 Let's um, let's let's have you explain this so we have a living mirror theory of consciousness we have a on Something that can absolutely not be decoupled. We the way that the the the way that the Individual consciousness the private consciousness the organism consciousness the way that that becomes Exists is literally through the fact that it must understand its world It must understand its environment and it has it has an ongoing feedback loop where it's air food water Fitness functions always fitness functions reproduction Ideas ideas ideas. What are the ideas at the top of the fitness landscape? How can I consume those ideas to make me as as smart as possible? So I could etc. So is this kind of your general reasoning over those billions of years and how that is slowly what had been happening? Yeah, I mean that that's an excellent description of it and but what I would say is that you're right that it can't be decoupled so The moment that life comes into existence. There's full-blown consciousness there's full-blown awareness of an environment and it wouldn't be as Complex as ours, you know, if you don't have a retina made up of loads of cells and all this other complexity You're the contents are not going to be as complex as ours But the fact of experience is is the fact of experience and to me this is so there's no Change in consciousness over the course of evolution if you could trade if you could have your atoms rearranged into a single celled organism You would be experiencing the world as vividly as you are now, but it'd be a very different experience, but that's still be An experience of that and I think something that's So in this picture because consciousness is this kind of absolute pristine perfect kind of space in which all experiences arise it Even though it seems to be separated, you know, there are these different islands of consciousness right now There's there's at least one over here and there's there's one where you are the character of consciousness itself is the same It can only ever be the same So it's like if you imagine, you know as as these creatures engaging in survival dynamics We become very concerned with our separation I become very concerned to differentiate myself from you and you know in order to survive And so the separation becomes the really important thing But if you try and kind of zoom out and look objectively You can kind of imagine if we're all like soap bubbles like we're made out of of the same liquid The dynamics of evolution and survival would make us obsessed with our separation But we're all made of the same liquid. This consciousness is the same consciousness. It's a feature of the universe It's not my it's not James's consciousness The concept of James in my head does not possess consciousness The organism doesn't even possess consciousness because it's arising through the interaction with the environment So it's more like you have a single universe with a sprinkling of islands of consciousness It's like it's like a bunch of eyes opening in one in one organism You know think of the universe as this organism where each of us is like an eye Opening in it and in that way you can see why in this picture consciousness is still this unified thing and you can still You can you can feel yourself to be identified with that rather than your own your own personal consciousness And if you imagine once you have that kind of experience of realizing that You know, this is usually described as the self being an illusion in spiritual circles when you when you realize that and you recognize This character of consciousness Then the moment you die Another eye will open in the universe somewhere right and and in parallel there are now these multiple eyes opening and when you identify With with that process then you're okay. I really am that ground of being I really am they that that Just the unfolding of the world and and these these eyes opening in it Which I think when I read texts like the Vedas and and the Dow and the things like this I To me it fits with my the world view. I'm describing I guess there are some that are quite explicit about kind of mind only only consciousness existing But to me I I get the feeling that these that the authors of these texts were seeing the same world view where a rock Doesn't have to be conscious the big bang didn't have to be conscious if they're aware of the big bang But it describes these these principles, you know, even reincarnation, right? If you take the Buddhist idea of reincarnation with the idea, you know The but the central one of the central doctrines of Buddhism is that the self is an illusion So I don't think you can think of it as James is reincarnated But when you have this recognition of the selflessness of consciousness, then it's like well, what's really happening is You know to use Rupert Spira's term of the screen of perception or of consciousness It's like there's this movie of James happening and then there might be a movie of a frog happening in parallel and then After I die as well and then a plant and the screen is always the same I absolutely agree with that that the character of consciousness is identical and I think to really grasp You know the pace of consciousness in nature You really need to be need to be familiar with that and that's why you know You can see it as this binary event that as soon as you have these enclosed living systems You have consciousness instead of a lot of scientific thinking gets kind of confused with Wakefulness and sleeping and like and then things of levels of consciousness and and that's what people start to think Well, maybe it gradually evolved but then the philosophers are like no There's there's no way it could have gradually evolved that that can't possibly have happened and yeah So I think I think this the kind of spiritual perspective is actually really crucial in understanding the place of the scientific picture of where consciousness fits in nature Wow, okay, so There's there's a there's a coexistence that it's always so important like sure I've been to talked about this so much just the utter refusal to cut life in two And to divide it in two and that if you always keep it at that one In no matter how you perceive always at the one it'll always help and especially in this sense like I think that the idea of an evolution Just exists. It just plainly is true But also at the same time again Simultaneity being key where it's like obviously we didn't have A way to structure meaning we couldn't structure order out of the chaos as well as we do now That's just fact. We just didn't have that ability to do it And now we're structuring order significantly more out of the chaos. Okay, so there's that So there has been some sort of an evolution of this neg this neg entropy and now we have this and it's excellent Okay, great. So there's that it's like the whirlpool has had is you know this the the eternal spiral But the you know, we're here But then at the same time is that we're holding that perspective At the same time as we're holding the infinite screen of consciousness and that That itself is never changing Parmenidus and Heraclitus really had from what I understand this first like 2,500 years ago the first realization of both of those things Coexisting at the same time and that that eternal becoming and the eternal being At the same time and like if you never divide in two then you get to that. Yeah Yeah, and that's exactly so the way I would say in my picture of the world is that In order to be an island of consciousness in order to have this kind of You know this perfect peaceful Perch of awareness from which you can just kind of sit and observe the world You know in the kind of in the best kind of meditative states, you know if you can achieve that Where there is this this kind of Yeah, it's pristine peaceful consciousness in order to have that Privilege of being able to look out of the world and have the lights turn on you need to struggle You need to struggle to keep yourself together. Do you there needs to be this this? Controlling and trying to make order And it's kind of like that's just the price of of admission like that's that's the bind we find ourselves in And it's better to kind of come to terms with that sooner rather later And it's also why I actually don't why I don't tend to think about there being some kind of consciousness outside of Outside of this process because if there was not to be too dark But there would be no point in me continuing to live if I could Live not as an organism that didn't have to feel pain and didn't have to feel hunger and all this stuff And I could still be conscious and at that I could be part of an infinite blissful kind of unified consciousness Then that seems better like I don't this seems to be a mistake this this evolution thing this life thing It seems like a silly Like you know, we're going to return to the one and then be like why did we do that stupid game that that was that game What was sucked it just introduced suffering Whereas in my picture of the world, it's like, yeah, this this this funny situation We find ourselves in that it's an amazing privilege to be alive, but it's not free. It's not trivial It's a it's a truly kind of interesting place to find ourselves in I think