There's this funny paradox about
consciousness that even though it is
what we are, even though it is here right
now, in the midst of every life experience,
at the same time it is a
complete mystery. Perhaps the only thing
that we can know beyond a shadow of a
doubt is that we are conscious.
Some experience of life is happening. But at the same time our most cutting-edge
science has no way to even begin
explaining why we are conscious or what
consciousness is. How is it that some
neurons firing in our brain creates this
incredible inner experience of the
entire universe? This rich, vivid inner
movie where love feels like love, pain
feels like pain, and a sunset looks like a
a sunset. Why isn't all this brain
activity just happening in the dark with no one here to percieve it?
If consciousness emerges from patterns of
electrical activity in your brain and
mine, as most materialists would assume,
the Sun has vastly more complex patterns
of electrical activity than our brains.
So why shouldn't that be associated with
consciousness? Why shouldn't the Sun have a mind?
It's kind of strange to talk
about the Sun being conscious but this
clearly illustrates that even as we get
some understanding of how the brain
functions we still don't have even the
vaguest idea of how that creates this
inner experience of life. And this is
what philosophers and scientists call
the hard problem of consciousness. The
nature of consciousness is such that
most neuroscientists say it's a product
of the brain and the brain is an
accident of evolution, and consciousness
is therefore something wonderful that we
enjoy but it's really an accident that
appears on planet earth during this period of time.
And it is a belief system
I have to say that that viewpoint that
you just very profoundly put together is,
which is belief system of neuroscience,
it's a belief system. There's actually no
way of proving that.
The more we know about the physical brain the more we realize it's not the creator of
consciousness it's very clearly related
to consciousness but again that it's
important to see that it's, it's more of
a reducing valve or filter.
Many honest scientists should admit that
consciousness is the greatest mystery of
science and, and that we don't know
exactly how it works. The brain's involved
in it in some way but we're not sure how.
Could be that the brain generates
consciousness the way a generator makes
electricity. If you hold to that paradigm
then then of course you can't believe in
life after death when the generators
broken consciousness is gone. But it's
equally possible that the relationship,
and nothing in neuroscience rules it out,
that the relationship is more like the
relationship of the TV signal to the TV
set. And in that case when the TV set is
broken, of course the TV signal continues.
Physicists sometimes take some aspects
of the universe as fundamental building
blocks: space, and time, and mass. If you
can't explain consciousness in terms of
the existing fundamentals, space-time
mass, charge then as a matter of logic
you need to expand the list. The natural
thing to do is to postulate
consciousness itself as something
fundamental. A fundamental building block of nature.
This perspective that
consciousness exists beyond the brain as
a fundamental force, fundamental reality,
is not just some theoretical idea
actually all of our scientific
advancements on the cutting edge of both
neuroscience and quantum physics are
pointing to this conclusion. That
consciousness exists beyond the brain,
beyond this human lifetime, and
ultimately beyond this universe. The more
that we learn about quantum physics the
more that we see that this is an
inescapable conclusion.
Consciousness can enter quantum physics
to collapse the possibilities into
actuality only if, now listen to this,
consciousness is transcendent,
consciousness is unitive, one
consciousness only, and consciousness is
us- we are that consciousness. And this is
a fairly spiritual view of the world.
In other words quantum physics enables us
to see directly that we can make
sense of the world only if we base the
world on consciousness. Quantum physics
makes this as clear as daylight. If we
understand this model of quantum physics
then it becomes apparent that we are not
in the physical world, the physical world
is in us. We create the physical world in
the- when we perceive it, when we observe it.
And when I say we I don't mean the
physical body or the brain but the deeper
domain of consciousness which conceives
governs, constructs, and actually becomes everything that we call physical reality.
And for me there can't even have been an
origin of the universe unless there was
some consciousness there to perceive it
coming into being. This is a lesson that
all physicists eventually are coming to.
Consciousness must enter into the field
of physics in a direct way through
something called the observer effect: you
observe an atomic system, and the atomic
system changes from a field of
possibilities into something it's solid
and physical and real and right there in
front of your eyes. This is a this is a
fact of physics that we have to deal
with if the Big Bang occurred out of
nothing and produced a material universe
then there had have been quantum
mechanics operating at the moment of the
Big Bang and that meant, that means
there had to have been an
observer present and this is where I
bring in the whole question of the soul.
