Conscious Creators of Reality

By observing a mundane phenomenon such as an apple falling from a tree, Newton discovered gravity, a fundamental property within the Universe that became the catalyst for a new era of scientific inquiry. Similarly, some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by individuals whose keen powers of observation, of the trivial and the ordinary, allowed them to draw back the veil of reality and peek behind the curtains into the inner workings of the Universe. Just as an apple falling towards the Earth is representative of the same fundamental principles that guide the entire material Universe, it is similarly possible, by observing the mundane phenomena at work within your own conscious mind, to intuit some of the deeper principles that operate within Consiousness as a whole.

In the Universe out of Nothing, I discussed how the scientific approach has reached its limits in its understanding of Reality. The Big Bang theory is able to trace the history of the Universe all the way back to a time when the entire Universe and its contents were compacted into a single infinitely dense object about the size of an atom. Yet, how this single point of material reality came into existence out of Nothing , is something that continues to baffle scientists. This is because Science, in its quest to discover and define reality, made an erroneous assumption which limits it from providing a more holistic understanding of the nature of reality. The assumption Science makes is that reality is fundamentally objective. In other words, regardless of whether there is a conscious subject to observe it, the material Universe continues to exist. And so there seems to be a great divide between scientific reality and the personal realities we find ourselves living in. Because the personal realities we experience are primarily subjective.

The Dual Nature of Reality

The universe thus appears a paradox. Reality itself seems dual in Nature. There is Material Reality which appears in the form of our Universe, galaxies and planets, the Earth, living organisms, elements and compounds, molecules, atoms and electrons. Our own bodies are part of this material reality, our bones, muscles, organs, tissues, cells and DNA. The brain itself is an organ made up of a highly complex network of synapses that fire electrical impulses that further trigger chemical reactions within it. But that is as far as our objective experience of reality goes.

There is another face of reality that is purely subjective and this is Conscious Reality. It is the reality of our minds, the one we find ourselves predominantly living in . This is the version of reality that feels intimate, real and extremely personal. It is the reality within which we exist as individuals rather than organisms and within which we create relationships that are guided by emotion rather than physical laws.

Science, in its attempts to understand Consciousness, divided Material existence into two categories: the living and the non-living. Living organisms fall within a spectrum ranging from the simplest bacteria to vastly more complex human beings. Living things are objects in the material world which are subject to all the physical laws of the Universe and yet have the capacity to display 'intelligence', to create new organisms of their kind, adapt within their own environments and evolve in design. Non-living objects however, are objects that display none of these capacities and are basically simple and elemental.

What this approach implies is that, Consciousness is the product of the biological structure of living organisms and intelligent life. Non-living things, because of the very fact that they do not demonstrate any intelligent qualities cannot possibly produce Consciousness. The second implication of this approach, is that if Consciousness is a product of only a subset of objects within material reality, it cannot possibly have any bearing on the laws and principles that guide material reality itself;  instead, it should be subject to material laws and must obey them. Its a case of the chicken and the egg. Because the current scientific understanding is that reality is material and that this material Universe is what produced both non-living and living organisms, and that biology is responsible for consciousness, it follows that material reality is the source of all consciousness.

While this is the accepted assumption, ask any scientist how this "consciousness" suddenly came to be in a Universe that was unanimously non-living, billions of years ago, and very few may even attempt an answer. The fact is no one knows. And so whether you ask: how that single point of matter that caused the Big Bang appeared out of Nothing, or whether you ask: how Life and Consciousness suddenly appeared in a purely material and inanimate Universe, you will receive the same blank stare. But perhaps, this blank stare means something.

The Properties of Thought

When observing your own consciousness and the various conscious phenomena that occur within your own mind, something becomes very obvious. The first is that thought has no material properties. It has no mass of its own and occupies no space whatsoever. It is capable of traveling at inifinite speeds (instantaneously) and is not restricted by distance. You can experience a thought of the street you live on and of the hotel you stayed at in the Dominican in the same amount of time, equally effortlessly. Your physical distance from each location is irrelevant to your ability to experience a thought about either of them. So, thoughts are not limited by the speed of light.

Thought is also unrestricted by time. You can experience a thought of the past and of the future, you can travel anywhere within time using thought. Thought is also unaffected by gravity or any material force. Whether you are standing on the Earth or on the moon, are sitting in a chair or on a roller coaster, thought occurs and can be experienced unimpeded by any of the forces at play. Therefore, Thought is not subject to any of the laws of the Material Universe. Now, you may argue that if someone were to take a sledgehammer to your skull, the blunt force may impede your ability to think. But what I am talking about right now is not the biological abilities of the human brain and how it ties into Consciousness. Yes, such a force may end your particular experience of thought, but the Thought itself remains unaffected.

Let me pause briefly to first define Thought and how I intend to use the word in this context. Thought is any event within Consciousness. Therefore, Thought events may come in various forms such as - Intention, Imagination, Abstraction, Perception, Emotion, Intuition and Reason. I will investigate each Thought form in greater detail in future articles. But for now, it will suffice to say, that any way in which we can experience ourselves consciously (as well as sub-consciously eg. dreams) would consitute Thought.

So in returning to the discussion on the properties of Thought, it becomes evident that it has no material reality and is not subject to any material laws. The reason why we can even imagine such concepts as time travel, unicorns, alternate dimensions and God is because Thought is not restricted by the physical laws of the Universe. But if the scientific perception of reality were true ie the physical Universe is all that exists, how can Thought operate independently of this reality?

Before the Bang

This very simple observation is immediately accessible to anyone who considers it. And this simple observation points to a Reality that is much greater than the existence of our physical Universe. Whereas, science assumes that Consciousness emerged somewhere along the way from the physical Universe, the truth is in fact the opposite: Our entire physical Universe was born as a result of a single event within Consciousness - from a single Thought.

That vast abyss of Nothing before the Big Bang was Consciousness itself. What created that single infinitely dense point of matter that exploded to create our physical Universe, was the Thought of a single infinitely dense point of matter.

Viewing Consciousness in this way revolutionizes the way in which we see ourselves and our thoughts. No longer are we simply forms of intelligent matter experiencing a finite existence, at the whims of an inanimate Universe. Rather each one is an expression of Consciousness creating realities from moment to moment. Every Thought event we experience has the capacity to create and shape our Universe and our circumstances. Every one of us is a conscious Creator of reality.

