5. Consciousness
The Mystery of Human Consciousness
Paul Dejillas, Ph.D. – September 23, 2023
Human consciousness is the highest peak of the cosmic evolutionary process. It is the purest form of energy that causes the changes and transformations of humanity and the external world. It is what distinguishes us from the chimpanzees. It is responsible for what we and our society have become today.
We started as food gatherers, animal hunters, and fishermen but were transformed into shepherds of flocks, livestock breeders, farmers, crop cultivators, as well as miners and metallurgists. Then, we gradually became craftsmen, carpenters, construction workers, road builders, mechanics, technicians, cloth weavers, garment workers, and dressmakers. As more and more goods and services accumulated, we were transformed into merchants, traders, financiers, as well as overseas workers.
A few of us became architects, entrepreneurs, bankers, industrialists, multi-nationalists, stock brokers and investors, capitalists, computer specialists, engineers, doctors and nurses, midwives, lawyer, training specialists, public speakers, university professors, and corporate managers. It is also because of our consciousness that produced highly intelligent individuals the caliber of Galileo, Newton, Spinoza, Einstein, Hegel, Mozart, Beethoven, Adam Smith, and many others.
Our consciousness has so developed that it has become the foundation for the progress and growth of our society. It guided us how to invent work tools and equipment to access nature’s abundance surrounding us. Starting with bare hands, we devised innovative technologies that included the use of bones, sticks, arrows, stones, metals, devices that greatly improved our food gathering and hunting expeditions as well as our system of plant cultivation and animal domestication that later led to the establishment of irrigation systems, water canals, and dams.
Our consciousness enables us to view and relate with the metaphysical and spiritual realm of life and existence, with our God, Gods, or Goddesses, the spirits around us, our departed ancestors as well as our subhuman kindred. These religious beliefs have been recounted in several ancient literatures. At the end of the harvest, for example, we learned that Abel and Cain brought the produce of their toil as offerings to God. Abel, for its part, offered the firstborn of his flock and some fat, while Dain some choicest crops and fruits.
It goes without saying that if we want to understand why and how we metamorphosed to this kind of life we live today, we need to understand the origin, nature, and nature of consciousness as well as its operations and dynamics. We must know how consciousness relates to our body, and to the external world.
The Seat of Consciousness
The human brain is structured into three distinct but interconnected parts: the reptilian, mammalian, and neocortex. Of the three, the neocortex is the last to fully develop. The first is the reptilian brain whose primary function is focused on our security and survival. Just a little above it is the mammalian brain, the part of the brain where our basic emotions of love and hate, joy and suffering, happiness and anxiety, and the like are activated.
But it is in the neocortex that our consciousness resides, manifested in our capability to reason and decide, as well as our ability to conceive symbols, communicate, and recall past events are developed. The neocortex is acknowledged as the seat of our consciousness. However, brain scientists differ in their views as to how consciousness emerged.
Mainstream science acknowledges the existence of human consciousness but insists that it is merely an emergent property, a product of the complex neural dynamics going on inside the brain. It is not needed for our survival. We do not need consciousness to think, judge, decide, and perform such basic skills as writing, listening, or reading. It does not exert any material influence at all on our life that, like our appendix, it can just be cut off totally, without endangering our survival and existence.
It goes without saying that consciousness is subject to the laws of physics and the dynamics of the brain. Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield likened it to a light connected to a dimmer switch, allowing it to shine bright as the brain grows. From the classical perspective, consciousness is unimportant; it is insignificant and inconsequential.
What is even more troubling is that the awareness of our decision to act on a given stimulus is delayed before we actually do the act. The atoms and molecules in our body decide first before we become conscious of our decision to act this way or that way. They have decided to open the door first before we decide to open it. This is quite disturbing because this means that we are pure and simple automatons, acting like brainless machines or robots, subject to the dictates of our inner quantum elements.
