Page 185 - Spirit and Mind. Vol 1

Nicolai Levashov. Spirit and mind. Vol.1

In the meantime, let us try to penetrate nature's mysteries and return to solving
the riddle of consciousness. Matter and consciousness, consciousness and matter:
unity and antithesis are implicit in these two concepts. Consciousness implies rational
behavior by those endowed with it. Reason, in turn, calls for reactions that are
appropriate to what is happening in the environment.

Appropriate behavior in itself implies that conscious individuals show the best
and most rational responses. So, those who possess consciousness characteristically
display such rational behavior which, at any rate, must manifest itself through

material objects. In other words, conscious-ness is manifested in matter that is
organized in a specific way. So let us define what kind of organization matter must
have in order to possess the ingredients of consciousness.

Humans tend to sort matter into the animate and inanimate, forgetting that both
are formed from the same atoms. Further, any atom of animate matter sooner or later
will become part of inanimate matter, and, conversely, some atoms of inanimate
matter will become part of the animate.

This disproportion is reflected in the fact that the amounts of animate and
inanimate matter are not equal: matter comprises only an insignificant part of the total
mass of the inanimate. Actually both categories are completely capable of
transforming into one another: hence, animate and in-animate matter differ from
each other only IN THEIR SPATIAL ORGANIZATION AND QUALITATIVE
STRUCTURE. (For further details, see Ch. 2).

Consciousness arises at a certain stage in the development of animate matter.
Therefore
CONSCIOUSNESS APPEARS AS A RESULT OF A PARTICULAR SPATIAL
ORGANI-ZATION AND A PARTICULAR QUALITATIVE STRUCTURE OF
MATTER. It becomes

increasingly evident that CONSCIOUSNESS AND MATTER ARE
INSEPARABLE FROM ONE ANOTHER. For this reason, the very question as
to the priority of consciousness vs. matter becomes meaningless.

Let us now look at the difference in spatial organization between animate and
inanimate mat-ter. Inanimate, i.e., inorganic matter, has four aggregate states — solid,
liquid, gaseous and plasma. Only solid inorganic matter has a spatial configuration in
which every atom occupies a particular spatial position in relation to its neighboring
atoms. For example, in a crystal, atoms form a stable spatial structure known as a
crystal lattice.

In this particular setup, the atoms are located at optimal distances relative to one
another, such that maximum stability of the whole system is maintained. Each atom is

capable of only slight movement around the node of the lattice corresponding to the
point of stable equilibrium.

In most cases, the distances between the nodes are commensurate with the
distances between the atoms themselves, which obviously permits movement of other
atoms and molecules between the lattice nodes. This setup allows only the exchange
of one atom by another inside the lattice itself.

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