The Primacy of Consciousness
Chapter 15 arrives at its conclusion with a striking reversal. The world we all seem to share – which the materialist tradition takes as proof that reality exists independently of mind – turns out, on closer inspection, to be evidence of the very opposite: that consciousness is the single, indivisible reality of which all minds and all worlds are expressions.
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Chapter 15 arrives at its conclusion with a striking reversal. The world we all seem to share – which the materialist tradition takes as proof that reality exists independently of mind – turns out, on closer inspection, to be evidence of the very opposite: that consciousness is the single, indivisible reality of which all minds and all worlds are expressions. What appeared to prove the primacy of matter proves instead the primacy of consciousness.
This week we explore the closing pages of Chapter 15, ‘The Shared Medium of Mind’, from the section break on page 148 through to the end of the chapter on page 150.*
*(The page numbers indicated here each week refer to the original publication of the physical book – they may vary slightly from more recent versions, owing to the publisher’s design modifications.)
The Ground Beneath the World
We take it for granted that matter is the fundamental stuff of reality, the bedrock from which everything else, including consciousness, somehow emerges. This assumption is so thoroughly woven into the prevailing culture that it rarely surfaces as an assumption at all; it presents itself as simple common sense. And its apparent justification is close at hand. We seem to be bodies. The world appears to exist around us, solid and independent. When we close our eyes, it vanishes; when we open them, it returns. The conclusion feels almost unavoidable: consciousness lives somewhere behind the eyes, housed in the brain, peering out at a world that exists quite apart from it.
But the body is not our primary experience. Being aware is our primary experience. Before we build any model of the world, before we conclude anything about matter or mind or where consciousness resides, there is simply the fact of knowing, of being aware. Every subsequent conclusion, including the conclusion that we are a body located in a physical world, arises within that knowing.