Many cannot accept that consciousness is just an emergent property. Modern science tells us that consciousness is not only real but it also exerts a significant role in creating or transforming the external world. As Julian Jaynes formulated Lloyd Morgan’s theory of emergent property in his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1926:2): “Just as the property of wetness cannot be derived from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen alone, so consciousness emerged at some point in evolution in a way underivable from its constituent parts.”
However, one may ask: How did science discover the existence and reality of consciousness?
Manifestations of Consciousness
Quantum physicists discovered the existence of consciousness in the dual nature of subatomic particles and in the effect of the presence of the observer studying the external reality. Physicists noticed that, at the quantum level, particles behave both as a solid mass and as a wave. They found out that if a particle, like an electron or photon, notices an external disturbance, as is the case when an observer enters into the quantum world using its high-powered microscope, its wave nature collapses and immediately presents itself to the observer as a solid mass.
The wave nature of the electron freezes in a physical form, allowing itself to be investigated and studied for as long as the observer desires. The electron remains in its physical state, becoming captive, so to say, to the will and intent of the conscious observer. The observer and the observed interact and their merger and union give rise to a collective form of consciousness.
Ancient knowledge has been right all along. As Jiddu Krishnamurti expressed it:
As you watch anything—a tree, your wife, your children, your neighbor, the stars of a night, the light on the water, the bird in the sky, anything—there is always the observer—the censor, the thinker, the experiencer, the seeker—and the thing he is observing; the observer; the thinker and the thought.
In this manner, the observer knows and creates reality according to its predefined intention or design. However, as soon as the electron becomes conscious that the observer stops the investigation, it goes back to its original wave state where the observer has no way of accessing. Therefore, consciousness is indispensable in the act of creation and transformation, and it is not only one way.
Knowing this dual behavior of atoms, physicists conclude that atoms and their sub-particles are also necessarily conscious like us. With or without an observer, atomic particles are conscious and aware of their surroundings. The electron participates in the process of creation. It influences the conscious observer in shaping external reality through the particle presented to the observer as a result of its collapsed nature and function.
Consciousness exists both in the quantum and macroscopic realms. The observer and the observed actively participate as a team in creating a new reality. Their active involvement in creation transforms them as one that there is no more distinction between the two. Technically, quantum physics calls this the ‘observer effect’.
At the quantum level, the original state of the electron is its wave nature, undisturbed by any external intrusion. In the meantime, the observer has no way of knowing about the electron’s wave nature because it is hidden from its view. The observer is in a state of suspended animation until the electron presents itself as a particle. However, the electron only does this if the observer intrudes into the quantum world.
The existence of consciousness is also demonstrated in Erwin Schrodinger’s hypothetical cat experiment. A cat is placed inside a sealed box, containing a vial of deadly poison and a radioactive atom. The whole thing is so designed that when a single atom splits, a detector releases the poison. However, the outside observer does not know when this will happen and does not also know what is happening inside the sealed box at any given moment in time. The cat could either be alive or dead.
However, this is only a “guestimate” or conjecture and speculation that the outside observer is unwilling to declare for fear that it would only lead him to wrong conclusions about the real condition of the cat. Before the opening of the box, the conscious observer is compelled to suspend any judgment because it has no solid foundation or objective evidence to base its arguments.
Schrodinger even devised the idea for the cat to be both dead and alive, suggesting that, in quantum physics, duality can coexist. Yet, the outside observer could not be certain at all and it has no way of knowing the real state of the cat. In a closed box, the cat is in a quantum state from the outside observer’s perspective, in the same manner, that the observer is in a state of suspended animation.
On the other hand, the cat cannot by itself open the enclosed box, just as the electron is not able to present itself to the observer unless it senses an external intrusion. It is uncertain of its condition and does not even know what is going on. The cat does not know whether or not the outside observer will open the sealed box.
