BEFORE we begin asking what happens after life, there is another question that may be even more mysterious. What is experiencing life now? The body exists; we can see it, touch it, measure it, study it, repair parts of it, and occasionally become annoyed with it when it decides that sleeping comfortably is an impossible task. The brain exists too. Scientists can observe its activity, study its structures and examine the electrical and chemical processes involved in thought, memory, emotion, movement and perception, yet consciousness remains difficult to explain.

We know that we experience life. We know that colours appear, that music creates feeling, that pain hurts, that love changes something inside us and so on. In essence, we know that we experience ourselves as existing.

Science can describe many processes associated with these experiences. The deeper questions remain, though. Why does experience exist at all? Why does a collection of physical matter produce an inner world? Why does the brain process information while consciousness experiences meaning?

A camera can record a sunset but never experiences its beauty. A microphone can record music but never becomes moved by the song. A computer can process language, but processing information and experiencing existence appear to belong to different categories. Human beings possess an inner world. We experience colour, memory and love. We experience the strange feeling of remembering a moment while knowing it has already disappeared. Something within us experiences the world, and that something remains one of the greatest mysteries of existence.

The philosopher David Chalmers called this the ‘hard problem of consciousness’. Science can study how the brain processes information and how different areas contribute to perception and behaviour. The deeper question is why physical processes give rise to subjective experience. Why does the brain activity connected to seeing the colour red produce the experience of redness?

Why does sound become music? Why does a physical event become a feeling?

The question carries us beyond ordinary explanations. Perhaps consciousness emerges from the brain, or maybe the brain creates awareness through its extraordinary complexity. Perhaps consciousness exists as a fundamental feature of reality, and the brain functions as a receiver or organiser. The body acts like an instrument through which consciousness experiences the physical world. While the truth remains under investigation, possibilities invite reflection.

The poem below begins inside the womb because the womb represents a world shaped by limited perception. The unborn child experiences a reality that feels complete. Everything necessary for that stage exists within the environment. The child possesses no experience of sunlight, air, open space, language or physical independence. They remain surrounded by a reality that cannot yet be perceived. The mother exists, the world exists, and the sky exists. The child simply lacks the sensory ability to experience them. Human consciousness lives inside a similar condition. We experience the universe through a biological system. The eyes receive a limited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The ears receive a limited range of vibrations. The brain interprets signals and creates the world we experience. Our perception gives us access to reality. It also creates boundaries.

The world may contain far more than human senses reveal. We already know that many forms of reality exist beyond direct perception. Radio waves travel through space without being visible to the human eye. Ultraviolet light remains invisible to us. Many animals experience sensory information in ways humans cannot. A dog enters a room and receives an entire world through scent. A bird senses direction through abilities that lie outside ordinary human awareness, and a bat navigates by sound. Each creature experiences reality through the tools available to its body. Human beings experience reality through human senses, and consciousness itself carries possibilities beyond the present range of those senses.

The spiritual teacher and philosopher Sri Aurobindo wrote, “Consciousness is the fundamental thing in existence.” He viewed consciousness as something that extends beyond the individual mind and participates in the evolution of life. This idea reverses the usual assumption. Instead of consciousness appearing after matter becomes sufficiently complex, consciousness may exist before matter and express itself through increasingly complex forms. The body becomes an expression, the brain becomes an instrument, and life becomes an experience.

The individual becomes a temporary point through which consciousness observes itself, changing the way we see identity. We often describe ourselves through the body, our name, our history, our work, our relationships and the experiences that shaped us. These things form the story of a life, yet the story changes, the body changes, the personality changes, memories change, and beliefs change.

The person who existed at five years old bears little resemblance to the person reading these words now. The body has replaced much of its physical material over time. The mind has developed new knowledge. The personality has grown through experience. Yet a sense of “I” continues. Something connects the child to the adult. Something experiences every stage. Perhaps consciousness remains while the contents of life change.

The philosopher and spiritual teacher Ramana Maharshi encouraged people to ask a simple question: “Who am I?”

The question appears easy until we attempt to answer it. We may say, “I am my name.” The name arrived after birth. We may say, “I am my body.” But the body changes throughout life.

We may say, “I am my thoughts.” But thoughts appear and disappear. We may say, “I am my memories.” But memories fade, change and sometimes disappear. Again, the question continues. Who experiences the name?

Who experiences the body?

Who notices the thoughts?

Who remembers the memories?

The search carries us towards consciousness, and consciousness represents the space in which every experience appears. So then, the body gives consciousness a physical point of view. Every human life becomes a unique window through which existence experiences itself.

The universe may look through billions of eyes. It may hear through billions of ears. It may experience joy, grief, love, fear, beauty and wonder through countless forms. Each person becomes a distinct expression of one greater reality. The separation may be part of the experience. The connection may belong to the source.

The spiritual teacher Alan Watts described the individual as an expression of the universe rather than a separate object placed inside it. He wrote, “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.” The words create a different understanding of life. We may never have been visitors inside the universe. We may be the universe becoming aware of itself. The stars formed the elements that became planets. The Earth created conditions for life. Life evolved into organisms capable of perception. Consciousness emerged, or expressed itself, through beings capable of asking where consciousness came from. The universe became curious about itself through us, and this explains the human desire to understand.

