I am conscious of many things, including being conscious. This is a subjective experience. What influences such experiences? The triggers, the stimuli, for our subjective experiences must surely include what happens within our bodies. Other stimuli would obviously include events and occurrences outside our bodies, some impacting physically (through our senses), others influencing our thought processes. It all sounds so simple, yet it is amazingly complex.
When we have a feeling or a thought, and transmit that into speech and, possibly, into some form of action, we are probably influenced by felt, or even imagined, needs or desires. Add to that a bucketful of hopes and fears, memories and habits, wishes and intentions, and hates and loves. There is nothing tangible about all this, is there? But, as experienced, they are real – and can have tangible effects.
Do such subjective experiences originate in the brain? Do they leave any traces in the brain? Or, are they like the movements of waves, both huge and small, in the sea? Or, are they like the rumbling or thunder of the storm clouds which pass over us from time to time? With waves and clouds, we know that they involve physical things and forces (so we believe).
With subjective experiences, like being aware or conscious about something or other, do we not have a problem comparable to the one about the mind and the brain? Are they – the subjective and the objective – connected in some way?
How will we go about solving this problem? Is there in operation a soul, a psyche, or a spirit which explains the conscious self? If so, can it be in tune with the ‘music of the spheres’ or ethereal influences beyond our capacity to know?
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 