A Meditation

Settling down into my office chair...there's no one here. I gaze through the window at the silent winter storm brewing outside... trees alone stand like lonely sentries, their branches dusted white by the frivolous wind. A flock of birds breaks formation. It’s every bird for himself. Disoriented ... they search blindly for a spot of refuge, their instincts numbed by the blistering cold. All this happens noiselessly. My eyes absorbed, my mind rendered dormant and uncomprehending, I slip into deep oblivion... 

In the distance, I hear a temple bell. The sound of water running over stones. A crow caws into the emptiness. And then another. And another. The temple bell rings again. It reverberates with a deeper tone and my feet tremble beneath me. My eyes open to a dark room bathed in the warm glow of a fireplace. Shadows dance across the stone walls of this small, cozy hut. I rise from my wooden chair, gathering my robes around me, my feet caressed by the warm rush mats as I walk towards the entrance of my home.

A crisp morning breeze greets me. Dawn has just broken over the horizon. It is time for prayer. My hut sits atop a hill. From here I can see the entire expanse of this Monastery in the mountains. In the center, a great stone courtyard houses the main temple. On either side, two smaller temples and the temple building. An old monk, bare-shouldered, in maroon robes, ambles towards the temple. Weeping cherry trees in bloom rustle their swooping branches. The wind strews blossoms across the stone floor as an offering.

Something feels different. My body - it feels changed; somehow leaner, somehow lighter, more flexible, more at ease. My mind too is silent. My attention is relaxed, open and invites in experience without favor, without judgment, without expectation.  My age is unknown to me, but I sense I have lived a while. I am a simple monk, a peaceful man, an entirely different man. And yet I feel I am the same - The same as I have always been and the same as I will always be.

My feet dressed in wooden slippers carefully descend the steep stone steps roughly hewn into the hill side. The sharp click-clack echoes eternally through the morning air. The temple bell rings again, rising me from my reverie...

My eyes open to the snow squalls outside the office window. The monk is no more.  I reflect on him fondly and his life that I lived. Now, here I am again, in the life of this man. I reflect on him fondly too.

Now falling still again, my gaze returns to the silent world outside, my heart brimming with the emptiness of it all...    

Dreaming Up Reality

The great sage Chuang Chou said, "Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."  

This apparent paradox of realities is one we all have experienced. But because most of our dreams lack any real lucidity and fade soon after we awake, we often dismiss the realities they present us as fictitious or imaginary. Every once in a while you may have a powerfully vivid dream that even after waking lingers both in detail and emotional impact for a considerable amount of time. You may narrate the dream to others, commenting "how real" it felt and search for some hidden meaning or symbolism. This felt real-ness of the dream coupled with the clear lingering memories in your mind are what attribute the sense of reality to the dream. 

Three Anomalies

Patients under the influence of painkillers such as Morphine, regularly experience dreams and hallucinations of a highly detailed and logical nature. They sometimes report not being able to differentiate between reality and their dream states precisely because the two resemble each other so closely. In these cases, they often struggle to establish which reality is the real one, by attempting to identify which reality has more inconsistencies. In particularly traumatic events, the hallucinating or dreaming mind may create a reality which is more consistent than the reality that person actually lives in. An example is of a person I know who was in a car accident in which some of her family members perished and she alone survived. In the hospital for weeks under the influence of Morphine she lived in an alternate reality where her family was still alive and in fact were attempting to convince her that the accident had never happened and that she had made it all up in some paranoid hallucination. Oscillating between the two realities, it took a considerable amount of effort of will for her to finally stabilize within the reality in which the car crash did happen, her family did perish and she lay in a hospital bed recovering. But what of the other reality?

On the other hand consider a person who having suffered some form of injury has suffered a severe memory loss. You have often seen films in which this is the case. For this person the reality of the life that existed prior to the accident simply does not exist. Even if the events of the person's life are narrated back to them, even if they are shown photos or videos of their past, it seems to lack any feeling of real-ness and since there are no lingering memories of the events there is no sense of reality. So did that past reality exist?

The third example is that of an individual that may be diagnosed as schizophrenic. This person may experience sights, sounds, smells, objects, events and people that, within our consensus reality, simply don't exist. Our lack of understanding around the subject leads us to categorize such individuals as mentally insane and we medicate them. Yet that individual's experience of their own reality is that it feels just as real as yours. Even the memories they create are of people and events that have never actually occurred in your reality. What often accompanies the experience of schizophrenia is an attached sense of paranoia. It is this paranoia that the individual and those around them (family members, doctors) react to the most. The paranoia is often simply a reaction to the realization that the reality you are living in is out-of-synch with the one others are experiencing. There is an overwhelming feeling of panic that ensues followed by a sense of deep and utter isolation that very few can imagine. No matter how alone you feel in your life, the sense of sharing this same one reality with all those you know and love, provides a foundation of security and balance that we take for granted. Imagine waking up one day and finding out that the reality you live in is entirely your own and you cannot share this with anyone. You cannot experience a greater isolation than this. It is often thought that a schizophrenic mind is an irrational mind, yet some schizophrenics are highly rational people. A popular example is the one of John Nash, genius mathematician and Nobel prize laureate. He was portrayed by Russel Crowe in the film "A Beautiful Mind". For years, Nash had and maintained relationships that never existed in the consensus reality. And eventually his means of coping was the acceptance that the second reality was only his hallucination. The inconsistency that allowed him to anchor himself was that the people he "imagined" never aged. Similarly, many individuals diagnosed as schizophrenic regularly experience overlapping realities. So which reality is real?

Defining Reality

In order to answer any of the questions posed above, it is first necessary to identify how we define reality. Is reality this disconnected and separate entity which exists independently of a person? That has been the general answer that we have, as a species, accepted as true. We have come to accept that reality is a steady state system in which the individual is only a part. This part can only interact with the whole in a very limited manner, through word and action. Yet, discoveries in quantum physics have revealed that reality is not as easy definable or identifiable as we previously thought. Rather than a fixed state, reality is more like a wave of potentiality. In fact, there is no such thing as a reality, only potentiality. What we call reality is a characteristic that is contributed by the observer. In other words, when an observer (a point of Consciousness) interacts with waves of Potentiality, they collapse into fixed particles - what we would refer to as Reality. (Read A Universe Out Of Nothing for an elaboration).

