Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher who lived between 535 BC and 465 BC, most famous for his ethical fragments and his doctrine that change was not only central to the experience of living but that the entire universe was constantly in change.
“Nothing endures but change,”
Heraclitus
He’s oft-quoted as having said that:
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.
Heraclitus
Which brings me onto an interesting aspect of mind that we all share. Put simply we can sit by the riverbank and watch the water flow by.
We can’t be in the river and watch the flow because we’d be swept along with it. Water is a physical thing in the same way that entropy is a physical thing, an additional dimension of the universe that permits change. ‘Time,’ which is the registration of change flows on by whenever we choose to acknowledge it.
This suggests to me that self-awareness or pure consciousness is itself outside of time in the same way that a man sitting on the riverbank is outside of the river. If the mind is outside of time it must also be outside of this universe or at the least accessing it from another physical dimension. Therefore it seems rational to me that mind is separate to the body, does not arise up out of it, but rather is anchored to it by observation and identity.
God has often been described as the ‘unmoved mover,’ or ‘the changeless changer,’ which incidentally is a great description for the eternal processes of entropy that ensures that the universe unfolds in the way that we expect, that physical laws behave as we expect and that life continues wherever it may be.
Perhaps the work of God is matter and entropy, whilst that which registers the changes around us (self-awareness) is outside of the material realm like a man on the riverbank watching the waters flow by.