In an early post on this blog, I pointed out that human consciousness has two aspects: temporal and atemporal. The temporal aspect never changes; ”I” am the same person from birth to death. The temporal aspect reflects all of the changes that take place in my life. The temporal aspect is generated in my brain, while the atemporal aspect is independent of the brain—a thought thinking itself. In this post, I take a closer look at human consciousness, particularly the atemporal aspect.
How do we know for sure that the atemporal “I” isn’t seated in the brain? It seems to have a beginning when we’re born and an end when we die, so it could be said to be temporal after all—that what we’re seeing is just an aspect of the temporal “I”. That’s certainly one possibility. But it’s also possible that that unchanging consciousness is there all the time and we just see it while we’re alive. We can’t tell which of these possibilities we’re seeing—they’re completely indistinguishable to us.
That being the case, according to quantum mechanics there is some likelihood that, on any observation, we could be seeing either possibility. In other words, we will see one possibility on some observations and the other possibility on others. Therefore, although we can’t know whether we’re observing our temporal or atemporal consciousness, we do know that it could be either.
What else can we say about this atemporal consciousness? Well, because it’s not connected to my brain, your brain, or anybody else’s brain, it’s not only atemporal, but aspatial as well. It is the same identical thought no matter who’s observing it. This aspect of our consciousness is the same in all of us. In this aspect, we are all the same person!
Another thing I want to pount out about atemporal consciousness is that it is prior to our temporal consciousness. As I explained here, the temporal universe results when atemporal existence (another name for atemporal comsciousness, as I’ve explained many times) is looked at in a different way. There is no temporal universe unless there is already an atemporal consciousness. In currently popular terms, the temporal universe is emergent from the atemporal universe. The emergence doesn’t work the other way. Thus, there's no escaping the conclusion that atemporal consciousness doesn’t originate in our temporal brains like our temporal consciousness. It has no location in time or space, no beginning, and no end. It never changes. It is a thought that thinks itself.
