It was 2:40 in the morning. I was wide awake.

I’d just had a hot flash with its attendant panic attack that woke me up. It’s that way for some women … the panic attacks. It was like that for my mom. She would look at me, wide-eyed and all flushed in the face, and tell me she couldn’t breathe and I’d have to grab the nearest thing and fan her with it, moving the air so she would know the air was still there.

Anyway, for some reason or other the concept of quantum entanglement popped into my head.

I began crafting an interesting, (hopefully) and amusing (again hopefully) article around the concept. Exactly what I shouldn’t be doing at 2:40 in the morning.

I read somewhere recently that those-in-the-know (or the think-they-knows) have posited that quantum entanglement is responsible for consciousness. I don’t remember what the argument for this was.

Thing is, those-in-the-know once thought that life could be created spontaneously. Like within a pile of leaves. Pile up some leaves, let them decay a bit, a little heat is formed and then voila! Life. Let’s just ignore insect eggs and mold spores and the like.

The other thing is, I feel I have no more reason to believe that consciousness exists outside of our physical bodies than that quantum entanglement accounts for it. But, that’s what I believe. I think a lot of people also believe this. Then again, a lot of people also once believed the earth was flat.  Doesn’t make it true.

Here’s another thing. At 2:40 in the morning when I was thinking about quantum entanglement and the human brain and consciousness, I crafted what I thought was a lighthearted and amusing article. I thought seriously about getting up and typing it out. But I convinced myself that I would still hold the gist of it in my mind upon waking. And if I didn’t, that I would have good ideas again. At least as good as what I was thinking at 3:07 in the morning. I told myself I should sleep and that if I got up right then, I’d never get back to sleep. I’ve had experience is this matter.

Well, shoot. I went back to sleep and lost it all.  But hey, sleep is important.

This morning, I am reminded that there are other in-the-knows who think that all matter has consciousness. That it is essentially a property of matter (all matter vibrates and consciousness is a vibration) and that the more complicated the matter (and vibration) the more complicated the consciousness. Under this hypothesis, even a rock would have consciousness. Then I began to wonder about an atom, or an electron or … ad infinitum.

And what about the universe? It’s very huge and very complicated. And very conscious?

I wanted to write about quantum entanglement, but I lost that thread to sleep and dreaming. Then I thought I would write about the fear I sometimes have that I will never have another good idea and the lengths I go to to convince myself otherwise. But I ended up writing about consciousness. More or less.

Quantum entanglement and vibrational matter aside, I think it’s pretty clear we are conscious. Or at least I think it is.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why.

Images courtesy of PostQuantum.com and Gracious Quotes, respectively.