Consciousness and the Myth of the Inner Light

When all other inner objects have been dismantled — images, emotions, beliefs, selves, memories, intentions — one phenomenon is usually left standing.

Consciousness.

Surely something must remain. Surely there must be a light on inside. An experiencing presence. A “what it is like” that cannot be reduced, distributed, or explained away.

This conviction is so strong that consciousness is often treated not merely as a phenomenon, but as the final guarantee that the inner world exists at all.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is not a conclusion. It is a last myth.

The Inner Light Picture

The dominant intuition about consciousness looks roughly like this:

• experiences are illuminated from within

• there is something it is like for me

• this qualitative presence is private and immediate

• the brain somehow generates or hosts it

Even theories that reject dualism usually preserve this structure. Consciousness becomes an “emergent property,” a “global workspace,” or an “integrated field.” The metaphors differ; the light remains.

But notice what is being preserved: the idea that consciousness is a thing-like presence located somewhere inside experience itself.

This is the mind’s eye all over again — only brighter.

The Hard Problem as a Symptom

The so-called “hard problem of consciousness” asks why physical processes should give rise to subjective experience.

From a relational perspective, this problem is not deep. It is malformed.

It arises because consciousness is treated as an inner product that must be generated, rather than as a way of carving experience. We demand an explanation for how the light gets switched on, because we have already committed to the metaphor of illumination.

Once that commitment is withdrawn, the problem quietly dissolves.

Consciousness Is Not an Extra Ingredient

Nothing needs to be added to perception, action, or coordination to make them conscious.

There is no extra glow. No additional substance. No inner witness.

What we call consciousness is the availability of experience to relational construal — especially linguistic, reflective, and social construal.

To be conscious of something is not for it to be lit up internally, but for it to be:

• reportable

• differentiable

• stabilised in attention

• integrated into ongoing activity

This is why consciousness comes in degrees, shifts with context, and changes across development and culture — all deeply awkward facts if consciousness were a simple inner presence.

Awareness Without a Watcher

Much philosophical confusion stems from the assumption that awareness requires an aware subject.

But awareness is not something done by a watcher. It is a mode of organisation in which distinctions matter, persist, and can be acted upon.

There is no inner observer behind experience. There is only experience organised in ways that support further coordination.

Remove the observer, and nothing vanishes. Remove the organisation, and consciousness evaporates — not because the light went out, but because there is no longer anything for it to be.

Why the Brain Won’t Save the Myth

Neuroscience reliably finds neural correlates of consciousness. These discoveries are then quietly promoted into neural locations of consciousness.

But correlation is not containment.

The brain participates in the coordination that allows consciousness to stabilise, just as lungs participate in speech. But consciousness is not in the brain any more than a conversation is in a microphone.

Searching for the inner light in neural tissue is like dissecting a radio to find the music.

Altered States and the Flexibility of the Cut

Meditation, psychedelics, dissociation, flow states, and certain pathologies are often treated as modifications of consciousness.

From a relational view, they are modifications of organisation.

What changes is not the brightness of an inner light, but:

• the granularity of distinctions

• the stability of self-referential construal

• the availability of narrative continuity

• the degree of social anchoring

These states feel profound precisely because they loosen the cuts that normally stabilise the myth of an inner witness.

Consciousness as Myth, Not Mystery

Calling consciousness a myth does not deny experience. It denies a particular story about experience.

Myths are not errors; they are successful compressions. The myth of the inner light has been extraordinarily effective at organising inquiry, ethics, and identity.

But it has also reached its limits.

What remains, once the light goes out, is not darkness — but relation.

The End of the Arc

With consciousness re-cut, the entire architecture of inner mental life collapses gently, without loss.

• No inner theatre

• No private objects

• No metaphysical owners

• No ghostly illuminations

Only coordinated activity, stabilised distinctions, and perspectival construal — actualised, moment by moment, without anything hiding behind them.

At this point, the question is no longer where is consciousness?

It is: what kinds of relations make this way of being possible?

That question opens a very different future.