Consciousness is… and here it stops. There is no definite answer, we just don’t know. The genome is being cracked and manipulated, neural networks mapped, recreated in synthetic life forms and as mathematical probabilities in AI… and yet we have no idea. Is it an emergent quality of the complexity of computation power of the brain? Is it somehow combination of senses, computation and environment, is it a chemical byproduct, electrical, quantum and can it even be reproduced? Where was it before it sparked?

A strange thing in our own brain is that the cerebellum at the back of your scull has more neurons and connections than the newest parts of the brain – but it has no consciousness. The old part of the brain controls the extreme complexity of one organism , pulls your hand away from the fire before you get burned, takes care of every muscle and tendon and coordinates – yet it is silent, quiet, dark – so complexity is not the reason of consciousness. There must be something that eludes computation and quantization here. The question continues to stump baffle and even suggest, in a heavenly irony of universe: How are we are able to grasp so much – except the things that makes us who we are? Is there a purpose of a universe that is not experienced by a conscious observer? We often apply the Touring tests to search for consciousness in artificial intelligence, and although they beat us by orders of magnitude in computational scope there is no trace of it being conscious. We test animals on the “mirror tests” to see if they are aware of being a separate entity, if they can recognize themselves, but forget the mirror test is well adapt only to species who primarily experience the world visually. If a dog made a consciousness test that asked you to recognize your own pee on a hydrant – you’d fail. Interesting experiment was one done on an octopus. The test was designed to try and determine the scope of her consciousness but when the octopus was tired of solving tests it crawled to the top of the aquarium and started squiring the lab personnel that made it do the tests – so is it conscious?

Where does consciousness go when you sleep, does shutting down the mainframe of frontal cortex shut down the consciousness, what does general anesthesia do where does it send you, how can you come back? Basically the truth is we have no idea, but it doesn’t diminish the feelings of love, connection, joy, lust, ambition, pain, hardship, grace… isn’t it wonderful to have been given a chance to be here, to be awake and have the world of experiences at your disposal for a few decades before shutting down, going back to the source or reigniting again and starting from scratch to gain new experiences. Yoga is about accepting the unknown and your ignorance as well as knowledge. We have no idea how – but you are awake. Say thank you and use it well.