The Substrate of Subjective Human Consciousness



A Poetic Claim:  It is proposed that the entire cosmos as phenomena is suffused with galactic ‘awareness’ or consciousness;  emerging initially as  ‘Big Bang’ light out of primeval darkness;  that is, revealing the dynamic elements of a process model of sentience; and as such, that the human brain, with its central nervous system, of some  69 billion nerve cells and their neuronal ‘Big Bang’ firings; and with the brain’s associated ‘mind’ as a receiver and transmitter of this cosmic energy or life force of quantum state consciousness, is intrinsically and indelibly connected to the greater universe.  In essence, it is postulated therefore that there is a remarkably strong connection between the larger scale cosmic network of approximately 100 billion galaxies and the human brain’s network of neuronal cells.
This hypothesized native ‘thought force’ or energy is received subjectively and individually in ego consciousness by the primal interstitial human brain, functioning synthetically via the reticular activating system of the brain stem  and serving as a font to the subcortical and cortical structures of the brain’s prefrontal lobe,  triggering positive electrical charges of the ions of its cortical cells, whose activity we define  abstractly as ‘consciousness.’   All of this internal processing is received affectively and subliminally by the human mind in the form of ‘awe’ of the metaphysical; in common parlance, is experienced and expressed by the individual as a ‘sensing’ mode.  That is, as emotions or ‘feelings’ perceived as the everyday thoughts that we harbor and that we are even capable of displaying reflectively in autopoietic fashion.

This quantum energy or force, potential or kinetic, is argued to be innately represented in all physical forms of nature; and is manifested either actively or inertly.
It is argued therefore to be what some cognitive scientists postulate or depict to be of  inherent ‘substrate independence.’

That is to say, this dynamic energy is portrayed abstractly in ego consciousness as ‘mind’ existing panpsychically as a ‘product’ across all elements of nature.
And, as some Artificial Intelligence theoreticians would argue with much conviction, this cosmic energy is innately present at the molecular level in every form of matter.

This substrate of life force is what the field of analytical psychology depicts broadly as the archetypal collective consciousness.
And from this perspective, it is argued to be manifested universally in even more arcane form as the life force of a transcendent cosmic consciousness revealed to and discerned vaguely by humanity as the ‘collective unconscious’ (underscored here as the ‘non-conscious’ substrate).

A student of the human mind, of human feelings, emotions, sensing, and the phenomenon of the conscious and the unconscious ( the latter identified here as the non-conscious substrate) as its by-products, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, in “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” once observed in emotional awe and trepidation the following:
“I was frequently wrought up [concerning the autonomous power of the unconscious] that I had to do certain yoga exercises in order to hold my emotions in check. But since it was my purpose to know what was going on within myself [within my psyche], I would do these exercises only until I had calmed myself enough to resume my work with the unconscious.”

We find this existential substrate life force permeating the spiritual realm of the numinous (with its appeal of an hypothesized underlying divine substrate), and  outsourced as universal archetypes in our myths, legends, fairytales; and in galactic dreams and images of the cosmos.
We can argue therefore that this existential life force of quantum consciousness is woven indelibly into the fabric of the universe, of which the human brain, with the early prenatal development of its neural correlates of feelings or awareness,  and consequently  the rudiments of conscious activity within the first two weeks of conception, functions as an animated receptor, gathering and harnessing this raw data that it portrays subjectively to human societies in the form of esoteric phenomena depicted as ‘reality.’
To paraphrase the English bard, Sir William Shakespeare in his play, The Tempest,  recognizing the  illusory nature of reality and the equally puzzling phenomena of  ‘altered’ states of consciousness during dreaming in the brain’s temporal-occipital lobe, noted by the bard in terse poetic language as such: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

About this poem

The matter of investigating the human mind and consciousness falls into the domain of ‘hard problems.’

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Written on February 09, 2024

Submitted by karlcfolkes on February 09, 2024

Modified by karlcfolkes on March 11, 2024

3:37 min read
374

Quick analysis:

Scheme XX XX AA BX XB XXX
Characters 4,651
Words 725
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3

Karl Constantine FOLKES

Retired educator of Jamaican ancestry with a lifelong interest in composing poetry dealing particularly with the metaphysics of self-reflection; completed a dissertation in Children’s Literature in 1991 at New York University entitled: An Analysis of Wilhelm Grimm’s “Dear Mili” Employing Von Franzian Methodological Processes of Analytical Psychology. The subject of the dissertation concerned the process of Individuation. more…

All Karl Constantine FOLKES poems | Karl Constantine FOLKES Books

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2 Comments
  • karlcfolkes
    For poetic correspondence, see my tanka poem, “Our Alignment With the Planets.”
    LikeReply1 month ago
  • karlcfolkes
    Who are we to say where Thought or Mind is universally housed?
    LikeReply2 months ago

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"The Substrate of Subjective Human Consciousness" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/180720/the-substrate-of-subjective-human-consciousness>.

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Who wrote the poem "Dreams"?
A John Donne
B Langston Hughes
C Gerard Manley Hopkins
D Thomas Hardy