I was having this conversation with one of our anesthesiologists (I usually veer away from these discussions at work, in fear of an impending urinalysis and I was surprised to hear him (who I assumed to be a strict materialist) state that while the use of f-mri's has been able to 'link' regions of brain activity with lived experience, he cannot account for the process of consciousness in humans and believes his colleagues who assume an entirely neurological origin of consciousness to be naive. This guy is one of the 'top-docs' (a ridiculous concept, but there it is) in the US.

So, I pose this question to fellow psychonauts, whose opinions on here I have grown to greatly respect.

Do you folks believe that all awareness/consciousness is a product of the activity of the brain? Is it a possibility that, as some have suggested, the brain acts as more of a receiver and concentrator, and that awareness exists in the universe writ large? (Similar to the forces of physics - gravity, weak force, strong force, etc)

I have been reading some lay-person friendly quantum physicists describe that while we are accustomed to viewing the world as separate, independent objects, if you had a very powerful microscope and looked at a person's brain, you would see tiny particles popping in and out of existence, inseparable from the 'soup' of other particles that surround it. In other words, all that exists physically is one large continuum, without boundaries, and without inherent connection to each other. If conscious awareness occurs in one section of the inseparable soup, how could it be distinct from the remainder of the universe?

I wholly concede that the 'ego', or the sense of I (memories, preferences, personality traits) are a product of my lived experiences, and will likely disappear when my body does, but is it completely crazy to assume that the 'I' that is not my ego, the primal awareness is produced non-locally? This experience has been the gem of all my psychedelic travels.

Thanks for your interest

first you have to define consciousness, and its parameters. if one determines that consciousness is awareness perceived within the neural networks of the brain (which is obviously apparent) then the "burden of proof" lies on the person proposing consciousness originating elsewhere, i.e. provide evidence sans anecdotes. Quantum physics provides a mathematical framework to describe energy transition, but it does not define consciousness.

Thanks for your reply,

It's true, I poorly defined what I intended to mean by consciousness in my post. That term has so many connotations, many of them vague and new-agey. I guess what I meant is 'awareness', or a sort of loosely defined inner world.

I also agree that the burden of proof would lie with those making claims that awareness may be possible without an embodiment. I am not making that claim, I am just curious. What piques my interest re: my layman's understanding of quantum physics is the notion that everything in existence is essentially the same stuff, the same matter, the same elements, etc. How is it that our inner worlds of experience (existence of which is largely anecdotal) arises from the organization of this stuff.

Is awareness special/unique? Is it just a novel property of electron exchanges in our brains?

I don't have any of these answers. I like to hear what other people think.

Thanks again.

Based on my personal experiences and research into correlations with other's experiences, I lean towards the possibility that external reality is a holographic construct created by our individual consciousness, which in turn is a fractal extension of the Original or Primordial Consciousness- the "Godhead". This original, non-dual awareness may have split itself up fractally into a duality awareness of subject/object so that it may experience itself in different ways, in different forms, and on different levels, so that it can experience perception in all of its unique and glorious manifestations.

In other words:

(From The Cracking Tower, by Jim DeKorne.)

"What better way for God to know himself than to divide his awareness so that he can observe objectively as creator and subjectively as creation?"

The author also talks about how many esoteric philosophies refer to "us" as being thoughts in the Mind of God- "objects" that "Consciousness-Without-An-Object" has been imagining for eons:

"One of the first things we learn is that emanation consists of a hierarchy of awareness. The Kabbalah explains that the Ein-Sof (Logos, Brahman, whatever) made ten emanations called Sephiroth, vessels to contain the light (consciousness) pouring into them from Consciousness-Without-An-Object's imagination. These vessels weren't able to contain this outpouring, and in what Kabbalists describe as a "cosmic catastrophe", the vessels shattered in into innumerable pieces and scattered throughout the realms of hyperspace, each fragment containing a spark of divine light (that's us). The main task of every Kabbalist is to "raise the sparks" of his or her own separated consciousness to reunite with the Ein-Sof that emanated them."

