Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind

by Annaka Harris

Imagine being a brain without any sense organs connected, floating in empty space or in a vast body of water. Then imagine your senses being connected, one at a time. First vision. The only content available to you is a subtle experience of sight. You can see light perhaps—pulsating light of varying brightness, coming in and out. Try to apprehend this without including the concepts of memory or language, so that there’s no sense of a self thinking, Whoa, it was just dark but now it’s light again! Instead, try to imagine a very simple flow of “first experiences”: light and dark alternating, then brighter light, dimmer light, pulsating light. Next, imagine light that takes on shapes: a circular light, a beam of light, light that extends far into the distance. Adding color perhaps: a reddish light that transforms to orange, then yellow, then blue. Imagine feeling formless and weightless. You’re free-floating in space, with no thoughts or concepts—no words “orange” or “red,” just the pure experience of those colors. Visualize the most basic experience imaginable. Next, bring in sounds, then tastes, then smells—each arriving one at a time in as pure a form as possible. You’re simply experiencing what arrives in your awareness, without words or concepts to describe what the experience is like. And finally, imagine the feeling of touch coming online in the form of pressure or heat—spanning broad areas and in small, pinpoint locations—not in your body, of course, since you don’t h...