Consciousness’ Time

The idea of a conscious experience, and therefore, your own individual conscious experience from within, has been something I have questioned the nature of since the first steps of early adult life. The nature of consciousness is truly a meaningful, deep, and, so it seems, an unanswerable question presently in time. What brings consciousness to existence? What determines the placement of your own individual conscious experience? Is there a limit to consciousness? These are just a fraction of the questions you can ask yourself, questioning the existential nature of the self and being. 

It’s hard to imagine the concept of not existing. Clearly, as a being, we did not exist prior to our conception in the biological form and brought forth to the world through birth. Our form in the human nature gives us the placement of our consciousness to perceive and conceptualize the reality we live in. But does our biological existence create our own conscious experience in theory? Could the consciousness that derives the self have existed in some matter prior to its placement in our own form of mind and body? That would lead to the assumption one can exist in some existential form beyond the body in the present.

But if consciousness is somehow this form of existential existence or dimensional perceptual ability, what would determine its placement in an individual body, mind, and soul? Something that has baffled my own self is the placement in time that I experience as a being. There have been billions of humans that have existed, either in past or present, along with the additional of other functional biological creates to perceive reality around them through a conscious experience on our planet. Does the fact you exist in the present, in the self, in your body, now, rather than existentially coming to experience the world from within John Smith or a dinosaur, have some type of cause behind it, purpose to it, or meaning to it in some functional universal unexplainable manner? One can trickle themselves down a pathway of WHY – why when, why now, why me. 

Then there is the unexplainable fact of you and me. You exist within, perceiving reality in the present, the ability to look out of those eyes, smell the air, taste your food, and observe your thoughts in mind. You most definitely exist inward. Everything else is outward. Is it possible that you can exist with this inwardly perceptual experience, at the same time as another? There seems to be a dimensional question there of consciousness – is there one consciousness, a finite number of consciousness, or an infinite amount of consciousness. If there is one consciousness, it seems that only you can really exist in the state of inward, perceiving the outward universe. What appears to be other forms of consciousness perhaps don’t have this same experience of inwardness, because you are experiencing this inwardness right now in the present time. Can the experience possibly be happening dimensionally inside someone else if you are experiencing the experience of experiencing reality? These thoughts seem almost selfish to the point of approaching theories of God thoughts if you question yourself enough. But at the same time, your experience in the moment seems around the spectrum of special. 

What actually would be the probability of any one individual coming to being and having the inward conscious experience of perceiving the external universe. One could make the argument this is likely an extremely low probability event, about as close to zero as you can get. Existing with the self as a conscious being could made to be an argument of being a borderline miracle. You and me, existing in the realm of a near zero probability, concluding that the genuine fact we exist is basically a miracle. But that also seems to not be an idea to dwell on, as if you exist through time, perceiving the self and the external as a miracle isn’t going to dwell existential direction to the self. Or would it? 

But let’s take a step backwards at this point and think about a one conscious universe. A one conscious universe could be infinite in consciousness, as consciousness could exist everywhere, with biological and neurological pathways to bring the consciousness to a point of defining the reality around it in different ways. One consciousness with the possibility of infinite ways to experience reality through time. This one consciousness can explain the existence of many beings, with the ability of there to, through time, be infinite beings. Consciousness as an infinite specimen seems to be more logical just as a baseline than a finite number of individual consciousnesses. A finite number of consciousness beings perhaps doesn’t give into the theory of you and me, where you are the inward, and everything else is the outward. There is the inward happening, and that seems to be the biggest dwelling question. 

Can you and me exist at the same time? 

By that question, perhaps theorizing that inward experience of perceiving the outward cannot be happening in multiple beings, but to explain the appearance of a multi-conscious universe filled with infinite or finite perceptual experiences, that an inward experience is experienced at different times. The consciousness of the universe experiences you and me, but at different times, but in the face of the universe’s time, exist at the same time, but time is defined differently in this perception by the experience. Would this be sequential – does consciousness go through time experiencing the universe in different forms step by step, one by one? If only one inward conscious experience can be happening, but the void of all existing conscious experiences is filled, as one inward experience has gone through and is experiencing all conscious experiences over the course of conscious time. Therefore, time as we think about it does not really exist as a clock continuously moving, but time exists as a conscious evolvement of experience. Time therefore would be infinite, has a present of the inward experience, and has a future of the present inward experience, as well as future conscious experiences that consciousness would move towards. Perhaps the future exists already in normal time interpretation, but the present conscious inward experience has not yet reached those future forms of consciousness that you see and can interact with.

Perhaps in the future, or maybe even in some form of possibility in the present, the inward experience that seems to be the definition of the present (by this theory) can transcend bodies, minds and ultimately take in the experience of others, removing from the origin of the self’s body. One consciousness, experiencing the universe from multiple perceptions, with the possibility of experiencing the universe from all perceptions. You are yourself, but as a theory, you are also everyone else at another time. 

None of this really answers where conscious comes from or why it exists. But perhaps the consideration of time as conscious evolvement might structure the past – and future – to change, as well as the ability to make the reality around us a product of us as time, so that as the current interpretation of time, and the future it brings, can be affected by our state of present, past and future consciousness.