Applying this to our society, the process of creating a new reality or transforming an existing one comes to a halt. The reality of the world outside stands still, unable to move forward in its evolutionary journey. There can be no progress at all—whether it be economic, political, social, cultural, or religious. Everything stagnates because both the leaders and the citizenry are not doing anything about the situation. Over time, the societal conditions may weaken and so with the living conditions of the citizens.
Because of these discoveries, new physics considers consciousness as the matrix of all matter, the foundation of all that exists.
Consciousness Is the Matrix of All Matter
As quantum physicists dug deeper into the quantum world, they found out that consciousness started right at the beginning, manifesting itself at first at the zero or vacuum level. At this level, there was nothing. However, this state of nothingness was not empty because it was filled with tiny conscious elements, all tightly packed inside a sealed box called the singularity.
These little elements were neither conscious nor unconscious but simply dormant, inert, and passive, ready to manifest given the right time and appropriate conditions. When the proper time came, the singularity exploded, giving birth to an infinite number of conscious subatomic elements. All created consciousness are products of a pre-existing consciousness that lay hidden beneath the box of singularity. As declared by Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics:
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.
This Primal Consciousness is the foundation of everything from which all forms and levels of consciousness emanate. Quantum physics calls this “Conscious and Intelligent Mind.” As Max Planck states:
We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
Galileo Galilei had already hinted at consciousness as fundamental, even referring to this as an omnipotent and eternal Being.
[The] findings of modern science are pretty much exactly what we would expect to see if this universe were indeed created, and sustained, from a higher dimension by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal Being who knows everything that is happening everywhere in the universe at the same time.
Human consciousness cannot be the starting point of all manifested consciousness. The external reality was already full of different forms and levels of consciousness long before our appearance in this four-dimensional world. We are not a product of the physical or material world.
However, the Primal Consciousness came from a different dimension, the fifth dimension. Albert Einstein’s monumental formula E=mc2, refers to energy as fundamental, out of which matter emerged. Thus, we can also say that consciousness (C) = mc2. Consciousness comes before matter. Matter is a derivative of and entirely dependent on consciousness. There can be no reality without consciousness.
In view of this, consciousness influences the dynamics of our brain, in particular, our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. It affects our mindset and lifestyle. It is consciousness that can discern what we want to perceive. Without consciousness, our brain is not able to make sense of the enormous information and unrelated data coming from the different senses of the body. This is partly caused by the dual set-up of the brain and the mind.
The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, namely, the left and brain hemispheres which are unique and distinct to each other. They perform separate functions and give differing interpretations even of the same external stimuli and sensations. The result can be chaotic because of their tendency to dominate over the other.
This is where the role of the consciousness comes in. Consciousness reconciles and conciliates the two by bringing them to some neutral place where they can be involved in peaceful themselves.
How is this so?
Consciousness Unifies Our Left and Right Brain Hemispheres
Neuroscientists have discovered that the left brain hemisphere is predominantly rational, analytical, logical, and sequential and is especially verbal and mathematical. It speaks, thinks, and judges reality based on the principles and laws of physics, causality, and rationality. On the other hand, the right brain hemisphere is more artistic, symbolic, and relational. The left brain understands the meaning of the word “outside”, for example, but it is the right brain that feels what it means to be outside and to be told to step outside because it does not belong to the group.
These two brain hemispheres are supposed to coordinate one another so that one does not dominate the other. However, there’s practically no one to monitor these two brain activities. As Minsky (1986:40) argued, “There are no persons in our heads to make us do the things we want, nor even one to make us want to want.” In more technical terms, Computer Scientist John. H. Holland advanced that “there is no master neuron in the brain … and thus “the control … tends to be highly dispersed.” As a result of the thousands and millions of information assaulting the brain every second, the situation can be one of chaos and confusion naturally because there is no one to manage the flow.
How is this possible?
Neuroscientists tell us that the fibers of the two hemispheres (dendrites, synapses, and axons) are not connected and that the electrical signals carrying the information from one hemisphere to another have to literally jump to reach the other hemisphere. To be successful it would take a lot of conscious awareness, will, and intent on the part of one hemisphere to reach the other.