"Every sentient entity in the multiverse is both an observer and an object of perception, and the source from which they emanate is the Primary Observer, which is unadulterated Consciousness itself. Before emanation, perception can not take place because perception involves both an observer and that which is observed."

and

"[The universe is apparently] constructed (and thus in such as way as to be able) to see itself. But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and multilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself...But, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore, false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself." (55)

"Thus consciousness is prior to observation. Combine this logical necessity with emanation and we see that whatever the Cosmic Mind imagines cannot be separated from its source. It follows then, that as the matter-energy created within this explosive act of imagination expands and fragments, becoming ever more complex, each emerging monad of fresh awareness perceives as a subjective fractal of the objective One Mind in whatever dimension it finds itself. Hence universe becomes Multiverse." (Big Bang?)

---

Disclaimer: I am not making any claims, so the "Burden of proof" is not on me.

In the famous TV analogy where the TV represents your consciousness, one would be incorrect to assume that the TV is generating the content/program on the television. It is merely receiving the signal non-locally. As with fMRI scans of the brain, if one were to scan and analyze the electrical activity of the various circuits and modules in the television, one would find clear correlations between the audio and video being created along with the electrical activity in the hardware. Now if one were to slash, or damage one of the circuits for example (or modify it in any number of ways), one would expect to see distortions and abnormalities in the television...and yet one would still be incorrect to assume that just because the physical intervention can create this effect, that it is the television set that is generating the content. Similarly just because we can alter our neurochemistry with neurotransmitters or affect the electrical activity with TMS or things like that, does not fully indicate that consciousness is generated by the brain. I'm not sure if this satisfies the "burden of proof" nor do I really care

I don't think our brain creates consciousness, I think it modulates it. It's just my conclusion considering the evidence I have now.

Biological complexity can account for the amount and quality of sensory input, but perception does not equal consciousness. Consciousness occurs in the absence of sensory input, like in an isolation device. Then we might think that consciousness is a sophisticated emergent process, an epiphenomenon of the feedback loops in our neurons, that only happens when a certain critical neural mass has been achieved. But should we assume that critical mass is exclusive to humans? Exclusive to humans and certain animals, the ones that show self awareness the ways we do, in spite of having a substantially different brain?

Where do we trace the critical line? I think consciousness is widely expressed in different qualities in our animal kingdom. By often giving consciousness a definition that matches the particularities of our human biology and our human timing, we fall once again in anthropocentrism and it's not hard to see that has not been particularly helpful in science so far.

Then, consciousness seems to manifest in many different qualities and those qualities seem to be a function of physical processes, but in order to see consciousness as a mere (albeit astonishing) by-product of those processes, invoking the burden of proof is a two-edged sword. The problem with the burden of proof is that it's in both sides. Like Global said, neurology has shown how altering the device produces an alteration in consciousness, but that doesn't prove consciousness is produced by the machine.

Neurology cannot prove that there is no consciousness after death. And playing with the same empiric reasoning, the way to prove there is (or at least, to prove that consciousness transcends our biological processes) would be for instance to report conscious experiences that occur in spite of a lack of proper brain activity and can be confirmed by external witnesses. Or to document episodes of memories of distant places or people, or verifiable remote vision in NDE experiences. Or shared psychedelic experiences between individuals, to mention a few. That is, inter-subjective experiences. And actually all of those have been reported.

The amount of stories I've read and seen about, whether they happened in a lab controlled environment or not, makes me think that consciousness manifests itself through our biology, not because of it. And I try to set aside my own solo subjective experiences when coming to this.

Just my opinion.

Great replies folks, thank you.

I'm a big fan of the tv receiver analogy, as it is the only thing that makes sense to me. As amazing as our brain boxes are, the experience of being a conscious, sentient being just seems too 'BIG' to be housed in the turnip that is our brains. I have been inclined lately to consider all that exists as essentially the same thing... I was just reading something from Alan Watts along these lines... if we consider that the big bang was the origin of all that is in this universe, then we are by extension, the same stuff as the rest of the universe. Trying to isolate us from the rest would be like dipping a cup into the ocean and claiming that this cup of water and materials is different than all the rest.

