The existence of consciousness had no beginning. What exists simply cannot have its beginning, for it is the one that exists – from forever to forever. This is the truth that implies itself by itself.
Let me try giving a broader explanation of this!
Since this regards consciousness and since there cannot be consciousness without knowledge and there cannot be any knowledge without previous experience i.e. movement, and since in the same way there cannot be movement without previous knowledge and thinking that initiates movement in consciousness, then the answer to the question of existence/non-existence of the beginning of consciousness, as well as the priority of psychological over physical and vice versa, is significantly simplified.
It is reduced to the only possible answer, and that is that consciousness eternally, again and again, in cycles, bestirs itself and gains knowledge. Then it stops and keeps this knowledge so, by having it, it can desire again to bestir itself and by doing so gain this same knowledge again. In other words, it is reduced to the answer that in the eternal existence of the consciousness of the universe there has always been a knowledge that preceded each of its movements and actions and that there has always been some movement and action that preceded each of its experiences i.e. knowledge.
To be clearer, this implies that the psychological and the physical eternally stand in mutual causal-consequential connection and relation and that they cannot exist one without the other. That is, there has always been a chicken that preceded an egg, and there has always been an egg that preceded a chicken.
Make no mistake, this implies that the first chicken or first egg that came into existence by the development of consciousness in this current universe, were not the first ones that appeared ever, but that there was an endless number of eggs, chickens, hens, and cocks throughout the past in all previous universes which existed prior to the current one and about which the consciousness of the universe, inside itself, kept knowledge. As it kept the knowledge about all other material forms, in its new developmental cycle, i.e. in the current universe, by this very knowledge, by its thought and will, from itself, by self-development, it builds all currently existing chickens and eggs. Similarly, it builds us ourselves and everything else.
In this way, we conclude that the rule and law of the existence of consciousness and the universe is the same one that rules the existence of the chicken and the egg. As the chicken’s egg contains the knowledge of the chicken by which it gradually transforms itself into a chicken, so this chicken leaves the same knowledge in a new egg by which it will again develop into a chicken. This same principle applies to the whole energetic/material universe by the knowledge it carries inside itself, without beginning or end, over and over again, eternally appearing and disappearing, building and collapsing, rising and falling. In a word – it breathes.
On the basis of our personal, as well as our scientific experience and knowledge of both our and nature’s existence, we now conclude and realize that we ourselves, as well as the whole nature/universe, do not exist as eternal duration, but as eternal recurrence with the meaning of self-preservation.
It should be noted that during all these eternal processes of recurrence, the ones that recur are energy/matter, material forms and knowledge about them. Consciousness never recurs. It is the one that is self-preserved by those recurrences.
Recurrence and self-preservation are at the same time the answer to the question: “How does the consciousness exist?”
Consider what the German philosopher Fichte says about eternal recurrences below:
Quote:
”Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do over again the same things that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may reappear as they were before; – this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself? This can never be the vocation of my being, and of all being. There must be something which exists because it has come into existence; and endures, and cannot come anew, having once become such as it is. And this abiding existence must be produced amid the vicissitudes of the transitory and perishable, maintain itself there, and be borne onwards, pure and inviolate, upon the waves of time.”