Sort of a cross between God and energy.
The logical fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The fact we are aware, than the details of which we are aware. More the light shining through the film, than the images on it.
Confusing the absolute, which is elemental, with the ideal, which is aspirational, is the elephant in the room the philosophers missed.
Actual knowledge though, that's the tough one.
We are these mobile organisms and that necessitites this sequential process of perception, in order to navigate. Then, as humanity, we evolved civilization out of narrative based cultures. So our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no actual dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
So time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but no one calls them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, not some dimensionless point between past and future. It creates time, not the other way around.
So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. With a wave, the energy drives it, expanding out, while the ripples rise and fall, back to equilibrium.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, toward infinity, as form coalesces in, toward equilibrium. Both entropic.
Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Consciousness goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts go future to past.
Yet it is the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, feeding the flame within, while the central nervous system sorts and orders the patterns precipitating out. Signals from the noise.
So we have the same problem with consciousness, as we do with energy, in that we can only define it in terms of the forms it expresses, not of itself, as our process of perception can only distinguish what has distinctions and differences. Otherwise it's like leaving the shutter on a camera open, everything just gets crossed up.
We push and pull our emotions and thoughts like they are something distinct from us, like energy pushing the wave, but they are the only us we recognize. We see the ripples, but we feel the energy.
Most of the people we see are just these things moving about, but occasionally one either just bonds to us like some magnet, or repells us, like some magnet. That's when all the little magnets within are lining up.
Basically we are all just leaves on the big tree. Look at that dimple in the middle of your stomach, if you think otherwise.