And so in this version, Reality is no longer some static state that is independent of the individual, but instead is wholly dependant on the individual to create it. An analogy that may help to illustrate this further is to imagine a blank canvas. This canvas is Reality. It is completely blank. What this canvas contains is the potential for a line to appear here, a curve to appear there, an angle to appear somewhere else. There are an infinite number of dots, lines or pattern combinations that can be created on this canvas. And yet the canvas also presents certain limitations. No line can appear outside the canvas, no line can go through the canvas. The canvas presents the limitations yet does not actually create anything. It is the individual who must choose which potentiality to give Reality to, what wave to collapse into a particle - in other words what line to draw. You can think you are creating something new, but in fact you are only choosing which invisible path on the paper you want to make visible, using ink. The paths already potentially exist. Every line you can possibly draw already exists in potential form. Michelangelo is quoted to have said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." This is in effect how Reality works.

This perspective on Reality is a game changer. Because what this says is that each and every individual is creating and interacting with a completely unique and separate reality. Because in every moment no two peoples' Consciousness are the same. 

Now imagine a group of artists in an art class painting their own picture. There is a nude model in the center of the room and each artist is attempting to paint as exact a rendition of the model as they possibly can. Once the paintings are complete, they all get together and compare. Because all their paintings are so nearly identical to each other (varying only in perspective but in 100% agreement of the details) they all agree that their paintings represent reality. This is what we mean by "consensus reality"- (a reality in which is perspective is unique but the details are uniform). It is the reality everyone 'agrees' exists. But then sitting alone in a corner of the room is an artist who seems unusually quiet. And so the rest of the group shuffles over to see what he has drawn and instead of a nude model they see the painting of a vase. When questioned on it, the artist claims that this is what is sitting in the center of the room. The group labels him insane and attempts to correct him. Or perhaps, the artist's canvas is blank and this is what he perceives in the center of the room. Or perhaps, the artist's canvas is the picture of a nude model standing with her dog. In each case, because the lone artist's view of reality is so completely out of synch with the consensus reality, the rest of the group labels the artist: in the first case as hallucinating/dreaming, in the second as an amnesiac, in the third as a schizophrenic. So what is really in the center of the room? Can this question even be answered? Given the information I have provided you, if you were to answer in accordance with the larger group, perhaps you also believe in reality being a consensus reality. However, if you were to allow that all the possibilities exist then what you are allowing is that reality itself has no real-ness to it. The real-ness is what the individual feels.

And so the only answer we can attempt to the above question is: none of them and all of them.

The Source of Reality

In working with this paradigm, we find that Reality is in fact the creation of an individual's consciousness. It then becomes evident that each person's reality is entirely their own and is completely disconnected from another person's reality. In fact, this Universe you live in and experience daily is not the Universe. It is your Universe. You are the sole creator of this entire infinite expanse of galaxies and solar systems, the Sun and the Earth, the Oceans and Continents, the Plants and Animals, all the people on the planet, your family and friends, all of it. Everything that exists is the creation of your own individual Consciousness. This may be too absurd to fathom but think of this instead:

Imagine you have a dream and in this dream you live an entire lifetime. In this lifetime you are a particular person, you grow and you age, you meet people, you have a family, some die, you experience joy and illness and eventually you perish. Waking up from this dream you realize that it was all a dream. But within the dream it all felt real. So what was it that felt real? What was that quality of real-ness and where did it come from?

Now, you will agree that you created the entire dream world. Each character and their story, each event, the details, the places and things you saw, it was all your creation. Yet simultaneously, you identified yourself as only one character in the dream, the main protagonist. You imagined yourself as one single person interacting with the environment and the other characters you experienced. But on waking you can see that it was all you. You were not that single character in a Universe of others, rather were the entire Universe, even though the real you doesn't exist in that Universe. The real-ness of the dream Universe that you felt was really your own sense of existence which you then projected into your dream world. What felt so real, what lent the whole experience of real-ness was your Consciousness. Real-ness (what we may also refer to as Existence or Presence) is a quality of Consciousness.  

(the Buddhists have a term for this that they call "suchness". It is the quality of the existence of everything. We often separate this sense of existence by separating this "suchness" from the experience of "am-ness" which is the sense of your own personal existence. However, this sense of am-ness and suchness are really one and the same. In fact, your sense of being is what imparts the sense of existence to the entire Universe)

Everything that Consciousness creates is experienced as real, just like everything water encounters is experienced as wet. Wetness is a quality that identifies the interaction of water, similarly Presence or Real-ness is a quality that identifies the interaction of Consciousness. In other words, everything that exists only exists because Consciousness that has created and permitted its existence. You literally create the Universe in each moment. By "you" in this case I am not referring to the "person" you identify yourself to be, but the Consciousness that is creating the whole experience, just like in the dream analogy above. While your point of view may for the moment be fixated in the reality of being this one person, your true identity is more linked to the Consciousness that is feeding that reality.

Chuang Chou was both the man dreaming of the butterfly and the butterfly dreaming of the man, and yet he was neither the butterfly nor the man.

Creating a 'Science' of Consciousness

Up until now, all conversation on the topic of Consciousness has been limited to the metaphysical, spiritual or philosophical realms of our lives. Science has focused its energy and efforts, instead, in the direction of the material Universe. The discovery of the Laws of Gravity, of Thermodynamics, of electromagnetism and of Relativity may have changed the context in which we live our lives, but the actual experience of living, of our experience of ourselves, our thoughts and emotions, how we relate to one another, how we relate to society, our happiness and peace of mind has been relatively less influenced by the discovery of these laws. Realizing that the Earth revolves around the Sun as opposed to the other way round has very little personal relevance to our experience of Life. And it is this impersonal nature of Science that keeps it cold, detached and disconnected from the inner realities we live in.

