Consciousness has many forms. What unites them all is an awareness of being. Neurons are not the only prerequisite for possessing it; they merely indicate a more evolved form. The experience of consciousness may even transcend sentience by predating life as we know it. There could be realms of solar, planetary, or galactic "awareness" we haven't discovered yet, or in the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Being one of the fundamental building blocks of physics, along with matter, energy, space and time; consciousness is a key ingredient in the evolution of the cosmos- a primitive form of godliness.
We perceive consciousness in our own species of course, but also in the way other mammals interact. Many philosophers would argue that plants are aware, as they have their own blueprint for behavior (even if they can't move at our speed, they do make choices in movement, and they communicate in subtle ways). By this extension, anything with cellular activity has consciousness; even bacteria, for it also knows what it needs to survive. While survival seems to be a key component, it is not required in the cosmological forms. These varying degrees of consciousness lie on a spectrum, and we must be careful to distinguish between its elements.
One school of thought posits that consciousness is merely a nexus of information processing, biological or not. If that were the case, computers, AI, and even the Internet are conscious, albeit in a different form from humans. I am more skeptical about this line of reasoning than I am about the inorganic one. A black hole retains a tremendous amount of information at its surface; Does that make it conscious? Not in my estimation. What would make it conscious is awareness, though we have no proof of it being aware of anything. For awareness to occur, there need not be an information processing center, or any evidence of behavior. All that is needed is a distinct collection of energy separating one thing from another. A rock has more consciousness than a computer, for its energy is its own. A computer merely operates on electricity; it's missing the other subatomic particles required for awareness.
I could be wrong of course. Maybe an "electricity of consciousness" is even more advanced than the human brain. But the computer has no behavior, which I believe is required for its more advanced forms. It is also not created by naturally controlled entropy. The inorganic consciousness that may possess planets and stars manifests as a "self" perpetuating inner order in a universe trending toward complete entropy (Second Law of Thermodynamics). Anything that does not possess the clear borders constrained by entropy and a chemical network is not conscious.
Consciousness is merely the result of a pattern of cells or crystalline structure (lattice), or any homogenous energy of the same pattern of matter, to receive information about the environment, which may or may not be used to make decisions. The more "units" there are, the larger the "processing center" of perception, and the more advanced the form of consciousness becomes. Since non-organic material has far less nodes of perception, being devoid of cells, it stands to reason that it is a far more primitive vehicle of consciousness- the lowest on the hierarchy/spectrum. Indeed, that is where we also find the lowest link in the chain of "astral" or "spirit" planes that run from the physical earth plane to godhood. In between are all the other phases of consciousness on the hierarchy.
We know consciousness is a holistic entity because there is no known "center" of perception in the brain; no location where we can absolutely be certain that the source of it arises. Rather, it is the integral of all neurons in the brain, collectively communicating with each other the vast amount of information in the body and environment, that competes for the attention of the decision-making network, encompassing the entire whole. A group of cells in one part of the network can override the entire consciousness by becoming alerted to any threat from its sensorium. We are like antennas that only receive the information being "tuned in" at a certain frequency. That is why memory files diffuse through the entire brain, or chemical network, of any creature, with the exception of non-organic consciousness, which doesn't appear to harvest it. The prerequisite for having a "mind" seems to be the faculty of memory; thus, it appears all forms of consciousness don't require it, as entities can become aware without remembrance. Mind is a deeply evolved department of consciousness that imparts access to the rich quantum inner environment of the higher spiritual realms of cosmology.
By the same line of reasoning, the entire universe, being an incredibly vast network of material, bridges all the information inside it, despite having non-homogenous patterns the closer one looks. The universe is not unlike our bodies, full of disparate cellular functions all working together to help it survive. The cells in our bodies, like the stars in our universe, are all working to distribute energy into a vast accordance of awareness, or consciousness. This is not to say the universal consciousness is the same type as ours, for it is not trying to survive and does not possess behavioral power in the biological sense. But to say it is a lesser form of consciousness on the hierarchy would be a mistake, as it is clearly most supreme.
One way of viewing the spectrum is that non-organic material is at the higher end, just below God, with intelligent material being derived from it on the lower end. This would be another huge blow to our egocentricity as a species. Nothing is more humbling than realizing we are the dregs of non-intelligent processes. We assume intelligence is superior to ignorance when perhaps it is the other way around.
A better way is not to view the spectrum on a timeline, but on a range of competency. This would open the door to another proof about God; that the universe is the most advanced form of consciousness; that we, being the most evolved of its known creatures, are the closest form that has come to it on the hierarchy, save the possibility of higher intelligent life among extraterrestrials, or angels on the spirit planes. While an atheist might view this spectrum as time dependent, with rigid evolutionary rules, a spiritual person might view it based on competence. For them, it doesn't matter that inorganic consciousness came between God and life. For all we know, it was needed for life to exist.
The painter doesn't summon an image without the building blocks of color. We need those building blocks in our bodies the same as any other creation; calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, etc.- these are all inorganic essentials we need to survive, which fully derived from inorganic consciousness. How special it is to be something that has incorporated so many disparate parts of cosmology that we approach our maker, becoming makers of our own.
