Toward a Science of Consciousness "Tucson IV" April 2000
An ABSTRACT submitted thereto by the Author, entitled: The Cosmic and Terrestrial Nature of Consciousness
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia - Southern Spring of 1999

ABSTRACT

The Cosmic and Terrestrial
Nature of Consciousness

Independent of culture, the fundamental and common (global)
expressions of both the indigenous and the mystic traditions,
speak of the inner nature of man (male and female) as a system
of irreducible metaphysical elements of being - "heart and
mind and soul and spirit".   How might these be modeled?

In terrestrial terms food (earth), water and air are essential
for survival of the physical body.  Hunger is the internal
response to the need for food, thirst for water and breath for
air.  However, it is something non-physical that characterises
the nature of the living system as "alive", and this "something"
has the characteristics of elemental fire - "the flame" of
consciousness. The spectrum of electromagnetic energy.

As the sunshine (fire from Sol) infuses the outer terrestrial
realms, so too does the inner (cosmic) fire (or flame) of
consciousness - sourced in the soul - infuse the inner
terrestrial realms.  Word and image (human senses of hearing
and sight) are based on vibration (physical and aetherial
respectively).  The correlates of consciousness are not neural,
they are sensory - ancient and elemental in a metaphysical sense.


One must naturally expect - from a systems perspective - that the
ontology of consciousness (and whatever scientific specifications
may be attributed thereto) must be a superset of the ontology
of life itself, for consciousness, it would appear, has evolved
out of life.  Life is the substratum, and as Erwin Schrödinger
wrote: "What is Life"?

The terrestrial environment, wherein this 4 billion year
evolution has occurred, has been entirely dependent for its
energy needs on the local cosmic environment.  The continuous
provision of (electromagnetic) energy from the sun, preserved
by the long-term gravitational systematics of the earth-moon-sun
system, has enabled life to evolve outwardly on earth.  Inwardly,
the heart, the mind and the soul of living beings have also
evolved - in an endosymbiotic manner - in response to the
long enduring cosmic systematics of the earth, the moon and sun.

Isaac Asimov once wrote that the moon has made it possible for
man to exist (life left the seas via inter-tidal zones), that
it has given rise to mathematics (it never coincided with the
year and seasons!), and that it enabled space exploration.

I go a few steps further and suggest that the "Great Light of
the Night" profoundly (via its subtlety) influenced the
evolution of the (nocturnal) mammals - away from the survival
oriented heart/earth (in which inner/outer environment all
living beings then dwelt) and towards a more cosmic perspective
of these terrestrial fields - the beginnings of self-reflective
mind. Like the earth and moon, the human heart and mind operate
as a binary system.  The dual hemispheres (left and right) of
the brain reinforce this operational classification.

Embedded as constituent organisms in the biosphere of the planet,
we too are metaphysical biosystems, each one internalising the
4 billion year old systematics of our local cosmic environment,
each one with the impetus and energy of a living soul, each
one with the binary systematics of consciousness manifest
through heart and mind.

And what is the nature of the pioneering spirit in this natural
model of consciousness where the earth and moon and sun
provide their cosmic tapestry?   The spirit is as the sunshine.

PRF Brown
BCSLS {Freshwater}
Mountain Man Graphics
Australia

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