Nat's Blog

Here’s where we find our reality, – somewhere between the cosmic extremes of everything in the known universe being different and everything in the known universe being the same.
Meanwhile (as far as sheer size is concerned), we also find our reality somewhere between subatomic particles on the one hand and galaxies on the other.
Nevertheless, here we are, and on top of it all, we’re able to experience anything and everything imaginable within the realm of human consciousness… Wow!
In spite of all that, however, most of us still take so much for granted regarding the countless wonders of our experience of reality.
We think nothing of our ability to see, hear, feel, taste or smell. We think nothing of our ability to remember or imagine. We think nothing of our ability to walk, run, jump, go out for coffee or what have you.
For that matter, we even think nothing of our ability to think. And yet, we just go on doing all of these amazing things all the time.
Who knows? Maybe reading this item might just present you with a sufficient excuse to ponder a few of these little cosmic mysteries. For instance, where does the human version of consciousness come from?
I mean, if all of humankind’s most up-to-date science tells us that everything in the cosmos (no matter how different it all appears to be) really is all the same on some level – that everything in every galaxy is ultimately made up of the same kinds of subatomic particles – then why should a human brain be any more conscious than a common rock?
Or, conversely, why should a common rock be any less conscious than a human brain? After all, it would appear that at the end of the day, the only substantial difference between a common rock and a human brain is the configuration of their respective subatomic particles.
Do subatomic particles somehow “contain” consciousness or are they somehow “made of” consciousness in their entirety? If so, does this particle consciousness lay dormant until enough subatomic particles are configured in a certain way?
Could some mad scientist one day configure enough subatomic particles in a lab (most likely, through the manipulation of certain elements and compounds), such that the resulting concoction would exhibit some form of consciousness to which we could relate?
As you can see, we could ask a myriad of interesting questions, here. And, hopefully, you’re already starting to appreciate where this line of questioning might take us.
Indeed, such questions are not only about where human beings as a species came from. They’re also about where we might go, once we’ve gotten to know ourselves just a little bit better…

When it comes to more mystical subject matter, (such as the great unknown), getting a better understanding of things generally requires you to get in touch with whatever part of your own psyche – whatever part of you – already corresponds to the given subject matter.
Otherwise, at best, you may only be able to achieve a superficial awareness of what you seek to understand, which is really no understanding at all.
Everything in the cosmos (as we now understand it) is directly connected to everything else, and apart from everything being somehow different from everything else, everything is also somehow the same as everything else.
This fundamental premise about the nature of our reality is, for lack of a better way of explaining it, what ultimately plugs us in to an infinitely greater universal consciousness.
Moreover, the aforementioned notions of difference and sameness, as they would apply throughout the cosmos, have their respective roles to play in terms of the very nature of our reality.
Without any notion of difference applying throughout the cosmos, everything in existence might well appear as one substance, whether it be solid, liquid, gas or what have you.
And regardless of the actual nature of this hypothetical substance, the cosmos as we now understand it would not exist – there would simply be the one substance.
Meanwhile, without any notion of sameness applying throughout the cosmos, you probably couldn’t have any appreciable quantity of “substance” at all, given that no two discernable particles would be the same.
And again, the cosmos as we now understand it would not exist – there would simply be a never-ending quantity of detached particles.
For that matter, without sameness and difference coming together as they do (on any number of different levels within our current reality), we might not even have our capacity to experience any reality at all – that is, if there was even a reality to experience in the first place.
After all, enough of the same substance(s) would have to come together to form your brain.
And beyond that, enough different substances would have to come together in various other configurations to form the body that supports your brain, not to mention the environment that supports your body.
Anyway, at this point, I’ll leave you to contemplate difference and sameness in the context of the reality we think we know. And then, next time, I’d like to take us a little bit beyond the basics…