So, following this logic, conscious experience is a component of the universe, it is one of the things that the universe 'does'. I remember something from Watts about abandoning the mental use of nouns, where everything is distinguished from everything else. All that is, is verb/action. We are one of the things that the universe 'does'. It is a comforting thought. Allows much more room for the concept of disembodied/post-mortem consciousness.

Interesting stuff

Great thread , good read , keep going

The scientific part of me thinks we need to first establish whether or not consciousness could be an emergent phenomenon of a complex biological system perhaps a bit like fluidity is an emergent phenomenon of the coalescence of (numerous) water molecules.

The other part of me thinks this question in part touches on the even 'bigger' questions.And, IMHO, the two aspects need not be mutually exclusive.

I dont think finding out that consciousness is a phenomenon that emerges within a given system really says anything about the idea of consciousness being the foundation of reality itself.

We are talking about 2 defferent levels..yes I think they are part of the same whole..but if consciousness can arise within a system as an emergent phenomenon than it implies that the system is a linear system..and when we talk about the foundations of the cosmos itself, or "god" or w/e we are talking about something I would assume is non-linear(or at least not linear in the sense that we understand the word).

So all you can really do is say you have observed consciousness in *this* linear system/level as an emergent phenomenon..but if we are talking about it's relevance within a non-local, non-linear level of reality we cant extrapolate from that to explain what happens from a linear vantage point..

The reason you cannot do this is becasue you would be then imposing rules observed from that linear vantage point, onto a non linear vantage point. That would not really make much sense. I think people often try to do this though not realizing they are just projecting their own linear mindset onto other processes that they dont understand from a linear standpoint.

Even the way I am trying to explain this I sort of fall victim to my own linear boundries.

There is sort of a catch 22 here though..becasue if consciousness is fundamental from a non linear/non local perspective, than it seems hard to imagine why it would not be from a more subjective linear perspective..it perplexes the linear mind to even concider the implications. This is why I think that linear models of reality are not complete.

Quote:

The Observer is the Observed
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

Personally, I believe we are all of the same pool of energy and consciousness is just a tightening of that energy.

I have yet to hear a satisfactory definition of consciousness. If we can’t adequately define it, then what exactly are we talking about? “It” is something we all know, something we claim to “have” (something I often claim is the only thing of whose existence we can be certain), yet none of us can really say what “it” is. Maybe the “hard problem” of consciousness should be called the “really, really hard problem” of consciousness.

I’ve tried to define consciousness via a process of elimination: If we remove from the definition all of those things that don’t seem to define consciousness, then what remains is consciousness. Right? The only problem – after removing all those things that aren’t consciousness, such as “wakefulness”, “awareness”, “perception”, “response to stimulus”, “self-reflection”, etc. – there seems to be nothing left!

To address the original question, and putting aside the problem of defining consciousness, it’s ultimately a question of belief.

The prevailing paradigm – the “primacy of matter” paradigm – claims that matter and energy are fundamental and “real”, and that everything we observe and experience, including our internal subjective experience, can be explained in terms of fundamental physical laws. It claims that the physical universe exists independently of consciousness. (How would you go about proving that claim? Seems to me you’d need consciousness to prove that the universe exists independently of consciousness!) Materialists claim that consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” resulting from extremely complex interactions among billions and billions of simple (and non-conscious) particles and forces between them. The burden of proof on materialists claiming that consciousness arises out of complex biological processes is indeed quite a burden. There is no such proof, and I’m not sure if there can ever be.

The “primacy of consciousness” paradigm claims that the material world is a result or consequence of consciousness. I find this appealing. After all, I know I’m conscious. (At least I think I am… or “something” is conscious, if not “me”.) But there is no proof that this paradigm is correct either.

I would like to point out that the simple idea that God divided his awareness up and actually experiences through his creation is sweet. And since at some level in this theory we actually are God then I want to congratualate us on being freaking awesome.

Excellent stuff.

Regarding the primacy of matter argument, something that has always intrigued me with this idea is the inexplicable jump from 'non-thinking' particles to thinking/experiencing/sentient beings just through the process of intricate organization. The same elements C, H, N, O, P, S that make up my desk table make me, and (exaggerating, but you get the idea) could by this argument become conscious beings if this desk table were intricately arranged as our nervous systems are. If phenomenological experience is an emergent phenomenon of the exchange of chemicals in a system, then it should be possible in any sufficiently organized system.

