Down Another Rabbit Hole: Philosophy and Consciousness

I seem to have wandered down another rabbit hole.

It actually began a long time ago. I've been down many rabbit holes in the past, maybe you have too where one thought leads to another and another and so on...

Today, it began with a documentary, that lead to a thought, that lead to Hermes Trismegistus and an ancient question about what human beings once believed they understood about themselves, the universe and the strange relationship between the two.

From there, my thoughts wandered into consciousness: the sense of self, the mind behind the eyes, my university studies on philosophy, which lead to Descartes, brains in vats, neural networks and that wonderfully frustrating philosophical question of what consciousness actually is.

We have mapped the brain in remarkable detail. The mind remains another question entirely.

Then quantum physics entered the room.

And once that happens, apparently there is no sensible way back out.

I found myself thinking about quantum consciousness, different timelines of awareness, the unsettling thought experiment of quantum immortality, fractured realities and whether the person experiencing this particular moment is only one possible expression of a much larger story.

Now I have arrived at quantum manifestation and the idea of frequency - where physics, philosophy, spirituality, and a considerable amount of speculation begin bumping into one another.

I am under no illusion that I am about to solve any of this.

That isn't why I keep following these ideas.

I follow them because I'm fascinated and because human beings have been asking versions of the same enormous questions for thousands of years:

Who are we? What is consciousness? What is reality? Does the observer matter? Are we merely experiencing the universe, or participating in it somehow?

Hermes asked questions from within an ancient understanding of existence.

Descartes questioned what could truly be known. Modern philosophers still wrestle with consciousness.

Quantum physics has given us a universe far stranger than the solid, predictable place it appears to be when I am standing in the kitchen making coffee.

Somewhere between all of them is where my mind has been wandering lately.

There is another reason these particular questions keep finding their way onto these pages.

Much of what I have been exploring lately has grown out of research for The Anamnesis Cipher, the novel I am currently writing.

Research has a habit of doing that to me. I begin looking for one idea for the story, encounter another, follow that for a while, and suddenly I am several centuries away from where I started, wondering about consciousness, reality, ancient philosophy or what quantum physics might - or very definitely might not - tell us about being human.

The interesting part is that I don't always know what will make its way into the book.

Some ideas will become part of Anna's world. Others will influence a character, a conversation or a question hidden beneath the story. And some will never appear in the novel at all. They will have done their job merely by making me stop and think.

That is where these posts come from.

They are the thoughts escaping from the research - the questions I couldn't quite put back in the box.

So these next few reflections belong together. They aren't conclusions. They are a trail of breadcrumbs through philosophy, consciousness, physics and a few wonderfully enormous 'what if's...

And I have a feeling this particular rabbit hole goes a very long way down.

Namaste

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.