Consciousness

October 14, 2014 - Does consciousness create the material world? Before we answer this question, its
important to first go into what the material world is actually composed of at a fundamental level.
Reality is not simply made of tiny physical pieces, like a bunch of marbles or tiny little bowling
balls. Molecules are made out of atoms, and atoms are made out of subatomic particles such as protons
and electrons which are 99.99999% empty space and electrical spin. These are then made out of quarks,
which then are a part of a Superstring field which consists of vibrating strings that give rise to
fundamental particles based on the nature of their vibration.
We interact with a world of physical objects, but this is only due to the way our brains translate sensory
data. At the smallest and most fundamental scales of nature, the idea of physical reality is nonexistent. From the Nobel Prize winning father of quantum mechanics Neils Bohr, Everything we call
real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. In quantum mechanics hasnt profoundly
shocked you yet, you dont understand it well enough. When you touch your hands together, it is
really just empty space touching more empty space, with the slightest ingredient of energetic spin of
these minuscule particles. The constituents of matter have absolutely no physical structure.
This is important to understand, because if we think of the world of quantum physics as being a world
of bowling balls and marbles, then the idea of consciousness creating reality doesnt really make sense.
But understanding that reality is a cosmic concoction of non-localized energy and empty space, it
becomes clear that our thoughts and the signals they register in the brain also have these same
properties at their smallest level. Our thoughts are also an activity of the universe, and all activities
take place within the same quantum realm prior to manifesting in physical reality.
Consciousness is one of the hard problems in science. There is no way to explain how something as
material as chemical and physical processes can give rise to something as immaterial as experience.
There is no reason why subjective experience exists at all, or how sentience evolved. Nature would
operate just as well without subjectivity, and when we actually try to scientifically investigate the origin
and physics of consciousness, we get hints that maybe consciousness and reality are not as separate as
material science would have us think.
A quantum object (such as an electron) can be at more than one place at the same time. It can be
measured as a wave smeared out in space, and can be located at several different points across this
wave. This is called the wave property.
A quantum object ceases to exist here and simultaneously appears in existence over there without have
EVER traveled the intervening space. This is known as the quantum jump. It essentially teleports.
A manifestation of one quantum object, cause by our observations, simultaneously influences its
correlated twin object, no matter how far apart they are. Fire an electron and a proton off of an atom.
Whatever happens to the electron, the exact same or exact opposite will happen to the proton. This is
called quantum-action-at-a-distance. Einstein called this spooky action at a distance.
A quantum object cannot be said to manifest in ordinary space-time reality until we observe it as a
particle. The quantum object exists indefinitely as a non-local wave until it is being observed directly.

Consciousness
Consciousness literally collapses the wave-function of a particle.
This last point is interesting, because it implies that without a conscious observer present to collapse
this wave, it would remain physically un-manifested in a state of potentiality . Observation not only
disturbs what has to be measured, it produces the effect. This was verified in what is known as the
double-slit experiment, where the presence of a conscious observer changed the behaviour of an
electron from a wave state to a particle state. This is known as the observer effect and completely
shakes what we assume to be true about the physical world.
The findings of this experiment were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, in which the
scientists summarized saying The introduction of a which- path (welcher Weg) detector for
determining the actual path taken by the particle inevitably involved coupling the particle to a
measuring environment, which in turn results in dephasing (suppression of interference). Thats quite
a mouthful, but it basically means that the measurement system used to detect the activity of the
particle effected the behaviour of that particle.
As scientist Dr. Dean Radin said in a paper replicating the double-slit experiment, We compel the
electron to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of the measurement. Now, a
common response to this is Its not us who is measuring the electron, its the machine that is doing the
observation. A machine is simply an extension of our consciousness. This is like saying Its not me
who is observing the boat way across the lake, it is the binoculars. The machine does not itself observe
anything any more than a computer that interprets sound waves can listen to a song.
This has led some scientists to speculate that without consciousness, the universe would exist
indeterminately as a sea of quantum potentiality. In other words, physical reality cannot first exist
without subjectivity. Without consciousness, there is no physical matter. This is known as the
Participatory Anthropic Principle, and was first proposed by physicist Dr. John Wheeler. Essentially,
any possible universe that we can imagine that does not have conscious observers in it can be ruled out
immediately. Consciousness is therefore the ground of being and must have existed prior to the
physical universe. Consciousness literally creates the physical world.
These findings provide huge implications regarding how we can understand our interconnectedness
with the external world. We create our reality is used to refer to the fact that our thoughts create the
perspective we have of the world, but we now have a more concrete and literal understanding of this
phrase. We actually give rise to the physical universe with our subjectivity.
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot
get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing,
postulates consciousness. Max Planck, Nobel Prize winning originator of quantum theory, as quoted
in The Observer (25 January 1931).