Wrestle with Mystery?

Maybe the greatest compliment I can give to Thomas Ligotti's challenging little philosophical missile (see previous post), is that it totally animated my mind!

It has made me think, and question myself, and forced me to delve into some of my fundamental beliefs.  That's pretty impressive.  The book is challenging, and provocative. It's not easy to dismiss or ignore, once you start it, you are in for the ride, and you have to think about it, and somehow argue with it.

One of the major assumptions of the book concerns consciousness. Ligotti proposes that human consciousness is an aberration, a horror, it's something which separates us from all other living things. And it drives us mad. I wonder is this true? 

What exactly is consciousness, and is it true that only human beings possess it?  Maybe as human beings we misunderstand consciousness? Maybe it's much more prevalent than we know?Does the Universe and all things in it possess some level of consciousness? Where does consciousness come from? Does it emerge from biology and matter? Or does it descend upon us like the rain? Is it a vibration or frequency that we "tune in" sort of like a radio or television?

I don't think any of us really know exactly what consciousness is, or how it works, and we don't really know if it is unique to us, or if it's common and pervasive.  Much of Ligotti's argument is based on the uniqueness and horror of being a conscious being, but maybe from the start there is a misunderstanding or mystery about consciousness which can't be unfolded?

The same thought occurred to me about life. Animate and inanimate. Do we really understand life and death? Are we making arbitrary or false divisions? Are we looking at the reality of our human condition with false eyes? Do most of our problems of understanding our world and our place in it, flow from a place of deep misunderstanding, and unknowing?

And maybe we can never really resolve these fundamental issues. And if we can't, we can never definitely understand anything.  Maybe we can only wrestle with mystery? Maybe, or maybe not.