The Unexpected Comeback of the Conscious Universe - Pt. IX

What is Life?

So far, a multidimensional vision has been outlined, that envisages a panentheistic ontology where reality is not only material, subconscious, and mental but is also superconscious, with each individuality a soul in evolution. Can this view of reality answer the following question: What is life?

Biologists and scientists tried hard throughout generations to define what should be considered a living organism. Famous is Erwin Schrödinger’s book “What is Life?” which precisely tried to address this question but without any convincing final answer. Nowadays, biology identifies, loosely speaking, as ‘living,’ anything capable of metabolizing, eating, excreting, maintaining homeostasis, growing, adapting to the environment, reproducing, and evolving. However, there is no consensus regarding a universal definition of life because, for example, the demarcation line between what is living and non-living remains unclear.

More recent attempts resort to complicated mechanistic explanations that are supposed to shed more light on the matter. A couple of which we have briefly discussed in a previous post, namely ‘enactivism,’ in an autopoietic frame, something nicely represented by Thompson’s biopsychism, or Reber’s ‘cellular basis of consciousness model.’ Others try hard with computational theories or, to the contrary, non-computational but functional models based on non-linear complex systems, extended cognition, thermodynamics, genetics, electromagnetic fields, information theory, and who knows what other contrived mechanistic machinery.

The living cell during the process of mitosis is an example of an autopoietic system. Source: Wikipedia

While these approaches could, perhaps, shed some light on the functional aspects of mind and life, it is clear to me that they won't tell us much regarding the questions involving the true nature of life. The explanatory gap will remain wide and open. Because, any definition, let alone explanation of the nature of life, based on such an exclusively materialistic functionalism, always fails to capture something of what it is trying to define or explain. Why is it so hard to define and explain something whose existence is undeniable and whose distinctiveness is so evident? Perhaps for the same reason why consciousness escapes any definition? Might life be something unphysical such as consciousness or mind? For some reason, something undefinable, ineffable, and intangible in life escapes a rigorous and universal scientific account, not only inside a purely reductionist and physicalist paradigm but also in those models that pretend to resort to more sophisticated or ‘holistic’ theories, while remaining firmly anchored in a naturalistic worldview. Yet, this remains the only accepted worldview, and on which almost everyone is betting, trusting that it will finally lead us to the holy grail of life. Personally, I believe this is a delusion that will go nowhere., but, nevertheless, I wish them good luck!

Meanwhile, I will work with a different working hypothesis. Let us begin by asking the question: What do we feel is missing in a naturalistic account of life? What distinguishes a stone from a living organism, other than its material constitution and its external and internal physical dynamics? A little bit of observation disengaged from the third-person materialistic dogma furnishes a not-too-surprising answer.

We know that life must be connected with consciousness, sentience, feelings, desires, emotions, passions, instincts, mind, thoughts, a sense of motivation, intentionality, and volition, that impel agency, purposefulness, and goal-oriented behavior, etc. How do we know that? Because of scientific and empiric observations? Not at all. If we talk about these things we do so only and exclusively because we can relate to these through our first-person subjective experience. Otherwise, from a scientific standpoint, they simply don’t exist.

Ask biologists what life is, and you will get a different answer from each of them, but almost always based on the processes of the organic form and never starting from, sentience, feelings, desires, thoughts, emotions, intentionality, agency, or creativity as characteristic traits of life. It is all about reproduction, adaptation, the genotype and phenotype, homeostasis, and metabolism, but never about some deeper psychological dimensions that, nevertheless, we know all too well as being intimately connected to life. This discrepancy between science’s third-person description and our first-person perception of life was already pointed out by Henri Bergson more than a century ago. Nevertheless, it is not only ignored but even ridiculed and branded as a form of outdated vitalism. Yet, this doesn’t make disappear the elephant in the room. The recent theories nowadays so in fashion I alluded to above, and that are trying to account at least for the agential aspect of life, only betray the desire of scientists to narrow down this discrepancy. The question then is: Where does this blindspot come from? It is not motivated by rational reasoning, it is a (more or less subconscious) instinct to ignore these psychological dimensions because, otherwise, the apriori naturalistic assumption would quickly get into the critical spotlight. Metaphysics and teleology would quickly infect like a dangerous virus their research body. To a large degree, this is already happening behind the scenes. The biologist J. B. S. Haldane once famously observed that teleology—that is, the idea that there is purpose in Nature—“is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public." The more recent escapade to this dilemma is called ‘teleonomy.’ It is the doctrine that the purposefulness and goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms should not be denied, but be considered only apparent, not real. In my view, this also will turn out to be only a temporary compromise between the intellect and the suggestion of a higher intuition. This attitude will not uncover the secret behind the processes of life, answering the real questions.