However, who will start doing the channeling? It is most unlikely that either one would initiate this because the two hemispheres are completely at odds with each other. Most likely, they will just tend to ignore each other’s information. Within ourselves is a continuing tug-of-war as to which of them dominates the other.
Nature has anticipated this problem. It has provided us with a faculty and mechanism, known as corpus callosum, which serves as a neutral ground where the two lobes can meet and interact with each other. The corpus callosum serves as a bridge of fibers that physically links and connects the two literally separated brain hemispheres together. However, it does not conciliate or make judgments but simply provides the space for the two to engage in a dialogue sending them each a message that they are supposed to act as one brain, while performing differing functions.
Nevertheless, this is not the end of our story. If consciousness exists, then, what is it? What are its contents? What are we conscious of? How does consciousness influence our transformation and our society’s progress?
Contents of Consciousness
Consciousness remains a ticklish issue for science because it is something subjective and experienced only by the individual. It is ignored especially because it is invisible, without any mass, volume, or weight. The word “consciousness” is seldom used. In its place, other concepts are used like mind, intelligence, alertness, memories, or intuition. The inability of science to fully explain still unresolved issues of consciousness does not hinder quantum physicists from exploring the deeper meanings and contents of our consciousness.
Brain scientists and mystics alike believe that consciousness gives us our sense of Self or I am. It is our deepest essence, core being, and our true identity. It is different from what psychologists call ego. The ego consists of all the information we put into our biodata sheets. These detailed descriptions of ourselves are necessary. We need them when we want to enroll our kids in school or if we want to transact business with the government. They serve as our identity. Without this information, we are non-existent before them.
However, quantum physics says that consciousness is something more significant but remains veiled because of the ego. It is most subtle, almost invisible, and undetectable. It is the one that gives us our true identity, which we call Self or I am because of the enormous potentialities it can unleash to build new realities or transform existing ones.
In my research, I found four concrete forms of conscious manifestations, namely, self-consciousness, cosmic consciousness, psychic consciousness, and God Consciousness or Christ-Consciousness. The Self is the first direct experience of the individual. Physically, we can be conscious of our breathing, heartbeats, breathing, and body temperature. Mentally, it can manifest itself in terms of awareness of our perceived thoughts, and emotions, expressing themselves as joy, bliss, anguish, suffering, worry, depression, or insecurity.
We can conceive an image of ourselves as belonging to the human race. We can be conscious of our origin, nature, role, and purpose in life. Animals cannot do this. Chimpanzees have instinctual consciousness; they react according to their instincts. We humans inherit this instinctual nature of consciousness, considering that our genes and DNA go back to the subhuman species. However, unlike us, animals have no image of themselves as a member of the animal kingdom.
Beyond the realm of Self-Consciousness lies an even broader experience of awareness that embraces the entire Cosmos. I label this Cosmic Consciousness, the type of consciousness that includes our awareness of our connection to the other species—bacteria, cells, plants, animals—and the other elements of nature like air, fire, earth, and water, including space, time, atmosphere, and those species underneath our oceans and rivers, and those that fly in the skies.
Yogapedia described cosmic consciousness as a higher form of the ego and Self, manifested as oneness with the universe (https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5809/cosmic-consciousness):
In a state of Cosmic Consciousness, the human mind is elevated beyond the awareness of the self and the ego and enters a place of oneness and unity with the universe. When Cosmic Consciousness is reached, the individual moves from believing in the oneness of the universe to having a direct knowledge of that fact.
Mahmoud Masaeli and Rico Sneller shared similar description:
The notion of cosmic consciousness indicates that a person disembarks themselves from their egoistic viewpoint or the identity that they associate with and relate to the creation that does not depend on or that is limited by their ego.
Meanwhile, William James, in his “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, interpreted "cosmic consciousness" as collective, or a "larger reservoir of consciousness", which includes awareness of our relationship with other species, whether visible or not, humans or not, physical or not. We can team up and cooperate with all creatures, living or dead.
