In the "Huangdi Neijing," an ancient Chinese medical treatise compiled about two millennia ago during the Western Han dynasty, consciousness is described not as a brain function, but as a "spiritual light" (shen)—a phenomenon that shines brightly only when the equilibrium of all the body's organs is achieved. This view fundamentally differs from the modern Western approach: neuroscience searches for consciousness within specific neural structures—the prefrontal cortex or thalamocortical loops—as if trying to capture it in one spot in the brain.
This discrepancy reveals a fundamental assumption underlying most Western theories: that consciousness is a self-sufficient mechanism that can be isolated and studied apart from the rest of the organism. The renowned Australian philosopher David Chalmers, when formulating his "hard problem" of consciousness in 1995, highlighted precisely this difficulty: if consciousness is localized in the brain, why can't we explain how physical processes give rise to subjective experience?
Meanwhile, the Chinese tradition offers a different solution to this philosophical puzzle—not because it finds an answer in one point, but because it refutes the premise itself: consciousness is not localized because it is not a separate entity.
According to ancient Chinese medical philosophy, the brightness of consciousness is directly linked to the harmony of the organ system—especially the heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, and spleen. When this balance is disrupted, not only the body suffers, but also the quality of consciousness: anxiety, insomnia, clouded perception, weakened creativity, and confusion in the face of reality arise. In modern psychiatric terms, these are called mental health disorders, but in the traditional Chinese understanding, they are a consequence of bodily disharmony, not a localized "malfunction" in the brain.
This holistic view creates tension with popular modern theories of consciousness. Consider the global workspace theory, developed by Bernard Baars, Stanislas Dehaim, and other neurobiologists: it proposes that consciousness arises when information becomes accessible to the entire brain network through a single "workspace."
Or Giulio Tononi's (2004) integrated information theory, which describes consciousness as the result of information integration in a physical system. Both these models, like most neuroscientific approaches, focus on brain mechanisms in isolation. If consciousness requires holistic bodily harmony, then computational models and their digital counterparts might be missing something essential—the context of the entire organism.
Paradoxically, this divergence does not invalidate the empirical data of modern science. We know that sleep affects cognitive functions, that nutrient deficiencies impair clear thinking, and that physical activity improves memory and mood. Western science explains these facts through neurochemistry—synaptic plasticity, neurotransmitter levels, and the clearance of metabolic waste during sleep. The Chinese tradition sees these as the workings of a single system, where restoring bodily equilibrium naturally restores clarity of consciousness. Both perspectives are compatible—they simply describe reality at different levels of analysis.
A comparison with health helps clarify this logic. When we assess a person's health, we don't look for it in a single organ—we examine the interaction of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems, the energy levels, the quality of sleep, and emotional stability.
The Chinese tradition suggests applying the same approach to consciousness: the "spiritual light" does not hide in neurons; it emerges or fades with the state of the whole. Practices like Tai Chi, meditation, breathing exercises, and sleep hygiene work not because they "train the brain" in a narrow sense, but because they restore precisely that organic harmony.
If such a perspective proves fruitful, consciousness research will move beyond the search for neural correlates and begin to systematically consider bodily states, lifestyle, and cultural context as integral parts of the picture.
The question of whether artificial intelligence can possess consciousness will require reconsideration: it would not be enough to pass computational tests—the system would somehow need to model or equate what we call organic harmony. This leads to a deeper question: can pure information, without a bodily substrate, ever give rise to what we call consciousness?
