I read an article a few weeks ago that I’m having trouble finding again. It was entitled “Consciousness Remains Science’s Greatest Mystery: 25 Things About Your Mind Scientists Can’t Explain.” The link to that article no longer works, so I apologize I can’t show you what I read in it. But I’ll press forward nonetheless.

The gist of it was that there are things about the human mind that continue to baffle scientists. They don’t understand how consciousness arose from inanimate matter, why we sleep, why the placebo effect exists, whether or not free will is real, and other such issues.

I’m surprised that people who study the mind for a living and are acknowledged as experts would so readily admit that they don’t understand important topics. At least they have the humility to do that. And out of that humility we could possibly be open to a fresh perspective. When we fail to find answers for a really long time, we might want to examine the preconceptions that are preventing us from discovering the truth.

John Murdoch’s Example in Dark City

Let’s liken this situation to the one that John Murdoch finds himself in at the start of the film Dark City. He wakes up in a bathtub with no memory of who he is or how he got there. His mind is a jumble of half-remembered moments from the past. Nothing makes sense at first. It looks like he’s a murderer. However, he feels no violent tendencies. He’s being hunted by some malevolent men called the Strangers. And he possesses fantastic telekinetic powers that allow him to fight them off.

John tries to think through his situation rationally and figure out what it all means. The trouble is that no matter how he moves the pieces around in his mind, they don’t make sense. That’s because he’s trying to put them together in the confines of an existence that is entirely Earth-based. It takes him a while to realize the truth: he’s not living on Earth. He came from that world, but he’s now on an entirely new planet that’s designed to test him and his fellow human subjects.

If we liken that to ourselves, we see that that’s not exactly what this life is for a number of reasons. For example, we’re not injected with personalities and false memories of childhoods, and it wasn’t a malevolent force like the Strangers that brought us to this world, but a loving Heavenly Father. Everything we experience in this life is quite real and intended for our good, even though we experience all kinds of good and bad things during our time here. And we are more than just physical beings.

Earth is not where we’re from. It’s our home right now, but we were originally spirits before this life. Just like John and all the other people in Dark City, we have no memory of where we were before coming here. Thankfully, we will remember all that again one day after this time of testing. For now, we have to live by faith without knowing for sure who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing.

Changing Our Perspective

What does all this talk about Dark City have to do with consciousness and other mysteries scientists can’t figure out? It’s in the possibility that we are looking at things all wrong. Every time John tries to escape the city, the mystery deepens because he learns that there is no escape. When he finally realizes the nature of his prison and that he came from somewhere else, all the pieces start to fit together.

Let’s return to the questions posed in the article I mentioned at the start to see if changing our perspective on them can make them much less mysterious. Suddenly, the nature of consciousness, sleep, placebos, and free will might just be explainable.

What if consciousness didn’t arise from the Earth? Rather, it descended from heaven. What if sleep has more to do with our spirits than our bodies, and that’s why it’s so hard to understand its purpose in physical terms? After all, many ancient kings and prophets were given dreams and visions during their sleep that helped them to see the future. What if the placebo effect is not some fluke of the mind? Perhaps it is a gift from God and a demonstration of the power of faith. What if our minds are not just a collection of chemicals and electrical impulses that are randomly bouncing around in the universe? Instead, free will is inherent in all of God’s children so that we can choose good or evil and be responsible for our choices.

These mysteries become much less mysterious when we try looking at them in a new way. We still do not have all the answers, but we could be on the path to finding them.

Seeing the Big Picture

At the end of Dark City, John points out that the Strangers were looking for the human soul in the brain when they were actually looking in the wrong place. They couldn’t find it any more than scientists can find answers to deep questions about consciousness by studying the brain. In other words, each human being is more than the sum of his or her parts. As Yoda put it in The Empire Strikes Back, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

If scientists think that they can decipher the mysteries of consciousness and the human mind by looking for material answers, they’ll continue to be disappointed. They’re missing the big picture. We have to pull back the curtain and consider something that might be scary at first. We don’t have to remain in darkness because there is a God and He is willing to share with us who we are and where we came from. We just have to ask and listen.

If we take a few steps on the edge of our understanding into the dark, I believe we will discover God there patiently waiting for us. And the darkness will give way to bright light.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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