The ultimate first principle is consciousness

The mainstream scientific or religious view often assumes that consciousness is the consequence of something that lies underneath it. That matter, which is ruled by the laws of physics, forms the brain, and the brain then causes conscious perceptions through neural activity. The religious assumption is always that a deity has created humans, which would then explain the existence of consciousness as something created by that deity.

Although these two possibilities could potentially be accurate explanations, one thing is for certain: Consciousness exists. You can't deny the existence of consciousness, since no unconscious being could even read these words. The fact of conscious perception that you're experiencing right now proves the existence of consciousness. That is undeniable.

We have many things for this thing that we call consciousness. Soul, awareness, perception, experience, and whatever else. What matters is that you have that quality. You are conscious.

But what do we make of this observation?

Well, I would like to claim that the undeniable existence of consciousness puts it into the center of life itself. Science, first and foremost, is a conscious perception. Religion, first and foremost, is a conscious perception. Even matter, thoughts, emotions, and your very own sensory perceptions, which form your body, are first and foremost, conscious perceptions. You can't refute this fact.

This obviously doesn't mean that these things might not exist, but it does mean two things if you're honest:

1. Consciousness might be the only thing that exists. There's no proof for the existence of anything outside of consciousness since every attempt to observe such a world would require us to leave our consciousness, which is impossible. Your consciousness might be able to change, but you can't perceive what you don't perceive. You have actually never been unconscious since unconsciousness isn't a state of consciousness but simply no consciousness at all. When you go to sleep, you wake up immediately again, and perhaps have memories (mental perceptions) of the time you spent sleeping. But you weren't conscious in sleep. To prove if anything other than consciousness exists would require us to observe a world we can't observe. A scientist who analyzes data about natural phenomena, first and foremost, has a conscious experience. This can't be denied. Consciousness necessarily exists since you're currently conscious, and it could be that nothing else exists. This doesn't immediately mean that consciousness is, in fact, the only thing that exists. It simply means that there's no proof for the existence of anything else. A first principle is an undeniable truth. Observations made by physicists, or claims made by holy books are potentially falsifiable, but consciousness itself remains as an unbreakable truth.

2. If something other than consciousness exists, we have no proof for the accuracy of our perceptions. This is very straightforward. The first point was about illusions. That the contents of our consciousness may be complete illusions. This point is about delusions. This means that you might simply have a false perception of the world outside of consciousness (if it exists). Scientific discoveries about the limitations of our perception would agree with me on this. Just because we perceive something in a certain way doesn't mean that it is happening in that way. Our consciousness might change the data that enters our perceptional universe.

These two undeniable observations about the fact of consciousness imply something that is extremely logical. Consciousness is the foundation on which our life plays out. Through consciousness we have an experience of life, and it is the first starting point from which we might be able to find additional facts about existence. Consciousness itself, however, can't be denied, which not only makes it a first-principle, but THA first-principle. So long as unconsciousness isn't a state of consciousness but simply the absence of consciousness, we will not be able to make statements about existence without first considering the fact that consciousness exists, and that we live through it.

We can't prove if anything other than consciousness is the source of life. There might be something else, but we just can't prove it since we would have to leave our conscious perception and perceive a world without perceiving that world, which is obviously a logical fallacy. This means that our focus, if we want to improve our lives and become more alive, should be on the improvement and expansion of consciousness.

That is because the fact of consciousness opens up a game and presents you with a decision. You can decide if you want to improve and expand consciousness, or if you want to worsen and shrink it. It's a decision you need to make which isn't immediately logical. There's no clear definition of what "good" or "positive" means. It certainly is the opposite of "bad" and "negative" however. The dualism here shows us that we have a decision to make. You can either play the game of consciousness improvement and expansion, or the opposite game. You decide.

