Notes on Universal Consciousness
“It simply comes down to this—that in this universe, there is one great energy, and we have no name for it…“
~ Alan Watts
See ‘Thoughts on Nonduality’ for further meditations on infinite awareness!
Consciousness is the fundamental source of being hence has no source…it is the source.
The source is an indescribable ever-present force… a limitless and unimaginable thing that cannot be define that underlies all existence, neither beginning nor ending and beyond the confines of human categories.
There is infinitely more to reality than the human mind can ever conceive.
All matter is simply an excitation of this energy force, manifestations of the universal consciousness.
Reality is an ocean of energy and separation of any single wave from the depths below or air above is an illusion.
Everything exists in relation to something else.
The universe is an interconnected web of relationships and all things are ultimately one in that they are undivided and identical at their essence.
Reality is consciousness.
What we call ‘reality’ is a tiny, visible sliver. Most of existence is hidden.
Reality, as we each experience it, is a personal phenomenological distinction of this universal essence.
On a quantum level our consciousness is entangled with consciousnesses all across the universe.
Consciousness is universal, not empirical and not explainable.
The universal consciousness is ultimately mental and absolutely ineffable.
Consciousness doesn't come from the brain…the brain is a condition for consciousness not a producer of it.
The concept of this sacred presence, the unnamable source of life is akin to the Brahman, the Tao and an analog to God.
Reality is not a collection of separate things, but a single self-aware field of being.
Every perceiver and every particle arises within that one consciousness, like waves expressing an ocean that has no shore.
“Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a sudden—I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it."
~ Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
Aldous Huxley described the brain and nervous system as a "reducing valve" that filters a vast "Mind at Large" (a universal field of consciousness) down to a narrow, survival-oriented trickle of everyday awareness.
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Perhaps Jung’s concept of the collective consciousness, consisting of unconscious memories of the brain inherited from the human species, repressed social memories inherited from our remotest ancestors is but a subset of the universal consciousness.
“What we experience with our senses is of course the physical world, the real world. You may ask me, well isn’t there also a spiritual world? But you must understand that the spiritual world is the same thing as the physical.”
~ Alan Watts
“There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing"
~ Alan Watts
The infinite experiencing the finite.
Idealism and monism have a long history as Indian and Buddhist thought embrace this perspective. Here the world and all objects are viewed as the products of consciousness and mental activity, and the idea of an external and independent world is rejected. Consciousness is the primary reality, the physical world being ultimately illusory
The universe and all that exists within it are one interrelated and interdependent whole.
Most creation myths begin with a paradoxical unity of everything, evaluated either as chaos or as paradise.
There is a single, intelligent consciousness that pervades the entire universe - the Universal Consciousness.
Our ‘souls’ or our individual consciousness’s are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe - hence have existed since before the beginning of time. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time.
More than a half century ago, Richard Feynman advised us to accept that nature makes no sense. “Do not keep saying to yourself … ‘But how can [nature] be like that?’” Feynman warns in The Character of Physical Law, “because you will get ‘down the drain,’ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.” Most physicists have followed Feynman’s advice.
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The Universal Consciousness goes by many names.
In the scientific world the Unified Field comes to mind, in spiritual philosophy, the All or Universal Consciousness is referred to and religion calls upon God who also goes by many names - Jehovah, Allah and Brahman to mention but a few. The name is relevant only in so far as it resonates with the contemplator.
Perhaps God, Yahweh, Mother Nature, Logos, Shaddai, Jehovah, Allah, Brahman, Primordial Om , the Holy Spirit, The Great Spirit, the Tao, Nirvana, the life force, divine consciousness, elan vital, divine power, divine unity, supreme truth, supreme ultimate, limitless consciousness, supreme consciousness, amalgam of unity, the Being, the essence of the cosmos, ultimate reality, the nothing, source energy, pleroma, Nietzsche's Will to Power, Schopenhauer’s Will to Life, Kant’s Noumena, etc. are all just different interpretations of the same universal energy.
Aristotle's held the view that the universe is a single entity with a fundamental connectedness between all things and that the cosmos is eternal. The ‘Prime Mover’ is an eternal unchanging mind thinking itself, pure actuality that starts motion without moving.
The Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas taught that the universe is a single entity, which is called Brahmin. All appearances of dichotomy or separateness are mere illusions.
“All that you see”, that which comprises both god and man – is one; we are parts of one great body.”
~ Lucius Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
“All things are woven together and the common bond is sacred, and scarcely one thing is foreign to another, for they have been arranged together in their places and together make the same cosmos.”
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.9
We are the universe experiencing itself, through us, as us and death is only a transitional state, a reverberating expression. Moving in and out of physical being. But always one consciousness, one spirit.
Consciousness cannot be observed because it's always the observer and cannot be measured because it’s the thing doing the measuring.
Consciousness is never an abject of its own knowledge just as a light can’t illuminate itself.
Every existent being from atom to galaxy is rooted in the same universal, life-creating consciousness. This consciousness is all pervasive but it can never be summed up in its parts since it is emergent, transcending all its expressions. It reveals itself in the purposeful, ordered, and meaningful processes of nature as well as in the deepest recesses of the mind and spirit. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time.
To the logical/purely scientific mind accepting this stuff is often difficult because the things that panpsychism/pantheism/theosophy/biocentrism talks about often manifest themselves in non-physical planes.
There's one great universal consciousness/soul/being that underlies, or simply IS, all reality.
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
~Nikola Tesla
“People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.”
~ Carl Jung
We are just biological interfaces that decode a signal that is out there in the universe.
Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time.
Our bodies + brains are "matter lenses" that focus and limit that great big nondual consciousness down into an individual, temporary human (or animal) consciousness that considers itself separate from the whole -- in the same way our bodies/DNA literally "focus" the swirling atoms and molecules of existence into coherent human forms.
We humans live in the present, live also in the past, through memory and in the furniture, though imagination.
We are simultaneously who we have already become (our character) and who we are trying to become (our projects and desires). Furthermore, human activity is by no means restricted to reading and intellection.
We are constantly acting upon, and being acted upon, by our environment: the people, objects, and institutions with which we come into contact.
Our characters and our projects are constantly clashing or meshing with everything around us.
Finally, there is a dimension to human life that we are normally not aware of. Our behavior is always the result simultaneously of conscious decisions based on more or less rational analysis, and of unconscious impulses derived from the unacknowledged reside of the unresolved intrapsychic conflicts of childhood and adolescence.
There is nothing that humanity has learnt or experienced in its entire history that has been passed on via DNA from generation to generation.
Thus each should reborn has to relearn and experience all aspects of the universe/reality for himself.
No shortcuts for a reason…the infinite wants to experience the finite with a blank slate each time.
The universe taken as a whole lies beyond our logic.
Perhaps its true nature has nothing to do with the way its parts work and lies outside the very characteristic of its components.
This reality cannot not be perceived but it can be inferred.
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Consciousness, or at least proto-consciousness is theorized to be a fundamental property of the universe, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang.
The best way to understand human consciousness is to think in terms of an all-pervading general consciousness which is a fundamental quality of the universe (in a similar way to other universal fundamentals like gravity or mass).
I suggest that fundamental consciousness becomes manifest in individual life forms as our own personal consciousness, via the human brain.
The brain performs the role of receiving and transmitting fundamental consciousness into our individual being.
William James put forward a very similar theory. In an essay called “On Human Immortality,” written in 1898, he suggested that mind, cognition, or mental awareness are the result of the essential reality of the universe being transmitted through the “receiving station” of the brain. James does not attempt to describe the nature of this essential reality, except through metaphors such as air passing through the pipes of an organ, or as invisible light or “white radiance.” But he makes it clear that human consciousness is an influx of this essential stuff. He says that our own “sphere of being” that is of the same nature as “that more real world.”
"The psyche is not confined in space and time"
~ Carl Jung
“Our outward-oriented consciousness, addressed to the demands of the day, may lose touch with these inward forces; and the myths, states Jung, when correctly read, are the means to bring us back in touch. They are telling us in picture language of powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives, powers that have been common to the human spirit forever, and which represent that wisdom of the species by which man has weathered the millenniums.”
