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Is the "I AM" consciousness a clue that existence is not purely evolutionary, but fundamentally intentional?

T

The I AM

Esteemed member
Over time, I've wrestled with a deep question that seems to escape both materialist science and mainstream religion: What exactly is the "I AM" — this ever-present sense of being, awareness, or self-existence that we all experience but can't fully explain?

Evolution tells us how bodies evolve, how brains process stimuli, and how species adapt. But nowhere does it account for the subjective, inner witness — the undeniable, intimate awareness that says "I am here," even in silence, even before thought.

Children don't need to be taught that they "are." They simply know, before language or education. And that "I AM-ness" doesn’t age — your body changes, your thoughts change, but the awareness behind them feels timeless, steady, unaltered.

So here's the crux:

Is this "I AM" awareness an emergent illusion of the brain, or is it the foundation of reality itself?

Could it be that consciousness is not a late byproduct of evolution, but rather the primordial design, or the original signal — the very thing evolution needed in order to begin?

And if so, does that suggest an intelligent architecture behind reality, one where "I AM" is not a name tag, but a fingerprint of something deeper?


I’m not here to pitch theology or pseudoscience. I’m genuinely seeking insights — philosophical, scientific, or experiential — from others who’ve wrestled with the same haunting intuition: that being aware that we are, might be the most underappreciated clue about the nature of existence.

Would love to hear your take.
 
Hi! This is a very interesting topic also for me.

Maybe you already know but in neuroscience it's called the "hard problem of consciousness", and the fact that we could function without a consciousness is called the "philosophical zombie" paradox. The hard problem of consciousness has been indeed described as the most fundamental scientific problem of all, as you said. Maybe if you look for these things on the web you can find interesting discussions. I remember similar talks even here on the Nexus.

I think that scientifically speaking most of the talks about self/awareness involve the Default Mode Network (DMN) which is the most likely neural correlate of the self. I think you will find interesting a paper called "Default Mode Network modulation by psychedelics" (or something like that) which describes what happens in the brain during ego death.

I know you said you don't want to pitch theology but i think that this concept has been expolored the most philosophically speaking in Eastern religions, especially in Hinduism and in the Yogachara and Tibetan Buddhist schools. Buddhism denies the presence of an unchanging self/witness, even if we could say that there is something akin in the teachings of Buddha-Nature and Storehouse Consciousness of Yogachara and Luminous Mind of Tibetan schools.

This latter concept of an awareness that goes beyond all boundaries and is neither individual nor collective, neither a self nor a nonself, is the one that better describes my experiences of "ego death" on psychedelics.
 
I like to think of the universe as a big vibrational being that grew itself a new pair of eyes with humans. We're a unique focal point where enough factors came together to bring this cosmic ocean into an awareness of itself. This seems to be the crux of a lot of eastern philosophy, more or less, and lines up with a lot the science (cosmos being a seamless, growing process since the big bag and all is vibration). The earth grew out of the universe and we grew out of the earth. We're what the universe is doing. The real difference between these two perspectives lies in whether this can only be understood conceptually, or experienced directly.

Computational theories of mind don't seem to make much sense to me. I don't see why an experience/awareness would somehow arise out of the complexity/number of connections in the brain. You can make a computer the size of Mars but I don't see it becoming conscious anytime soon if it's just nodes connecting. I think the resonance fields of neurons/microtubules is where the interesting stuff is happening, and the brain is probably more like an incredibly complex lens or instrument rather than a generator of consciousness
 
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I'd suggest reading books by Bernardo Kastrup. His work is very digestible for a mind with western education.
Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism posits that reality is fundamentally mental, a universal field of consciousness. Our individual minds are like dissociated "alters" within this larger consciousness, and the physical world we perceive is the way this universal mind appears to us. This view is realist in that it acknowledges a world independent of our individual minds, but it's a mental world, suggesting that understanding our own consciousness is key to understanding the nature of reality itself.
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I believe the I am doesn't age but gets jaded. When we were young the ultimate trauma never settled in bc everyday we had getting older and being and adult the best thing to look forward to. So we rushed it unconsciously....got older then the traumas set in. So anxiety and rumination replaced the ability to live in the moment and appreciate " I am ". Just my opinion
 
Yeah, I think it's exactly as you describe, with the "I am" being the fundamental backbone and true nature of reality. I'm guessing you probably already know that this isn't a new idea, since the entire perennial philosophy is based on the concept. I think what you're probably really asking is whether it's literally true, in which case I would also say yes, at least in my experience.
 
For another perspective:
I AM never really clicked over here.

There is no good reason to believe that 'I' exist(s) as separate.
This is happening, and that's what you are.

