**TL;DR – Panpsychism on an extremely fundamental level is related to the exploration of consciousness. Consciousness is the unification of these elements – balanced between perception and the natural world.** Consciousness is the mechanism of life in its most recognizable form, but it is not directly representative of yourself. I would argue that general thought is more reflective of the self. To not confuse consciousness and your experience of life may approach the concepts necessary to distinguish what consciousness is. Panpsychism shows an interesting view for this. It’s described as “the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world.” The closest defining aspect of consciousness I can come up with would be panpsychism on an extremely small level. Somehow, the world (or whatever you want to call *this*) is being experienced and shared, but not through what we refer to as the “self.” All aspects of humans, down to the atoms, are a part of this. Clearly, panpsychism does not imply that inanimate objects are conscious. The unified nature of matter is an act of consciousness. Nautilus writer Annaka Harris states, “Consciousness could persist as is, while the character and content changes depending on the arrangement of the specific matter in question.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions physicalism – the unified nature of the world without considering consciousness – and dualism – the separation of mind and matter – to make up panpsychism. Consciousness can be found balanced between the natural world and perception. Quoting from Harris again, “Think of consciousness like spacetime – a fundamental field that’s everywhere.” https://nautil.us/issue/82/panpsychism/consciousness-isnt-self_centered https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

**Further commentary on panpsychism:** - It's possible conscious awareness is something absolutely fundamental to the universe. (It may not be _the_ fundamental basis or force, as it's conceivable there is no one fundamental anything, especially if the concept of "infinity" is meaningful to reality in some way. But so long as it's _a_ fundamental of the universe, the theory and its implications can be a go.) This could be referred to, indeed, as [panpsychism](https://iep.utm.edu/panpsych/), described beautifully well by "mkta" above. - Interestingly, [panpsychism](https://www.organism.earth/library/document/out-of-your-mind-2) can solve a lot of potentially tricky problems about awareness and the multiplicity of "selves" and "experiences" in time and space we perceive: Why is this experience of "me" happening right here, in this lifetime, and not "over there," in what I from right here perceive to be "your" lifetime? Why, further, am I in _this_ place of my lifetime, and not _that_ place in time? It's certainly possible that these are only questions that arise out of a false tension between the sense of self that springs from physicalism and the self that thinks and feels _about_ itself and about its own thinking and feeling. In which case, there is actually no problem here at all---we just are who and where we are, separate in awareness and experience, no explanation necessary other than that some physical form of the universe is moving and existing how it is, and we _are_ that, no less. So we are this time here, and when it moves on, we, _as it_, necessarily do, too; and same with being this person versus another---it's just how it quite physically is. (Even if the physical form of the universe is not quite so, and so there still is a problem of accounting for awareness in terms of its separateness---because, for example, us "fully being" the universe might also involve a separate and fundamental strand of awareness itself---we could always imagine that we _think_ we need an explanation for how things are when in reality they can just be without invoking anything extra, possibly ever.) - However, if awareness is fundamental to the universe in at least some kind of "larger" way than we usually from within each moment in time perceive, then it's possible the answer to these questions of "why is this experience of me happening here and not there, etc." is actually: "You", which is in truth the same fundamental "me feeling", are everywhere at once. In each and every co-existing place in time, "you" simply do not know it, but that super fundamental "me feeling" is quite actually the exact same everywhere. Every moment, in fact, is actually somehow eternal---moments don't fundamentally pass by, because there are no separate "yous" to whom things are happening. In the same way the one fundamental "me" feeling/awareness of the universe is "tricking itself" into believing it is living separate, bounded lives, time itself, in _each_ life, is apparently moving on for each supposedly separate observer, but not in actuality. Perhaps, the theory goes, each "spot" (a life, a moment in a life---even probably both) comes fully loaded with memories intact, in such a way that the "illusion" never shatters: The same awareness is everywhere at once, but continuity in apparently very separate lives is felt because "each location" stores memories appropriately as to make it seem the awareness has only ever been there just now. - This type of theory, where awareness is absolutely fundamental to the universe, collapses many problems that arise from and about the multiplicity of space and time that we experience. (See above, where it can attempt to answer questions like, why am I feeling _this_ experience _now_ rather than another at a different time?, etc..) Is this an explanation, however, that simply displaces these problems to a new, over-location type of place? That is, does it simply move the problem from one area to what we conceive to be a larger "other" one? Just like we can wonder why the "me feeling" is here rather than where another person is, we could ask still why everything is happening to the fundamental over-consciousness all at once rather than, say, _something else_ (something we haven't thought of yet, and possibly could not possess the capacity to understand). It could be a new area of questioning where the problem nonetheless ever remains: How is the "me feeling" contained in these locations and not others, especially if this "me feeling" is meaningfully separate and in no way ever unified, like we tend to feel it is? It's potentially the same question that will arise at the thought of awareness being the same everywhere: only then we wonder why it's in "all places" instead of _actually_ "insert some larger concept we don't know yet". We could always just stick to the problem of bounded awareness instead, or stay with fundamental separation of awareness as an entirely meaningful concept, so it's hard to perhaps ever fully rationalize a move to a single conscious awareness. (Indeed, it's always possible that awareness can be meaningfully separate _and_ unified at the same time. If there is ever, in all actuality, a point where awareness _knows_ it is both one and separate, or even is just absolutely unified in the same sense we feel unity in our lives, then the problem becomes a bit, if not much, different. Though, perhaps, only at that particular point when it is relative to others, if that doesn't itself invoke just what we may be trying to avoid.) - Additionally, this type of theory that invokes a sense of eternal oneness and "all at once-ness" does make a lot of sense, but it does require that conceptual framework of unity that, personally, I think we tend to love even when it may be to our detriment: We seem to like when theories are cohesive and "go back to" one fundamental thing, since it can feel very neat and powerfully explanatory all at once. But that may not be how reality is in its totality, if there even is such a thing as "totality," anyhow. It may be a meaningful part of it, but it doesn't have to be the final say, to the extent that what explanatory power it gives us could always, always be rewritten. (I will say it is quite intriguing that this oneness of awareness is actually an attempt at explanation that tries to remind us that we don't _need_ an explanation for anything, since it all just kind of happens and is always "already" happening forever and all we can do is surrender. Could be so. That's a nice path to enlightenment and calmness for many, which is worth a lot, certainly.) - It is worth noting that [Erwin Schrödinger](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/schrodinger/biographical/) espoused [this kind of theory](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/schrodinger/). He believed the "total number of minds in the universe is one." This feels quite intuitively right, in my opinion, although I do wonder if we need to account for the fact that awareness might necessarily have a hard time _accounting for_ itself, so we may not need to invoke the singularity of consciousness to describe and understand the multiplicity of experience that could otherwise just _be_ (even if as also meaningfully part of something larger.) - In some moments, this way of thinking feels so intuitively right to me it's hard to imagine there could be any other way to explain the "me feeling" of awareness----why it is felt in each person as different and yet the same, unless it _really is_ the same. However, I do wonder if it's still "too neat" of an explanation, in some sense. For instance, we could be meaningfully (meaning truly, truly, not in appearance only) the exact same awareness everywhere, and yet we could also possess the capacity to make decisions for ourselves in a way that cuts off the fundamental nature of sameness of consciousness at its roots. - Interesting reading (worth looking at the comments of dissent too): https://aeon.co/ideas/panpsychism-is-crazy-but-its-also-most-probably-true?comments=true