A Simple Explanation of Immanence, or Inherent Consciousness

Scientists generally say that consciousness is a by-product of brains, and while organisms without brains may be reactive to stimuli, they are certainly not what you would call "conscious." The Simple Explanation, on the other hand, starts from the premise that consciousness is inherent in all matter.

The Simple Explanation proposes that our universe is fully conscious, from the tiniest material manifestations of the sub-atomic level through material aggregations of ever-increasing complexity and scope until it scales up to the most complex consciousness of all--the Very Large Universal Consciousness encompassing the sum of our universe's aggregate structures and processes. Indeed, the very ground state that forms the matrix of our universe, irrespective of material, is consciousness-without-thought. 

Each piece of material "knows how" to do its job in the niche it occupies. 

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As you can see from the diagram, our Universe is organized into increasingly larger and larger aggregations of objects and the processes required to arrange and maintain them. The Simple Explanation is a form of "intelligent design" in claiming that the matter and processes of our universe are driven by the consciousness inherent within it, and not by randomness or chaos. In this sense, the Simple Explanation is reminiscent of philosophies that talk about "Divine Immanence." 

According to the Simple Explanation, every unit of consciousness "knows how" to do the job it occupies. The scope of its knowledge and the breadth of its responsibilities becomes greater as it occupies niches of increasing complexity, but even the tiniest sub-atomic particles "know how" to do their jobs, just as a sunflower "knows how" to be a sunflower, a cloud "knows how" to be a cloud,  and a cat "knows how" to be a cat. From the micro level on up, particle-like waves "reach out" to others and "work together" to make larger and larger particles, atoms, molecules, and elements, forming the material bedrock of our universe. 

In this manner, inanimate material "behaves" no differently than life forms. Each of these pieces of material "knows how" to do the job slot it occupies. A hydrogen atom possesses the organizational capacity to be the hydrogen atom; it also "knows how" to reach out to other atoms to make molecules. Similarly, life forms put themselves together by building organelles and cells out of proteins and other cellular precursors, using very complicated arrangements and mechanisms for sub-cellular entities. Likewise, a stem cell mysteriously "knows how" to differentiate into just the cell needed to do the job. 

Oddly enough, while the concept of "very tiny up through very large" works well enough when applied to the amount of information needed to run a physical process, it doesn't really describe the amount of potential consciousness a material unit inherently possesses. This is because each and every unit of consciousness, no matter how tiny or large its vehicle, is a fractal of the entire overarching consciousness and, as such, inherently possesses the potential for all knowledge. 

The amount of information a piece of material can utilize and manipulate has more to do with its place in the overall structure and what it needs to know in order to do its job, not whether it is a life form or not, or whether or not it has a brain. In this Simple model, consciousness is inherent in all material, while knowledge is relative to an entity's niche and point of view, and information is valued according to its personal utility and its usefulness to the overall good.