16 | The "I" and Consciousness

Welcome to the Cow Behind the Barn: A podcast exploring humanity, the world, and the divine, as experienced and interpreted by an artist. I’m Kevin Caldwell, a co-finder of the Table Collective.

“What is consciousness?” 

That question has fascinated and perplexed people in the fields of philosophy, science, religious heritages and spiritual traditions, and in various artistic genres (including but not only science fiction!), for centuries. And it is not merely an abstract question, for the answers that have been proposed all reach to the very core of who we are, how we understand the very nature of our “selves.” 

If you’ve been following any of the Episodes, you know that along the way I have frequently paused to say, “that is a topic for later,” and typically that comment is prompted by the fact that I was beginning to say things related in some way to “consciousness”, in what I call its big C or small c dimensions.

The reason for such pauses came about because a simple question had become the framework of the entire podcast so far:

“Where and when did I begin?”

Where and when led to the explorations of space and time, the nature of the cosmos and the past, present, and future. 

And now, where and when did I begin has led to this point, standing, as it were, on the porch, about to knock on a door. And I expect it will open into the unexpected, into vast rooms and hallways that I can imagine may be there, but which I know will only become known as I enter and explore.

 

Stories and Consciousness

This time, I will begin with some stories:

The Whale

I came across the One Planet podcast and heard Nan Hauser (President of the Center for Cetacean Research and Preservation) talk about her experience as she was filming underwater when a whale swam directly at her, placed her on its “nose”, repositioned her at various points along its body, and at times covered her with its large fins. She said it was at times terrifying, given the size and power of the whale, but then she noticed a killer whale in her vicinity and realized the whale had been protecting her. It was exhibiting something many whale researchers have noted: that whales exhibit altruistic behavior towards other species, an altruism some researchers attribute to empathy. 

Consciousness?

 

The Rainforest

In a May 2024 article in Atmos, Romany Williams wrote, “In 2014 after nearly two centuries of efforts by the Tūhoe nation in New Zealand, the Te Urewera Act was established, a precedent-setting law which granted formal legal personhood to the Te Urewera rainforest. Similar efforts are being brought forth by Indigenous nations across Turtle Island in an effort to preserve our precious, often voiceless, wild ecosystems.” 

Consciousness? 

 

My Mother

A more personal story: some years ago, my mother had a sudden stroke, the result of which was that her ability to communicate ebbed away over the course of a few days. Within a week she became fully non-responsive. 

While it had been my sister who found my mother, and thus my sister who had the most traumatic experience, my brother and I also formulated the scene in our imaginations as we listened to her, and thus had our own secondary levels of trauma. So, one evening, I suggested that the three of us try an imaginative meditation experience to help us address the inner emotions and memories.

We all silently imagined or recalled the scene and I asked us each to invite “Love” to be present. Because we each shared a Christian heritage I named Love “Jesus” in this case. I encouraged each of us to imagine the scene with Love present in any way our minds suggested. After several iterations of imagining various aspects of the scene, I said to my brother and sister, “what do you want to say to Love, to Jesus.”

My mother had not spoken in days and had not indicated in any way that she was aware of our presence or our words. But as soon as I said, “what do you want to say…” she responded, “I love you Jesus, I love you Jesus, I love you Jesus.” 

Consciousness?

 

The Rock

When I was 18 or 19 I wrote a short, fictional story about a rock on the side of a mountain. It was told from the rock’s point of view, in first person singular. I imagined experiences of the rock as time passed, as its environment changed. I submitted it for publication and though it was refused, and I heartily endorse the reasons (it had all the marks of late adolescent writing style!), one editor took time to comment on the intriguing nature of the concept and encouraged me to keep writing. 

The story implicitly asked the reader to suspend reality and join in imagining a world in which a rock has consciousness, a sense of self, and what that would be like for the rock. 

 

Consciousness?

Each of these stories in different ways raises questions about the nature of consciousness, and about the nature of what it means to be a self, what a self is. 

