The Primacy of Consciousness, Peter Russell

one question that comes up a lot here is what the hell is non-duality how many people have no idea what non-duality is right I mean it comes from the Sanskrit term advisor which literally means not two and very simply this isn't the simplest possible way of putting it other people here will probably put it much better than I can it's really just a description of the awakened state of consciousness and in that awakened state there's the realization that there isn't a duality between self observer and experience it is all one it is all one unfolding in which there appears to be a self that we just realize in the end we are just that awareness that's always there and one characteristic that comes up again and again and again in those teachings is the idea there's nowhere to get to we're not going to path to some wonderful cosmic enlightened state yes we're on a path but really on a path to realizing there is no path there's nowhere to get to it's just waking up to the truth that our own being and the truth of what it is to be aware and intrinsic to it is this whole idea of consciousness and what is consciousness which is going to be a theme for a lot of this conference in fact I've got news for you there is no such thing as consciousness - prolly leave your already mystified there is no such thing as consciousness we often treat consciousness as something something in the world when we take a word and we add any SS to it we talk about the state or quality of it so you know happiness is the state or quality of being happy happiness doesn't exist the experience of being happy does in that same way consciousness as a thing as a phenomena doesn't really exist but what is true is that each and every one of us is conscious we are all experiencing beings and that is that is the one thing we cannot doubt we cannot doubt that we are aware we could doubt everything about our experience right now we could be sitting in the matrix all of you know the matrix like the film living in a virtual reality where this is all just a reality generated by a computer and suddenly somebody will switch off the computer and wake up and we're sitting at home even if this were the matrix we would still be aware that being aware is always there always present so that's why I say there's no such thing as consciousness when we think of consciousness as a thing we actually get ourselves often a bit of a wrong track and I think this is what's happened a lot in some of the scientific approaches to consciousness the scientists are sort of looking out they're trying to work out what is consciousness where does consciousness come from how does it relate to the brain what is this thing called consciousness forgetting that it is actually the very field in which they are doing their science as I said in that little video it's to be conscious is being conscious is where science takes place all the ideas the theories the elaborations it's all taking place in experience and then we start looking for what is what is consciousness I think that that's that's where we begin to go wrong rather than just recognizing the truth is that each and every one of us is aware that that's the truth and everything everything we know is something that is known in our experience and all that we know in a way is a representation of the world right now we are sitting here we are having this experience of being in a room with the sights the sounds the thoughts that are going through our minds the feelings what's happening is you know we are like it's coming into the eyes being processed by the brain the information is being processed and very cleverly the brain puts together its picture of what the world out there is like and we think we're seeing the world directly but what we're actually experiencing is the appearance the representation that comes in the mind and it's I mean it's brilliant the way it does this because it integrates sound with this and and touch and smell it's all integrated into this wonderful virtual reality and so in some senses we are sitting in the matrix we're sitting at our own personal matrix that is being created second by second by second by second so everything everything we know is ultimately our experience that is that is our primary reality the reality of experience what science is doing is taking our experience and looking out there and saying well what is the actual world like the world we don't actually know physically what is the actual world out there what is it actually like and so we do all these experiments and things and we make hypotheses but it's all based upon our experience so in a way there's like there's two realities there's the reality of our experience and then there's what we call I call the reality out there the the physical reality that science is trying to understand and what is fascinating is it turns out the two are completely different right now we think the world out there is as you see it with the colour the sound sensations the touch the solidness but the more that we look into what the actual physical world is like it's nothing at all like our experience I mean just simple things like color you know we see the color blue there's no blue there there's light of a certain frequency or energy we don't we know what that is that's just a concept in the mind but it it's just an you know photon of a certain energy say which hits the eye but the message that goes down the nerve fibre to the brain isn't a blue message it doesn't go down a blue channel it's exactly the same electrochemical signal if it was a red message red photon it's the brain that puts it all together and then what appears in our experience is what philosophers call the qualia that quality of blueness appears in our experience and it's the same with everything I mean you're hearing my voice in the physical world there was just air molecules moving backwards and forwards very rapidly they hit the air