Life, and hence consciousness, flourishes at numerous orders of existence. From a prokaryote to a behemoth, and everything in between, are a part of life in this universe. I have always wondered where consciousness begins and where it ends. To elucidate my point, lets start from the lowest form of life.
Consider a single cell (may be there is something lower than that, but that can be reserved for another discussion), it performs all the functions of life. It is an independent life form in itself. It must be aware of its existence, otherwise the entire life process, response to stimuli and self replication simply wouldnt take place. That implies that all cells have a consciousness. Every cell in our body has a consciousness, but are we as an organism, aware of it? We seem to have a consciouness of our own, is it a collective conscious of all the cell in our body?or is it an synergy of the conscious of all the cells, or it something entirely new, different from the consciouness of the cells?
Taking this an order higher, let us consider the planet earth itself. Each animal and plant on this planet has a conscious, and earth itself seems to exhibit all the life processes life homeostasis, response to stimuli, self preservation etc. Does that make earth a super-organism? If it does, then does earth have a conscious? If it does, then why are we not aware of it…. may be it is the same as the cells and our body, just like the cells are not aware of the body’s conscious.
If the planet itself has a conscious of its own, then why does it have to stop there, cant a galaxy, whose cells are the star systems have a consciou of its own? Cant it be a superorganism? Taking it an order higher up, we could hypothesis that the entire universe is one gaint organism.
I know I have more questions that statements on this post, but the point is…. arent we going about the wrong way trying to figure out how the world works? Why does the concept of an organism have to stop at us, or the animals or birds. Is it simply because the order of our conscious is here, so we arent in a position to comprehend a higher order of existance in this universe? If this is so, isnt all our knowledge just projections of the truth through prisms?
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