So, no posts since Xmas eve - that is unusual for this thread, and I wonder if this might this mean that 'God' has now been found: if so, I think we should be told.
From my perspective as a theist, the label "God" is attached to so many different and often contradictory feelings and concepts, it seems unlikely that whatever one person has found within their mind through intuition and labelled 'God' will mean much to someone else who attempts to understand it through reasoning and science.
My older daughter had me read an extract in English (no idea if it was originally written in French) from Henri Bergson's philosophical thoughts in Mind-Energy ( she wanted help trying to understand its meaning in order to do an essay she is required to write as part of her French and Philosophy degree - why is this stuff never written in plain, easy to understand English?)
Anyway, Bergson's metaphysical discussion about the origin, nature and destiny of humans and the interaction between mind and body or between matter, consciousness and intellect seems to say that "there is no decisive fact that clinches the matter, such as we expect to find in physics or chemistry."
AB might be interested by Bergson's view that for consciousness to exist, there is no present - there is only the immediate past and the imminent future, and without a memory of the past and an anticipation of the future any consciousness becomes unconsciousness. Bergson says consciousness is what bridges the past to the future, but that the existence of consciousness in a being is impossible to prove, and that just because consciousness is linked to a brain in humans, it does not follow that lower organisms that do not have a brain do not experience consciousness.
I think the idea seems to be that humans and animals have consciousness and conscious awareness of matter and how to act on matter, but the more intelligent a species has evolved to become, the more it reflects on and has feelings about the actions its consciousness has on matter - it has developed a greater faculty for choosing its actions, which is localised in its brain, than less evolved species.
And while a lot of our thinking and decision-making is automatic, we are more aware of our ability to choose in times of crisis when we feel our choice matters in some meaningful way because of the impact it will have on our future.
So I would say this process of reflection may form part of the "search for God" and whatever it is that is perceived by the person searching can never really be found or communicated to someone else by intellect.
I have not read much more of Bergson than the extract my daughter showed me, so I am not sure if Bergson came up with any psycho-physiological explanation for the mind or why the mind evolved to do what it does or the mechanisms by which consciousness reflects, but to paraphrase he says that matter is what brings division and precision. He also says that for a thought to become distinct, there must be dispersion in words. He then says there is effort expended in producing the material realisation of the indistinct thought as we have to choose how to express our thought. Bergson then says this effort causes us to draw out more from ourselves than we initially had, causing us to be raised above ourselves.
Though I am not sure if "raised above ourselves" is describing humans reflecting on the interaction of consciousness and matter or if Bergson is describing making a choice as some sort of creative evolutionary process which creates new neural pathways in the brain through the mental effort we have just made, or if "raised above ourselves" means something else entirely.
