I Think, Therefore I Am

17th-century, Consciousness, Robert Fludd

What peculiar quirks nature has devised in

her impeccable creation, endowing me and

thee with consciousness, awareness, the

capacity to think and to plan, to imagine and

to theorize, exercising cerebral function as

though we are not merely one with nature

but perhaps nature itself. As a powerful

instrument forever challenging understanding

of what, where and how we fit into the world

around us, and how that world exists in a vast

constellation of other worlds, of stars and volatile

gases and minerals revolving and evolving, our

thought processes explore the vastness of the

unknown, theorizing and experimenting as

though we were not ourselves merely the dust

of exploding stars but the creator of all that

exists. Imagine this: theoretical physicists

studying quantum mechanics play with the

notion of the unknown of creation and its

sister existence in the wan belief that what

we think of as consciousness is but an illusion

as is the world we inhabit, ourselves included

for without our observance creating that

presence it would not, perforce exist. Really.