~ ღ ~ Living Consciousness ~ ((( ॐ ))) ~ Vibrant Interconnected Reality ~ ღ ~

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As an extension of the previous chapters, this chapter expands upon the information on consciousness and its relation to awareness. In this chapter, we will take a dive into the deeper waters of consciousness – it goes in tandem with another chapter titled “Living Awareness – The Heart of Living Life,” which comes up in the next section. The terms Living Consciousness and Living Awareness arise from personal experience that best describe the aliveness of the experience of being alive, of being fully awake and aware whilst exploring the physical reality, the world around us, and the possibilities of human life by occupying the vehicle better known as the human body. Living Awareness is all about experiencing our core essence, experiencing life directly, experiencing reality directly, experiencing humanness in the most direct way possible; and Living Consciousness is all those experiences put together – from cosmic to galactic, to human, animal, plant, and so on.

In short, Living Consciousness builds upon the idea of Interconnectedness of Everything through shared consciousness – it shows that we live in an Interconnected Reality. More broadly, if described using humanly intelligible words, terms, shapes and forms, one would describe Interconnected Reality as follows: it is made up of Interconnected Nested Multiverses within the Innerverse – these beautiful tree-like structures resemble Apollonian Gasket Fractals in multitude of dimensions. This type of Interconnected Reality is Vibrant, Flowy & Malleable – everything and everyone is connected to each other and nothing is separate from the whole; each of us is part of this bigger whole – like water drops in the ocean; individualized but interconnected, independent but also interdependent of the whole.

~ Interconnected Nested Multiverses within the Innerverse - Beautiful tree-like structures resemble Apollonian Gasket Fractals in Multitudes of Dimensions ~

When we take the previous into consideration and delve deeper into the idea of Interconnected Living Consciousness, we can find that someone who is on a path toward self-knowledge, will eventually come to the realization that the highest endeavour of the mind is the investigation of its own nature. Thereby, as one delves into their own nature through self-inquiry – turning their attention and curiosity inwards towards oneself and towards the truth of one’s nature, one can understand how everything else connects to the whole. You see, just in the same way as we are part of the whole, so in the same way the whole is part of us. It is through self-inquiry – the constant attention to the inner awareness of “I,” that it is possible to see the parts as well as the whole; as one delves into this, one realizes that Self is Awareness, that everything is ultimately One Interconnected Whole. It is by self-inquiry, through which, and by which, one can better understand themselves, and in turn grow, ripe and mature.

As one grows in understanding of oneself, the Mystery of Life unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals. The deeper investigation and understanding happens through the processes of Self-Realization & Self-Actualization – realizing one’s deepest desires and capacities, fulfilling the possibilities of one’s potential; expressing one’s creativity, quest for spiritual enlightenment, pursuit of knowledge, and desire to give to society. On that note, the highest possible desire is to know thyself – in other words, Self-Realization and its natural progression, Self-Actualization. Eventually this inward focus can lead to an experience of one’s ultimate true nature – such as Kensho and Satori; and even beyond experience itself to a dimension that is empty of any experience or sense of self, such as Samadhi and Enlightenment. And so you see, when one becomes realized and actualized, one does not simply know life – one is life, one is existence, one is awareness, one is knowledge, one is wisdom – without any sense of separation.

Furthermore, in terms of consciousness, at the deepest level, there is but Oneself – One undivided Self; hence Oneself. There is but One all pervading Spirit; there is but one First Cause that has its Being of itself, and on which all other beings depend; there is but one Infinite Being, so there is but One Awareness – see? This is where Living Awareness comes in, for you see, both the individuation – the experience of being an individuated human being – a person, as well as Oneness of Life, Oneness of Reality, are experienced through Omnipresent Awareness. In this respect, Living Awareness knows itself by itself, in itself, as itself, through itself. It is this very recognition and acknowledgment through many different facets of the same that can be called Living Consciousness.

