Life is not something that exists separately from the world. The body is composed of the same physical reality from which everything around it arises. Food becomes tissue. Air becomes part of biological processes. Water moves through the organism. The body is continuously participating in the larger world.
Yet psychologically, human beings often experience themselves as isolated individuals standing apart from everything else.
The Living Body
The body is an organized living process. It senses, responds, repairs itself, stores information and continuously adjusts to its surroundings.
Conscious experience appears within this living process. Whatever consciousness ultimately is, our ordinary human experience of it is inseparable from the functioning of the living organism.
The Psychological Centre
Human beings do not merely experience physical sensations. We also construct an image of ourselves: who we are, what happened to us, what others think of us, what we want to become and what we fear becoming.
This psychological centre can become so dominant that life is interpreted almost entirely through it.
The question is not merely what consciousness is, but how consciousness participates in the life being lived.
Life as a Whole
Perhaps the division between “my life” and “the world” deserves examination.
The individual is not physically independent from nature. The body depends upon an enormous network of processes extending far beyond its apparent boundaries.
Seeing this does not require a mystical conclusion. It requires attention to the obvious fact that life is interconnected at every physical level.
The inquiry into consciousness therefore becomes an inquiry into life itself.