If everything emerges from the same ground — a kind of common consciousness or global mind — we could conceive that an ontological cascade, in accordance with Plotinus’ “hypostatic” model, could emerge from the source. In that regard, a procession in scales would naturally develop, such that dissociation from the source becomes progressively accentuated.
If this is accepted, we would say that the human being inhabits the space of greatest dissociation from the elemental consciousness of origin.
Returning to the Aristotelian ontological dichotomy, we would speak of a world in which interaction is more accidental and less substantial; that is, there would be an experiential predominance of the accidental over the substantial.
This proportion would gradually invert as one advances along the aforementioned ontological hierarchy toward the source.
Once this ontological scheme is defined, we may ask about its reason: why do we develop eyes, as well as the rest of the accidents?
One possible explanation would be to appeal to intelligent design theory, which would in turn be consonant with the Neoplatonic vision of Plotinus.
Thus, if this consciousness or mind possessed not agency or will in an anthropomorphic sense, but rather an inherent telos consisting in its own self-experience — that is, in experiencing itself — why not think that each of these stages constitutes a mode of experience?
In other words, what if this existential succession occurs as a consequence of the impulse connatural to this primordial substance to experience itself in diverse ways? This would coincide with the notion of necessary irradiation from the One, understood as the sole arché or principle of reality, to which Plotinus alludes.
We would therefore speak of a telos that coincides with a kind of “experiential diversification.” This would not arise as a consequence of will or agency, as in the Judeo-Christian notion, for example, but rather as the result of a drive consubstantial with the very essence of that fundamental consciousness or primordial substance.
At the most basic and therefore material stage, experience is, returning to the Aristotelian framework, more accidental, insofar as it is the plane upon which it unfolds. However, as one ascends — or descends, since we are not speaking of transcendence but rather of immanence (though this directional metaphor is merely illustrative) — within this more accidental empirical dimension, the type of experience would obviously be more constrained, in the sense that dissociation would be more pronounced. Thus, all those dissociative barriers would be more sharply marked.
Conversely, as one ascends or descends along this ontological ladder, dissociation would gradually dissolve — until its complete dissolution in the one consciousness — giving rise to a more permeable type of experience, and thus one of greater scope or plenitude, though in any case distinct and inconceivable from within our material paradigms.
From this it follows that experience would be determined, in essence, by the degree of dissociation.
And if, taking this premise, we again ask why one can see at the next stage — or the previous, depending on perspective — the answer might be that, according to what is reported in NDE cases, at that stage the more subtle dissociation relative to the more material one is capable of accessing information without the body, since the body is itself another creation of that fundamental consciousness, simply one more form of expression within its experiential telos — its experiential diversification. It is not indispensable for perception, which may occur without the body.
This does not deprive biological evolution, with all its particularities, diversity, and degrees of refinement, of meaning or purpose. On the contrary, it is one more mode of experience that consciousness necessarily develops as a consequence of that telos of experiencing itself in all possible ways.
It would be a kind of development of attempts or experiments, through which the fundamental mind, driven by that connatural telos, intentionally originates a material plane in which eyes exist — not because vision requires them in order to exist, but because they constitute one possible configuration of experience.
We could therefore speak of experiential multiplicity or diversification in both a horizontal and vertical sense.
This would translate into diverse modulations between substance and accident. At the most fundamental level, everything would be substance; at the most phenomenal level, everything would be accidental — always from the perspective of subjectivity experiencing itself.
Consciousness would thus encompass the entire range of possible types or planes of experience. Eyes develop on the material plane because it is a plane in which experience occurs “accidentally,” with the primacy of accidental elements — what we call matter — over substance. But as this materiality dissolves along the ontological hierarchy, the eye ceases to be present as a material accident or phenomenal element. Yet even in the absence of the eye at subsequent levels, the faculty of vision is preserved, since its origin is not material or accidental but substantial, and therefore mental.
We might say that consciousness continues to experience itself at those subsequent stages without renouncing the capacities that are likewise present at other strata.
As dissociation diminishes, the senses we correlate with sensory organs at the material level — which, under the materialist paradigm, are said to provide information interpreted by the brain — would still occur at successive stages, but in a different mode.
That is, the senses as experienced at the most elemental, accidental, or phenomenal plane would progressively “perfect” themselves. Everything epistemically accessible at the material level would likewise be apprehensible at those further stages, but in a more “perfect” way.
The reason for this is that the constraint imposed by material or phenomenal conditioning would progressively diminish as one advances along the ontological scale toward the source.
Thus, at the primordial ontological substratum — that fundamental substance — there would be no constraints. Access to information would be absolute, omnidirectional. This would extend to the sensory function as we know it in our dimension. We would be speaking of pure experience.
These ontological planes would not collapse into one another upon the termination of each experience — for example, human death at the material or phenomenal plane — but each stratum would remain and endure.
This would not be incompatible with the possibility that dissociation undergoes multiple experiences within the same plane, following the paradigm of reincarnation, whether or not there exists a finite number of such attempts or experiences within each plane.
In any case, this question escapes our present intellectual and demonstrative capacities.
The error, then, would lie in attempting to homologize the experiences of one plane with those of another, since experiences at each plane must necessarily be distinct.
The question would then arise: how and why, upon transcending to the next plane, might that less dissociated being access information from that level?
This could be explained if the empirical telos of ultimate consciousness is capable of traversing the ontological hierarchy, crossing the various levels at least in one direction: from the less dissociated to the more dissociated.
It would appear more improbable — though perhaps not impossible — that this experiential conatus could translate from the more dissociated levels to the less dissociated ones, since this would require accepting that the restrictions imposed by the “accidentality” of those strata could be overcome.
Thus, levels of lesser dissociation could only be “perceived” insofar as dissociation progressively dissolves in correlation with this ontological ascent or descent.
I therefore consider that the problem need not be posed in terms of necessity, as Bernardo does, but rather in terms of experiential diversification.
The fundamental matrix diversifies itself into multiple experiential strata, all of them attempts — or, if one prefers, experiments — through which the fundamental mind, moved by that connatural telos, intentionally originates a material plane in which eyes exist, not because vision requires them in order to exist, but because evolutionary and material constraints enrich the diversity of experience into which consciousness irresistibly radiates.
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