What is Consciousness?

What Is Consciousness?

Introduction

Is consciousness located in the brain? Does it permeate the body? Does it extend beyond us entirely? Which comes first—thought or the structures that appear to generate it?

These questions have occupied philosophers, scientists, and mystics for centuries. While contemplative traditions have long reported consistent findings within deeper states of awareness, it is only relatively recently that physicists and neuroscientists have begun to approach consciousness as a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry.

What emerges is not a single answer, but a convergence of perspectives—each illuminating a different facet of the same underlying mystery.

Consciousness as a State of Matter

Physicist Max Tegmark has proposed that consciousness may be understood as a state of matter. As he writes:

“I conjecture that consciousness can be understood as yet another state of matter. Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness.”

Tegmark’s broader framework, known as the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, suggests that all mathematically consistent structures exist physically. Within sufficiently complex structures, self-aware substructures arise and experience themselves as inhabiting a real, physical world.

Whether or not one accepts this hypothesis, its value lies in how it reframes the question: consciousness is no longer treated as an anomaly, but as something that may emerge naturally under certain conditions—subject to structure, organization, and coherence.

Information and Integration

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi approaches consciousness from a different direction. His work proposes that any conscious system must possess two key properties.

First, it must be capable of storing and processing large amounts of information. Second, that information must be integrated into a unified whole—irreducible into independent parts.

This mirrors our lived experience: consciousness appears as a single, cohesive field, not a collection of fragments. Tononi’s framework allows these qualities to be expressed mathematically, making consciousness accessible to formal analysis without reducing it to mere mechanism.

Together, approaches like Tegmark’s and Tononi’s invite a subtle but important shift. Instead of asking where consciousness comes from, we begin asking what conditions allow it to appear.

Consciousness as Opposition?

Some have suggested that consciousness is best understood as antimatter—an invisible counterpart to visible reality. While intriguing, this framing often relies on opposition: consciousness versus matter, inner versus outer, visible versus invisible.

My own resistance to this idea is simple. I do not experience consciousness as an opposing force.

Mystical traditions consistently describe consciousness as pervasive rather than oppositional—present within the brain, yes, but not confined to it. Rather than standing against the physical world, consciousness appears to animate it, permeate it, and give rise to experience itself.

Consciousness as the Most Familiar Thing

Philosopher Galen Strawson offers a grounding perspective. He argues that consciousness is not mysterious at all—it is, in fact, the most familiar thing there is.

By consciousness, Strawson means experience itself: seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, understanding. These are not abstractions; they are the only phenomena we know directly.

Bertrand Russell made a similar observation decades earlier, noting that while we know little about the intrinsic nature of physical matter, conscious experience offers a direct glimpse into what something is like from the inside.

In this sense, consciousness is not something we infer—it is something we encounter constantly.

Consciousness, Awareness, and the Center

Yet a distinction becomes necessary. Consciousness alone is not the same as awareness.

Without awareness, consciousness may exist in a diffuse, unorganized state—present, but unfocused. Awareness introduces coherence. It brings order, direction, and meaning.

This distinction becomes especially important when we consider questions of the eternal.

If the eternal has no beginning and no end, what lies at its center? What exists between infinity and infinity?

I propose that consciousness occupies this position—not as an object, but as a binding field. Consciousness is the bridge between formlessness and form, between nothingness and everything.

Because it lies at the center of what is boundless, that center must be everywhere.

Closing Reflection

Consciousness, then, may not be something we possess so much as something we participate in. Awareness allows that participation to become coherent, refined, and meaningful.

In this light, consciousness is not merely an emergent property of matter, nor its opposite. It is the necessary condition through which experience itself becomes possible—the quiet center through which form arises.

It is the bridge across the river.