Language appears to be merely an echo,
and what is perceived as you may be regarded as resonance?

Free will expresses itself.
This is a being, and a doing.
Separation only occurs when you call it that.
 
For me, "I am" or Being in an ordinary state of consciousness is never clear.
It's quite slippery and covered with different thoughts and tendencies.

"I am" that I saw during medicine work is on another level.
It's the same presence, but without these additional elements.
It's like an openness with an awareness of what is.
Language and doubts simply have no weight there.

I recognize that the base is the same, but it's painful to fall back into everyday me at this point.
I see why so many in 60s & 70s went into spirituality instead. You always come down.
🙏
 
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You don't really think, or perceive, "I am" unless you ask yourself if you are thinking or perceiving it. You're kinda not really conscious unless you ask yourself if you
are conscious.
 
Does I AM demand I WAS NOT or I WILL NOT BE as a comparative state?

I believe currently that conciousness is fundamental and matter emergent. A singularity of awareness makes alot more sense to me than one of matter.

So I wonder if I AM only exists in finite, mortal forms. I AM doesn't exist fundamentally, rather is emergent in beings that are aware of their own birth and death
 
brokedownpalace10 said:
You don't really think, or perceive, "I am" unless you ask yourself if you are thinking or perceiving it. You're kinda not really conscious unless you ask yourself if you
are conscious.
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Who's asking then?
"I am" is always here. It's just loaded with other stuff, like: I am this body thinking about a fun cat picture.
We are always conscious, but distracted.
fink said:
Does I AM demand I WAS NOT or I WILL NOT BE as a comparative state?
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It doesn't demand anything, we do.
fink said:
I believe currently that conciousness is fundamental and matter emergent. A singularity of awareness makes alot more sense to me than one of matter.

So I wonder if I AM only exists in finite, mortal forms. I AM doesn't exist fundamentally, rather is emergent in beings that are aware of their own birth and death
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Ramana Maharshi describes it best. You can read The Path of Sri Ramana to understand his philosophy.
Basically, "I am" can't exist by itself and always attaches to something, the first being "I am the body".
If you pay attention to "I am" and disregard the rest, it'll subdue and reality will shine forth.
"I am" is like a door through which the light of reality shines. We came in through it, and we'll go out through it.
 
The I AM said:
Evolution tells us how bodies evolve, how brains process stimuli, and how species adapt. But nowhere does it account for the subjective, inner witness — the undeniable, intimate awareness that says "I am here," even in silence, even before thought.
Click to expand...
How do you know evolution does not account for these subjective experiences? I'd argue that it's precisely this wondering about our existence which serves as an adaptation to give people a will to live and therefore as a species, to persist. If everyone took up a purely materialistic/nihilistic view we might not have much care to live, let alone live morally -- in a way where we look out for one another. Not to mention also the rise of large social groups through common beliefs (religion etc.) which allowed people to band together. If you did not have mystical wondering about the world you might not have subscribed to these ideals and would therefore live in isolation, more likely to be removed from the gene pool.
 
fink said:
Us humans are great. We all understand the concept until we start explaining it to each other. Then it becomes about how we say it, splintering the knowledge into eight billion pieces.
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We know just about everything we need to know when we’re born, don’t you think?
Seems like we forget somehow.
 
The I AM said:
Over time, I've wrestled with a deep question that seems to escape both materialist science and mainstream religion: What exactly is the "I AM" — this ever-present sense of being, awareness, or self-existence that we all experience but can't fully explain?

Evolution tells us how bodies evolve, how brains process stimuli, and how species adapt. But nowhere does it account for the subjective, inner witness — the undeniable, intimate awareness that says "I am here," even in silence, even before thought.

Children don't need to be taught that they "are." They simply know, before language or education. And that "I AM-ness" doesn’t age — your body changes, your thoughts change, but the awareness behind them feels timeless, steady, unaltered.

So here's the crux:

Is this "I AM" awareness an emergent illusion of the brain, or is it the foundation of reality itself?

Could it be that consciousness is not a late byproduct of evolution, but rather the primordial design, or the original signal — the very thing evolution needed in order to begin?

And if so, does that suggest an intelligent architecture behind reality, one where "I AM" is not a name tag, but a fingerprint of something deeper?


I’m not here to pitch theology or pseudoscience. I’m genuinely seeking insights — philosophical, scientific, or experiential — from others who’ve wrestled with the same haunting intuition: that being aware that we are, might be the most underappreciated clue about the nature of existence.

Would love to hear your take.
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You might like this article which addresses some of these issues

www.scientificamerican.com

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?