If asked who we believe ourselves to be, we might try and use scientific jargon to define ourselves. From a physics perspectives, we are physical masses subject to the laws Inertia, Momentum, Electromagnetism, gravitation etc. like everything else. From a chemistry perspective, we are complex compositions of organic compounds, elements and minerals. From a biological perspective we are highly complex Organisms composed of trillions of cells with highly specialized functions. From a Neuroscience perspective we are body-mind systems powered by a highly complex processor called the brain which comprises a network of synapses that conduct information through the transfer of electrical charge. From a psychoanalytical perspective we may be a Myers -Briggs Personality type. But no matter what scientific explanation you use to define who you are, no matter how comprehensive or sophisticated, you are left with a sense that the real essence of You has been completely missed. And it is precisely because we have such limited means of defining ourselves that we end up experiencing our own lives as finite, incomprehensible and grossly limited. The Science of Life and the Experience of Life are felt to be two completely different things. 

What is necessary then is to develop a new language, one that sheds light on the behind-the-scenes dynamics within the realm of Consciousness - a "Science of Consciousness". In the blog post: A Universe Out of Nothing Consciousness was discovered to be the Nothing from which Everything emerges, it is the foundation of all material experience. Without Consciousness, the Material Universe has no reality. Now, having developed this basic premise, we can begin an exploration into the Nature of Consciousness itself and the principles that govern it. In exploring in this way, we will begin to discover how Consciousness is the foundation of Reality from which we ourselves emerge and to which we remain connected through our entire experience of Life. What you are is more than just a biological organism, a chemical compound, a physical matter, a network of synapses, a Myers-Briggs personality type. In fact these are only a few logic models in which you can choose to perceive yourself but they do not, by any means, contain the totality of the experience of who you are. Rather, who you are is not limited by any one perception or point-of-view but is the very foundation of all perceptions and points-of view. You are the Consciousness which is prior to perception. In exploring the Nature of Consciousness what we are really exploring is the Nature of who you are.  

You might question how such an endeavor can be anything more than speculative. After all, how can we explore something as esoteric as Consciousness much less develop a Science of it?! Until now all talk of Consciousness had been the domain of poets, philosophers, seers, mystics, psychics and gurus. And most of the conversation surrounding Consciousness had been prescriptive rather than investigative. Most gurus and self-help teachers focus their ideas and teachings on how to become aware of your consciousness, how to work with your consciousness, how to shift your perspectives within consciousness. But few have ventured into the study of Consciousness itself other than the specific relevance it has to a particular person. As a result, the larger questions in Life about "Who we are", "Where we come from", "Where anything comes from", "What happens to us after we die",  "How was the Universe Created" - the so called Big Questions of Life, the questions that every kid asks their parents, the questions that make every parent squirm when asked by their kids, still fall within the domain of ancient metaphysical texts and neo-spiritual jargon. This is not a knock against the ancients or contemporary spiritual teachers by any means. In fact, these two groups have provided a wealth of wisdom that must not be ignored. Where they have fallen short, however, is in developing a language that makes these deeper truths of life accessible to the modern intellectual mind; one that is naturally rational and fiercely skeptical. Criticizing the structured and highly organized Logic of the modern human's intellect, is something that many spiritual teachers tend to do, often seeing our intellects as an obstacle to a truer and fuller understanding of Consciousness. The effect that approach has is that it creates a further rift between the Analytical Mind and the Intuitive Mind, the Left Brain and the Right Brain, the Rational and the Esoteric. In society as well, this creates opposing intellectual factions, the scientific community and the metaphysical/philosophical/religious community, that are increasingly critical and mistrustful of each other's viewpoints. The problem is that they just don't speak the same language.

In developing a "Science of Consciousness" I propose to take a different approach. The Logics of Metaphysics have had a relatively slow evolution compared to that of Science whose evolution has been exponential. As a result the language that Science uses is current and relevant while that of Metaphysics/Spirituality is stale and outdated. Through my own spiritual journey and process of Inquiry, I have come to realize that these two aspects of Logic are really one and the same. In fact, each one is incomplete without the inclusion of the other and it is precisely because they exclude each other that each is unable to bridge the gap towards providing a more complete and holistic understanding of Reality.

In my exploration of Consciousness, I will attempt to demonstrate and further justify how Consciousness and Matter are inextricably linked; that in fact, matter is the "image in the mirror" and Consciousness is the reality projecting it. Just as you can witness the movements and dynamics of your body by looking in a mirror, it is possible to use Physical  Reality as the Mirror in which to glimpse and study the dynamics of Consciousness. This is a highly personal study, because unlike matter which can be separated and studied in isolation under a microscope in an impersonal manner, Consciousness can only be studied through meditation (experientially) and through contemplation (introspecting or reflecting). Each person's own experience of Consciousness is their one and only portal to the study of Consciousness itself. The two are not separate but are essentially one and the same, just like the light that is emitted from a lamp is exactly the same and reveals the same properties as the light emitted from the Sun. 

In this exploration I will investigate how the Laws of the physical Universe are reflections of corresponding Laws within Consciousness. How matter, force, space, time, energy are manifestations and counterparts of corresponding 'principles' within Consciousness. I will explore different States of Consciousness that correspond to various hierarchies of life-forms from elemental to microscopic to plant to animal to human and further to more refined levels of consciousness. I will investigate the nature and purpose of Birth, Death and provide a different perspective on Reincarnation. These investigations to name a few are just the preliminary ventures in a larger attempt to develop a whole new paradigm; one that presents a more holistic and integrated model of reality; one that places the most distant galaxies and your own personal emotions within the same single context; one in which unification (of understanding and experience) and not separation is the heart that powers the journey.

Stay tuned. 

A Universe Out of Nothing

We currently live in the "Big Bang" age; the era in which the Big Bang theory is the predominant scientific model for how our Universe was created. There are still a number of people who doubt this theory of the Universe, however, and these are often people who believe in a more Creationist approach based on religious faith - on a Genesis of some kind. 

Each party ridicules the other for their notions. Scientists who base their reasoning on logic, mathematical theory and material evidence find the theory of some divine intelligence creating the Universe absolutely ludicrous. Those of faith on the other hand find it hard to accept that the entire Universe and its contents simply "popped" out of absolutely nowhere and so despite all the hard evidence they remain unconvinced.   