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And because both Living Consciousness and Living Awareness are closely related to Self-Realization and its natural progression, Self-Actualization, let us add a little more perspective and context. Advaita Vedanta (Ancient Non-Duality Tradition) defines Self-Realization as the knowledge of the True Self – beyond both delusion and identification with material phenomena, defining the manifest material world to be temporal – an eternal play of shakti or energy; the immutable principle or the Ultimate Reality is beyond space, time, and form – therefore, it cannot be described, quantified, reasoned, or explained – all that exists on a differentiated basis can only be directly experienced as itself. Hence, the “outside” world that we perceive with our senses as being solid, and believe to be made out of a dense material – is actually existing in consciousness, which goes on to say that everything is happening within consciousness where the mind appears.

In other words, the mind is a localization of consciousness – believed to be located in the brain and situated in the head, which in turn is a part of the human body. The body itself is an image in the mind, and everything in the mind is happening inside consciousness. Therefore, the individuated, solid, dense, located entity called “I” – is the manifestation of an idea – created by the mind as a form of an image; this, in turn, takes place inside the mind – residing in consciousness, inside which a flame of Living Awareness infinitely flickers, you see? And if one pursues to find the ultimate nature of the mind, they would end up realizing that the ultimate nature of mind is that aspect of the mind which remains constantly present in its experience – this is the Eternal Essence that cannot be removed or excluded in any circumstances; in other words, it is pure presence – Infinite Living Awareness.

Living Awareness is too close to itself to know itself as Infinite Living Awareness, and therefore the only way to know itself is through individuation and the creation of the finite mind. The finite mind isn’t an entity as such, but rather an activity through which the Infinite is able to know the world. Therefore, the finite mind is the activity of Infinite Living Awareness, which has the ability to vibrate within itself – creating the form of the finite mind. This activity then makes it possible for the Infinite to know the objective experience – enabling the Infinite to know itself through the finite mind. This knowing is Living Consciousness, you see?

To summarize, Living Consciousness is that which is present and aware – Infinite Consciousness knowing its own being; the knowing of our own being is Infinite Living Awareness. In other words, Living Consciousness is the tool for Living Awareness to know itself – the container of all experience. Living Consciousness is that in which all experience appears, with which all experience is known, and out of which all experience is made. All that IS, or could ever be known – is experience; all experience is mind – thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing, perceiving. Therefore, it can be said that the mind’s knowledge of whatever it knows or perceives is only ever as good as its knowledge of itself.

– Living Consciousness is that which is present and aware.
– Living Consciousness is that in which all experience appears.
– Living Consciousness never knows anything other than its own being.
– Living Consciousness is the being of every cell and every particle.
– Living Consciousness is the Living Awareness of All That Is.
– Living Consciousness is the real you, or the one to experience the wondrous and wonderful presence within the human body.

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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~ ∞ ~ Panpsychism – An Easy Escape From the Dilemma of Consciousness ~ ∞ ~

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To further our discussion about consciousness, it is imperative to briefly dip our toes into something that may or may not shed some light on the complexity of understanding consciousness, and why consciousness is so difficult subject matter, especially to Western people. As a way of introduction, let us call this something “an easy escape from the dilemma of consciousness.” It concerns a revival of an old philosophical theory known as panpsychism – emphasis on the revival aspect of it. You see, in recent years, we have seen science leaning towards the idea of panpsychism, which entails that everything has a degree of consciousness. The view of panpsychism has recently been making a comeback in the philosophy of mind, because it is seen as one possible solution to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness.” But the catch is, that this “new wave” of panpsychism lacks the mystical connotations of previous forms of the view. In a nutshell, it is a sugarcoated, cherry-picked and watered-down version of the original.

Panpsychism, in philosophy of mind, is the view that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. In this revival, there is only matter; and there is mind, in the sense that mind is matter. Hence, there is nothing spiritual, supernatural, or mystical about it. It’s like the advocates of this “new wave” of panpsychism are cherry-picking only those things that best fit the standard scientific paradigm with its materialist foundation for the purposes of finding an easy escape from the dilemma of consciousness. The ultimate goal of Western science is nothing more or less than the “theory of everything,” which is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. But alas, without solving the “hard problem of consciousness,” such theory is unattainable. The undeniable truth is that science alone cannot solve the ultimate mystery of life, because we ourselves are an intrinsic part of the mystery we are trying to solve – unless we add ourselves to the equation, we will never solve any of the major problems, nor will we solve the mysteries of life, either.