drum and the ear drum sends messages back to the brain and the brain analyzes it and very cleverly works out the voice and creates the sound of my voice but there's no sound out there that's the old thing you know if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it doesn't make a sound the answer is no but the air molecules are still moving and maybe the ants hear the sound but we can go even deeper and say you know what is mattering that this disappears very solid stuff very solid matter but what modern science has discovered as we begin to analyze what is matter it's almost like there's nothing actually there we used to think matter was composed of little solid balls called atoms that was the Greek idea the ultimate constituent of matter was an atom a little tiny solid particle and that's because we experience particles and so we imagine the world is made of particles and then with the advent of atomic physics we realized that what we call those particles were actually more complex elementary particles with protons neutrons electrons going around them and then as we got better and better understanding we realized that most of that was actually empty space 99.999999 9% empty space if you made the center of an atom the size of a golf ball and put in the middle of this room the atom would be like electrons the size of peas spinning around the outside of the room nearly all empty space and then what we realized with quantum physics is that you know neutrons electrons protons don't actually exist there's no thing there there's just the propensity to have a certain observation that these things that something goes on as an interaction but there's no thing as we normally think of things there there's just this field of information that we are experiencing that's all there is it seemed now physics ain't is just information an electron all we know electron is information about the way it interacts with other particles or other fields one wave interacts we call charge another way it interacts we call mass and other way it interacts we call spin we don't know what these things are they're just labels all we have is the information that comes to us about what is out there but then the miraculous thing that happens is that information the information through this coming through photons through light information that's coming through sound and all the other information that we are receiving through the senses that information the whole field of information out there sets up another pattern of information in the brain this complex information field out there sets up another corresponding information pattern in the brain complex information pattern and that we experience the experience that information is this this is how we experience information this is how information appears in consciousness this multi-sensory multicolor hi-fi touchy-feely three-dimensional beautiful smell a world that we live in it's where this is the information field appearing in our consciousness and the big question of science in terms of this is how on earth does that happen how does how does the brain create consciousness it's actually I think a wrong question because I think where we are stuck at the moment in a old paradigm that doesn't doesn't really work maybe my time that the paradigm is the model that any science goes by like quantum physics is a paradigm is like the big theory within which science does its work or relativity is a paradigm or DNA model in molecular biology that's a paradigm it's like the big system the big idea within which things operate today science operates in what I call a meta paradigm it's the paradigm behind all the other paradigms in physics there's one fundamental worldview on fundamental assumption and that is that reality the ultimate reality is matter energy space time and once we understand matter energy space time we'll understand everything including consciousness that's the worldview that most of modern science operates in but there's a huge problem with that paradigm the test of any scientific theory the test of any theory is does it predict the world correctly so in Einstein came along with the theory of relativity it made certain predictions about how light will be bent around the Sun about how if you speed it up clocks they actually you sent them very fast they would tell time more slowly they'd done the experiments light is bent around the Sun when you send clocks around the world they do run a little bit more slowly so the prediction was true and the theory holds we have a worldview in science which does not predict the only thing we know for certain we have a scientific worldview that does not predict that any of us should ever have a single conscious experience according to the modern scientific worldview we should all just be biological robots doing our thing eating drinking making love singing songs without any experience why is there in an experience the fact that the current world view doesn't predict it says that something not something wrong with it there's something missing there's something lacking in it but with any paradigm shift what tends to happen is we get stuck in the old world view and the classic case is the old geocentric view of the universe the earth was the center of the universe so it was thought for thousands of years by most people not everybody but most people thought the earth was the center of the universe the problem was the planets they didn't go round smoothly they wandered the word Planeta means to wander and they kept on trying to tweak the system adding more circles in doing this keep tweaking it nobody dared question the fact that the earth was the center of the universe until Copernicus came along and even then it took a hundred and fifty years before his ideas were really accepted we now take it for granted but people were holding on to the old view and just finding ways to try and make it work I think that's what's happening with our current