Consciousness-2

The first breakthrough in understanding consciousness came in 1929, when German neurologist Hans Berger used electrodes placed on the skulls of subjects to measure electrical activity within the brain. Called the Electroencephalogram (EEG), it allowed Berger to discover two types of electrical activity, called alpha and beta waves, that seemed to be linked with key aspects of consciousness.  Whatever consciousness is, it is likely to be linked to so-called brain waves- the rhythmic flows of electrical activity between neurons. Hard-working brains show the fastest type- beta waves with frequencies up to 40 cycles a second (Hz), while resting brains typically show slower, larger amplitude alpha waves. Drowsiness or meditation produces even slower theta waves of 4-7 Hz, while delta waves of just 1-4 Hz appear only during sleep.

Although its systematic study has only just begun, consciousness- in the opinion of some eminent scientists’ today- is an absolutely fundamental part of this universe and cannot simply be computed away as airy metaphysics.

Having to embrace the concurrent existence of complementary properties to explain the quantum world- such as the simultaneous existence of both wave and particle nature for electrons- paves the way for science to find an essential link between consciousness and primary field. From this viewpoint the fundamental realities of the primary field and consciousness are inseparable aspects of the same underlying process.

David Bohm has named this underlying process the implicate order. Basil Hiley suggests: “Mind and matter are but different projections from the deeper implicate order where such a division does not exist.” He also emphasizes that “the implicate order is not some woolly metaphysical construction, it is precisely a description of the underlying process,” which is supported by credible mathematical analysis.

Since coherent superposition is an inherent characteristic of the quantum world, space and time are not expected to be mere numbers at some level. At the deepest level of space even the Plank’s dimensions can be deemed merely as expectation. Bohm and Hiley call this pre-space, which gives rise to John wheeler’s proposed pre-geometry. At the pre-space level according to Bohm and Hiley, the universe is an undivided whole-everything is connected to everything else, and made coherent by the self-organizing property of the quantum potential.

The essence of the implicate order is the one source that unfolds both the primary field (the common source of at least everything physical) and consciousness. Based upon this thesis, it would be logical to infer that the one source of the world’s great spiritual traditions is grounded in scientific reality.

Schrödinger believed in the Vedic concept that all conscious beings are aspects of that same universal entity.(“filled with Brahman are the things we see, filled with Brahman are the things we see not. From out of Brahman floweth all these, from Brahman all, yet he is still the same.”- Isha Upanishad).

 Expressed in terms of our scientific worldview today, consciousness would be manifest when the individual brains quantum state is in resonance with the cosmic potentiality of consciousness. After Schrödinger, we may humbly assert that we are all equipped to be tuners of the universal source of consciousness....

OM TAT SAT....