The mystery of the Universe is the mystery of You!

The mystery of the universe is also the mystery of our own existence. In fact, the mystery of our own existence is crucial to solving the mystery of the universe because without us there would be no one to ask the question. Without you and me to ask the question the mystery of the universe would be an unaddressed mystery. So as you know, a few years ago I wrote this book, You Are the Universe, with physicist and cosmologist Menas Kapatos, who is not only a great cosmologist but a physicist trained at MIT, with Philip Morris, who was connected of course to Oppenheimer, who's in the news right now. I'm going to be speaking to Menas again in an interview, which we'll publish here. But I think the mystery of the universe is solvable, or we can get close to it, if we think of quantum consciousness as the ontological primitive of the universe. Ontology is that branch of philosophy which deals with being or the nature of existence. Epistemology, of course, is the branch of science that looks at the limitations and the methodologies of human knowing. So right now there are a lot of conundrums in cosmology, which I mentioned before. What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the Planck Epoch? Why is cosmic inflation so precise? Why is the measured value of the cosmological constant different from the observed value? What is dark energy? What is dark matter? You can see there's lots of loopholes right now in our understanding of cosmology, but also of quantum mechanics, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the contradictions of quantum mechanics, which are totally non-intuitive if we look at reality through our perceptual apparatus. So let's look at this a little bit in detail, because even scientific constructs are based on bias, based on what my friend Ellen Langer might call premature cognitive commitment or implicit bias, implicit bias, implicit cognitive bias, implicit bias in understanding. And, you know, as you know, the understandings of current science are based on the philosophy of naïve realism, which starts with an implicit bias. And the implicit bias is that matter is the ontological primitive of the universe, that we start with the assumption that there is something called matter. And then we build up from there. You know, how does consciousness come about? How does evolution come about? How does genetics come about? How does epigenetics come about? All of that. So let's address what we might call the theory of quantum consciousness. This is a hypothesis that proposes that quantum mechanics plays a fundamental role in the brain's function and could explain critical aspects of consciousness. Okay, so right now, there's a bias here, that quantum mechanics plays a fundamental role in the brain's function. Okay, assuming that the brain is a physical object, and not a modified form of consciousness. So duality is introduced right here. But if you understand non-dual thinking, then the brain is a modified form of consciousness itself. In any case, this theory is still in its early stages of development. But there are a number of arguments that have been put forward in its favor. One argument is that the brain is too complex to be explored by classical physics alone. Classical physics is the theory of physics that describes the behavior of objects and energy at large scales. And it is not able to explain the behavior of objects at the quantum scale, such as electrons and photons. The brain, as you know, is made up of billions of neurons, each of which is a complex quantum system. It is argued that classical physics cannot explain how these quantum systems interact with each other to give rise to consciousness. Of course, I don't think they do. I think consciousness creates the biological correlates, and consciousness also operates through the principles that we associate with quantum mechanics. In any case, there's another argument for quantum mechanics or for quantum consciousness, and that is quantum mechanics allows for the phenomenon of superposition, which is the ability of a particle to exist in multiple states at the same time. This is in contrast to classical physics, which states that a particle can only exist in one state at a time. It is argued that superposition could be involved in the way that the brain processes information, and could be responsible for some of the unique properties of consciousness, such as its subjective nature. And some researchers have argued that the brain may contain structures that are capable of supporting quantum effects. For example, microtubules, which are tiny structures found within neurons, have been proposed as possible quantum computers. This is an argument that comes from my friend Stuart Hameroff and his colleague, the Nobel laureate that he works with, who was also the thesis advisor of Stephen Hawking. It is argued that these structures could be involved in the processing of quantum information, which could be essential for consciousness. The Nobel laureate I was thinking of is Sir Roger Penrose. So in any case, the theory of quantum consciousness among scientists is still controversial. There are some arguments in favor of that too, by scientists. One is that the brain is too complex to be explained by classical physics, and quantum mechanics allows for the phenomenon of superposition, which could be involved in the way that the brain processes information. So quantum consciousness could explain some of the unique properties of consciousness, such as its subjective nature, without which we wouldn't be asking these questions. Also, there are some things that we actually would be asking, such as, you know, I think cosmologists are already asking these questions. And these questions say, if the Big Bang was everywhere, that would employ a non-local universe. So how could matter be non-local? Now, if you look at the Big Bang theory, you'll see that some physicists believe that the theory is consistent with non-local universe, that the Big Bang theory is consistent with non-local universe. This is because the Big Bang theory states that the entire universe was a very hot, dense state in its inception, and that it has been expanding since. This means that all parts of the universe were once in contact with each other, and that they may still be