scientific worldview we cannot explain consciousness there's nothing that predicts consciousness but rather than saying well what's wrong with the worldview we say well maybe it's this maybe it's anger in information theory maybe it's the chemistry maybe it's this and people come up with lots of different theories about how the brain creates consciousness but nothing works this is the hard question that was referred to that Budhia referred to in the video the easy question in philosophy the easy question is what goes on in the brain when we have a certain experience you know what goes on in the brain when you fall in love what goes on in the brain when you do a long division some what goes on in the brain you know we're just just just beginning to get an idea of some of these things and maybe in 50 years time maybe we'll understand that and we'll have a complete or nearly complete understanding of the brain and better predict our experience from the brain but why should any of that processing give rise to an experience that's the hard problem and really they're two different questions you see one question is does the brain affect what we experience and the answer is pretty much yes the other question is does the brain create the capacity for experience and it is assumed that it does but I think that's that's where the problem is because it assumes that somehow dead unconscious in element matter that we are composed of that the brains are composed of the matter of the neurons somehow magically creates experience something magic happens and out of that comes subjective experience how the object if matter and say people are sort of struggling to get their heads around this how does it happen but I think with they're all all on the wrong track we accept that other creatures are conscious I mean we accept pets are conscious where do we draw the line between what is conscious and unconscious we might say well you know maybe vertebrates animals with a spinal cord are conscious but what about insects they don't have a spinal cord are they conscious do they have an experience if you say well no they don't they're just biological robots then you have to say well what's the difference between an a spinal cord in an animal the spinal cord an insect what's the difference it suddenly creates experience or if you say one or maybe insects have an experience I mean I actually find it difficult to pull the legs off a spider because I and I sense that it it's going to feel it's a put into pain it's going to have some sort of inner experience maybe tiny compared to ours where do you draw the line maybe where you say well spiders have awareness but worms don't what is it about a spider's nervous system that brings awareness that isn't in a worm wherever you draw the line one side of the line you have no experience the other side of the line something magic happens and you have experience where people are going in this weather sort of the leading edge of research is going in this or the leading edge of thinking is to say that actually consciousness is there all along it isn't something that arises out of matter when the conditions are right it isn't something that emerges at a certain level of complexity or certain system that consciousness the ability are not conscious the ability for experience is always there in everything and more and more people are beginning to to open up to this view it's what in philosophy is called pan psychism pan means all psyche mind so literally mind is in all everything has mind but this is actually still a very it's a very dualistic model because it's saying this matter here and the and there's experience here and it's like the two go together but this is actually a dualism this form of philosophy it's not a non dual philosophy and ultimately I think where we need to go is the step beyond that to say that consciousness is not just as fundamental as space-time matter energy it's not something which exists with space-time matter energy consciousness is actually the fundamental I don't to say substance it's the fundamental essence of existence out of which comes the experience of space time energy and matter that field of information in which we live in in which we are embedded is an aware field and this part of the field this part of that aware field is sensing other parts of that aware field and creating for itself the experience of matter energy space and time and in that sense we are creating the material world we are creating the experience of the material world I don't mean we are creating the material world in the way that some people talk about alright I'm creating that accident or I'm creating that event in my life now we are creating the experience of material reality out of a world which is ultimately just awareness just a field of being aware and that is what so many of the great spiritual teachings have been pointing to that the material world we see is actually not an illusion so much as a delusion it's a false interpretation of what is there that the ultimate nature of everything is consciousness that wonderful quote which ended the video from Misaka data that what you perceive as matter is ultimately just consciousness or the Upanishads of ancient India two and a half thousand years ago the maha vaakya which is like the great truth of the Upanishads says that I am that I am consciousness I am that being aware though art that thou art that being aware all of this all of this is that being aware and that alone is aware being aware is alone and I think on that actual pause finish I should be saying more on Sunday on all of this but going in more detail but I think that's enough for now so thank you

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 30,965

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Keywords: consciousness, peter russell, uncertainty principle, Wave-particle duality

Id: w6rfIKNvqbA

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2015