Fields of Consciousness
Abstract
Understanding consciousness is very different from all other studies of nature because consciousness is not observable. It can only be experienced. I know that I’m conscious – I know what it feels like to be me. Others around me seem to be conscious (e.g. seem to have experience) but it is simply not possible to probe into their minds and observe their thoughts or feelings. This contrasts with observations of the brain, where we can probe and study various physical aspects of its workings such as its structure, function, connections, firings, along with many other physical properties and processes.
How these physical aspects of brain functioning and processes give rise to, and correspond to, experiences of the mind (thoughts, emotions and experience) is referred to as “the hard problem” of consciousness.
Can inanimate matter (composed of molecules and atoms) in the form of a brain give rise to experience or does it just filter and process it? Correlation of specific brain functions to activities of mind does not imply causation any more than a specific circuit within a TV set creates the programming that is viewed on the TV screen. Science has been unable to demonstrate how consciousness arises from brain functioning – that is merely an assumption of the prevailing materialist paradigm that no one has been able to prove in fact. The materialist conjecture is that when brain complexity reaches a certain threshold, somehow consciousness suddenly arises, a reasonable sounding hypothesis but one that is not backed up by any hard evidence.
Could it be that consciousness does not arise from the physical brain as the prevailing paradigm assumes? Instead is it possible that some aspect of consciousness transcends the brain where it acts as more as a transceiver and/or reducing filter for a transcendent consciousness? If so, is this transcendent consciousness built from the same fundamental forces, matter and energy as studied by the physical sciences? Can experiences of the mind be externally manipulated in some way science does not yet understand? Is there something else that underlies consciousness, a primitive awareness fundamental to nature, that does not depend on brains or sense organs that accounts for conscious experience, something has heretofore not been recognized nor understood?
Answers to these questions are the subject of the article below. It describes an alternate view of reality where only a single wholeness exists and one where an aspect of consciousness is fundamental and irreducible. We describe how this awareness (which we refer to as intrinsic awareness) is built into the fabric of the cosmos and not emergent from physical matter and energy. Also discussed are some of the implications of this view where consciousness interacts with, and influences, all objective and subjective experience.