Category: Familiar Existence Series

What is our familiar existence? Seemingly a silly question. As I look out of the window I see the sun shining, trains passing by and people living their lives. This is what feels as our familiar existence. The world we expect to still be there when we wake up from a nights sleep. The world that was here before we were born and the world that will continue after we are long gone. The physical world.

But what is it really?

We are very good at understanding the physical world because it is so important to our survival. We have to know that if we fall of a cliff or don’t get food in time, we die. Our brains developed not only to understand these concepts, but to live them. That’s what makes them so familiar.
But even though we literally live and breathe the physical, it might just be part of the truth about our existence.

For what ultimately is our existence, is not the parts that construct us, but our mind itself. Out of all the things we know or think to know about reality, this is the one thing we actually know -or rather feel- to exist. Our local existence: consciousness.

Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefor I am)

René Descartes

While the physical world is the world we interact with, consciousness is the world we experience. The physical is often described as real, tangible. But is consciousness not just as real, if not more so?

Even though consciousness is at the core of our being, the discussion of existence is often polluted by the things that come most natural to us: the physical world.
In our daily lives cities are made of buildings and buildings are made of bricks. So it is understandable that the question of what existence is, is often answered by looking for the underlying building blocks.

We understand a great deal about what we call physical. Yet, this instinctive way of looking at the world does not seem to match the way it actually is. We do not expect consciousness to arise when we construct a building. Nor can we explain our own.

So where does consciousness find its origin?
Think back about your conclusions when you imagined yourself to be in that white room. What did you think? And what do those answers say about your beliefs? Could others make sense as well?
Is consciousness merely a side effect of the physical world we experience as true, or is it possible that the truth lies somewhere else?

During the next series we will explore our local existence: Consciousness. What is existence? What are you?