Atoms and rocks do have a kind of consciousness, but it is hardly the same as plant consciousness, and it is magnitudes apart from human consciousness.
The human brain has the ability to reflect on the qualia that comes to it from our senses, and respond thoughtfully, while animal nervous systems primarily react to qualia instinctively.
To me it seems that subatomic particles only have consciousness of being (as they pop in and out of existence); atoms have extended this consciousness. Molecules have a consciousness of belonging, which lasts as long as they endure in larger and larger forms, and plants have extended this consciousness of belonging to an awareness of community. This last is the reason that our human minds have found great solace in the apparent wisdom of the plant world, because it is so cooperative in contrast to our own, human landscape.
Yet our sense of being is only manifested in doing, and in all that communal motion our only sense on belonging. We have lost the stillness of silent being. We haven’t even a bat’s sense of identity with the insects it feeds upon. Do the meadow flowers know they are not the breeze, like we do? Our loss.
But in our wonder of nature and ecosystems, when their qualia comes to us and fills us with awe, there we can find the route back to oneness and the source. For our inner landscape, such as it is, is an ecosystem too.
Animal instinct reacts to the qualia they receive from ecosystems, but the journey of the human mind is an attempt to mirror ecosystems themselves. Astray though we might have gone, the qualia we need, that makes us wonder at our own inner landscapes, is to be found in the half dreams of theta-scapes.
Theta-scapes are akin to the Bardo state between death and rebirth.
Theta reveals the identity of our being and belonging, that we need to recover. Essentially, it is similar to the bat’s identity with the landmarks and pathways of its landscape, but our identity is with ecosystems rather than landscapes.
It is a tall order to achieve this oneness. We must develop this sense through conscious ritualing, with both our our inner and outer landscapes. Pure science and awesome spirituality combined.