, linguistic minds, is not exactly wrong either: our brains may crave those interpretations because they something true about reality. If the right brain picks it up, it needs expression, which we do, through religion.