Consciousness was not some substance in the brain but rather emerged from the complex relationships between the subject and the world. It was part alchemy, part illusion, a collaborative effort that obliterated our standard delineations between self and other. As Brooks put it, “Intelligence is in the eye of the observer.” —

The mind is generally associated with feelings, sentience, and consciousness of self, while the brain is a dissectible biological tissue. But learning about the brain, which is part of a larger system called the nervous system, can teach us about the mind and thus about our nature.

Whereas one’s cosmology provides a context for ecology within the nature of the universe, one’s ontological assumptions and perspectives take into consideration the nature of being, existence, reality, and relationships between all things. One ontological or spiritual stance is that all individual minds, human and nonhuman, participate in a collect