Existential Question About Consciousness

Alex, remember when you asked that really interesting question about what makes a person a person and about consciousness?

I looked into it, and I think what you were experiencing was a symptom called existential OCD. It’s when a person has cyclical thinking about existential topics, and a sense of dread that accompanies it rather than a healthy curiosity.

You might want to look further into OCD as there’s a treatment for it that the statistics are backing up to be effective. It’s called ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) and it basically resets the fight-or-flight-response. Basically what happens is the thoughts themselves are a function of the sympathetic system, so the more thinking you do, the more you push your body into sympathetic mode. It feels like you need to keep following the thoughts, but when a person does so they get sucked down a vortex that seems intellectual, but is really just fight-or-flight mental processes disguised as intellectual pursuit for knowledge. It’s very tricky that way.

Anyway, the treatment is to basically not engage in active thought down the rabbit hole, when an intrusive thought appears. In doing this you push against the sympathetic response, and push your body back into parasympathetic mode. You feel very scared at first and feel a strong compulsion to go down the rabbit hole of thought, but this feeling begins to subside the more you resist, until your brain and body are more centered and balanced into the parasympathetic response, and then long-term you’re more regularly in parasympathetic mode and not fight-or-flight.

This treatment is effective for many cases with OCD. Some cases that are more severe though don’t respond to ERP enough, and supplements or medication are needed along with the ERP in order to bring the immune response back to balance. Yes, it’s the immune response involved in all of this. The brain has glial cells and is a core part of the immune system, so it tends to get racing thoughts, or cyclical ruminative thoughts if the immune system is dysregulated.

I wanted to tell you this, and I also wanted to discuss the subject about what makes a person a person. Maybe it will trigger your OCD to discuss it thought, so if that’s the case, then stop reading here.

But if you think you can discuss this topic without experiencing anxiety, then read on…

As an N type, I found the topic fascinating. And what I’ve been discovering is that people aren’t like God. God exists without anything bringing Him into existence. No one spoke a word to bring God into being. His divine being is actually invincible and eternal. This is why Jesus needed to become a man in order to be able to die and to pay the death penalty. God’s being did not have a beginning and has no end. Nothing can take Him out of existence – His physical person.

The Bible says He has a body, but also that He is omnipresent. Whatever body He must have, it isn’t one made of creative material. It must consist of indestructible material.

The Bible says man is made in the image of God, but that Christ is the exact representation of His Person. (Hebrews 1:3). What this verse means is that whatever God is made of Christ is made of. An eternal, uncreated, indestructible substance. Whatever makes up who and what God is, also makes up who and what Christ is. They are essentially the same kind of being. Not the same person as they are two separate persons, but they are the same kind of being.

Why is this important to the topic? Well, let’s look at how everything else came into existence. The first thing to be created in this world was light, and light came into being when Christ spoke the words: “Let there be light.” And together with the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the face of the waters of the earth (which must have been previously created), they created light..

This has significance in understanding what we are as people and what all things are. All created things are actually first and foremost- hear me out here as this is very ENFP – information in the mind of God.

When light formed it wasn’t just some random thing forming. There was already a definition for what light is – everything about what it is and consists of – in the mind of God already existed.

So in a way, every thing that exists is first information, or another way of saying it is, there is a record of everything.

It’s not a written record at first (though I do believe written records exist in heaven); because in order to write down a record paper must exist and ink, which need to be created before they can exist.

No this record exists in the mind of God and is not a physical thing. It is truth. It is facts.

Since we are created beings and we are not divine, we are under moral law and we’re under scientific law. But interestingly, God is neither under moral law nor under scientific law. God is the Source of Morality, the Standard of right and wrong, meaning He will always do right, so while He’s not under moral law, this doesn’t mean He will do wrong things. And He is the Creator of science and scientific law. As the Creator of scientific law, this is why He is omnipresent, existing outside of space and time. Since space and time are created things, He existed before them and exists outside of them.

Thus God cannot be defined by scientific measurements or laws, including the measurement of time, and is ageless. He’s outside of all of that.

So when we consider these two “dimensions” – scientific law and moral law – we see that a human being is someone who is under both.