~ Joseph Campbell
“Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens there lie other consciousness’; other forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without ever suspecting their existence but apply the requisite stimulus and in a touch, they are all there in their entirety. Types, different types of mentality which probably somewhere have their feel of application or adaptation, no account of the Universe can be total which leaves these other types of consciousness quite disregarded but how to regard them is the question, for they are so discontinuous with our normal consciousness. They may determine our attitudes though they fail to furnish formulas. They may open a region though they do not give a map. At any rate, they forbid the premature closing of our accounts with reality.”
~ William James
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The universe is fractal-like in nature. Our individual consciousnesses are therefore a subset of a larger, universal consciousness. In the same way that the skin cells on my elbow are a subset of “me” — they exist independently, but collectively, I exist.
There is a single, intelligent consciousness that pervades the entire universe. Death is like an implosion, an inward withdrawal of consciousness from a physical body into this universal consciousness. Our ‘souls’ are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe and have existed since the beginning of time. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time.
What dies? Is anything actually destroyed? Certainly not the body, which falls into its constituent parts of water and chemicals. That is mere transformation, not destruction. What of the mind? Does it cease to function, or does it make a transition to another existence? We don’t know for sure, and few can come up with anything conclusive.
What dies? Nothing of the person dies in the sense that the constituent parts are totally blasted from all existence. What dies is merely the identity, the identification of a collection of parts that we called a person. Each one of us is a role, like some shaman wearing layers of robes with innumerable fetishes of meaning. Only the clothes and decoration fall. What dies is only our human meaning. There is still something underneath. Once we understand who that someone is, death no longer bothers us. Nor does time.
"And do you know what 'the world' is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by "nothingness" as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be "empty" here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my 'beyond good and evil,' without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself-do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? - *This world is the will to power-and nothing besides!* And you yourselves are also this will to power-and nothing besides!"
~ Neitzsche, Will to Power, 1067
What does science say?
Quantum physics suggests that consciousness is fundamental and intrinsic to the universe, woven into the very fabric of reality. In this framework, death is merely a shift in consciousness, a continuation of our existence in a different form.
Just as energy cannot be created or destroyed according to the laws of thermodynamics, perhaps consciousness persists beyond the physical body. Quantum mechanics hints at the interconnectedness of all things, implying that our individual consciousness may be part of a larger, universal consciousness.
From this perspective, death is not something to fear, but rather a doorway to a greater understanding of existence. Just as a wave in the ocean returns to the vastness of the sea, our consciousness may merge with the cosmic consciousness, transcending the limitations of individual identity.
Approach death with curiosity and openness, seeing it as a natural part of the cosmic dance rather than an endpoint. It invites us to contemplate the mysteries of the universe and our place within it, offering a sense of wonder and connection that transcends the fear of mortality.
Max Plank is recognized as the originator of quantum theory.
Asked by an interviewer, “Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter and its laws?”, Planck replies:
“No. I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Planck seems to be alluding to a Spinozan or Schopenhauerian conception of reality, with the universe emanating from a singular Mind.
In a later speech, he explains:
“I would like to observe that my research on the atom has shown me that there is no such thing as matter in itself. What we perceive as matter is merely the manifestation of a force that causes the subatomic particles to oscillate and holds them together in the tiniest solar system of the universe…we must assume that this force that is active within the atom comes from a conscious and intelligent mind. That mind is the ultimate source of matter.”
In his writing, he acknowledges the rigor of the Positivist view—the idea that we can only trust first-hand experiences—but points out that it’s rigor makes it incredibly limiting. Any sensible view of reality requires a leap of faith, into a squishier, less rigorous world.
As the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Double Slit Experiments demonstrate, physicalism and dualism fail at the quantum level, however, idealism, the position that reality is fundamentally mental in nature, does not.
The only way to truly speak about Consciousness is to become silent.
That which we hold in our mind is not the Source.
We are reflections of projection, 37 trillion three dimensional mirrors mirroring an infinite mirror.
What do the formulators of quantum theory and other research scientists have to say about consciousness?
"Vivere est Cogitare" (Life is thought)
- Niels Bohr
“As regards mind, I am fully convinced that it has a central place in the ultimate nature of reality.”
– John S. Bell, quoted in What Does Quantum Mechanics Say About Mind Powers?, Psychology Today, accessed 27th Oct. 2024: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/biocentrism/202309/what-does-quantum-mechanics-say-about-mind-powers
“I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that’s what I tend to believe. I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works. But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious. I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness.”
