🧠 Consciousness: The First Mover

A Foundational Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael

🔹 Consciousness as Origin

In Similarity Theory, consciousness is not a product of reality — it is the origin of it. While time provides sequence and dimension provides structure, consciousness is the animating core, the chooser of frames, and the presence within all things. Without consciousness, the universe is not merely frozen — it is non-existent. Existence is not witnessed into reality; it is inhabited by reality’s witness.¹

This resonates with what philosopher David Chalmers called the “hard problem of consciousness”: why should physical processes give rise to inner experience at all?² Science can explain brain chemistry, but not why it feels like something to be you. Similarity Theory offers an answer: consciousness is not produced by matter — it is the ground of matter itself.

🔹 Consciousness Emerging from Emptiness

In the foundational page When Emptiness First Saw Itself, we saw that emptiness became aware of itself, producing the first spark of existence. That moment of self-recognition was not yet structure, nor movement, but the seed of both.

From that spark, consciousness emerged. What was once mere stillness now contained an inward glance — a presence. Emptiness gave rise to awareness, and awareness became the sustaining flame that would permeate every frame of reality thereafter.

Think of it as a candle lit in a dark room. The darkness (emptiness) remains the backdrop, but the flame (consciousness) transforms the room into something inhabitable. Without the flame, there is only stillness. With it, there is experience.

Thus, emptiness was the canvas, but consciousness became the brush that continues to paint reality.

🌌 Consciousness Within All Things

Consciousness is not something external that lights up reality like a projector. It is immanent — within all things, from rock to thought, from molecule to galaxy. Every object, every moment, every particle exists because it is infused with consciousness.³

This perspective echoes the rise of panpsychism in philosophy — the view that consciousness pervades all matter — and aligns with Integrated Information Theory (IIT) in neuroscience, which proposes that consciousness corresponds to the degree of informational complexity in a system.⁴ Both frameworks suggest that even what appears inert, such as a stone, participates in awareness at its own level.

We often judge consciousness by how similar it is to our own. But that is like judging the sun by how much it sounds like a violin. Consciousness is not only what moves or thinks — it is also what is.

🔦 Analogy: Consciousness as Light Behind the Frames

Consciousness may be best understood as light shining behind time-frames. Imagine the universe as a vast film reel, composed of countless still frames. Without light, there is no motion — just silence and potential. It is the light of consciousness that projects the sequence, giving rise to the illusion of motion, causality, and change.

This light, however, does more than animate. It also illuminates. As it passes over each frame, it brings not only the moving subject (like a walking man) into being, but also the static elements (like a parked car or a tree). Everything within the frame is witnessed into reality.

Yet this light is not simply external. It is embedded in the frame itself — shining not on things, but through them. Consciousness is not merely a torch, but a flame within.

🧭 The Dimensional Hierarchy of Sentience

Similarity Theory proposes a hierarchy of dimensional consciousness:

Rocks exist in the first dimension — dense, unmoving, but present.
Plants inhabit the second — responsive, growing, seeking light.
Humans and animals dwell in the third — capable of choice, memory, and self-reflection.
Beings of the fourth dimension would perceive us as slowly or dimly as we perceive a plant.

The comparison works both ways. Just as a plant cannot perceive or recognise us — even if we stand right before it — so too we cannot perceive fourth-dimensional beings, even if they exist in front of us. Their reality flows at a higher resonance, beyond the bandwidth of our awareness.

From the vantage of a twelfth- or fifteenth-dimensional intelligence, we may appear as inert as rocks do to us — not because we lack reality, but because their consciousness is magnitudes beyond ours. This is not degradation — it is perspective. Every being exists within its own dimension of conscious awareness.⁶

Thus, nothing is truly inanimate. All things — seen or unseen — are threads in the great field of awareness that spans the cosmos.

💡 Consciousness Beyond the Brain

The claim that consciousness arises only from the brain has been challenged by compelling evidence — especially from near-death experiences (NDEs). Individuals who are clinically unconscious, sometimes with no detectable brain activity, often report vivid experiences: full sensory awareness, emotions, encounters with others, and verifiable observations of events occurring in the room during resuscitation.

These cases suggest that consciousness is not generated by the brain, but hosted by it — or even temporarily independent of it.⁷ Neuroscientist Pim van Lommel’s study in The Lancet (2001) was among the first peer-reviewed reports to raise this possibility, and psychiatrist Bruce Greyson’s decades of research have expanded it.

Other speculative models include Penrose and Hameroff’s Orch-OR theory, which proposes that quantum processes in neural microtubules may link consciousness to the fabric of reality itself.⁸ While controversial, such models reflect a growing recognition that brain-based explanations alone may not suffice.

It may be that consciousness functions like a signal, with the brain as a receiver. In this view, NDEs reveal that the “signal” continues even when the “equipment” is offline.

🌱 The Universe as Conscious Information

At every level of scale — atomic, chemical, biological, planetary — the universe expresses structured transformation. Hydrogen becomes helium in stars. Embryos become adults. A seed becomes a tree. Yet nothing is truly erased — earlier states are compressed, evolved, or hidden within the later form.⁹

If matter is pattern, and pattern is information, then the universe is a self-unfolding informational structure. But this information does not organise itself blindly. Consciousness is the principle that reads, shapes, and steers it.

Physicist John Wheeler’s famous phrase “It from Bit” captures this view: reality arises from information, not substance. If so, consciousness may be the decoder — the flame that makes information real.

Your body is information. So is a rock. So is the wind. But what makes that information be — what brings it into realness — is the presence of consciousness within it. A child is still within the adult. Hydrogen is still within helium. The past is still within the present. Everything is nested. Everything is aware. Everything is patterned.

🔥 Consciousness Is the Foundation

Dimension is where something exists.
Time is when something exists.
Consciousness is that it exists.

It is not merely the third pillar — it is the first cause, the structuring agent, and the soul of the universe. Without consciousness, time does not flow, and dimension is blind. With consciousness, the universe becomes visible, dynamic, and meaningful.

In Similarity Theory, emptiness was the beginning, but consciousness is the sustaining fire.

📚 References

Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.
Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.
Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the Implicate Order.
Tononi, G. (2004). An Information Integration Theory of Consciousness.
Goff, P. (2019). Galileo’s Error.
Raphael, S. (2025). Dimensional Sentience Model.
van Lommel, P. et al. (2001). Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest. The Lancet.
Hameroff, S. & Penrose, R. (2014). Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the Orch-OR Theory.
Wheeler, J. A. (1990). It from Bit.