Consciousness

The basis of the western lack of understanding is due to William James, the father of Western Psychology who in 1902 dismissed Consciousness as “the name of a nonentity”, this contributed to the science assuming that Consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of matter, a view held by old-science (Newtonian science) advocates, called Materialism.

It was only as a result of cutting edge physics, particularly Quantum Physics, the very fundamentals of all existence (perceived) so far that has confirmed again and again that Consciousness is in fact the very ground of Being!. There is nothing else apart from Consciousness, from which arises Mind as does matter. Physicists have come to realize that the universe is interconnected in much subtler ways than had once thought. In quantum physics the observer and the observed can no longer be separated and the whole is more fundamental than the part.

The old Newtonian worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles.  Whereas the worldview being confirmed through cutting edge physics is in fact very similar to what has been proposed by our Gurus, Buddhist teachings and the Upanishads, that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real as intention. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency—it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation—but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation.

Consciousness/awareness studies in the West are no further in understanding Consciousness, David Chambers in the mid 1990 presented a ground breaking academic paper, the Hard problem of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be studied objectively.  In Neurophysiological approaches to consciousness, once again, it is Quantum theory that provides some understanding of Consciousness as related to neurons, synapses  etc. Wigner researcher in this field concluding “the very study of external world (neurons etc) led to the conclusion that the content of consciousness is an ultimate reality”  More recent studies by Hameroff and Penrose are pointing to Quantum events taking place in microtubles, the sub-cellular skeleton.

Awareness can not be known as the “knower” of awareness, Awareness can ONLY be known by BEING aware!