Consciousness can localize into matter. When it does, we call it life.

…I am the life in every creature…
-Bhagavad Gita | 7:9

What caused matter on this planet to organize into living organisms? Science still has no idea. Why? Because they religiously ignore consciousness. Without it, all they’ve been able to do is generate lists of attributes to describe life. But these are only descriptions, not explanations. If we could design a robot with these attributes, would it suddenly become alive? It’s intuitively obvious that the missing ingredient is consciousness.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Perhaps that is why current discussions of the problem give it little attention or get it obviously wrong.
-Thomas Nagel | What is it like to be a bat?

There are plenty of physical theories for consciousness, but they all rely on mysterious tricks to transform mass-energy into conscious experience. And modern physics is no help. They say it’s the other way around. They say, conscious experience causes mass-energy to manifest out of nonphysical quantum fields.

Common to all life is the basic desire to move toward what feels good, and away from what feels bad. But isn’t consciousness the only thing that can ever feel? Isn’t that what we mean by sentient?

Because of my life as a wildlife biologist, I’ve handled thousands of wild animals (mammals, birds, fish, but mostly amphibians & reptiles) and I can personally assure you, they were all conscious and exhibited emotions—their behavior would always betray their feelings. In fact, they behaved as I would if I were them (that’s a nonduality joke). We know animals are conscious and can feel. Why else would we have an ethical oversight committee to approve and monitor all our wildlife interactions?

Creatures are loved not for their own sake, but because the Self lives within them.
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Animals experience the same feelings we do. The main difference between humans and other animals is our intelligence; not our feelings.

Recent advances in Artificial intelligence highlight the difference between intelligence and feelings. AI is becoming exceedingly good at imitating human intelligence, even our emotional intelligence, but no coder has any idea how to make a computer conscious. In contrast, all organisms are conscious and can feel.

Furthermore, what do we mean when we say an organism is dead? Don’t we mean that its consciousness is gone? Isn’t that what we mourn? So, don’t we already equate life with consciousness? Being alive means there is consciousness perceiving the inputs from its sense receptors, wanting to feel good, and when consciousness can’t live in that matter anymore, we say the organism is dead.

Death in the Microcosmos | YouTube 7:20

Today’s scientific community assumes that consciousness emerges from the brain, despite discovering that single-celled organisms behave consciously, and even form memories. To this day, there is still no real evidence that brains create consciousness, or even store memories. We’ve only confirmed that it facilitates consciousness and provides links to memories.

It’s still scientifically reasonable to speculate that the brain is only a complex interface between consciousness and matter, and that all cells are conscious to some degree. The mystical idea that consciousness comes from a deeper source than matter is still consistent with our findings in physics and neuroscience.

Consciousness is like the electricity in a computer. A computer has a body and a brain that runs programs and has memories, but it needs electricity to come alive. We have a body and a brain that runs thoughts, feelings, and has memories, but it needs consciousness to come alive. And just as electricity is completely different than the programs and memories of a computer, consciousness is completely different from our thoughts, feelings, and memories. Also, note that it’s the same electricity running through all computers (in the area), just as it’s the same consciousness running through all of us (lifeforms). It’s only the thoughts, memories, and bodies that are unique to each individual; though some lifeforms are more like a lightbulb than a computer. This was discovered by researchers meditating on consciousness thousands of years ago. When we identify with our thoughts, memories, and bodies, we see ourselves as separate. But when we identify with consciousness, we humans can quickly see past that limited illusion of separateness.

Exercise: Watch these YouTubes’ while asking yourself if these organisms are conscious of their surroundings.

World’s Most Adorable Badger – The Dodo Comeback Kids | YouTube 5:39

Kung Fu Mantis Vs Jumping Spider – Life Story – BBC | YouTube 4:07

What Plants Talk About | NATURE | Vimeo 52:57

Are we really just biological machines in a meaningless universe of physical processes? Why is the machine metaphor better than the organism metaphor when trying to understand life, the universe, and everything?

We quickly learn to take for granted this impossible world we are born into. Set aside your default blinders for a minute, and with fresh eyes, see how freaky the miracle of life really is. Then you will see there are mystic clues everywhere.