Why does every living being act as if it has agency, aim, and purpose? What is, and from where comes that will to action, will to reproduce, will to grow, will to expand, will to know of living organisms? Where do the creative impulse of novelty and the urge to reach an ever-increasing complexity and variety of forms we observe in the evolution of life come from? In what sense are emotions, feelings, and instincts less problematic to explain away than a hard problem of consciousness? How is it that cognition precedes brain functions and even looks like inherent in life from the start of the first bacteria?

The ever-increasing complexity of complex systems. Blessing or curse?

In fact, it is now clear also that even single-celled organisms have a degree of sensing and information processing of their surroundings that people struggle to explain inside the orthodox paradigm. A form of ‘basal cognition’ in cells and plants exists that previously was thought to be possible only in organisms with a brain, or at least with a nervous system. Even collective intelligence shapes the behavior of bacteria or a colony of cells as if they possess a single but collective mind of their own. This basal and collective cognitive behavior in response to environmental stimuli shapes the evolutionary trajectory that, so far, fiercely resists any naturalistic rationalization. Of course, we might like to believe that, despite centuries of almost no or scarce progress in accounting for these life-phenomena we have to wait another century of progress and research and that then we will get there and dispel the mystery.

However, meanwhile, instead of positing a blind bottom-up material process, supposedly leading to the emergence of these intrinsic psychological life properties, could we look at life coming from the opposite direction, namely by assuming that these properties of life are already inherent from the start in a universal consciousness? Could we assume that life is not a creation but a creative power already inherent in matter? Some sort of fundamental primitive embedded in existence and that needs only the favorable conditions to manifest? What if we posit the existence of an intentional principle, a ‘desire-force’, and a ‘will-force’ as already inherent to life from the start? As absurd as this might sound, why not adopt this at least for a while as a working hypothesis, a momentary conjecture, a speculation to be taken seriously, and then see where it leads us?

There is nothing in science that prevents us from taking seriously the hypothesis that consciousness, desire, sentience, mind, goal-directedness, will, etc., are principles that are not emergent from matter but are fundamental primitives that impel the organization and function of living matter itself. That might sound like a form of vitalism. And, in a sense it is. Science has decided to ignore the vitalist option, not because of a rational and observational reason, but only because of an ideological choice. The reader might dwell on this aspect in more detail by reading my paper on vitalism here.

But in what sense could the present integral cosmology expand our vision of life, in comparison, say to panpsychism, cosmopsychism, analytic idealism, or other current theories of universal Consciousness?

In the view of the integral cosmology the universal consciousness and, by reflection, its superconscious plane, is not just a passive conscious transcendent or immanent witness. Consciousness itself is much more than experience in and of something passively existing. It is more than what Thomas Nagel defined as “what it is like to be.” In the Indian tradition one speaks of the ultimate reality as a transcendent consciousness in terms of Sat-Chit-Ananda—that is, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. There is no distinction between the three, they are triune and one (reminiscent of the Christian tradition as well.) Consciousness is something that is, contains, and transcends infinite qualities, properties, and attributes. Consciousness is not only sentience but also will. Consciousness is not just experience, it is also existence. Consciousness can’t be exhausted in a creative power, but is also power or force. Consciousness is not only will, but also bliss. Consciousness is knowledge but also love, joy, beauty, and many other qualities that transcend a nomenclature related to our everyday experience of the ordinary waking state consciousness. It is all these qualities at once without distinction, and none in particular, while in its experiential dimension in a spatiotemporal realm manifests these in the different forms of what we call ‘phenomenal consciousness.’ The universal Consciousness is not merely a silent immovable and inert self-awareness, and even not the sum of these things. These qualities are rather different words to describe the very same thing that is all of them at the same time and without distinction. The distinction, between existence and bliss, or knowledge and will, or joy and power, etc., is still not there. It appears when consciousness manifests on the different planes and self-distinguishes itself by a process of exclusive concentration from the universal to the individual. Yet, none is absent on any of the planes. All these qualities are intermingled and only partially expressed in one or the other form on each plane.

For example, when the supreme knowledge identifies with the mental plane it becomes what we call ‘cognition’ and, at least in the human, develops a half-lit and pale reflection of the superconscious gnosis that we call ‘reason’. When the same supreme knowledge and will identify with and act through the subconscient they become the ‘basal cognition’ in the cell or plant and what we call ‘instinct’ in all living creatures. When the supreme love and will identifies and acts through the life plane it becomes what we call ‘human love,’ ‘emotions’, ‘desires,’ ‘feelings,’ and ‘passions.’ When love and unity identify with the duality of the physical plane rooted in the subconscious, they become sexual attraction, a desire to reproduce, and all the bodily instincts based on attraction or repulsion and the craving for physical pleasure. When the supreme will identifies and acts through the life plane it becomes what we call ‘agency,’ ‘intentionality,’ ‘volition,’ and ‘goal-oriented and purposeful behavior.’ When the supreme creative power identifies with, and acts through the physical plane it becomes what we call a ‘physical force.’ When the supreme quality of delight of existence identifies itself with, and acts through the physical and life plane it manifests as the instinct of survival and egoistic self-preservation. And so on.

