Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Pristine cognition. My brother is getting rid of his old car which has been sitting in the driveway of my parents house for more than a year. Someone's gonna come and tow it away. What a great car. Lots of fun to drive, 16 years of service. How can there not be any sentimentality?

February 12, 2006, 9:55 a.m. - Sad Porsche 944

We do attach to material objects. We project our feelings and consciousness on objects. I have several too many guitars because I project feelings on them. I love my bikes. And I habitually thanked my cars after a long road trip.

And here I am, my consciousness, my view of the world from my eyes. And I view these objects around me, upon which I usually don't attribute any consciousness or sentience. Why not?

Their physical matter isn't inherently the objects they represent. Their physical matter is the way molecules are put together in a certain way. Rearrange the molecules of this object, and you'll have that object. We are stardust. Every physical thing we perceive in our solar system is the remnants of an explosion of some ancestor star.

And I think of the potential for consciousness or sentience in objects the same way. Their perceived lack of consciousness is just the way the ground of consciousness has been put together for that object.

It's my thesis, inspired by dark energy, that consciousness is naturally formed from something naturally occurring in the universe. There is a naturally occurring "ground" of consciousness, just like there is naturally occurring grounds of physical matter.

It's all continuum. Basically, I'm no different from the objects around me, physically or sentiently. I'm organic, they're not, I'm sentient, they're not, but the ground of our beings are the same – stardust. It's just the way we're put together.

And this is still not going to put food on my table.