 

Consciousness and the Self: Clarifying the Questions

Some of the questions about consciousness and the nature of the self that come immediately to mind include: 

What do we mean by consciousness, and by self? How do self and consciousness relate? Are they the same, or different? Different in what ways? 

And then lot of related questions follow right away: 

Given that human beings, for example, change developmentally relative to consciousness and our sense of self as we grow from childhood into adulthood, and when our cognitive functions decline with the aging process, including when some of us are swallowed by some form of dementia, what does consciousness mean, what is a self, in such stages and cases? In infancy, childhood, adulthood, old age, dementia?

Are there other kinds of levels, or types of consciousness and selfhood, not just within humans, but in other beings or things? Sometimes I refer to small and big “c” consciousness and small and big “s” self to contrast the individual with something more than individual: a collective or divine consciousness. But why stop at two? Might there be a whole taxonomy of ways of being conscious, and ways of being selves?

Do quantum theories of the universe and physics have insights for this? Quantum theories of consciousness need to be explored in connection with all of this, especially the question of whether there might be some sort of cosmic level consciousness, and if so, what is that. 

What about the questions that more and more involve AI? Could a computer or programmed “thing” become a self, does it have consciousness? Can humans create a conscious being?

I also need to include meditation, spirituality. I am not only asking what religions say about whether there is a divine Self, a divine level of Consciousness, and if so, what that is. That is an important topic and I will be including it in an Episode (or more!). I am also asking about the effects of meditation, a word which covers a lot of different practices and mental states, on one’s consciousness and sense of self. Is there more to who we are than what we normally experience, for example?

There is another lens I look through when I am thinking about consciousness and the self. We tend to have an explicit or implicit hierarchy, we tend to assume that certain types of consciousness are better than others. And often we equate “better” with intellectual progress or ability. Much of our educational and professional world operates with a priority given to so-called left-brain functions (though the left-brain, right-brain model is outdated it is still very common). 

We tend to highly value logic and reasoning; mathematics and analytical skills; sequential/linear thinking. We often discount imagination, intuition, and non-linear thought, or at least relegate those to a less reliable way of “knowing.” As such, people who exhibit less prowess at what we value in intellectual functions we tend to devalue as people. 

Our views of consciousness and the self have potentially very significant results in how we see other people and things and animals. I will come back to that point in a bit.

 

A Pause

Speaking of other ways of knowing, such as imagination and intuition, this seems like a fitting juncture to pause and share a poem that I began to write while preparing for this Episode. 

I will share it here without a lot of comment other than to say it is my imaginative and intuitive way of processing how I currently understand consciousness.

It is a poem called Room-scape. It may be worth listening to a few times, or even going to the written text of the poem which we include on our Table Collective website, in the Blog section (at tablecollective.art). 

 

Room-Scape

Lead marks on paper, from a pencil

Moved by fingers, moved by hand,

Moved by bone and muscle,

Moved by tendon, sinew, nerve,

Moved by a thought shot down the path

Of pulse and synapse  

To the pencil point on a paper.

 

In the moment of the pencil moving,

Tracing a thought on dull paper,

Pulped flat from the souls of trees,

Further up and further in, 

Up the hand, arm, neck,

Inside the grey tissue inside the skull,

Another thought is already born, 

Formed, and sent, on its way

Before the old thought 

Finds the period on the paper.

 

In the room two cats 

Playing, purring, pausing,

Staring into the dark hallway 

At the things cats see

In the spaces beyond my sight.

 

Inside square walls

There is a tiny orange flash of fish 

Moved by some liquid synapse,

Or lure or longing I cannot sense.

 

A plant above and to my right

Tamed and potted 

In soil from the loam of some 

Raw and wild land

Spilling leaves and stems

Down the bookshelf’s breast

Trellised green and yellow.

 

Toys are askew, scattered residue 

Of a three-year old’s make believe.

She sleeps in a crib that stands on a floor

That is the ceiling above me.

 

A daughter, first born of three, 

Sleeps above me, to my left.

Mother of a first born of her own,

Across the hall, not yet stirring

In the crib.

