Is Light Consciousness?

Here’s a fact: All human biological processes produce chemical reactions. And all biological chemical reactions produce substances. In chemistry there is no such thing as a chemical reaction that doesn’t produce anything. Therefore, if a biological process could produce consciousness then consciousness would have be a substance that could be measured, weighed and dissected. However if you simply observe your own consciousness closely you will see that consciousness is much more like an empty space—and more like a light, than any biological substance that can be dissected.

Consciousness is like light because it illuminates your reality. It is what makes your reality perceptible. Right? And consciousness is also like a space because everything that exists must have a space in which to exist. When you look out upon the world everything you see corresponds to a space that it occupies. Your house, a tree, a mountain, this planet, everything occupies a space. But what about your thoughts? Thoughts are things too, so they too must occupy a space. But if you looked inside your head, there is no space in there, just brains. That is because the space that your thoughts occupy is your consciousness.

Even if you close your eyes and imagine a vast panoramic sunset, you will see it only because it is within the light and space of your consciousness. If you drag up old memories, they too only become perceptible as they enter into the light and space of your consciousness. How else could you possibly see them inside of your head? And when you are asleep dreaming, your dream appears to you in the light and space of your consciousness. And the fact that we can be aware of our senses of sight, smells, hearing, touch and taste shows that consciousness is very much like a light because it enables us to observe, or ‘see’ those sensations. So consciousness, far from being any kind of biological substance, is much more accurately analogous to a space that can be illuminated.

Philosopher Alan Watts offered this marvelous analogy of consciousness: Imagine reading a book. It’s an enthralling story and you’re gripped by every word. Pretty soon you lose awareness of the individual words because you are so immersed in the flow of the story. You are also completely unaware of the paper that the words are printed on. In this analogy, the paper is like consciousness. It is present as an invisible background behind the black type that is printed on the page, and yet the story could not exist without it. That’s why consciousness seems impossible to grasp: it is the ‘blank page’ upon which the world exists in our awareness.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JoiDCrOp50w



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