While other contemporary idealistic philosophies or cosmologies of universal consciousness might get a step closer to the vision of an integral cosmology, they are still hampered by a coarse-grained ontology. If there is only the mind and no distinction between life, matter, the superconscious, and the subconscious, one is forced to twist things upside-down and posit the qualities of the subconscious, physical, and life planes as fundamental qualities of the Mind at large, rooting it in primordial desires, elementary feelings, instinctual attractions, basal cognition, blind agency, intentionality, and volition, as if these were the fundamental primitives that create life by a bottom-up process. Ironically, they end up in the same reductionist corner of the material sciences that they were supposed to bypass. While the integral cosmology looks upon the same phenomena with a top-down perspective. These basal qualities are only the faint reflexes of the supreme qualities residing on another plane., not the fundamental phenomena where to start.

And, by the way, what is the function of the soul in the biological realm? From the integral perspective, we see that the first-person approach led us inadvertently to invert the logical order of things. Evolution is not only a purely physical, environmental, or genetic process determined from the outside onto a purely physical organism, but evolution goes also the other way around: from the inside out. The organism is not simply a passive container subjected to its genetic code and passively adapting to the environment but is also an active agent that, at least in part, shapes its own destiny and even the environment itself. All organisms contain this impulse from within that also plays a role in evolution. Deep down, each living entity contains supreme qualities in its individualized forms because it is a ‘divine spark’ of that same supreme consciousness. Something that several natural philosophers, especially among the German romantics like Goethe and Schelling, was always felt as a more or less intuitive truth. Something that, obviously in its secular form, Lamarck somehow suggested as well, but was dismissed because of a lack of evidence. But in most cases, evidence can be found only if one looks for it. Indeed, modern biology is, to its surprise, now slowly beginning to suspect this being the case (e.g., se the so-called niche construction process, even though it remains on the surface of things.)

On the other hand, the involution of the infinite Consciousness did not only result in the obnubilation of its original powers and qualities but in a process where it has also hidden itself in what seems to be its opposite. From superconscious it became unconscious and insentient, existence seems to have become non-existence, knowledge turned into ignorance, love into hate, bliss into pain, creativity into passive inertia, etc. Yet, behind these appearances, it continues with its workings as a supreme secret intelligence that aims at uniting back itself via the evolutionary process, by an (only apparently outward) evolution of the species. A universal consciousness that has plunged itself into the opposite qualities of itself to know itself. Perhaps, because the only way to know one of its qualities requires it to know the opposite quality. To know what bliss, unity, love, etc., are one must experience, pain, duality, hate, etc. This is, in the integral cosmology, the raison d’être of life’s dual aspect with which all religions and spiritualities have struggled to come to terms.

However, for the time being, the technical details are not essential. The much more fundamental message here is that this integral cosmology offers a different way of seeing, a much wider perspective, and a higher standpoint from which to look upon the universe and life. Because how we see, rather than what we see, determines our thinking and doing. What initially might look as an unnecessary multiplication of entities in planes and parts, is revealed to have much more explanatory power. The failure of science to account especially for all those psychological powers and qualities that we observe in life becomes apparent. Science, with its exclusively limited view of the physical plane, tries to explain with an ever-increasing complex naturalistic machinery of that very same plane something that, instead, originates on other planes of consciousness. The physical plane undoubtedly reflects some of the qualities of the higher planes but doesn’t generate them. Any attempt to explain or reproduce them only physically can’t succeed or, in the best case, results in an emulation that, sooner or later, will betray its emptiness.

Our cultural and psychological difficulty in accepting this standpoint is that, after all, what we observe about evolution on Earth is that first, the basal instinct emerged, and only later the higher cognitive functions developed. It never occurred to us that both are expressions of something that implanted them as a seed by a top-down involution and is now emerging by a bottom-up evolutionary process. Science will never get to the real ground and being of life by trying to obtain consciousness, life, and mind, starting from its proto-appearances, for the same reason why one can’t ever get the real image of an object starting from its shadow.

After all, this is not a new or particularly original understanding of the world. You will find it throughout the spiritual history of humankind. A similar message transpires in Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, different Eastern philosophies, etc. I only reflect it from a contemporary perspective through the scientific lens and, in particular, from the cosmology of Sri Aurobindo which is the most integral and in line with modernity. Despite their differences and nuances, the underlying principles and the forces molding life and Nature outlined in these mystical visions that several cultures had independently of each other, have been the same since times immemorial. They didn’t change or lose validity because of science. On the contrary, it is science that has fallen into a blind scientism, unable to see what is staring it in the face.

In the next and last part, I will shortly address the longstanding question of free will, ending with a few concluding remarks.

Thank you for reading my work!

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