Reality Models: Consciousness outside of spacetime

glennji | May 1, 2007 min read

I’ve been wondering about reality and consciousness.

What if our consciousness exists outside of spacetime, “mapping” onto our living, physical brains to allow us to control our bodies and receive physical input? This isn’t too far out an idea — why else do you forget your dreams when you move in bed, but can regain some of the memory if you move back to precisely the same position? The dream-state may exist in a spatial location separate from the brain. (Actually, it could also be that more than just the brain is required for thought — perhaps the whole nervous system is involved in the creation of consciousness. More on that later, I think.)

Okay, so accept for a second that it is at least possible that consciousness exists separately from our physical brain, outside of time and space altogether. Religious people would say that it at least occupies the same space as, if not being the “holy” part of, a timeless, formless Elohim (although isn’t that plural?), the Brahma-ocean, or Omega-point consciousness. Wow, deep. Basically I’m just hypothesising that what we call our consciousness exists in one or more different dimension(s) to those we identify as “space-time”. Therefore, what limits it to a temporally-linear evolution?