The fact is, while the evidence that suggests that the Universe we live in expanded and evolved from a single point of space, is impossible to ignore, there are still certain incomplete aspects to this theory that even scientists admit they have absolutely no idea of how to explain. For example, according to the big bang theory the entire Universe began from a single compressed point of matter of immense density that suddenly exploded. The theory holds well as we trace back history from now all the way till the point when that dot of matter exploded. But ask any scientist where that point of matter originated from? No one can tell you. Why did it suddenly explode and create a Universe? Nobody knows. There are a lot of theories and conjecture of course but none that have any consensus or evidence to support them. The fact is according to Science everything originated from Nothing. But science has no practical means of defining what Nothing is. The only way science defines Nothing is as the 'absence of something'. But how can everything emerge from nothing? This is a paradox that even scientists cannot answer.

The Factor of Consciousness

The truth is that science, through all its advancements, failed to recognize that there is a fundamental factor operating in the Universe that has been ignored over and over again in every formula, every theory and every principle. This factor is Consciousness.

Consciousness is not just some theory or idea but rather it is the most empirically verifiable aspect of reality. You know you are conscious. You have absolutely no doubt about this. I know I am conscious; I have no doubt about this. Consciousness is evident everywhere in different expressions. The trees in the city park are conscious, your pet poodle is conscious, your insufferable boss is conscious, the E.Coli bacteria in your intestines are conscious. Consciousness is everywhere and is operating through everything, yet it is missing from any law of physics in existence. A theory of the Universe governed only by the laws of physics implies that there cannot possibly be Freedom of Will, because to have Will means to have the choice to operate in a spontaneous and unpredictable manner. The very physicists who develop and support these theories are inadvertently admitting that they have no Will of their own.

And so here is the dichotomy that we as a society find ourselves plunged into. On one hand, we are intellectually adapted to believe that science is a water-tight approach to reality, yet on the other hand our intuition cannot but feel that there is some important piece of this whole puzzle missing. Yeah, the Earth revolves around the Sun and there are a gazillion galaxies receding from each other and Pluto is no longer a planet, but how does this have any personal relevance for me? This Universe I live in doesn't even factor in my own existence into it. It’s a valid question.

The Quantum Problem

Up until a few decades ago this was a question that science always found some ingenious way to sidestep. But with the advent of quantum mechanics this changed. Just like a family may organize an intervention to confront Tommy with his drug addiction issues, Quantum mechanics confronted scientists in a way that avoidance was no longer an option. The discovery was simple - an electron when observed by an observer (the scientist) behaves differently than when it is not observed. This was arguably the biggest WTF moment in the history of science. When the scientist directly observed the electron it behaved as a particle, but when the electron wasn't being observed it behaved as a wave.

Here are the two implications of this experiment:

The first one is something that is now being whispered and gossiped about in the scientific community. It is that human Consciousness can impact the material Universe without any form of direct interaction. Simply looking at an electron i.e. becoming conscious of it, can alter its state. So if just looking at an electron can alter its behaviour what does that say about the rest of the known Universe? After all, aren't electrons the 'building blocks" of the Universe? Are you not, in this moment, 'looking at' trillions of electrons every nanosecond, even though that may not be how you tend to perceive it? And as you are looking at the trillions upon trillions of electrons that make up your t-shirt sleeve, the send button on your blackberry, the tip of your kitchen knife, are you not altering their behaviour? Isn’t your chair only becoming a chair (the electrons in it becoming particles) exactly because you are aware of it? Up until then it only exists as the possibility of a chair (the electrons as waves of potentiality.) There is a reason why this is being spoken about so cautiously in the scientific community because the implications of it will flip our entire worldview upside down.

The second implication is far more profound. I haven't heard of anyone in the scientific community yet who has gone this far with the implication. To illustrate let me give you a scenario:

It is 6:00 am and you are in a subway car. It’s early and at this moment, you are the only person on the car. You are relaxed, your gut is hanging out ever so slightly, and you are slouched and unconcerned about what you look like. "Ping!" the doors open and someone walks in and sits opposite you. Suddenly you are aware of the presence of another human being. Your gut retracts ever so slightly, your posture stiffens and you become a little more wary. You are still relaxed and the change although extremely subtle, has nevertheless occurred. You can't help it. What has really happened? Your consciousness has interacted with the consciousness of another person and that dynamic has caused a change. The other person, upon seeing you, has responded with their own change. The other person's presence makes you "self-conscious". When you are by yourself, you may go through long periods of time when you aren't even aware of yourself, but in the company of others you naturally become aware. Consciousness induces consciousness.

When the scientist observes the electron, it is not simply a matter of the scientist's human consciousness altering the material state of the electron. Rather, the scientist's Consciousness induces the Consciousness of the Electron. The electron, becomes Conscious of the scientist observing it and reacts by altering its state. The electron becomes "self conscious".

The Nothing before the Something

In developing a theory of the origination of the Universe, science has reached the boundary wall of logic and now is beating its head against it. It has reduced everything into One thing. But it can’t penetrate any further, because the only thing that is prior to the One thing is the No-thing. But what is this Nothing? Let’s take a certain analogy.

Think of yourself lying on a mad scientist's table. The mad scientist says,
"You are nothing more than a collection of bone, muscle, organ and tissue that emerged from one single cell!" And you respond defiantly,
"No! I am so much more. I am a human being." (Cue emotional background music). To this the scientist responds by amputating your arms, and laughing maniacally says, "See I have made you only 70% of who you are!" And you respond courageously like William Wallace,
"NO! I am still me and will always be!" At this point he chops off your legs and says,
"And now? Aren't you only half the person you were?" Upon which you respond,
"No! I am still the same!"
He now proceeds to remove all your organs one by one substituting them for mechanical ones that he attaches instead just to keep you alive (for the sake of this analogy). There is nothing left of you but your brain, which he begins to chip away at keeping you conscious all the time.
No matter how much of your 'material self' is removed or destroyed your consciousness, your sense of being, of existing, remains unaltered.  Now the reality is that the moment he destroys your brain completely your consciousness will no longer be able to 'exist' in the material sense. But has the Consciousness really been destroyed or has it simply retreated from that particular expression of a person? After all without the brain, human consciousness cannot find expression in the physical Universe. It is the single portal of expression for human consciousness. Using this analogy, let’s extend it to the big bang concept.

