“Consciousness is the ground of all being. If you can understand consciousness, you understand the universe.”
“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
For millennia, the accepted paradigm has been that consciousness – that ineffable experience of awareness and self—results only from the complex chemical and electrical interactions happening in the brain. Rooted in reductionism, this view posits that the human brain, a sophisticated network of neurons and synapses driven by complex chemical and electrical interactions, generates our ideas, emotions, and experiences. However, an increasing number of experts and scholars are starting to doubt this long-held belief and investigate the notion that consciousness could not be limited to the physical confines of the brain.
The reductionist, materialist view of consciousness can adequately explain many facets of brain function and behavior. Neuroscience has made enormous progress in tracing neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), the minimal brain mechanisms jointly necessary for particular conscious experiences. Methods including sensory masking, binocular rivalry, brain lesion investigations, and transcranial magnetic/electric/ultrasound stimulation have allowed scientists to investigate how conscious perception relates to brain activity.
Despite these developments, the underlying question of how consciousness results from brain activity remains unresolved. The “hard problem” of consciousness presents itself in attempting to elucidate how subjective experience arises from just physical processes. Critics of the reductionist view contend that even the most thorough knowledge of NCCs could not be enough to close the explanatory distance between brain activity and conscious experience. This is because some experiences, often discarded as “anomalies,” directly challenge the idea that the brain alone generates consciousness. These include accounts of people seeing material or locations from great distances (remote viewing), sharing or feeling another person’s ideas or emotions, or displaying cognitive skills even with significant brain damage. If veridical, these events imply that consciousness could not be dependent on the physical substrate of the brain.
According to theories of non-local consciousness, awareness exists as a fundamental feature of reality rather than being limited to, or produced by, the brain. From this perspective, the brain allows us to access and experience this universal awareness by functioning as a filter, receiver, or transducer. This perspective aligns perfectly with Eastern and ancient philosophical traditions that see consciousness as the base of existence from which the physical world emerges. It also reflects the findings of quantum physics: everything we perceive as being real derives from subatomic particles having no substance and only comes into existence when consciously observed.
As mentioned, remote viewing is the capacity to see far-off places or events beyond the reach of physical senses. From 1972 to 1995, the US government conducted a covert operation to investigate the possibilities of using remote viewing for espionage. Comprising more than 500 operational missions and several hundred controlled experimental trials, the program was known as “Project Stargate.” Research carried out under this initiative produced statistically meaningful findings not ascribed to methodological errors. In the so-called Ganzfeld Experiments, an isolated “sender” attempts to communicate telepathically with a “receiver” under sensory deprivation. Meta-analyses of numerous Ganzfeld investigations show a hit rate somewhat above chance, implying the existence of a non-conventional information transfer capability.
People who have near-death experiences (NDEs) commonly describe deep experiences including out-of-body sensations, meetings departed loved ones, and a deep sense love and the transcendence of space and time. Further contradicting the idea that awareness is limited to the brain are certain NDE experiencers who claim veridical impressions of events occurring at a distance from their physical bodies.
Likewise, accounts of people showing savant-like abilities despite cognitive disabilities, speaking foreign languages fluently without prior study (xenoglossy), or possessing skills and knowledge they could not have obtained through conventional means abound. Documented cases of people with severely damaged or nonexistent brains who show remarkably intact cognitive ability further bring into question materialistic, reductionist notions.
Whether local or non-local, we must develop theories of consciousness that allow for experimental validation or invalidation using the scientific method. Objective measurements of physiological and behavioral reactions should always complement subjective reports whenever feasible. Researchers should be mindful of possible prejudices and confusing elements that could affect their findings and work to reduce their impact. The study of consciousness calls for an interdisciplinary approach combining ideas from neuroscience, physics, philosophy, and other sciences, promoting open communication and cooperation.
Serious challenges confront purely materialistic approaches. However, this is also true of purely esoteric approaches. Although the evidence for non-local consciousness is still under heated dispute, the phenomena under study raise elementary questions about the nature of reality and the role we play in it. Researchers could further knowledge of the nature of consciousness by adopting a broader perspective and being receptive to fresh ideas, perhaps killing some darlings in the process. Even if they contradict long-held beliefs, it is crucial to approach the study of consciousness with humility and an open mind, allowing one to explore other points of view. The study of consciousness calls for a multidisciplinary approach, combining models from neuroscience, physics, philosophy, and other disciplines. Ultimately, we must abandon absolutist approaches and open ourselves up to the possibility that consciousness is, in fact, a fundamental property of reality.
Be First to Comment