– Edward Witten, quoted in ‘World’s Smartest Physicist Thinks Science Can’t Crack Consciousness’, Scientific American, 18th August 2016: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/world-s-smartest-physicist-thinks-science-can-t-crack-consciousness/ (accessed 1st Feb. 2024) Note: original interview is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUW7n_h7MvQ&t=3s
“Although I had not explicitly asserted, in either Emperor or Shadows, the need for mentality to be ‘ontologically fundamental in the universe’, I think that something of this nature is indeed necessary.”
– Sir Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 175-176
“I think that matter itself is now much more of a mental substance.”
– Sir Roger Penrose, ‘Discussions of “Shadows of the Mind”’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1994, 1(1), pp. 17-24
“The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind… To put the conclusion crudely – the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by ‘mind’ I do not exactly mean mind and by ‘stuff’ I do not at all mean stuff. Still this is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to the feelings in our consciousness… It is the physical aspects of the world that we have to explain.”
– Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Macmillan, 1928, pp. 276-7
“Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into sub-consciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature. This I take to be the world- stuff… We have only one approach, namely, through our direct knowledge of mind. The supposed approach through the physical world leads only into the cycle of physics, where we run round and round like a kitten chasing its tail and never reach the world-stuff at all It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference – inference either intuitive or deliberate”
– Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, Macmillan, 1928, pp. 280 & 281
“Modern microphysics turns the observer once again into a little lord of creation in his microcosm, with the ability (at least partially) of freedom of choice and fundamentally uncontrollable effects on that which is being observed. But if these phenomena are dependent on how (with what experimental system) they are observed, then is it not possible that there are also phenomena … that depend on who observes them (ie, on the nature of the psyche of the observer)?”
– Wolfgang Pauli, Letter of Pauli to CG Jung, 23 December 1947; in Meier 2001, pp. 32-3
“To us … the only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality-the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical-as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously … It would be most satisfactory of all if physis and psyche (i.e., matter and mind) could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”
– Wolfgang Pauli, “The Influence of Archetypical Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler,” in C.G. Jung and W.Pauli, The Interpretation of Nature and Psyche, New York: Panthean Books, Bollingen Series L1, 1955, pp. 208, 210
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
– Max Planck, interview in The Observer, 25 January 1931a, 17 (column 3)
“As a physicist, and therefore as a man who has spent his whole life in the service of the most down-to-earth science, namely the exploration of matter, no one is going to take me for a starry-eyed dreamer. After all my exploration of the atom, then, let me tell you this: there is no matter as such. All matter arises and exists only by virtue of a force which sets the atomic particles oscillating, and holds them together in that tiniest of solar systems, the atom… we must suppose, behind this force, a conscious, intelligent spirit. This spirit is the ultimate origin of matter.”
– Max Planck, ‘Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter]’, speech delivered in Florence in 1944, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Plank-Gesellschaft, Abt Va, Rep. 11 Plank, Nr. 1797
“As every act of research measurement has a more or less causal influence on the very process that is under observation, it is practically impossible to separate the law that we are seeking to discover behind the happening itself from the methods that are being used to bring about the discovery.”
– Max Planck, Where is science going? New York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1932, pp. 95
“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.”
– Max Planck, Unity of the Physical Picture of the World [Единство физической картины мира], Moscow, Nauka, 1966, pp. 50
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”
– Max Planck, ‘Epilogue: A Socratic Dialogue’, Where is Science Going? 1932, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, pp. 217
“I am not afraid to call this mysterious creator, as have all civilized nations of the earth for thousands of years: God. So you see, my dear friends, how in our days, in which people no longer believe in spirit as the foundation of all creation, and therefore find themselves in bitter estrangement from God, it is precisely the minute and the invisible that leads truth back from the grave of materialist delusion, and opens the doors into the lost and forgotten world of the spirit.”
– Max Planck, ‘Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter]’, speech delivered in Florence in 1944, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Plank-Gesellschaft, Abt Va, Rep. 11 Plank, Nr. 1797
“There is, in fact, no clear-cut division between the subject and object; they form an indivisible whole which now becomes nature. This thesis finds its final expression in the wave-parable, which tells us that nature consists of waves and that these are of the general quality of waves of knowledge, or of absence of knowledge, in our own minds.”