We look into space because something within us recognises connection. We study the brain because consciousness wants to understand its own experience. We create art because existence seeks expression. We love because connection reveals something deeper than separation. The mystery then becomes personal.

The poem’s unborn souls may represent more than physical life before birth. They may represent consciousness before it becomes aware of a larger reality. One soul trusts only the world it knows. The other senses something beyond the limits of experience. Both positions are honest since human beings live inside the same tension. We seek evidence because evidence protects us from illusion. We remain open because knowledge continues expanding. We investigate, question and experience, and still, we accept that some mysteries remain unfinished. Wisdom lives inside the ability to hold knowledge and wonder together.

Interestingly, the question of consciousness also changes how we approach death. If consciousness emerges entirely from brain activity, then death may represent the end of individual experience. If consciousness exists independently of the brain, then death may represent a change in the form through which consciousness expresses itself.

This is why science continues to study consciousness, spiritual traditions continue to explore the soul, and philosophy continues to ask questions. The mystery remains open.

The womb offers an interesting image. The unborn child depends upon the environment of the womb. The body develops there, the senses prepare there, and the child experiences a complete world within a limited space. Then birth changes everything as the child enters a reality that existed before it could perceive it, a world that waited beyond the boundary.

Perhaps death carries a transition that consciousness cannot understand while living inside the body, or perhaps the body resembles the womb of a larger reality. Maybe physical life prepares consciousness for another experience, and the end of bodily existence represents the beginning of a different form of awareness. These ideas belong to spiritual reflection rather than established proof. Reflection allows the imagination to explore possibilities that certainty closes. The mystery of consciousness invites humility because we experience awareness every moment while understanding only part of its nature. We use consciousness to study consciousness. We ask the observer to observe itself.

The eye cannot see itself without a mirror. Consciousness, therefore, requires life as its mirror. Every relationship reflects something, every experience reveals something, every challenge expands awareness, and every moment offers consciousness another way to experience existence. The world becomes a place of learning. Love becomes recognition, compassion becomes the awareness that another person experiences life from within, pain becomes more than an event because someone feels it, and kindness becomes meaningful because consciousness receives it.

Perhaps the value of life lives inside experience itself. The universe contains matter, and consciousness creates meaning. The world becomes alive through experience, which might very well explain why life feels sacred. We remain conscious for a limited time within a body; we experience the world through one set of eyes, we hear one collection of voices, and we carry a unique story. No one else experiences life exactly as we do. Every human being has an inner universe. The greatest spiritual responsibility involves recognising that inner universe in others. The person beside us carries memories, fears, hopes, dreams and experiences that remain invisible. We see behaviour, but we rarely see the complete story. Compassion grows when we remember that every person experiences life from within. The question of consciousness may never receive a final answer during our lifetime. The question is valuable because it changes the way we see ourselves. We may be more than the story we tell. We may be more than the body we inhabit. We may be more than the thoughts that pass through us. We may represent a temporary expression of something ancient, intelligent, creative and deeply connected. Or consciousness may emerge through the extraordinary complexity of life and create meaning during the brief time we exist. Either possibility makes life valuable. One voice says that physical reality contains everything. Another voice senses a reality beyond the visible.

I suppose the answer waits beyond the boundaries of present perception. Consciousness continues in forms we cannot yet understand, while the body is a temporary instrument and life is one chapter within a larger existence. The truth may remain hidden until experience reveals it. The unborn child cannot understand the world before birth. The living mind cannot fully understand what lies beyond death. Yet the unknown continues to surround us. The mother exists beyond the child’s sight. The world exists beyond the womb. The sky waits beyond the darkness. Consciousness carries a reality beyond the body, and we are already held inside something greater. Life is the moment when consciousness opens its eyes and experiences itself in human form. When this physical experience reaches its final page, consciousness will discover that the world it called life represented only one beginning.

 

A Whisper Beyond the Womb

 

Deep in the dark, so warm, so tight,

Two tiny souls knew only night.

One turned and asked, so full of dreams,

“Could life be more than what it seems?”

 

“Don’t be absurd,” the other sighed,

“This is our world, so safe inside.

No space to run, no sky to see,

No other fate for you or me.”

 

“But what if air will fill our chest,

And Mother’s arms will bring us rest?

What if there’s light, what if there’s sound,

And we will walk upon the ground?”

 

The second scoffed, “You speak in vain,

We’d never survive without this chain.

The cord that feeds us is all we know,

Without its touch, we’d cease to grow.”

 

“But maybe out there, free and wide,

A greater love will be our guide.

She carries us now, though out of sight,

 

Her voice, her warmth, her soul, her light.”

 

“Mother? You claim she’s really near?

If she exists, then why not here?”

“Look closer, feel her soft embrace,

She’s all around, in time and space.

And when we leave this darkened sea,

I know she’ll be the first we see.”

 

Romella Dasratt