'நான் யார்?'
Swaminathan Sankaran
This week’s subject for The Interview is the best-selling author Michael Pollan, whose forthcoming book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” is a highly personal and expansive survey of questions around human consciousness — what it is, what it’s for and what that all might mean for how we live.
I could talk about consciousness all day, but often when I do talk about it with people, I can tell that they view thinking about consciousness as almost akin to navel gazing. Like, it’s interesting to think about, but really what difference does it make? What is your response to that?
I’ve thought a lot about what good is it to think about consciousness, and I came to think that it’s more important than ever. Scientists are learning that more animals and creatures — going all the way down possibly to insects — are conscious. So that’s one interesting issue: We’re sharing consciousness with more creatures. And then the big threat is artificial intelligence and the effort to create a conscious A.I., which is going to be an enormous challenge to this question of what does it mean to be human. Is consciousness something that a machine can possess? Who are we? So I think we’re approaching this kind of Copernican moment of redefinition.
Questions of consciousness, which are really questions about what makes us us, are important questions. But at the same time, they can lead into other questions like: Is there some stable “I” that exists or not? Sometimes thinking about those questions can be destabilizing. Is that just me? Do you have similar apprehensions?
It can be destabilizing, absolutely. One of the reasons people are happy to be less conscious and fill their attention with distractions and drugs is because the mind can be a scary place to visit. We often want to be less aware of what’s going on. There are reasons people avoid going down these rabbit holes. It takes a willingness to risk something.
I apologize if this seems like a woo-woo question, but do you think the absence of something like a stable “self” also means the absence of something like a soul? Do you believe in a soul?
Well, if a soul is something that is indestructible and survives our death, no. But I can’t say anything about the afterlife with confidence. Consciousness has become our secular substitute for the soul; we talk about consciousness the way people in the 16th or 17th century talked about souls. So I think there is a hidden religiosity or spirituality in the whole conversation around consciousness. Somebody asked me recently, Do you think as people get older, they are more interested in consciousness? And I would say yes, and probably for that reason.
Read more of the interview here. Or watch a longer version on YouTube.
VETTAI ANANTHANARAYANAN
On Feb 8, 2026, at 11:05 AM, Swaminathan Sankaran <swamina...@gmail.com> wrote:
Swaminathan Sankaran
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