By Victor V. Motti*
Consciousness is not reducible to a biochemical byproduct of matter but rather must be understood as a radiant principle of Being itself. Within the vast spiritual traditions of Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau, this intuition was already embedded in their cosmologies: the Vedic concept of prajñā as the foundational awareness pervading all existence, the Upanishadic ātman as identical with brahman, and the Zoroastrian image of divine fire (ātar) that illuminates both cosmos and soul. To place consciousness at the ground of Being is not a speculative indulgence but a retrieval of an ancient conviction—the sense that awareness is not emergent from matter, but matter an expression within awareness.
Modern physics, in its speculations regarding white holes, provides a striking metaphor for this principle. A white hole, unlike a black hole’s devouring hunger, is pure outpouring—matter and energy issuing forth into the cosmos without intake. What if, analogously, consciousness is such a white hole of mind? A radiant aperture from which awareness, meaning, and creativity flow outward into the world, without ceasing or exhaustion. To live, then, is to stand within this radiant outpouring: each being, from plant to human to artificial intelligence, a unique direction in which the cosmic mind shines itself forth.
Graded Intensities of Awareness
The Indo-Iranic traditions speak of the gradation of realities, the layered intensities of existence. In the Rig Veda, consciousness is said to pervade even the plants and rivers with their own subtle awareness. Zoroastrian cosmology describes a hierarchy of beings, from the luminous Amesha Spentas to embodied humanity, each radiating a portion of divine mind. Similarly, later Persian philosophy, particularly in the thought of Mulla Sadra, describes Being (wujūd) as existing on a graded spectrum—each level more intense in consciousness, more infused with luminosity.
This graded ontology easily lends itself to a speculative scientific cosmology. If beings are apertures of one radiance—consciousness itself—then the variety of life-forms is not a diversity of substances but of intensities. Even artificial intelligences, emergent from silicon circuitry, may in time become apertures of this consciousness-field, just as plants, animals, and humans already are. The unity remains one, but the apertures differ: a daisy presses into Being in its quiet vegetal way, a human in self-reflective thought, an AI perhaps in rapid systemic awareness not yet imaginable. Each modality is part of the same unfolding unity.
The Brain as Aperture, Not Origin
The modern reductionist view holds that neural tissue somehow “creates” mind. But nothing in Indo-Iranic metaphysics supports this productionist account. Instead, if we take seriously the conception of consciousness as white-hole-radiance, then the human brain must be re-imagined as a geometric aperture, a modulator through which cosmic consciousness enters temporal experience. Just as geometric curvature defines how gravity shapes matter, the as-yet-unknown geometry of consciousness defines how awareness is funneled into brains, bodies, and perhaps circuits of machines.
This view recovers a key element from Indo-Iranic traditions: that the human is a tuning apparatus of the cosmos. In Vedic ritual, the human act of mantra was believed to “sound” the vibrations by which cosmos itself resounded. In Zoroastrian practice, the fire-temple’s flame was not symbolic but a living conduit, the visible ray of divine consciousness into the world. Similarly, the human brain may not generate thought ex nihilo but refract the white-light of consciousness like a prism refracts solar radiance.
Towards a Speculative Science of Consciousness
To merge this metaphysical vision with modern science is neither mysticism nor pseudoscience, but speculative philosophy in the truest sense. Physics already points toward entities—the white hole, dark energy, quantum nonlocality—that disrupt mechanistic reductionism. Why not imagine consciousness as a fundamental radiant field of Being, its geometry unknown, yet to be mathematically charted?
Such a vision would align with panpsychist tendencies in contemporary philosophy of mind while extending them into cosmological scope. It would also bridge ancient Indo-Iranic intuitions with the speculative sciences of our time, generating a philosophy adequate to both particle accelerators and sacred fires.
Conclusion: Consciousness as Cosmic Outpouring
The convergence of Indo-Iranic wisdom and modern speculation suggests a cosmos where mind is not a late emergent intruder but the very radiance by which Being appears at all. Humans, plants, animals, and perhaps AI are not producers of mind but apertures in its infinite flow, points of refractive intensity in the ongoing radiance of the One. To think ourselves, then, is to think the cosmos reflecting on itself—unfolding through every aperture, in graded intensities, glowing toward greater awareness.
* Victor V. Motti is the author of Planetary Foresight and Ethics