 

Behind a door to my right

Another sleeper.

We have fifty years of waking,

Walking; bed and bread;

Breath inhaled and exhaled;

A weathered life of days, 

Together.

 

These rooms are breathing.

 

The night has inhaled a passing day 

Held its breath deep in moonlit lungs

Up to the point of exhale, 

Releasing a tomorrow that will be today,

A wind that will carry us afloat

From dawn down to dusk and the next breath 

Swallowed in deep.

 

The woman breathing

The daughter and the daughter’s daughter 

Breathing

The cat breathing

The fish breathing

I am breathing.

 

I inhale the breath of the breathing room

Into lung, to blood, to brain,

Down the muscle and tendon and bone,

Down to fingers laced around a pencil

To the dulling point scratching,

To the traces of lead on paper,

To lines shaped into sticks,

Circles and twists and spots.

 

The grey dust on paper is inhaled by other eyes.

They draw in deep the scratches of the pencil on the page,

Into lung, to blood, to brain,

Down again through muscle and tendon and bone and vein.

 

The Ethics of Consciousness

There is another aspect of  consciousness and the nature of the self I want to touch on here, in addition to the more philosophical questions, and the practical considerations of a hierarchy of ways of knowing and thinking which is related to how we see the self and consciousness.

There are also significant ethical dimensions to all of this. 

Our views of what it means to be a self and conscious will affect what we then determine is or is not a self, which affects how we treat people and things in our world. If we think that someone with lesser intellect, or in a coma, or with Alzheimer’s, does not display signs of consciousness and selfhood that are in keeping with our definitions, it will affect how we treat those people.

Turning from human beings, can we carry this over to plants, cats, fish, as I did in my poem? Consider why we react differently if we see someone smashing a spider, versus, say, beating a dog to death. We feel differently based on our experience that a dog has feelings and is conscious in some way, whereas fewer of us imagine a spider to have those characteristics.  

Here’s the point: our relationship to and treatment of people and everything in the cosmos is potentially affected by our way of understanding consciousness and the self.

Thus, in addition to the more theoretical and philosophical dimensions of how we see consciousness and the self, there are very real consequences in both our private actions, and in public policy relative to the environment, treatment of the mentally impaired, euthanasia, and more.  

This matters. It really matters.

 

Back to Where?

In a way, this question of “I”, the self, consciousness, circles back to the very first Episodes of the podcast in which I was exploring the nature of the cosmos to be able to answer the simple “where” I began.

What is the cosmos like? I ended up with many more Episodes on that topic than I anticipated! Well, now I am asking another question about the nature of the “where” in which we live: is the cosmos conscious? Or at the least, what within the cosmos is conscious?  

Now, after that long preamble, back to the question that began this journey:

When I ask “where and when did I begin,” what do I mean by “I”? What is consciousness and the self?

 

My Background

Before trying to articulate a working definition, I want to be open about my background to all this. We all come to any discussion with a pre-history and that history will in large part determine how we view things, the questions we ask, and the questions we don’t think to ask. 

I did not enter this topic with an explicit definition of my own, but neither do I arrive here as a blank slate. I have a pre-history that has probably resulted in some implicit assumptions about consciousness and the self. 

 

In my late teens I had a number of experiences and came to certain intellectual conclusions, that combined to result in becoming a devout, practicing Christian. In that heritage I absorbed what was taught to me as a given: that we are body, soul, and spirit, and that this is the nature of the human being, the human self. I understood as well that there was a divine self, God, and other selves, conscious spirits both good and bad, the angels and demons. My views on these things have changed, I think matured, but it is in my background. 

In college I took a Philosophy of Mind course, which probed major questions about the nature of the mind, consciousness, the inter-relationship of self-hood and consciousness with the body and with the chemical processes of the brain, etc. 

Later I sought out the help of a therapist as part of my process of personal integration and healing. It happened that she was a Jungian, and this introduced me to the reality that much of my “self” was not conscious, including the shadow self which we usually prefer not to be conscious of, and the subconscious depths of myself which seem to connect with something more vast and more deep, something possibly shared in some way with all of humanity.