Cosmic consciousness is the awareness and realization that every part of the Cosmos is inextricably connected, not as isolated and broken pieces but as one integrated unit or system we call the Cosmos. Quantum physics calls this unbroken wholeness, in which everything complements and reinforces each other’s needs and aspirations, although manifested in varying degrees and forms.
Animals are also aware of the need to be with others. Like us, it expresses their social nature. So, they congregate in groups—fish flock with fish, birds with birds, elephants with elephants, giraffes with giraffes, each group of which has its own specific territories. Nevertheless, their consciousness is limited primarily to their respective herd.
However, there is more than meets our physical senses. We humans can also be conscious of those things and events that even border on the psychic realm. Classical physics has its natural aloofness with the paranormal because it is beyond our linear and causal experience of time, space, and matter. Most even believe that the paranormal realm does not exist at all. However, unknown to the public, many classical thinkers have shown to us that the paranormal world is real.
The most celebrated case perhaps goes to the couple Marie and Pierre Curie, both recipients of a Nobel Prize for discovering radium. Trying to discover the source of energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity, the two attended séances with a known medium. It was in these sessions that the couple experienced and witnessed numerous paranormal events, leading them to conclude that these phenomena are for real and that the psychic realm really exists.
Then, there was Sir Alfred Russel Wallace, who cofounded Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Together with Sir Williams Crookes, a Nobel laureate in physics, they shifted their attention to the paranormal world. Attending séances, Wallace narrated that they witnessed several paranormal phenomena like miraculous healings, apparitions, materializations of objects, levitations, clairvoyance, elevation of tables, movement of objects, and so on. Quantum physicists have reinforced their faith in the paranormal when they discover baffling events in the quantum world like jumping or leap-frogging, teleportation, bilocation, omnipresence, interconnectivity, instant communication regardless of distance, and time travel.
Indeed, there are more than meets the eye. Modern science discovered that there is so much to know beyond our physical senses. Humans can only detect between 20,000 and 30,000 cycles per second of vibrations. Outside this range are the ultra-high and ultra-low sound frequencies, which we cannot sense without the help of scientific gadgets. This is also true in the case of sight. Nevertheless, they affect us and we can be conscious of these effects in our body, mind, and spirit. Psychotherapist Lawrence Leshan expressed the importance of these psychic occurrences because they are preternatural gifts that must be allowed to manifest if we are to become fully and truly human.
Moreover, we humans can also be conscious of things beyond the physical and psychic realms. We can be aware of the mystical, mythical, and divine, which is the highest level and form of consciousness. In this state of awareness, we can live beyond purely instinctual and mental urges and focus more on the moral and spiritual concerns in life. Holding on to this state of consciousness long enough will eventually diminish our attachment to the ego, allowing our real "Self" to directly manage and direct our lives.
While many beliefs view God as transcendent, new thinking views it as also immanent, manifesting itself in all of creation in many diverse ways so that its divine presence can be seen everywhere in the four-dimensional realm of creation at any moment in time regardless of race, culture, beliefs, gender, age, or status in life.
Quantum physicists see the Holy Trinity in atoms as electrons, neutrons, and protons
Copernicans see it as planets, moons, and Sun;
Albert Einstein sees it as energy, mass, and light or E=mc2
Hawking sympathizers see it as a black hole, wormhole, and white hole
Relativists see it as galaxies, dark holes, and dark energy/matter;
Astrophysicists see it as creation, inflation, destruction
String theorists see it as multiverse, parallel universes, and Extraterrestrials
Anthropologists see it as culture, civilization, and beliefs
Environmentalists see it as the Ozone layer, biosphere, and ecosphere
Astrologers see it as constellation, Zodiac, and horoscope
Neuroscientists see it as brain, spinal cord, and nerve cells.