The Nothing that exists prior to the bang is Consciousness. Consciousness is really nothing from a material perspective.  It is a big fat zero as far as science is concerned. Yet, it is the big fat zero within every formula in physics that doesn't impact the formula from a mathematical (material) perspective, just like adding zero to any number doesn't change the number. Yet this Nothing is that Something that you feel yourself to be even as the mad-scientist chops you up piece by piece. It is the Nothing that is not affected when you are 70% of your material self (body), 30% of your material self or just a tiny fraction holding on by a thread. It is the Nothing that is always whole and undividable.

Similarly, that Nothing prior to the Big Bang is pure Consciousness and that single point of infinitely dense matter that appears is that single portal of expression of Consciousness. The entire Universe is one giant brain.


An Act of Free Will

In fact, physicists nowadays are developing all kinds of theories of Multiverses. Theories which propound that our own Universe is not the only one of its kind and that, in fact, there are infinite Universes coming into existence with similar big bangs every moment, all emerging from this single Nothing. There are many Brains that emerge from Consciousness.

And here is where the two seemingly paradoxical trajectories of science and religion intersect. Because religion posits that there is some divine, superior, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient power that created the entire Universe. Science says that everything in existence emerged from the same Nothing. Call it Divine, call it God, call it Nothing, call it Susan. They all point to the same reality. That Consciousness is the landscape in which Space, Time and your Grandmother's garden are all allowed to exist.

If an electron has consciousness, then atoms, molecules, microbes, cells, elements, rocks, dirt, plants, animals, humans, bacteria, planets, oceans, solar systems, societies all exist, subsist and evolve as a result of Consciousness. Even the natural laws and the laws of physics are given life and existence to by Consciousness. 

The infinite nature of the material Universe is born from the absolute Nothingness of Consciousness. All of Life as we know it is a single act of Free Will.

Demystifying Karma

'Karma' is a word that has been around for a long time. For Hindus and Buddhist it is a heavy word, weighted with centuries of meaning and interpretation. It has a gravity similar to the kind that the Judeo-Christian word "Sin" has attached to it. In fact, if you compare the two concepts together they are remarkably similar in their philosophy and approach. The only significant difference being that Sin and Redemption is seen as this linear process with an end that precipitates in some kind of final judgment by a higher power, whereas karma is a cyclical process where judgment is built and automated into the fabric of the process itself and doesn't need a God to perpetuate it. Regardless, both approaches strongly suggest that there is a Right Way and there is a Wrong Way and you kind of want to follow the Right Way if you know what’s good for you.

This sort of paradigm may have been appropriate for the ancients but in 2013 it is atrociously out of synch with a more sophisticated and nuanced experience of life. And so here is an attempt to present karma in a more accessible language:

Karma, quite simply put, is Universal Law of Equilibrium. It is the balancing principle of Reality that always seeking to restore balance where there is imbalance, to restore harmony where there is disharmony.

Karma is the energetic component of Consciousness which generates phenomena in the Universe. In the Universe it is experienced as Natural Laws. Within Consciousness it is precipitated by the Movement of Will.

Everything in the known Universe is subject to the karmic principle of balance. Electrons are subject to karma, atoms are subject to karma, cells are subject to karma, humans and animals are subject to karma, organizations are subject to karma, nations are subject to karma, planets are subject to karma, solar systems are subject to karma, galaxies are subject to karma - from the microscopic to the macroscopic, karma operates on each and every level manifesting as Natural Laws in the Universe which originate from Movements of Will within Consciousness.

In your own life, each one of you experience the balancing principle (Karma) in a variety of flavors some that are unique to you and some that are collective:

As an individual, you experience certain imbalances within your own psychological makeup which eventually translate into your material reality. These imbalances reveal themselves in the form of negative thought patterns, anxiety, depression, over aggressiveness, anger issues, depression, listlessness, lack of fulfilment, lack of trust, over zealousness, fanaticism, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, neediness, low self-esteem, showmanship, dominance, over competitiveness just to name a few. These are the disharmonies which, through expression and interaction, generate an inducing effect on your Life and your circumstances. Your own inner psychological experience influences and induces your physical circumstances and vice versa. You will attract circumstances whose eventual goal is to restore balance to that area of experience of your psyche and similarly imbalances in your life circumstances can be smoothed and balanced by cultivating an inner psychological balance. This is essentially the "Law of Attraction" that many self-help gurus and books like 'The Secret' advertise in a dumbed down and narrowed perspective.

This is not just limited to the realm of action but goes all the way down to to the root of intention itself. Your inner and outer realities are not two disconnected Universes brought together simply by action. A negative thought impacts your outside reality well before it ever gets translated into an action. We tend to have a very simplistic sense of responsibility that only extends as far as our actions, yet responsibility goes all the way down into the roots of our inner experience, our thoughts, emotions and intentions. But whether we realize the magnitude and impact of our inner experience or not, the Balancing Principle (karma) operates regardless. Imbalances experienced within your inner experience will attract outer experiences that eventually balance them out.

Trying to predict outcomes based on how this Balancing Principle works is beyond the scope of the human intellect. If the "what goes around, comes around" concept were true, there would be a very uniform experience of Life for each individual. However, what circumstances you attract in your life is based on the very specific requirements of your own psychological blueprint. If you and your friend are equally greedy, yet you never seem to have enough money and he just won the lottery, it seems completely inconsistent because the same psychological principle should, in theory, attract the same circumstances to balance them out. You may scream and curse the heavens for being unfair but it is you who has missed the point. It is not that simple.

A negative internal imbalance such as greed may for one person attract more poverty in order to temper that person's perspective on material wealth and therefore result in a more balanced perspective. The same greed in another person may attract a winning lottery ticket in order to highlight the experience of the greed and magnifying its uncomfortable side effects. It is impossible to judge what a person "should" be experiencing beforehand. And to suggest that any person deserves a fate other than what they are currently experiencing is to see things from a very narrow viewpoint of experience. In the larger scheme of things everything happens and operates according to the Balancing Principle.  There is no "should", there is only what is.

In addition, to your own individual karma dynamics, you are simultaneously subject to endless layers of karmic principles that operate on every level of existence from the microscopic to the macroscopic. In addition to a person you are also a universe of electrons that are subject ot the karmic principle through quantum laws, the atoms in your body experience karma as do the molecules, the cells, the microbes and bacteria. You experience their collective karmas as an effect of their individual karmas. Every electron that reaches an excited level must return to a steady state, each cell that turns hostile needs to be neutralized, each bacteria that emits removes toxins is allowed to expand. There is an entire universe of birth and death, triumph and tragedy, sin and redemption, imbalance and balance happening within a single square millimetre of you index finger. It impacts you.