– Sir James Jeans, ‘The new world-picture of modern physics’, Presidential Address delivered at Aberdeen, 5 September 1934: in Nature, 1934, 134, pp. 355-65
“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”
– Sir James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1930, pp. 137
“Each step was from particle to waves, or from the material to the mental; the final picture consists wholly of waves, and its ingredients are wholly mental constructs … the cumulative evidence of various pieces of probable reasoning makes it seem more and more likely that reality is better described as mental than as material … There is no longer a dualism of mind and matter, but of waves and particles. The two members of this dualism are no longer antagonistic or mutually exclusive; rather they are complementary. We need no longer devise elaborate mechanisms, as Descartes and Leibniz did, to keep the two in step, for one controls the other – the waves control the particles, or in the old terminology the mental controls the material.”
– Sir James Jeans, Physics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, 1942, pp. 202, 202 & 204
“We are faced with the following remarkable situation. While the stuff from which our world picture is built is yielded exclusively from the sense organs as organs of the mind, so that every man’s world picture is and always remains a construct of his mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence, yet the conscious mind itself remains a stranger within that construct, it has no living space in it, you can spot it nowhere in space. We do not usually realise this fact, because we have entirely taken to thinking of the personality of a human being, or for that matter also that of an animal, as located in the interior of its body. To learn that it cannot really be found there is so amazing that it meets with doubt and hesitation, we are very loath to admit it.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ [1944], in What is Life? and Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1967b, pp. 122
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, interview in The Observer, Jan 11, 1931
“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ [1944], in What is Life? and Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1967b, pp. 117–127
“The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ [1944], in What is Life? and Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1967b, pp. 154-155
“Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ [1944], in What is Life? and Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1967b, pp. 89
“Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. All the ‘minds’ in the world, which we know through our personal experience, are singular.”
– Erwin Schrödinger, ‘What is Life?’ [1944], in What is Life? and Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press, 1967b, pp. 88
“The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.”
- Erwin Schrödinger
“The universe is entirely mental … and we must learn to perceive it as such.”
– Richard Conn Henry, ‘The Mental Universe’, Nature, 2005, 436(7), pp. 29
“Non-local causality is a concept that had never played any role in physics, other than in rejection (‘action-at-a-distance’), until Aspect showed in 1981 that the alternative would be the abandonment of the cherished belief in mind-independent reality; suddenly, spooky- action-at-a-distance became the lesser of two evils, in the minds of the materialists. Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.”
– Richard Conn Henry, Henry RC & Palmquist SR, 2007: henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html (accessed 19 April 2023)
“It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of consciousness is the ultimate universal reality.”
– Eugene Wigner, ‘Remarks on the mind-body question’ (1961), reprinted in JA Wheeler & WH Zurek (eds), Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 168-81
“When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”
– Eugene Wigner, The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner: Historical, Philosophical, and Socio-Political Papers: Historical and Biographical Reflections and Syntheses, 2013, Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 28
“Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.”
– Eugene Wigner, Philosophical Reflections and Syntheses, 2012, Springer Science & Business Media, pp. 252
“[T]he laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated … without recourse to the concept of consciousness.”
– Eugene Wigner, ‘The Probability of the Existence of a Self-Reproducing Unit’, contributed in M. Polanyi, The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday, 11th March 1961 (1961), pp. 232
“It is not matter that creates an illusion of consciousness, but consciousness that creates an illusion of matter.”
– Bernard Haisch, The God Theory, Weiser, 2006, pp. 137
“Modern quantum theory, the overarching principles of twentieth century physics, leads to quite a different view of reality, a view that man, or intelligent life, or communicating observer participator are the whole means by which the very universe is created: without them, nothing.”
– John Archibald Wheeler, ‘The anthropic universe’, 18 February 2006: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-anthropic-universe/3302686#transcript (accessed 19 April 2023)
“No theory of physics that deals only with physics will ever explain physics. I believe that as we go on trying to understand the universe, we are at the same time trying to understand man. Today I think we are beginning to suspect that man is not a tiny cog that doesn’t really make much difference to the running of the huge machine but rather that there is a much more intimate tie between man and the universe than we heretofore suspected…”
– John Archibald Wheeler, quoted by Florence Helitzer, The Princeton Galaxy, Intellectual Digest 1973 (June), pp. 32
“Quantum states are not physical objects: they exist only in our imagination.”
