Regular readers will know my principle of rejecting physics-based ways of thinking of metaphysics... Here I break my own rule - as this notion popped into my head yesterday and I found it somewhat helpful. But bear in mind it isn't True - it's just a model.
Most people nowadays see consciousness as software running on the computer that is the human brain. This means that consciousness is localised, and communicates with the 'environment' of the brain-computer by some kind of interface. etc.... It also means that consciousness is (like software) fragile, and tends to break-down - it can also be destroyed.
My idea was that consciousness happens in a gas - and gas is unbounded and everywhere (except where it is excluded) - so all consciousness is intrinsically-connected over time.
I imagined consciousness as something like a dynamic pattern of molecules within this gas, creating a concentration that is consciousness.
The degree of concentration could be higher or lower, and could become greater or less over time. So that a greater concentration of consciousness comes from a greater and more-internally-communicating concentration within this extensive gas.
Where does this concentration within the gas come-from, and why is it sustained across time - when the tendency would be for any 'randomly-occuring' concentration to randomly-disperse?
Well, my assumption is that the concentrations are the living Beings of reality, and these Beings Just Are present, from eternity; and to be a living Being is exactly to have the innate attribute of sustaining these concentrations of consciousness.
This is 'why' the 'self' is immortal - why our souls or spirits are immortal, why some kind of consciousness is eternal. Because each concentration of consciousness has-been from eternity, has sustained-itself across eternity, each 'therefore' is indestructible and persists forever.
That is 'why' there is direct direct knowledge of everything (except where the gas is excluded) because each concentration is a part-of the universal gaseous medium, and has experienced the entire history of that medium.
This model (but just a model - not True, because Being is primary - not physics) seemed a helpful tool for (sort of) conceptualising some realities; so I thought I'd share it on the off-chance it works for someone else.
