The Universe is Conscious

Here is an idea that I've been reading about in different forms over the years from Eastern thought put in a pretty simply, easy to understand way:

Our Universe is conscious. It is aware of and responding to it’s surroundings. What we perceive as our own individual consciousness is in fact simply a part of what can be called Universal Consciousness. Our ‘local’ consciousness can be seen as being like a drop of water that is a part of an infinite ocean. It is both the drop and the ocean simultaneously and so are we.

Could the idea of this article be the great transformation that everybody is talking about?

Read the full article here...

reply to post by mightymouth


This idea has been tossed around a lot and back in my short time as a pantheist it was a point of view I favored. The thing is that no one has ever proven the Universe is alive or is conscious or intelligent. It would be very difficult thing to test for. I mean how exactly would we go about determining this scientifically?

I am aware there are supposed 'spiritual' or 'psychic' attempts, new age talk of contacting the energy of the Universe, that sort of thing, but scientifically it seems it would be difficult to prove.

Watch 'What the Bleep do We Know' (parts one and two). It'll explain everything..... in a horrible, horrible, made for public school type way, but it'll explain. Pretty interesting stuff.

reply to post by Mactire


I've watched What the Bleep before. But now I think it deserves another look...the lady with the pipe was kind of... "interesting". I'm very intrigued by this line of thought.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull


...but what if the so called "intelligence" of the universe is actually us? The living organisms spread around on the various planets.

Testing the theory using the scientific method would mean only using the 5 senses and I think a proper test of the theory would need...something else, another tool, a 6th sense...

I found it interesting that matter behaves differently when being "witnessed" than it does when no one is watching. Who know? Maybe the tree falling in the forest really doesn't make a sound.

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by mightymouth

 

This idea has been tossed around a lot and back in my short time as a pantheist it was a point of view I favored. The thing is that no one has ever proven the Universe is alive or is conscious or intelligent.

Well, the situation is somewhat more complicated than all of that.

It is the metaphysical duality which asserts that there is a separation between consciousness and the physical reality in the first place. And the origin of that assertion is the very foundation of human consciousness itself; specifically, the consciousness of the "self", which, through the 'movement' of self-reflection separates itself from both that physical reality as well as other "selves".

It would be very difficult thing to test for. I mean how exactly would we go about determining this scientifically?

The metaphysical duality has never been 'tested for' or 'determined scientifically'.

It is the article of faith which underlies the entire scientific method itself.

And, as Karl Popper observed, the fundamental a prioris of any definitional system cannot be proven.

On the other hand, to assert that the universe is "conscious" really has no meaning until you define precisely what you mean by the term consciousness and whether there is more than one dimension of consciousness.

Michael

In Your Eyes, Darling, I See the Universe

Is the universe conscious? In a way it is, because it has conscious beings living in it. These beings are part of the universe, made of the same stuff as the rest of it. The universe is conscious because it has eyes (our eyes) to look at itself and ears (our ears) to hear, and brains (our brains) to manufacture consciousness with.

We are the consciousness of the universe.

But matter--atoms and molecules--are not conscious, no matter what you saw on What the Bleep do We Know?

Originally posted by Mactire
Watch 'What the Bleep do We Know' (parts one and two). It'll explain everything.

The claims made in that film are not based on science. The filmmakers have just co-opted a few scientific terms and ideas to make themselves sound believable, but basically, WTBDWK is just the usual mumbo-jumbo from the mind-over-matter crowd--the people who've been telling us for thousands of years that faith moves mountains and wishes come true, but never seem to be able to make these things actually happen.

reply to post by Mactire

You are right Mactire a tree falling in the forest makes no sound, it is simply a wave with potential to be a sound. Only by the act of observing it (hearing it) does it become a sound. I'm not an expert but this is my understanding of what quantum physics is telling us.

This is my first time posting here, I am the author of the article quoted in the original post above. My article seems to really have hit a nerve, witnessed by the sudden surge of visits to my website.

Amit Goswami is one of my favourite influences, it just so happens that I first heard his theories of the universe in What the Bleep. You can visit his website here: www.amitgoswami.org... and learn more about the idea of the conscious universe.

You can also watch this video on Vimeo.com

reply to post by davidboullata

Actually, what physics (not necessarily quantum mechanics) tells us is more like this:

'A tree falls in the forest.' Meaning, some redisposition of matter and energy occurs within a certain set of spatiotemporal coordinates. If you were there to see it, it would look and sound exactly like a tree falling in a forest (because that is exactly what it is). If a bat were observing it instead, the bat would see and hear something which, if it were played back to you, would not look and sound like a tree falling in a forest. That's because a bat's senses and brain are different from yours. You wouldn't recognize what it sees and hears as anything familiar to you at all, but the bat would hear and see what sounds and looks exactly like a tree falling in a forest sounds and looks like... to a bat.

If an alien were present that had senses that saw microwaves, or felt sound as heat, then that alien would perceive whatever its senses were evolved (or designed) to perceive. Again, it would make no sense to you if you 'saw' or 'felt' it, but it would still be what a tree falling in the forest 'seems like' to that alien.

What actually happens in the forest is a dance of subatomic particles, of energy transfers between them through the exchange of virtual particles. That dance, that transfer through exchange, will occur whether you, a bat or an alien are around to see it or not. The appearance it takes when one of you is around to watch it will depend on which of you is watching. In each case that appearance will differ. But the underlying phenomenon still occurs, whether someone is there to give form to it by watching it, or not.

We see the world through senses and brains designed to interpret the dance of phenomena in certain preset ways. This is not an illusion, and it certainly does not mean that consciousness creates the world. The tree falls in the forest whether or not anyone is around to observe it--but it only looks like a tree falling in the forest if someone is.