On a collective level, you exist as part of a family that has its own unique familial karma, a school/organization/group which has its own institutional karma, a faith/religion/spiritual circle which has its own spiritual karma, a nation which has its own national karma, a species which has its own specific karma, a planet which has its own planetary karma. When a tsunami wipes out an entire chunk of a population it is the law of balancing which is happening on a macroscopic level which trumps the karmic implications of the individual human being. Just like when you scratch your head, your desire to restore the balance of comfort to your scalp trumps the individual karma of a skin follicle on your scalp.

The balancing is continuous and never personal. Even and especially on the individual level, it is never personal. Your poverty is not the result of the neglect of some divine being in the sky, but an automatic prescription offered to you by your circumstances that address the symptoms of your psychological condition. Your psychological response to this prescription then lays the scaffolding to how the next circumstance will unfold. It is a truly organic process. You and your Life are not two separate entities, rather you form a symbiotic partnership where one follows the other and responds. Everything is guided whether consciously or unconsciously by the Principle of Balance.       

The State of Conscious Acceptance

Conscious Acceptance is a powerful way of life. It is a path that is fresh, spontaneous and centered in the present moment. It is the choice to align with reality, with the nature of things and with circumstances as they unfold. Ultimately, Conscious Acceptance is the result of being rooted in the present moment. It is the attitude which emerges in relationship with your life when your mind's need to control your reality relaxes.   Conscious Acceptance is not a thought, it is not a mental process, it is not a state produced by your mind but rather it is a state in which your mind exists.

Living in a Mind-made Reality

Your Mind is a processing tool that is powered by Consciousness. This Consciousness is not personal to you; it is not your property nor is it something that is unique to you. It is the one Consciousness that powers all of Life, all Minds - cellular, microbe, plant, animal and human; just like electricity powers a vast world of technology each one with different aptitudes and processing capabilities. The electricity is no one appliance's property but is utilized and shared by all technology equally and indiscriminately, regardless of the function of the appliance, regardless of any benefits or harm that may result. Similarly, your mind is powered by Consciousness and outputs versions of reality that are a result of Consciousness interacting with the Mind's mechanisms and controls. 

You are accustomed to living a story. It is the story of your life as related to you by your mind.  And this story relies on the history of a past and the promise of a future as its basis. Without a past and future, there is only this moment which does not offer enough yarn for your mind to weave its complex storylines. Without a past and future it is impossible to develop a plot line. Without a past and future, this protagonist that you are is hardly worth mention. There are no circumstances transcended, no tragedies endured, no joys experienced, no defeats or triumphs, no foes vanquished, no victims nor oppressors, no lessons learned, no self-realization, no transcendence. Without a past to compare with and a future to project against, this present moment becomes utterly meaningless to your mind. And so its interest with the present moment is only in context to the past and the future. As a result, the reality that you  live in is a state that is produced entirely by your mind, based on its abstractions.

This is in stark contrast to the true nature of reality. Because in reality, the present moment is all that exists. The past and future have no real existence of their own, rather they derive their relative existence from the present moment. The past only exists as memories and records, which in turn only exist now. You cannot experience the past; you can only experience a remnant of it in the form of some symbol of its existence. Yet even that symbol (whether it be a bullet hole in a wall, a fossil, a page of a history book or a memory in your mind) exists only in this moment. If it ceased to exist, the past it linked to would be simultaneously lost. Similarly, the future is a derived reality that only exists in connection with its symbols, in the form of your projections and predictions that in turn exist only now.

Your Mind can only produce and work within derived realities. It has no context to the present. Even when it refers to the present what it is really referring to is an image or a mentally constructed abstraction of the present. Just like a camera can capture only a 2 dimensional image of a 3 dimensional reality, similarly the mind is limited by design to create a static image of a dynamic reality. As long as your awareness is limited to the reality produced by the mind, you remain convinced that it is the only reality that exists. Even if you were to speculate that there exists some larger reality outside of it, this would only be another image generated by your mind which is just another extension of your current reality.

Awakening to Pure Consciousness

However, it can sometimes happen that as a result of certain catalysts such as severe psychological trauma, prolonged periods of depression or anxiety, intensely tragic circumstances and intensive meditative inquiry, the mind becomes temporarily debilitated. This may last for a period ranging from a few seconds to a few years. This 'event' that some traditions term as Awakening or Satori, is an experience of a profound and empty flow. It is the experience of Pure Consciousness. While some of the more rudimentary mental processes that allow you to interact with your environment in a basic way still continue operate, most of the thought processes that usually dominate and influence your experience of Life become temporarily disabled. This Awakening then becomes a life-changing experience for you because it is the first glimpse into the true Nature of Reality, unfiltered and undifferentiated by your Mind. Even when your Mind recovers and resumes its normal functioning, that experience of the Pure Consciousness lingers and becomes the driver that propels you on the quest for Self-Realization. 

This Awakening while powerful is usually insufficient in creating a permanent shift in your experience of reality. This is because there is a significant amount of mental conditioning that is still very dominant and which easily clouds your judgment. Your Mind continues to produce realities that are distorted because there are certain dysfunctions that are inherent within its own unique makeup. A faulty camera will continue to produce faulty images, regardless of the expertise of the photographer.

The purpose of Awakening is not to create some permanent state of effortless existence. Rather it has the potential to create a shift in the way in which you perceive your own mind and as a result changes the way in which you relate to it. Until Awakening you took your own mind's word as the law, but that single momentary experience of Pure Consciousness, exposes a whole new truth. This truth once known can never be unknown.

Your experience of Life now becomes one of constant inquiry and reflection. Even as you feel compelled to act in accordance with your past conditioning, you become simultaneously aware that this is only a means of perceiving reality and that ultimately everything you see, feel and experience is a choice you are making to comply with the story your mind is telling you. A rift now begins to appear between you and your mind whereas previously none existed. Previously you and your mind were one and the same and to suggest otherwise was ludicrous. But now, you realize that what you are always experiencing is some version of yourself and not your real Self and you begin to feel an internal rebellion brewing.

