Ah, I love these discussions about free will and determinism. I wrote a post a while back I'd love your feedback on (no need for a vote).
Currently our consciousness is more or less held captive by the limitations of our brain and our surroundings that trigger our senses. With our imagination we can to some extent transcend those limits and explore other realms of consciousness.
Interesting. I see consciousness as an emergent property of our brains, just as we are an emergent property of many groups of cells working together. As our sensory inputs feed into our memory, we create a concept of moving through time and self awareness. It's not unique to humans, we've just been the best species so far (that we know of) to articulate it using language.
What would consciousness look like without a brain? That's a really good question, one I've never considered. What would a body look like without cells?
I don't mean to imply that consciousness can exist apart from matter entirely, but that consciousness can increasingly transform matter to its own ends. What the endgame is there I don't think we can quite imagine yet! :)
Ah, I love that. :)
Maybe their just 2 sides of the same coin. Could it be that the reason why consciousness transforms matter is that they could interact more efficient? To reduce the resistance from matter to receive consciousness , that way the cycle of popping in and out of existence can speed up to a pace where it seems as if our bodies are constantly animated but in fact it dies and resurrects at a very high speed so no one notices and we think we are this persona, the host which is in fact but a point of reference to observe itself. These cycles can be observed everywhere at different speeds and we divide them in to different steps: for example day and night, life and death; a year with it's seasons, ...