– Asher Peres, ‘Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, and Shannon’, Department of Physics, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, ArXiv, 2003, pp. 2
“The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”
– Werner Heisenberg, quoted in ‘Bertlmann’s socks and the nature of reality’, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy, 2004, Cambridge: Cambridge University, pp. 139-158
“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
– Werner Heisenberg, Das Naturgesetz und die Struktur der Materie, 1967, as translated in Natural Law and the Structure of Matter, 1981, pp. 34
“I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call ‘chance’ when they are made by electrons.”
– Freeman Dyson, Disturbing The Universe, 1979, Harper & Row, New York, pp. 249
“Materialists appeal to physics to explain the mind, but in modern physics the particles that make up a brain remain, in many ways, as mysterious as consciousness itself”
– Adam Frank, ‘Minding Matter’, Aeon, 13 March 2017
“Some consciousness researchers might think that they are being hard-nosed and concrete when they appeal to the authority of physics. When pressed on this issue, though, we physicists are often left looking at our feet, smiling sheepishly and mumbling something about ‘it’s complicated’. We know that matter remains mysterious just as mind remains mysterious, and we don’t know what the connections between those mysteries should be. Classifying consciousness as a material problem is tantamount to saying that consciousness, too, remains fundamentally unexplained.”
– Adam Frank, ‘Minding Matter’, Aeon, 13 March 2017
“Consciousness and matter are different aspects of the same reality.”
– Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, The Unity of Nature, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980, pp. 250
“Mind or something of the nature as mind must exist throughout the entire universe. This is, I believe, the truth. We may never be able to prove it, but it is the most economical hypothesis: it fits the facts much more simply … than one-sided idealism or one-sided materialism”
– Sir Julian Huxley, ‘The biologist looks at man’, Fortune, 1942, 26(6), pp. 139-52
“There is no need to regard the observer as basically separate from what he sees nor to reduce him to an epiphenomenon of the objective process. More broadly one could say that, through the human being, the universe has created a mirror to observe itself.”
– David Bohm, The Undivided Universe, Routledge, 2002, pp. 389
“Thought and matter have a great similarity of order. In a way, nature is alive, as Whitehead would say, all the way to the depths. And intelligent. Thus it is both mental and material, as we are.”
– David Bohm, in dialogue with philosopher Renee Weber: ‘Nature as Creativity’, ReVision, 1982 5(2), pp. 35-40
“The stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create … In them the universe begins to itself.”
– George Wald, ‘Life and mind in the universe’, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology Symposium, 1984, 11(1), pp. 1-15
“Mind, rather than being a very late development in the evolution of living things, restricted to organisms with the most complex nervous systems – all of which I had believed to be true – that Mind instead has been there always, and that this universe is life-breeding because the pervasive presence of Mind had guided it to be so. That thought, though elating as a game is elating, so offended my scientific possibilities as to embarrass me. It took only a few weeks, however, for me to realize that I was in excellent company. That kind of thought is not only deeply embedded in millennia-old Eastern philosophies, but it has been expressed plainly by a number of great and very recent physicists.”
– George Wald, ‘The cosmology of life and mind,’ Noetic Sciences Review, 1989, 10, 10
“The harmony of natural law … reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”
– Albert Einstein, ‘Religion and science’, The World as I See It, Citadel Press, 1999, pp. 24-9
“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me in support of such views.”
– Albert Einstein, statement to the German anti-Nazi diplomat Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg around 1941, as quoted in Löwenstein, 1968
“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe, a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
– Albert Einstein, letter to Phyllis Wright (January 24, 1936), published in Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein’s Letters to and from Children, Prometheus Books, 2002, pp. 129
“There probably is a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t.”
– John von Neumann, in Macrae N, John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence and Much More, American Mathematical Society, 1992, pp. 379
“Sir, an equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of God.”