I, for my part, choose to take the raw observation of the ultimate first-principle which is consciousness, and conclude that I should make the most of it since it's a truth I can't deny. It's a leap of faith, but it seems obvious that improving and expanding consciousness equals becoming more alive, and also having a better life. Choosing positivity over negativity isn't necessarily logical, but it would still be stupid to choose a painful and small experience of life.

If you're sold on this, then you might ask how to go about improving and expanding consciousness. For that it's important to distinguish between two things:

1. There's stuff that you perceive.

2. There’s perception itself.

The things that you perceive are what I like to call the elements of consciousness. I only do this for practical purposes. The elements of consciousness are sensory perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and non-ego. They form what we call body, mind, emotions, and environment. But consciousness itself isn't necessarily those things but rather that which perceives them. The name of the game is therefore to improve the elements of consciousness as much as possible, and to expand conscious perception itself as much as possible. But how do you do that?

The improvement of the elements of consciousness (body, mind, emotions, environment) means that we aim for the most positive experience of them. The opposite of positive is negative, and so to improve means to eliminate negativity. Negativity is characterized by causing suffering. We call such things "problems". A problem is something that causes suffering, because if it wouldn't cause suffering we wouldn't regard it as a problem. It would either be a neutral thing without any meaning, or a positive thing with meaning. Anyway, problems cause suffering, which is negative. If we therefore want to improve the elements of our consciousness (make them positive) we have to eliminate suffering, which in turn can only be achieved by solving a problem. Solving problems is the primary thing we need to do to improve that which we perceive. It will make the perception of those things more positive, and therefore lead to a better life.

The beautiful thing that happens when you solve problems is that your consciousness expands. That happens because suffering traps consciousness in a small space which prevents it from being big, essentially. When you have back pain for example, your consciousness isn't flying through the 5th dimension or something like that, but is occupied with your back. Obviously that happens because there is a problem you haven't solved yet. The pain is an indication for an unsolved problem, and before you solve it, you will not have a positive experience, and your consciousness will not be able to transcend to higher level problems.

To demand infinite positivity and infinite consciousness is childish. Those are ideals, and you don't know if they are things you can actually achieve. However, they are the grand navigations in the game of consciousness. Who wouldn't want to have an infinitely positive experience, and an infinitely high state of consciousness? The primary action item in this game is therefore to solve problems.

You might ask: What does it mean to solve problems? Well, first of all, it means to eliminate suffering and therefore whatever the opposite of suffering is. Secondly, it means to expand consciousness. But that's not the question, I already explained that. The question is: What is the action that leads to a problem being solved? The answer is: solving problems means fighting entropy.

Entropy states that objects naturally fall apart, decay, fall into chaos, and flow into all directions of the universe. This is very easy to observe. If you don't clean your home for a week, it will look and smell like shit. Another example is that if I spray perfume on a particular point on a wall, it will soon fill the whole room, and will be perceivable everywhere in the room, but if we open the window, the room becomes the whole atmosphere of the planet. The opposite of entropy is order. The complete non-existence of an object would be infinite entropy, and therefore infinite order would mean that an object not only exists, but exists most positively. An infinitely ordered object would be infinitely beautiful, useful, pleasant, enlightening, curative, good, and whatever other positive word.

Now remember, problems are perceived because they cause suffering. This means that an object which causes suffering is in a relatively higher state of entropy than an object that doesn't cause any suffering. And since order is the opposite of entropy, solving problems means ordering objects. If you can identify what exactly it is that's causing the suffering, you can start ordering that, and by that you will fight entropy, which will in turn solve the problem. By this your perception of that object will be improved, and your consciousness can transcend to higher level problems.

If you therefore want to play the game of consciousness as hard as possible, the primary action item is to order the elements of consciousness. Ordering the 4 elements of consciousness – body, mind, emotions, and environment – is the main game that we're playing inside of the Ozmania community. So check it out if you're interested in a daily game which will ensure that you intensely order the elements of your consciousness, and by that intensely improve & expand your consciousness.

Ömer, powered by Ozmania