In the day the earth became dormant. While she sleeps is she not still alive?
Is there life in stone, or is It is unconscious, without life? Walking over the dry landscape, Death Valley appears barren. As a casual passerby one would assume it a wasteland of worthless desert, but in the cooking soil lay dormant the seeds of a life cycle full of pause.
Wait ten years for the fall rains to drench the landscape—and in spring see the super-blooms, where Death Valley becomes a meadow. As humans we depend on a more frequent cycle, so we move on. Nothing lives here. Be a great place for a mining operation if it wasn’t so damned hot!
Walking over a cracked riverbed—four years now and no sign of life, but underfoot in the hard pan sediment thrives the lungfish. Sealed in a self created pod and breathing air, the lungfish of considerable size patiently waits for rain, estivating.
Now we say we’re unconscious in sleep and self-conscious in the wakeful state. Which is the Reality? Are they not both states of living? As a stone lay dormant, is it unconscious, which in its sleep is a form of consciousness?
Reality is continuous and eternal. Neither the unconsciousness nor the self-consciousness of the present is any more real than the other. Unconscious and conscious are both consciousness. Tread lightly, slow down, and listen.
Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony—Charles Choi, Live Science. Is there consciousness there?
TheCommonAtheist 