Becoming The Witness Self

Your experience of your own hypocrisy begins to generate great amounts of anxiety and suffering. In periods of deep meditation or contemplation you are able to connect with that state of Pure Consciousness you perceived in your moment of Awakening, yet this contact is often shaky and short-lived and leaves you hankering for more. Even as you realize that you cannot attempt to grasp for it, you grasp for it. You can't help it; you are compelled by a driving sense of lack and desperation. You begin to perceive yourself as two Selves - the one who operates beyond the Mind ie the Witness Self and the one that exists as an image of the mind ie the Ego.

Tired of being used as a pawn, you begin battling, denying and rejecting your mind and its thoughts, dismissing them, chastising them, suppressing them. Your Ego (the person that you are under the influence of your thoughts) becomes your sworn enemy and on the quest for Self Realization you convince yourself that the ultimate challenge is for you to slay this Ego. There is now a clear line of demarcation drawn between you and your mind. You have set yourself up as the 3rd party Witness to the phenomena of your life. You begin to regard everything from a distance, observing all the events, relationships and activities of your life as different derivations of your mind, which you clearly want to avoid. You begin to value the moments in which your mind's activity subsides and are wary, even afraid of moments where your mind gathers momentum. You being to develop more and more sophisticated strategies for avoiding your own mind. These may take the form of certain philosophical perspectives, self-help strategies or spiritual outlooks. You manage to achieve an uneasy status quo where you develop a sort of cold and aloof relationship with your own mind and its processes, a kind of cold war. Every thought that occurs is met with criticism and harsh scrutiny and emotions begin to be regarded as weaknesses.

Yet, despite having achieved this distance there is a sense that this detached state of existence is not the liberation you were craving. Even though this detachment from a mind that previously dominated, even tormented your experience, was initially perceived to be liberating, after a while the experience becomes arid, fruitless and unfulfilling. The realization then dawns that true liberation is not an experience outside the Mind but can only happen within and through it. The true purpose of that initial Awakening moment is now seen. It is to bring awareness to the many ways in which the mind malfunctions and is constricted and to heal those constrictions to allow a steadier and more unobstructed flow of Pure Consciousness. 

Reintegrating with the Mind

At one point you see that this Witness Self that is observing the Ego at work and is keeping it at an arm's length is just another version of the Ego.

The real experience of Pure Consciousness is really one of effortless flow and of non-separation. It is the experience of  No-Self - a Self that cannot be identified, referred to or localized. It is not a Self in the ways the Mind perceives a Self to be. It is not a person. Rather anything and everything experienced is felt as the Self.

However, when the mind reflects upon this experience of Pure Consciousness in hindsight it generates an image of an enlightened Witness Self that experienced that state and is somehow separate and other than the Ego. This is enlightened Witness Self is then accredited with being that experience of Pure Consciousness but really what it is, is an imposter created and perpetuated by the mind in  a kind of mental espionage. When you see that what this Witness Self is actually an alter ego you created in order to cope with the onslaught of your Mind, you are faced with a strange paradox. It is that you exist in two simultaneous realities in every moment. One is that of Pure Consciousness, of pure potentiality that encompasses everything. And the other is that of the Mind as an Ego and an entity that is in interaction with the world and the environment. The one lays the foundation for the other and the two are in fact inseparable. Without Pure Consciousness the Mind cannot exist and without the Mind Pure Consciousness would have no means of being aware of its own existence. They both work in tandem.

What remains then is to develop and enhance the flow of Pure Consciousness by smoothing and refining the mechanism of the Mind. This is achieved by a process of Conscious Acceptance. The Self that you are in any given moment is constantly shifting and changing depending on your experience of the moment. When the Mind subsides, you are the No-Self of Pure Consciousness. When the Mind is at work, you are the Ego with its personality and viewpoints. Who you are is the image of whatever your experience reflects to you in the moment. You true identity is the Awareness that precedes it all.

Developing an Attitude of Acceptance

Working with rather than against the Mind, your attitude becomes one of surrendering to the experience of the moment in whatever form it takes. You are able to see that resisting or chastising your Mind for its dysfunctions or constrictions only creates another dysfunction or constriction. You no longer buy into the stories the mind creates nor do you resist them. Instead, you see these stories as relevant clues to unearthing yet another dysfunction that needs healing, another constriction than needs relaxing. Only by accepting its existence can you allow the wound to heal. Your journey becomes one of discovery and your attitude one of compassion.

You are not afraid to experience emotions that are difficult because you can see that difficult emotions are like compressed gases that build in pressure until they explode. To gently release the emotion each time it arises without denying it nor identifying with it, is the means to depressurizing its negative effects. Ultimately, all emotions, even those perceived as negative ones are beneficial. It is only when an emotion is suppressed or incited that it begins to pressurize.

Your thoughts are passing phenomena that have only a relative reality and relevance. Any thought that persists is indicative of a direction in which you may need to focus your attention. Excess negative thoughts are indicative of an aspect of yourself that needs healing, while excessive positive thoughts are indicative of aspects of yourself that have inflated beyond proportions and may need to be deflated as they also have negative repercussions. Each thought process, each emotion has its own flavor and points to another direction that you can further relax and open to the flow of Pure Consciousness.

This attitude of Consciously Accepting your thoughts, emotions, mental positions as well as perceptions of the world around you can only happen because you are simultaneously aware of yourself as being rooted as in the Present Moment. The present moment is no different than the experience of Pure Consciousness and the recognition of No-Self. They are all different perspectives on the same one undifferentiated reality. With one foot firmly anchored in the Present you step into the reality of the Mind.   

Conscious Acceptance develops a more and more balanced view and expression of Life. As more constrictions are released and more dysfunctions healed, what emerges is an ordinary yet deeply stable sense of existence and a Life that is experienced as effortless flow. While the experience of the Ego is one that is constantly refining and deepening, this refining and deepening is allowed to happen from the deeper perspective of Pure Consciousness that is always already whole and never lacking. The moment of Awakening that you once experienced as a profound moment of clarity has gradually become your normal experience of Life.

You clearly see that you are both the Creator and the creation, the Author of your story and the protagonist of your novel; you are the audience to the drama that you yourself have directed.