The Mystery

In lucid dreams, dream characters sometimes give the impression of having consciousness of their own. They speak and behave logically, perform amazing cognitive feats and express in their behavior distinct purposes and feelings, but do they have a consciousness of their own? Probably many scientists will not hesitate to answer the question with 'no' or to reject it outright as being meaningless. To avoid rash judgments, we wish to give a precise explication of the question by distinguishing it from other interpretations.  In stating that dream characters have consciousness of their own, we do not mean that these are independent beings in the way that occultists and spiritualists think of ghosts or spirits. Rather it is our view that all dream characters, including the dream ego, arise in the brain of the dreamer. This argument is supported by the working hypothesis of psychophysical parallelism or isomorphism. Whereas sensory inputs tend to dominate in the contents and the orga

What if everything you knew about the universe was just the tip of the cosmic iceberg? Imagine questions that have troubled the greatest minds for centuries—mysteries that stretch our understanding of space, time, and existence itself. These enigmas not only puzzle us but also beckon us to explore deeper into the cosmos.  From the elusive dark matter and dark energy that together comprise 95% of the universe, to the perplexing matter-antimatter asymmetry that suggests an imbalance at the very birth of reality, these mysteries are not merely scientific queries—they are gateways to profound existential insights. Dark matter, detected indirectly through its gravitational effects, helps hold galaxies together, and yet, it does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, eluding direct observation. Its counterpart, dark energy, propels the universe’s accelerating expansion and is possibly a property of space itself, challenging our most fundamental understandings of physics. Antimatter, seemingly e

Over 100 consciousness researchers signed a public letter condemning one of the most popular theories of consciousness—the integrated information theory—as pseudoscience. This in turn prompted strong responses from other researchers in the field. Despite decades of research, there’s little sign of consensus on consciousness, with several rival theories still in contention. Your consciousness is what it’s like to be you. It’s your experiences of color and sound and smell; your feelings of pain, joy, excitement or tiredness. It’s what makes you a thinking, sentient being rather than an unfeeling mechanism. Why is it so hard to make progress on consciousness. The core difficulty is that consciousness defies observation. You can’t look inside someone’s brain and see their feelings and experiences. Science does deal with things that can’t be observed, such as fundamental particles, quantum wave functions, maybe even other universes. But consciousness poses an important difference: In all of

Features of consciousness difficult to understand in terms of conventional neuroscience have evoked application of quantum theory, which describes the fundamental behavior of matter and energy. Aspects of quantum theory (e.g. quantum coherence) and of a newly proposed physical phenomenon of quantum wave function 'self-collapse' (objective reduction: OR - Penrose, 1994) are essential for consciousness, and occur in cytoskeletal microtubules and other structures within each of the brain's neurons. The particular characteristics of microtubules suitable for quantum effects include their crystal-like lattice structure, hollow inner core, organization of cell function and capacity for information processing. Conformational states of microtubule subunits (tubulins) are coupled to internal quantum events, and cooperatively interact (compute) with other tubulins. Macroscopic coherent superposition of quantum-coupled tubulin conformational states occurs throughout significant brain