A theory called panpsychism proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
 
Panpsychic said:
You might like this article which addresses some of these issues

www.scientificamerican.com

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?

A theory called panpsychism proposes that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
Click to expand...

Idealism: Consciousness is all there is, and the physical world is just a projection, or an illusion.
Panpsychism: The physical world is real, but everything, including molecules and atoms, is at some basic level conscious.
Click to expand...

I'm more into analytic idealism. The idea is fundamental, and I see simple logic at play here.
Physical reality is how Mind at Large looks to us from our perspective. Read it, it's good:

jhp5b3de7061b200.jpg
 
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fink said:
Yes, that sounds about right. Perhaps it's just part of the fun of conciousness, to confuse everything intentionally so we have a lot to talk about with each other.
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Young brain isn't developed enough to incorporate a soul (psyche, same meaning actually).
In later years we develop our habits and filters. That's why children seem so innocent.
Still, they already hold potential for later complexity. To get back to childlike innocence with full awareness is the goal, imo.
 
I think these ontological questions and their "resolution" (via Realization) are fascinating and what we refer to as "our minds" can writhe in effort and agony to achieve such a resolution using language, to produce a statement of "what is". What is utterly gob-smacking is that the musing can be put to rest with prolonged sustained focussed contemplation, a process of removing the obstacles via deconstruction of the whole of ones beliefs and assumptions, to reveal what is already the case about the nature of this event we call "I am" having a "life". At some point one will have to inspect this ever present sense of being, clarify its components, attend to each to see if they are as they appear or have attributed meanings asserted about them with no firm underpinning. Useful openings for ones contemplations are attending to "where" this sense of being is, and ruthlessly inspecting how the idea of its location (and if such a location is possible) has come about.

Further it will become necessary to realize that language is akin to a technology which connects self and other, and if one was never exposed to language one would not be liable to ponder the matter of "I am" and would not have what we call "inner dialogue" and consequently a profoundly different sense of being, certainly not beset by many of the challenges a language-dominated experience provides. Clearly having no- language function would pose its own challenges in a modern "world" but the point remains the capacity for it may be innate buts its formation requires exposure to it in some form. Language is a representational modality where some sensory element (hearing eg voice, or seeing eg letters) is attributed the capacity to represent another sensory and cognitive element (eg the sound "shit" representing discontent/annoyance, or the colour red representing danger/caution in proceeding); it has parallels with a Knights Move ie is oblique, not direct nor capable of "being the thing itself" to doff ones cap to Heidegger. So these matters when realized deeply, and in the absence of a psychotic-level disturbance emerging, can render the question as akin to a "harmonic of conceptualization" and thus devoid of being able to provide an answer of worth. Moreover, if we tentatively run with the assumed model of reality where consciousness is "caused" by brain activity (but we are not quite sure of how), and that our sensory organs have a limited bandwidth (eg we don't see UV, or utilise as bats do a type of sonar) and via light bouncing of physical objects the resultant experience is generated then when we see a brain we can only be seeing a potted version of what exists, and to inspect it ever closer for explanations misses the point that it can never be seen in full, "as itself" thus the image we call the real brain cannot be that. Bernardo Kastrup alludes to this by stating that there actually is no hard problem of consciousness and it is more akin to an artifact of language and muddled thinking, a point I concur with him fully upon.

Most of us know, intellectually, that our experience is "within consciousness" but strongly harbour a belief that it in some way bears similarities and a degree of functional concordance with the "real physical world" out there which exists in space and is progressing across time. Advanced meditators have profound insights that time and space are markers of/permitters of/the backdrop for our experience (which is believed to correlate with a physical reality) and are not immutable and are rather assumptions. The pinnacle of the mediators aspirations is realizing the non-experience of "reality" where time and space cease, change is not, and the possibility of any experience including "I am" or being located anywhere/any"when" is rendered void. Language cannot "go there" as there is no location, nor time to permit sentences to be constructed, and it puts "I am" in the same place as ones "True Nature" where ones "mind" (or if we are going to be rigorous about it, the language function in operation) no longer operates, and notions of birth and death are recontextualised as impossibilities eg no time nor space renders sequential events simply as appearances consequent upon the presence of time and space. Of necessity it is not conceivable nor representable. That is "no self" to the ultimate and will be referred to as "I am" in conversation using language. Therefore even the sense "I am" is a construction, a representation of that which cannot be represented, and points to the paradoxical nature of reality, where there are no questions nor answers.

Sadly, the culture in the West does not value these kinds of deep investigations as its foundational beliefs, and assumptions, about the nature of reality preclude such investigations.
 
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