Now we've gotten to the heart of the
matter you've really laid it out very
nicely: the, what is probably the major
controversy the major theoretical
problem in
science at the the 20th century, in the
21st century right there.
The quantum soul: this may be
scientifically feasible. Here's a picture
of an out-of-body experience. I work in
medicine and anesthesiology. We hear
stories about this all the time
statistical examinations of people
having cardiac arrest show it's a real
effect, and the near-death experience is something that really needs to be studied.
When somebody's gone through a
cardiac arrest, when they've technically
gone beyond the threshold of death, we
have a situation where whether we like
it or not the brain shuts down. So now
you can study the mind, consciousness, the
psyche, the soul, the self whatever you
want to call it in a clinical context
where the brain has been switched off.
Now of course we would expect there to
be no consciousness present when the
brain has shut down. That would be common
sense however over the last few decades
thousands if not millions of people from
all over the world have anecdotally
reported being conscious being aware
having memory being able to see things
and recalling in precise detail what
doctors and nurses were doing,
conversations clothing etc. Except
they're recalling things from a period
when they, their brain had flatlined, they
had gone beyond the threshold of death.
The most provocative evidence for heaven
from near-death experiences seems to me
to be cases where people come back from
near-death experiences and they have
information there's no way they could
have had if they had just had a physical
experience while on an operating table.
For example some people come back and
they're able to recount conversations
that their relatives have had five blocks away from the hospital.
It probably is also this issue of religion
and science. People think that anything
that actually challenges our materialist
worldview is somehow religious in nature
and therefore is also suspect because
that is non-scientific. Rather than
saying maybe some of these phenomena are
actually part of our reality system and
we just need to expand beyond
materialism to include consciousness. And
it's not that it becomes religious but
it simply is including phenomena that
are actually out there and observed by scientists.
I would really love to
explore these near-death experiences in
much more detail because there is a
whole ocean of research and mind-blowingly
incredible stories around this
phenomenon but I will save that for a
future video. Suffice it to say here that
a new scientific paradigm is emerging
around the study of consciousness where
the essence of what we are is understood
to be non-local. Which means that
consciousness is not contained in this body.
It's beyond this human lifetime and ultimately beyond the physical universe altogether.
The idea of non-local consciousness is not very
popular within mainstream science. At least not yet.
We believe that eventually it will be the
fact we believe that is the future of
science it's not just about
consciousness but about the physical
world that there elements that are
non-local. We know that from quantum
mechanics but we think it's much bigger
than the way that mainstream science is
thinking about right now. What do we do
with that idea? Well the first thing that
you notice is you you go back through
the history of the esoteric traditions
all the way back to shamanism and that
is the perennial philosophy.
It is codified and in basically two forms: one
is consciousness is fundamental and
consciousness comes before space and
time. That's like the most pithy way you
can shove together fifty thousand years
of esoteric lore.
I think that in the next decades quantum physics with
knowledge of structure within the brain
is going to take us on the verge of a
reconciliation of spirituality and
science that's never been experienced
before and it's going to be really amazing.
It's as if the teachings of the
ancient mystics and the teachings of the
modern physicists, primarily I suppose
Western, have come together. Yes it has
come together in a in such a fashion
that it is promising new children new
babies to be born out of this new
paradigm it's truly a new paradigm
because we are recognizing that
consciousness is the ground of being and
matter mind all these things are
possibilities within consciousness.
And in this way our most advanced
sciences are just starting to catch up
to what mystics and spiritually awakened
beings have been teaching for thousands
of years. The deeper that we delve into
the mysteries of consciousness the more
that the line between science and
spirituality will be blurred which
inescapably points us to a much more
spiritual understanding of the universe
the cosmos and existence itself. Science
is evolving into a new paradigm and with
it so is all of humanity this is the
Great Awakening it is unfolding before
our very eyes and it is my pleasure and
my honor to share it with you.