Hypnotherapists see it as life, death, and reincarnation
Sexologists see it as male, female, and neuter
Sociologists see it as father, mother, and children
Psychologists see it as consciousness, subconsciousness, and unconsciousness
Political scientists see it as citizens, politicians, and the state
Ideologues see it as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis
Social activists see it as left, right, and center
Moralists see it as good, bad, and ugly
Climatologists see it as hot, cold, and lukewarm
Arborists see it as trunk, branches, and fruits
Farmers see it as tilling, planting, and harvesting
Sumerians see it as Anu, Enlil, and Enki
Hindus see it as Krishna, Shiva, and Vishnu
Chinese see it as Tao te Ching, Shangdi (Cosmic God), and the classic Chinese Culture
Christians as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit
The Judeo-Christian-Islam Tradition sees it as Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah
The Book of Genesis sees it as Adam, Eve, and the snake
The New Testament sees it as heaven, hell, and purgatory
Mystics see it as Self, thoughts, and emotions
Adventurers see it as cannabis, alcohol, tobacco
We see it within us as body, mind, and spirit
Cosmic Anthropologists see it as the Cosmos, humanity, and the Cosmic Force
Consciousness has a special role and central position in our four-dimensional world. The solipsistic view that only the mind exists has now been discarded since the discovery of quantum physics in the last century. Consciousness is preeminent; it defies the classical Newtonian law of entropy because consciousness is eternal, infinite, and immortal. There is no way to accept the materialist and reductionist worldview. If that were so, there would have been no way to accept the existence of an afterlife.
Consciousness cannot be regarded as an emergent property of the body-mind dynamics. It does not decay even if the body dies. While the laws of physics regulate our bodily and mental activities, consciousness follows laws that are considered metaphysical and spiritual in nature. While it is anchored on the physical, it is designed to set sail into higher dimensional forms of existence. It serves as the portal through which the physical enters the spiritual and mystical.
The frequency level of our reptilian and mammalian modes of consciousness is too low. We have to raise the frequency level of our mindset and lifestyle beyond the physical and the material. We need to transcend our low-vibrational level of consciousness by continually being aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions such that they go beyond the instinctual and survival mode of existence.
We have to create tsunami-like changes in our vibrations so we can influence the entire humanity and our Planet Earth. We have to exert a gargantuan force enough to build here on Earth a New Humanity, a New Nation, a New World Order. When this is realized, our new planet will be populated by communities of transformed and enlightened beings, where there is only love, peace, and harmony. In fact, we have started it already and we are getting closer and closer to a better tomorrow.
Peace, love, and harmony will remain controversial for as long as the relationship between the brain and our consciousness is not reconciled. So, what still awaits us?
The Future Remains Uncertain
Despite the recent developments in science and technology, we still do not know much about our future. Tomorrow is unpredictable. In layman’s terms, Stephen Hawking employed the dart game analogy to illustrate this point. According to him, while there is a certain probability that the dart will hit the bull’s eye, there is also an equal, nonzero, probability that it will hit its intended target and the equal possibility that the dart will hit any other given area of the board and even outside it. So, our choice of what possible outcome we want to have in the future is always uncertain. What comes is in our hands.
The future lies in our hands.
So many possibilities can happen. Our imagined cat parable suggests the existence of an almost infinite range of possibilities and potentialities. The atom can split anytime at the least provocation and explode releasing all the deadly and poisonous radiation inside. One sad possibility, which is not farfetched, is when any deranged humanoid robot-like individual, holding the keys to the world’s nuclear arsenal, will just push the button that could trigger a global nuclear war. In fact, it has already started in various little corners of the world.
However, it is an ugly scenario of the future that nobody wants. Our collective consciousness needs to be aware of this ominous future that may come to us. But whether it is ugly or not, the future remains uncertain and we must accept it. Here lies another great mystery. Despite the immense power of our consciousness, the future remains unknown and unpredictable, and the observer only plays a very limited role in predicting it and, as quantum physics observes, even if a prediction is arrived at statistically, the future remains a possibility.