Speculation, Musings, & Insanity

A few years ago, I began to think about my own beliefs in God and how they related to who or what I am. During this period, I did a lot of reading to see what science, philosophy, logic, and religions say about God and our own spirituality. Although there were far too many tidbits of information to put into a blog post like this, in my next few posts, I'll try to give you the big pieces that really pointed me in the direction I took.

First of all, I wanted to answer the question, "who or what am I?" I removed all external observations and looked at how the mind works. The first conclusion I kept reaching was the fact that we are self-aware beings. Here's why. Even if every nerve connected to every sense organ in our body were severed, we would still be aware that we exist simply because we are aware that we are at that precise moment, thinking about being aware. This is summed up in the pure logic exercise done by Rene Descartes where he eliminates all other possibilities and external influences one by one and eventually states the inevitable conclusion, "Cogito, ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am."

Next, I thought about what the "I" is in that simple statement. Is it a physical brain firing electrical impulses? Well, in my view, those electrical impulses and neurons are basically more of the same physical manifestation of "I" which Descartes tries to eliminate in his logic exercise. On a more personal note, I realized that during my many years of struggles with bipolar disorder, "I" had observed that my mind was not functioning correctly during my worst mental states. Well, if "I" am able to observe the functioning of my mind from an outside perspective, then "I" must be separate from my mind, right?

This led me to reason that the human mind is more like the steering wheel and pedals on a car. I believe the real "me" is the willful entity driving the "car." In other words, I am the entity making a constant stream of choices and causing my mind to move my body in such a way as to act on those choices I've made.

Think about the act of driving a car for a moment. You control the car using a steering wheel and pedals. When you first start driving that car, you aren't able to control it very well. As you drive longer and longer, your skill at controlling the car grows. You are better able to control the steering wheel and pedals to produce the specific motions you desire. The steering wheel and pedals are the physical interface you use to control the larger physical object - the car.

With that analogy in mind, imagine a spirit inhabiting a newborn baby. They are not very good at "driving" their body. They flail about. They gurgle. They make noises which don't reflect what they are trying to communicate. They lack the skill at controlling their physical bodies which they will gain with practice as time goes on.

The mind is the physical interface for controlling the larger physical body - the steering wheel and pedals. A baby's control over their mind is poor, so they are unable to control their body. Electrical impulses in their minds fire in a random fashion at birth. The mind is far more active than it is as an adult. "Something" gains more skill at controlling those electrical impulses as time goes on. "Something" is able to operate the "steering" wheel more precisely with practice.

So if I'm not my mind. If my mind is simply the steering wheel for my body. Then, what am "I." Considering they have never found some physical thing in the brain which causes all of the precise firing patterns of neurons which govern self-aware thinking, "I" must be non-physical. I am not a tangible, physical, object. I am self-aware consciousness. I am spirit. I am ethereal. For me, that is the only explanation that makes sense. We are spiritual beings operating physical bodies and using the mind as an interface between the two.

This obviously matches what we're told, not only in the Christian bible, but in the vast majority of religions worldwide. Some are confused by the creation story in Genesis because it literally reads like we were being created twice somehow. Well, if we are indeed two parts - physical and spiritual - then perhaps we really were created twice. First, our spirits were created as derivatives of the spirit of God the Creator. Then, He made physical bodies for us so that we could interact with the physical world which He created. In fact, if you look at nearly every religion worldwide, they all have a pretty similar creation story. Plus, they all depict us as spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies.

Speaking of creation, I believe the story of creation was primarily intended to establish the order of creation, not the timescale. I don't think humans in that ancient time period could have grasped the reality or real timescale of exactly how it happened, so they told the story in a way they could grasp. In fact, hearing detailed explanations of all aspects of a powerful spiritual being creating the energy and matter of our universe with a single thought would be beyond their grasp due to the vast gaps in ancient vocabulary required for a more accurate understanding.

Any story you tell has to be told in terminology that the listener can understand. Imagine having to explain that God created all things as energy and matter to somebody who doesn't have words like energy and matter in their vocabulary. When they repeat the story, or write it down, instead of them saying God created energy and matter, they would likely tell people God created space and solid. Or maybe it was something similar which got changed slightly during each of the many translations of the story over time until it became heavens and Earth. In any case, the gist of the story (God created this universe) remains while the terminology eventually becomes slightly confusing and the subject of great ongoing debate. So, unlike many, I believe Genesis and science actually agree on creation. According to both science and the bible, a lot of stuff was put on Earth before we humans finally got here.

I also think the act of creating our physical bodies to house our spirits was the result of direct DNA manipulation and seeding by God. Would ancient people have understood this concept or would it have been simplified for them to grasp the story more easily? Again, I have to believe that terminology and ancient vocabulary got in the way of the literal verbal accuracy of telling the story so that people of that time period could understand it. My mind envisions a divine being relating this story to an ancient person by saying, "See this fine dust? Even that is made up of much smaller parts. Those same tiny parts were used to create man." The person then writes the story down as, "Man was created from dust." It's easy to see how that could happen. But, I digress.

Let's get back to the spiritual vs physical question.

Another indication that we are an ethereal consciousness controlling a physical body comes from science. I looked at the physical laws in science and tried to find something in science which verifies us as being ethereal consciousness rather than random firing neurons. To my surprise, I easily found huge indications in quantum physics.

It has been found that our consciousness plays a deterministic role in the observation of states of quantum level objects. These states are known as quantum superpositions, or simply the ability of a subatomic particle to exist in more than one state at the same time. The indication that consciousness exists comes in the fact that the actual state isn't set until it is observed. Who observes it? We, as conscious beings do. Before we observe its state, the possible states of a quantum object only exist as probabilities.

This concept is also outlined in the "Measurement" problem. You can't directly observe whether a wave function collapse occurs in a subatomic particle because the observation itself alters the result. For a thought experiment demonstrating this problem, see Schrodinger's Cat or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.

So over the course of a lot of research and reading, I have firmly established in my own mind that we exist as spiritual consciousness inhabiting a physical body. Amazingly, I also established that our consciousness affects and interacts with physical reality. This realization was the stunner. We, as spirits, can actually modify reality directly. My theory is that this ability is exactly how we cause specific neurons to fire in our minds in order to tell them how to manipulate our bodies. I'll touch on our ability to directly manipulate physical reality more in a future post.

Labels: Consciousness, God, Physics