Later still I began to study more seriously, and with greater open-minded curiosity, the teachings of the Buddha, and of the Bhagavad Gita, and Quran and Tao Te Ching. This exposed me to very different ways of understanding the nature of the self, consciousness, the body, the world, and the divine. 

Much more recently, maybe a year or so prior to starting the podcast, I have been interested in what I will call the physics of consciousness  and the self.

This is a pretty cursory survey for the purpose of brevity. My aim has been to outline some of the sources in my history for how I approach defining and understanding humanity, the divine, and what it means to be a self.

 

A Menu of Definitions

To talk about something, we have to know what it is. So, I need to clarify a definition for consciousness and the self.

I will begin by just listing some of the definitions I have come across. Then, without a lot of debate, I will share what I will use as the working definition for the purpose of the podcast.

Here is a list of some of the definitions I have discovered:

“Consciousness is the state of being aware of experiences”

“The self refers to the concept of one's own identity” 

“Consciousness is the ability to experience, and the self is the entity that does the experiencing"

“One is conscious and a self if one is both aware and aware of being aware, including being aware of remembering, and aware of being ‘other’ with respect to other selves and things” 

“Consciousness is the state of being aware of yourself (note self there) and the world around you. It is a subjective experience that's unique to each person”

“Consciousness is just a meaningless universe of matter, an illusion”

“Consciousness is a function of the neural activity of the brain”

“Conscious and unconscious mental and physical attributes make up the self”

“The self is a subjective experience that's central to selfhood. The privacy of this experience is one of many problems in the study of consciousness”

And finally, a more poetic or perhaps existential, definition:

“Consciousness is everything you experience. It is the tune stuck in your head, the sweetness of chocolate mousse, the throbbing pain of a toothache, the fierce love for your child and the bitter knowledge that eventually all feelings will end.” 

 

My Approach

What I notice in those widely varying descriptions is that definitions of consciousness and the self have different “mixes” three things: experience of the environment and stimuli, awareness of those experiences, and the awareness of having that awareness. Different definitions include or exclude those, but I see them as common enough that they have shaped my approach. 

I see four dimensions of consciousness and the self.

One Dimensional Consciousness/Self: experiences what happens (in some way), but is not aware of experiencing it.

Two Dimensional: experiences what happens to it and is aware of experiencing it.

Three Dimensional: experiences what happens, is aware of experiencing it, and is aware of being aware.

Multi-Dimensional: this is beyond the human level; the subconscious, divine, collective. 

In the coming Episodes I will try to explain more about the different Dimensions, drawing again from philosophy, science, religion, and from my way of seeing and experiencing all of this as an artist.

In keeping with that last statement, I will end this Episode with another poem which was inspired recently as I was meditating on and considering the insights of the Buddha into the nature of the self.

As with the prior poem, I will present it here without further comment, and invite you to re-listen, or read it in print, and to receive it with your imagination. It is called, "A Feathered Flying Thing.”

 

A Feathered Flying Thing

What you see is a flying thing

All vanes and plumes and hollow shafts

Hooked quills, blood feathers, pins

In flight from nest to limb

To wind to branch, 

Back again.

 

You see the feathered thing

Tracing air, open winged,

On waves invisible as light.

 

You see,

But I know.

 

There is no bird,

No follicles, no skin,

Only feathers, covering layers of feathers,

Attached to and held together in 

A hollow fullness.

 

These feathers that I am,

This I that is a we,

This single plural of feather.

First, second, third person.

 

“I” is not here,

Yet this reeling feeling

Of feather lifting feather in the wind,

A shape of move and hover,

That is me.

 

I am the feathered flying thing you see.

 

 

What is consciousness, and what is the self? Real? Not real? Empty? Full? Singular, plural? Less than all that? More than all that? Other than all that?

In upcoming Episodes I will come back to all of this, and to the four dimensions I introduced.

Until next time…