Not achieving nearly the attention it deserves, a report in the the October 2023 Popular Mechanics entitled “Scientists Believe They’ve Unlocked Consciousness, and It Connects to the Entire Universe,” is unique for the way it addresses the origins of consciousness and links them to the laws of the universe as a whole.

If indeed what we experience as “consciousness” is a fundamental reality of the universe as a whole, then the implications can be absolutely stunning, in my humble view. No, it does not mean that there is a massive super-consciousness overlooking all creation. What it may mean, however, is that the universe is permeated with impulse tendencies toward self-reflective consciousness and that this is remarkable for its potential implications. It could mean that such consciousness is potentially shared, in one form or another to a greater or lesser degree, by almost all living things. What we experience as our consciousness permeates the very fabric of our universe, the reality in which we live.

The Popular Mechanics article notes that “whether we create consciousness in our brain as a function of our neurons firing or if its exists independently of us, there is no universally accepted scientific explanation for where consciousness comes from or where it lives.” But advances in research suggest “we may soon be able to identify a true architecture of consciousness.”

The article by Robert Lea notes that “the new work builds on a theory that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Roger Penrose, PhD, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, first posited in the 1990s, known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory or Orch OR. Broadly, it claims that consciousness is a quantum process facilitated by microtubules in the brain’s nerve cells.” Their theory suggests that consciousness is “a quantum wave that passes through these microtubules, with unique properties like superimposition (the ability to be in many places at the same time), and entanglement (the potential for two particles that are very far away to be connected). (This is already way beyond my ability to decipher).

While the theory has been questioned by experts, it is enjoying a revival with the latest data that is coming in from the interstellar investigations of the James Webb telescope and their often puzzling implications for trying to sort out the kind of universe, and what kind of laws, as flexible or immutable as they may be, in which we live. It is unclear whether all these developments are driving us toward a clearer perception of a universe governed by essentially knowable, by current standards, laws and processes, or the opposite.

While it is known, for example, that the building blocks of sentient life as we currently know it are everywhere in the universe, it is not known what the chain of events are that actually produce life and consciousness. Maybe it is not a process at all, but a universal precondition.

We do get set aside into a contemplation of where such basic notions of morality and right-versus-wrong behavior come from. They are defined by advanced concepts of enhancing life versus diminishing it, and by a certain generosity of spirit that embraces diversity and virtually infinite options for nurturing life, all being spawned of a singular impulse.

If the moth that flutters above me is born of the same substance and laws, or range of them, that inform my conscious thought, then how does that cause me to behave as a result of knowing that?

For me, it calls forth from me a special appreciation for life, for the wondrous universe of which we are a part, not as specs of insignificance, but as fully enfranchised players who do what we do not knowing what or why, necessarily, our actions make a difference, and to strive within our limitations to enhance life, to embrace and enlarge it.

I think something that goes by the name of evil also exists, and it is the flip side of life. It tears down the connections between us, for whatever reason. It is not to be sanctioned or condoned, but overcome with the vastly superior spirit of life and enablement that we are here to celebrate and bring into even fuller form and sublime realization.