The Unification Of Physics And Consciousness

And so Buddhist contemplatives and others have found multiple dimensions, have found a dimension of consciousness that lies beneath our ordinary psyche, the conscious and subconscious minds called the substrate consciousness, which is blissful, luminous, non-conceptual, and does not arise from matter, does not arise from neuronal activity in the brain, does not arise from matter of any kind. It's not material. It does not arise from material. It is conditioned by matter but does not arise from matter; a deeper dimension of consciousness. Those who have accessed this substrate consciousness, this subtle continuum of mental consciousness, have used this as a platform rather like launching a Hubble telescope beyond the atmosphere of our planet to be able to probe into deep space beyond the distortions of the atmosphere, of contamination in the atmosphere, light pollution and so forth, enabling them to probe much more deeply into the space of the universe. Likewise, those who have launched their minds into orbit, into the substrate consciousness, have used this as a platform for probing even more deeply into the nature of reality as a whole and not only the reality of their own individual mental continuum. They've discovered a whole dimension of reality called the Form Realm, which is more subtle than our constructs of matter and of mind at a coarse level, a deeper dimension of reality out of which this dualistic reality of mind and matter, subject and object, emerges; a Form Realm. We find a comparable notion, a hypothesis, from the writings the collaborative writings of Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, one of the greatest psychologists, one of the great physicists of the 20th century who proposed an Unus Mundus, a unitary reality that transcends, that underlies, this coarse physical reality of mind and matter on this coarse level. 

Buddhism goes beyond this to propose that all phenomena are empty of any inherent nature or identity of their own. All phenomena arise relative to the means by which the phenomena themselves are apprehended. So perceptual phenomena, so sounds and colors, smells and tastes, all arise and exist only relative to the sense perceptions of them. They do not exist independently out in the objective world or inside the brain. They exist only relatively in this interface between sensory perception and sensory objects. This is a truth widely known in modern neuroscience, modern physics. But the Middle Way view in Buddhism - this perfection of wisdom tradition in Buddhism - goes beyond this and suggests that all such things that we imagined to exist independently of perceptions such as particles and fields, waves, space and time, these too are human constructs. We have defined them. And these constructs of particles, waves, matter, the physical and so forth, these too exist only relative to the mind that conceives them. They do not exist independently in some absolutely objective universe. All these phenomena arise in a mode of dependently related events, a process of dependent origination, nothing having its own absolute or inherent nature. This view also finds its reflection or a parallel in modern quantum mechanics, in the writings of John Wheeler, Anton Zeilinger and many others, physicists who have probed so deeply into the nature of the physical world that they found that in fact, we know nothing about the physical world as it exists independently of our systems of measurement, as it exists independently of our conceptual frameworks. All that we know of the universe is what the universe reveals to us in response to our questions and our systems of measurement. In other words, the very concept of matter is something that emerges from information, and information is what we glean from our systems of measurement and there is no information without someone who is informed, without the observer, without consciousness. 

So now consciousness turns out to play a central role in the universe that we know of. When you take the principles of quantum mechanics and apply this to the universe at large, you come up with a field or discipline called quantum cosmology which suggests that if you do not introduce the observer-participant into this scientific understanding of the universe, in fact the entire universe is frozen, the problem of frozen time, the universe does not evolve. There is no change. There is no evolution of the universe unless you introduce an observer-participant who separates the objective world from the subjective observer. The objective world there out there, the physical. The subjective observer over here. Without that invasion into the fabric of reality, that intrusion into the fabric of reality, without the participant, the observer superimposing the sense of now relative to which then there is past and there is future, there is no time. It sounds like mysticism, but in fact this is a direct inference from the equations of quantum cosmology. 

This view, there's a strong parallel here with a view that is regarded by many as the pinnacle of Buddhist thought called the Great Perfection or Dzogchen, in which beyond all these dualistic appearances there is posited a primordial dimension of reality that consists of, is pervaded by primordial consciousness that is non-dual, from an absolute space of phenomena, beyond relative space time, which is indivisible from a primordial energy, an energy of consciousness itself, out of which all other forms of energy are derivative. A unitary reality, a reality of perfect symmetry, which consists of undifferentiated energy/space/consciousness. And only with dualistic grasping do we freeze this universe such that we find ourselves inhabiting a world of this and that, of congealed crystallized objects, congealed crystallized subjects. Remarkably similar to the view of quantum cosmology, the very notion that time itself is relative, that there is no absolute time, there is no absolute past. Even the past rises relative to the types of questions we ask and the systems of measurement we devise in the present. The past only exists relative to the present. The future exists only relative to the present. The present exists only relative to the past and the future. None of these are absolute. Space is not absolute. Mind is not absolute. 

Can this be realized? The primary way of bringing this to immediate experience is through the practice of meditation, dissolving one's ordinary psyche, dissolving this like a snowflake melting into liquid water, dissolving the psyche into the substrate consciousness. Using this as a platform for investigating into the very nature of the mind. Using practices called vipassana or contemplative insight, probing into the very nature of the mind to realize the absence of inherent nature of one's own mind and then perceiving from this, the absence of inherent nature of all phenomena, the emptiness of even the dualism of subject and object, and from that insight into the emptiness of all phenomena, then resting in profound inactivity stillness until even the substrate consciousness dissolves, melts, into primordial consciousness, pristine awareness, and one gains a non-dual realization that in fact one's own identity, the essential nature of one's own mind, has never been anything other than primordial consciousness, indivisible from the absolute space of phenomena, indivisible from the energy of primordial consciousness. One finally has come to know who one is and one is non-dual, from the ultimate ground of the entire universe, and one is awakened, and this is what it means to become a Buddha.

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