Being under both means we do not exist as a thing independent from being created. Unlike God we have definable measurement, and our body develops according to scientific processes. We are a certain number of years old; we are a certain height and exist in a certain place, etc. And we grow according to scientific processes. However, our definition – what we are – does exist in the mind of God as a sort of record.

And then after we are created and begin to do and to act, God keeps a record of our actions, thoughts, attitudes, and choices.

God does this because we’re under moral law, not just scientific law. Animals like us are under scientific law, but because they do not have moral agency, do not have a record in heaven.

We normally think of these things we do and the life we’ve had as memories. They are memories to us in our mind, and memories are physical things, actual neurotransmitters and stored matter, like a piece of paper is a physical record.

But what God has in His mind is more than a memory. It’s not physical. It’s an immaterial record. And so when we do actions and live out a life in this world, that record isn’t actual material. In fact all facts are not material. Facts can be written down but the facts themselves are not material.

All information is not physical.

This is how God could create a person with a word, and bring them into being. He brought into being something that was a fact and definition in His mind.

The Bible says the Word of God is alive and active…able to judge the intents and purposes of the heart and divide between the bones and the marrow.

God has a word for everything that exists – a definition – that is so precise that it distinguishes between the difference of marrow and bone, defining each. And this Word spoken by and operating by Christ’s almighty power, has creative power to create these things it is defining.

This is how God could say “Let there be light” and a very specific physical phenomena came into being.

It’s also how he can create us in the resurrection with a shout. He could have also created Adam this way the first time, but He chose to bend down and mold the dirt into a human being, rather than speak him into existence.

So we are really at our core, a definition brought into being by God. That’s how we come into being. The word possesses authority and has the right to make us. Then our body forms according to that word, under the authority and directive of that word, according to its parameters and criteria and dimensions.

We are under the authority of the Word as well as scientific law. Under the authority of the Creator.

And God not being brought into being by anyone, is not under any authority, and did not come into being by a Creator, thus He is the authority, and His records are authoritative records.

And then once we have lived and done actions, we now have a record in God’s mind and in heaven.

We think of this record as memories but it’s way more authoritative than that. This record is so authoritative that even after we die, we can be resurrected and judged from this record.

People being moral agents, have the power to establish a record that is eternal. We can set in operation good or evil deeds that then stand long after we are gone.

And if we have chosen Christ, then He has the right to raise us in the Resurrection.

And what makes us us – even more so than our physical bodies – is that record, which He will place in the brain of our new physical body.

It’s also true that our distinct DNA makes us us.

But perhaps what’s more us than even our physical form is that record.

And that’s why we could die physically, and be recreated with completely new material and no part of it would be from our previous body, and yet we could still be us.

And thinking about this I wondered, “Well wouldn’t it be possible to create two people who are exactly alike physically, and then download the same memories and record into their brain, and then wouldn’t they be the same person then?” I was wondering about consciousness and how that would work from a consciousness perspective if they both have the same memories and all of that.

But I think the Word of God wouldn’t allow for that. The Word is authoritative and contains all truth. Just as it specifies the subtle yet distinct difference between bones and marrow, it also specifies the criteria that the record of a person’s life can only be downloaded into one person. Identical clones in DNA and in record cannot be created.

The Word rules over everything and defines everything and would not allow for something like that to be done or to be possible as it by definition defines a person as being the only one; as being an individual. This is what was created when we were created.

I think we’re used to thinking of ourselves as physical beings only, and we don’t think about how we are a record in heaven, under the jurisdiction and authority of God. But that’s essentially what we are, and if we died in the faith, then God has the authority to resurrect us to eternal life and give us bodies that will not age or decay.

If we died outside of the faith, then God doesn’t have that authority.

And to get the rights needed to save us, Christ had to become a man and overcome sin and die on our behalf.

All of this involves official records and rights, and it’s really these rights and records that govern and determine and shape the truth we see in the created world.

It is the Word and the power and authority of God that governs physical things and brings physical things into being. So the Word is more true and more real than even the physical world, as the physical world can be demolished and destroyed or rebuilt, as will happen at the end of time when the whole world is destroyed and recreated, but the Word is eternal and there’s no higher power or authority than it.

So if we are registered on the records a certain way, that is truth. It’s the truth of who we are and what our fate is. And then we can easily be recreated by God through that Word at the resurrection. That part is easy for Him to do.