connected today through non-local entanglement. So there is evidence to support the idea of a non-local universe. Experiments have shown that entangled particles can be linked together in such a way that they behave in a coordinated way. They correlate their activities with each other, even when they are separated by large distances. This suggests that there may be connected, there may be some kind of non-local connection between particles. So these are all ideas that suggest, anyway, that the universe may be non-local. In quantum theory, particles can be at several places at the same time. So how can matter be at several places at the same time? Quantum theory also suggests that particles may travel along many routes simultaneously, for example, as in photosynthesis. So in quantum theory, particles do exist in a state of superposition, which means they can be in multiple places at the same time and have multiple possible properties. This is a very strange concept, and it is not something that we can easily understand with our everyday experience. The phenomenon of quantum superposition is closely related to the concept of quantum entanglement, which is where two particles are linked together in such a way that they share the same fate, no matter how far apart they are. This means that if you measure the properties of one particle, even if they are on opposite sides of the universe, you will instantly know the properties of the other. The implications of quantum superposition and entanglement are still being debated by physicists, and some physicists now believe that matter is non-local, meaning that it is not limited by the constraints of space and time. Others believe that these phenomena are simply a reflection of the fact that we do not understand how quantum mechanics works. But here are some summary points. Quantum mechanics, which means quantum superposition, is a very fragile state. As soon as we try to measure a particle, it collapses into a single state. This suggests that the act of measurement itself may play a role in determining the outcome of a quantum experiment. Quantum entanglement is also a very strong phenomenon. It has been shown to work out over vast distances, even billions of light years. This suggests that there may be some kind of underlying connection between all matter in the universe. So what is all this suggesting? If you really think about it hard, then you have to ask the question, if the Big Bang happened everywhere, all at the same time, and if the universe is infinite in its dense state and its expanded state, and if consciousness, quantum consciousness, is the ontological primitive, then consciousness alone, or universal consciousness, or cosmic consciousness, or quantum consciousness, whatever you want to call it, can explain all the conundrums of quantum mechanics and also of cosmology, and bring about a reconciliation between quantum mechanics and the grand theory of relativity, the gravitational theory of relativity. This is how it would be explained then. Consciousness self-interacts, and knows itself as the experience that we call space-time, energy, information, and matter. That experience comes from a field of infinite possibilities, that consciousness is borderless, infinite, unbounded, irreducible, without cause, spaceless, timeless, fundamental, unimaginable, incomprehensible, but the fundamental reality. It self-organizes, self-evolves, self-regulates into experience, and the experience includes species-specific knowers, modes of knowing, and objects known, which are in fact perceptual activities in that biological organism. That in fact, the mind, the body, and the universe are all entangled as a unified process in consciousness, and this actually solves every conundrum of modern physics and modern cosmology. The problem with this is that right now, our science is based on naive realism, which I've mentioned several times, is based on subject-object split, matter is the ontological primitive, the objective universe being the human look of the universe, and the assumption that there's a universe that exists in the absence of an observer, which is impossible to prove. So, you can see the problems with current science. These problems are actually solvable. All we have to do is shift from a bottom-up approach to a top-down approach. Start with consciousness, differentiating into all experience, and the fact that we cannot reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics is simply because we are looking at gravity and quantum mechanics through two different modes of knowing in the same consciousness, and in fact, consciousness has innumerable, almost infinite modes of knowing, depending on the instrument of knowing, and the biological organism is an instrument of knowing, a biosensor. So, when we understand consciousness as a field of all possibilities, consciousness as the source of non-local correlation, entanglement, superposition, consciousness determining events through the uncertainty principle, consciousness actually localizing itself through attention and intention, then I think we've solved the problem. There's a solution to the hard problem, and there's also a solution to what looks like the impossible unification of the grand theory of relativity and the quantum theories that gave rise to the modern era. As you know, Einstein was on the fence and uncomfortable with non-locality, even though he first described it in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen equation, subsequently reinforced by Bell's theorem, and now absolutely known experimentally. In fact, the Nobel Prize to Chisholm et al. or Alan Aspect and his colleagues was for experimentally producing non-locality. Non-locality answers many conundrums, including where do we go after death. If you're non-local, there's nowhere to go. We're already in that place, which is all places in general and no place in particular. In fact, if you understand non-locality, then you can see that the origins of the universe are in a field of awareness that is omnipresent, present everywhere, omnipotent, the source of all energy and matter, and omniscient, the source of all information that ultimately becomes knowledge. Omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and in the deeper reality, you may be that. Non-local, local. Let me know what you think.