Consciousness in the Mirror

A mirror reflects a picture of some of the objects in a room, but the mirror cannot be aware of the picture. This shows that the material can never be aware of the material. The recognition of the picture requires a consciousness.

Yet, the materialists claim that consciousness consists of merely some material action in a material brain. They contend that consciousness has to be a special kind of material that can be aware of the picture. But if consciousness is a special material, then by what means are the materialists aware of this special material? Some deeper special material perhaps? Indeed, this has to be some special material because an awareness of it requires an ever deeper material. In addition, this awareness seems to continuously escape from the material so that it can look back on it in order to be conscious of it.

One begins to suspect from all this that the material can never be conscious of the material under any circumstances, just as the mirror cannot be conscious of its picture. Only consciousness can recognize the picture, and this consciousness must be something different from the material since it seems to continuously escape from it. But what is this consciousness, and what do we know about it? Precious little actually. About all we know is that it produces a recognized picture and that it seems to possess some connection to infinity. Why this connection? Because consciousness extends ever deeper when we realize that our awareness of the picture requires an awareness of our awareness of the picture, which in turn, requires another awareness until.......well, we get the picture. If only we had the strength, we could extend this awareness into infinity.

All of this speculation raises another question: Can there be an Infinite Consciousness? Since we have already shown that the material can never be aware of the material, and that consciousness has to be something quite different from the material; then we find it impossible to believe that consciousness could ever have been created by a nonconscious material process. Therefore, our finite consciousness must have been created by an Infinite Consciousness.

The materialists may counter all of this speculation by claiming that it all constitutes a mere illusion. Consciousness only seems to be connected to infinity, not actually. But consciousness recognizes this illusion which proves that it is working as it should, and whatever works as it should has to be real. In addition, the materialist cannot explain how he can recognize that consciousness is but a material process but by means of another consciousness that seems continuously to escape from the material. It would seem that even the materialist needs an infinite material in order to be conscious.