Another take may be to give these 'non-thinking' particles more credit. The quantum world, even through our tiny understanding, seems to be a ridiculously complex, bizarre and interesting place. These little guys give rise to an entire universe.

Maybe we will never have these answers, it is just so much fun to think about. I appreciate the wealth of great responses.

This is the stuff I live for! (Alternately, this is the stuff I live from). Either way, you get the point. Thanks to the OP and to those who have replied with insight.
Spangles

The universe is not one continuum without boundaries except at an extremely tiny quantum scale. Particles popping in and out of existence is what exists in a complete vacuum. Also note this description necessarily involves time passing. So for an analogy: if you are driving along with your face very close to the road you would not be able to see that it was not uniform and there were pebbles and potholes and tar etc. So basically that idea doesn't do it for me. However, quantum physics defy intuition and a lot of what is talked about it is still hypothesis. But just this basic fact, that some of it is incredibly weird and defies everything we would expect from our experiences on our size scale totally opens up the possibly of consciousness having sources outside ones body.

On the other hand our brain is probably the most complex thing that has ever existed in the universe. The human brain is estimated to have 100 trillion synapses. Within those there are nearly 1500 different proteins that work together to form a sort of machine that processes the signals (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/science/21brain.html). Add to that the fact that neurons can fire 1000 times per second. I can easily believe everything we experience could be explain by our physical brain, but even if that is true I have doubts we could ever come to understand it.

And then there's the third party possibility that we don't really exist at all like we think we do: http://www.nytimes.com/2.../15/science/15brain.html

Similarly a theory has been put out that we could be living in a super advance computer simulation from the future. That one is interesting when thinking about the Uncertainty Principle and the various physical properties that are quantized, sort of how pixels are the quantization of current visual computer simulation outputs.
They are actually working on a way to test this theory out.
http://www.washington.ed...-say-idea-can-be-tested/

You blew my mind... All that you were talking about, I was thinking similar things about it hours ago.


I imagined to be something like that, but by looking into things happening now in our planet (money replacing energy, which in our case is time) and electricity playing the main role in life, its assumed that if we replace the way of perceiving "time" as "money" to "time" as "characters", we will soon realize that we are trully characters of our own creation. But at the moment, look around you, you are all characters from the internet, knowing yourself through the world of DMT, which is the world of life. In this case you can literally assume that our internet (electrical one) is connected to the living internet (imagination/DMT). In this case you can clearly assume yourselves as a living lightning, because all your imagination is spread throughout the internet. If the internet lived long enough to see itself being the lightning, it will assume that its a creation of Earth.

Fantastic read so far! Could this perhaps become a sticky?



To me this quote has a lot of meaning, mainly because there has been many times where I have encountered beings/people in my dreams who have told me quite an interesting thought...usually these dreams come around when I've experienced my highest levels of depression, almost as if whoever/whatever is trying to snap me out of my depression, cause it seems to work every time, they would say something along the lines of: "If I were to say the phrase 'I am', and you were to also say 'I am', we would be taking about the same 'I', the same is true for anyone and everyone", in a way the thought would make me realize that we are all in this together, and that what I was feeling was not isolated, as we are all the same deep down inside... So that may sound like I'm going off topic but if you think about the concept of "I am" as being the same "I" regardless of who says (or thinks) it, than you can see how it relates to the quote by Jim DeKorne.

Having trouble putting these spice world concepts into words... but here goes...

Is it possible that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter?
Perhaps aggregates of matter share a quantum virtual "information" particle field,
linking them closely with each other, such that they share information?
i.e. Matter stores information, but cannot manipulate it.

Perhaps in living things this information field (perhaps the higgs field?)
is in a state of non linear dynamic flux, or vortex flow - such that
the life form can store and manipulate information.

At some level of complexity, the information vortex generated and sustained
within living matter becomes capable of modeling itself, thus self consciousness.

Seems maybe the body/brain is a structure to create / maintain / localise
a sufficiently complex information vortex, in the material world?

Maybe these ideas just shift the questions - to what is information....