– Srinivasa Ramanujan, statement to a friend, quoted in Ramanujan, the Man and the Mathematician by Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, 1967, pp. 88
“It is the revised understanding of the nature of human beings, and of the causal role of human consciousness in the unfolding of reality, that is, I believe, the most exciting thing about the new physics, and probably, in the final analysis, also the most important contribution of science to the well-being of our species.”
– Henry Stapp, Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, The Frontiers Collection, Germany: Springer, 2007, pp. 6
“This issue of the ‘collapse of the wave packet’ cannot be really avoided: After all, the role of an interpretation is to establish a correspondence between the formalism of a theory describing a system and the results of the experiments – or, rather, the records of these results – accessible to the observer. And we perceive outcomes of measurements and other events originating at the quantum level alternative by the alternative, rather than all of the alternatives at once. An exhaustive answer to this question would undoubtedly have to involve a model of ‘consciousness’, since what we are really asking concerns our (observers) impression that ‘we are conscious’ of just one of the alternatives. Such [a] model of consciousness is presently not available.”
– Wojciech Zurek, W. H. ‘Preferred states, predictability, classicality and the environment-induced decoherence’, Progress of Theoretical Physics, 1993, 89(2), pp. 281–312
Other referents to Universal Consciousness
· Panpsychism
· Akashic Field
· Taoism
· Biocentrism
Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe. It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around.
The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist. It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their body. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too. If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local.
· Block Universe Theory of Special Relativity
· Predeterminism
· Theosophy
· Quantum Metaphysics
One Opposing View is Emergence
Materialists assume that there is no ethereal consciousness, and that the experiential feeling of self awareness is an emergent property that comes from the activity of the brain.
Piecing together the currently popular theories suggests the following general picture for how the brain creates consciousness, proceeding from the neuron to socially supported identity:
neural circuits organize statistical input and output -- The brain is processing sensory input and generating motor output on a continual basis, functioning basically as a statistical information processing and prediction machine.
memory constructs a dynamic model of the world -- One aspect of how the brain works is that it generates an interactive dynamic model of the world based on the statistical information received from the senses. This model includes an understanding of the environment, a representation of the physical body itself (body image; the way you know your hand is yours and not somebody else's), a representation of other beings in the social world (parents, friends, society, animals), and ultimately a representation of oneself. The representation of oneself may be an extension of social modeling reflected back onto oneself (the purported owner of one's perceptual experiences); it may also be the "actor" responsible for the observed behavior represented by the body image (perception of "agency").
information integration unifies coherent perception -- One aspect of the "conscious field" is that it appears unified, complete, coherent, and self-aware, even though experiments show it is not. This may be made possible by extensive feedback pathways within the brain which exchange information between brain areas, unify perception into a single coherent point of view, and drive the brain's representation of the body's identity toward a consistent model of goal-directed voluntary action.
episodic memory creates identity through personal narrative -- In humans in particular, "one-shot memory" is able to store an episodic record of the events we experience along with causal models and explanations. This "episodic memory" is organized into a multi-layer narrative on many time scales. Our knowledge of our own personal history forms our identity of who we are, which further supports our understanding of that entity which is being aware, experiencing perceptions, and causing actions.... our "self".
social structure reinforces a model of reality and agency -- Society and human culture further reinforce this "mutually developed" model of who we are, who other people are, who they think we are, what we think they think of us, etc.. There are many levels of recurrent nesting of representations of our personal and social identities, both within our own brain and distributed across the brains of our family, community, and social relations.
language codifies social reality and supports transmission of cultural beliefs -- All of this is brought into a crisp structured social-conceptual framework using language. Language is a culturally-transmitted conceptual system with a spontaneously developed sequential coding scheme (words and grammar). Language allows society to operate within a common believe system that is kept synchronized across individuals. This belief system includes concepts such as personal responsibility, intentional action, truth, knowledge, and other core belief frameworks that provide a foundation to our conscious experience.
Thus the brain plays a role in generating and maintaining a model of the world that includes "us," and also includes "us" believing we are having self-aware experiences. In modern human society, this is further supported by a shared reality and belief system that we acquire from infancy through cultural transmission, human language, episodic memory, and personal identity.
Perhaps we are simply unable to handle the truth.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
~ H.P. Lovecraft
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Future Edits:
Reference and combine with notes on religion(i.e. other names for god), Carl Jung, pantheism and quantum field theory!
