You may have heard of the concept that consciousness, or the mind, is merely an ‘illusion’. The idea that consciousness is an illusion is primarily put forward to counter the dualistic stance that we, as humans, consist of a physical body and a separate ethereal consciousness or mind.

The concept of dualism was initially founded in ancient beliefs and philosophy which is thousands of years old and lacked the contextual benefit of contemporary physiology and science. Even so, I do not think that this is sufficient to explain why we developed dualism in the first place.

The belief in our ethereal selves also sprang from a desire to explain what we experienced in the past, and still experience today, as that undefinable seemingly undiscernible thing within ourselves that is perceived as a presence aware of our bodies, sentience and place in our environment.

So, what is this ‘thing’ that we seemingly observe in ourselves?

The concept that the mind or consciousness is an illusion does not mean that we are all mindless robots but rather our perception of this illusion is not what it seems. The interplay of subjective awareness can be explained by underlying biological processes within the human body. This body consists of a nervous system which contains multiple organs, one of which is the brain.

The body and the brain work together to produce sensory responses that form patterns of neuron-firing within the brain structure. I will call these patterns ‘activation matrices’ for want of a better term. Various activated matrices can affect cognitive areas of the brain prompting predisposed recognition and active response. This activity is supplemented by the release of neurotransmitter chemicals.

These matrices can also cause the formation of wave patterns across the brain structure which can activate different brain areas. These processes are further nuanced by time variance in that the quality of cognitive activation can vary dependant on the time delay between pattern propagation and brain area stimulation.

We are not conscious of these dynamic, complex and layered processes. We are only aware of their consequence. For example, when we pat a dog, we may experience seeing the dogs tail wag and feeling the texture of its coat.

We do not experience the light meeting our retina, travelling to our optic nerve as an electrical signal and into the brain structure and IT cortex where 16 million neurons activate in different patterns and register seeing a dog.

Nor do we experience the simultaneous chemical changes in the brain that may alter our mood and the firing of neurons in the somatosensory cortex that create a response that registers as ‘feeling dog hair’.
When we think about the dog, we do not experience the electrical activity of neurons in the visual and auditory cortexes, the prefrontal cortex or the activation of the motor cortex in preparation for saying ‘good dog’.

These consequences do not require an ethereal intermediary mind or consciousness entity to occur. They simply, or more accurately complexly, just happen. The combined inherent ability of the nervous system and brain to recognise and produce sensory responses simultaneously does all the work.

Our experience of our bodies, our sentience and its presence in our environment is a complex biological, electrical and chemical process. These processes are necessarily filtered and prioritised in order for us to efficiently react, intellectualise and behave in a way that makes sense in our environment.

I believe that nowadays, with the benefit of modern science and an understanding that the source ancient ‘thinking’ that led to dualism was relatively uninformed, we can dispense with the illusion of consciousness, or the mind, and shift our perspective away from these imagined ethereal forms.