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? Scientists still have 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?

An axiom of all life is that it tends to move toward what feels good, and away from what feels bad. But doesn’t feeling imply consciousness? Isn’t consciousness the only thing that can ever feel good? Isn’t that what we mean by “sentient”? How else can we explain the behavior of living organisms, except to say that they are conscious?

Furthermore, what do we mean when we say an organism is dead? Don’t we mean that its consciousness is gone? 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 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 neuroscience.

Consciousness is like the electricity in a computer (or any household appliance). Like us, each computer has a body, and a brain that runs programs and has memories. And like a computer that needs electricity to run, our body needs consciousness to be alive. But note that electricity doesn’t come from the computer but from a deeper source, and it’s the same electricity that runs through all computers (all appliances). Similarly, the same consciousness runs through all of us (all lifeforms), and it’s only the programs, memories, and bodies that are unique (though some organisms 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, eventually we see past that very limited illusion of separateness.

Exercise: Watch these YouTube’s 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?