Think Once More-24 Poem by Smruti Ranjan Mohanty

THINK ONCE MORE -24

CONSCIOUSNESS

The following essay does not advance a scientific theory, nor does it critique science in any way. Rather, it offers one perspective-one rooted in observation, informed by scientific understanding, and then continuing gently beyond it. The thoughts that follow explore consciousness not as thought or awareness but as a more fundamental principle implicated in life, matter, and change itself. What follows is not a conclusion to be accepted but rather a perspective to consider.

Consciousness as the Principle of Becoming

When we speak of consciousness, we are generally referring to the mind, encompassing thoughts, feelings, memory, and awareness. Science demonstrates quite clearly that these depend upon the brain. When the brain is damaged, the mind is altered. When the brain ceases to function, personal awareness comes to an end. The understanding is true but incomplete. Long before there is a brain, life is already at work. A single fertilized cell has no brain, no nerves, no thoughts. Yet it divides and organizes itself, corrects errors, and gradually takes on the form of a living body. There is no overseer guiding the process. No thinker to plan the steps. And yet the process unfolds steadily toward coherence and form. Something acts before thought begins. This motivating force does not think. It does not plan or decide. And yet it acts with order and consistency. When we look at nature more closely, we find the same pattern everywhere. Things arise, peak, stabilize, change, dissolve, and reappear in new forms. Atoms combine and break apart. Stars are born, burn, collapse, and become the substance of new stars. Particles emerge from fields and disappear again into them. Life follows the same rhythm. As physics now understands, matter is not fixed or inert. Even space itself is alive with energy. Everything is in motion. Everything is process. Through living and non-living realms, one tendency is everywhere present: the urge to take form, to cohere, to perdure for a time, to dissolve, and to form anew. If we apply the word consciousness at this primordial level, we must define it carefully. Here, consciousness does not imply awareness. It does not imply thought or experience.It is the fundamental dynamism of existence-the tendency of reality to be something rather than nothing. In this sense, consciousness is not something possessed by things. It is that by which things can appear. Life does not create it. Life intensifies it. The brain does not produce it. The brain gives it reflection and form. Human awareness is not the source of consciousness. It is one of its most complex expressions. Death, then, is not the end of consciousness. Death ends a specific form-a body, a brain, a mind, a personal story. What ends is organization. What does not end is process. The same force that took the form of this life before birth and assumes another afterwards. The same force that beat your heart, healed your wounds, digested your meals, is the same force that spins galaxies and cooks stars. What survives is not a person. Not memory. Not identity. What survives is the principle which keeps the universe in motion. Birth and death pertain to forms. Continuity pertains to becoming.

Consciousness is not something we have; it is something the universe does. The brain knows consciousness as experience; the universe knows it as becoming.

Smruti Ranjan Mohanty ©
23.12.2025
India
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