It goes without saying that we should not be surprised that our standard scientific method struggles to deal with consciousness. You see, it seems as though, modern science was explicitly designed to exclude consciousness. It seems that there is – still, at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, a great taboo against querying the mysterious inner world of consciousness. For some reason, it is not considered to be a fitting topic for “serious science.” As such, some have convinced themselves that the only practical solution would be the revival of panpsychism; that this cherry-picked “new wave” of panpsychism would be the magic bullet that would solve all the problems regarding consciousness. But alas, the problem of consciousness, however, is radically unlike any other scientific problem.

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Even though panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories concerning mind, reaching far back into pre-Socratic times, it is paramount to highlight the fact that this “new wave” specifically deals with the mental aspect of it all – covering only a tiny fraction of the spectrum of consciousness. Therefore, it is unfortunate that with the rise in interest in the “hard problem of consciousness” in Western science, it has misleadingly become synonymous with consciousness, resulting in a lot of ensuing confusion and misunderstanding. You see, the claim is that “I – the body am conscious,” and because “I am composed of physical matter,” therefore also the physical universe (matter) must be conscious. Panpsychism is often considered to be equivalent to the Non-Dual understanding of consciousness, which entails that consciousness pervades everything; and herein lies both the problem and misunderstanding. You see, the core of this misunderstanding lies at the very beginning of the statement – the mistake is: “I – the body am conscious.” And so you see, when you build on this ground, every other step also contains this initial misunderstanding.

Even though there is similarity to Non-Dual understanding of consciousness, there is also a profound and distinct difference: from the panpsychist’s perspective – mind exists in matter. In contrast, from the Non-Dual perspective – material world exists in mind. Panpsychism, therefore – is a form of materialism, in which the world is seen as separate from our core essence – that of awareness. A key problem with materialism is that it has been unable to explain how arrangements of matter can possibly generate subjective experience. This problem is so incomprehensible that some materialist philosophers even try to deny the very existence of consciousness altogether, and find an easy escape from the dilemma of consciousness. As such, panpsychism provides an easy escape route for the materialist – it magically “solves” the hard problem of consciousness, simply by declaring consciousness to be either an irreducible property or the intrinsic nature of matter. All that panpsychism does – is that it maintains the current belief that matter is either in substance or in structure the primary aspect of reality, which goes on to say that panpsychism gives us the sugarcoated version of materialism which doesn’t actually solve anything.

In panpsychism, consciousness is fundamentally fragmented in the same way as matter appears to be; consciousness is just one more irreducible property of matter at a subatomic level – just like mass, charge, spin and momentum. In other words, all matter is thought to have consciousness at a fundamental level – matter, however – remains the broader and more primary aspect of reality. And so you see, to the panpsychist, “the real world” consists of matter and energy fields – which are, allegedly, outside, and independent of, consciousness. The presumption that the physical body has consciousness comes from the observation that because we are able to experience and to perceive the world, therefore we must also have consciousness – making us conscious; identifying ourselves with the physical body. And yet, in all actuality, we don’t have consciousness – we are consciousness made manifest by Living Awareness; there is a fundamental difference between the two – see? In our observations of the world, we have also noticed that animals seem to express certain level of consciousness, and hence we have applied this same presumption to animals as well.

By virtue of the aforementioned with regard to levels of consciousness, one can pose the following questions: Where do we draw the line and say that something is conscious and something is not? When does matter become conscious, or can it ever become conscious at all? If we really tune into this idea, we can find that in all actuality, only consciousness is conscious, and only awareness is aware; and that our ability to be aware, enables us to express consciousness through which we experience the world. We also find that there is a precursor to consciousness – that of sentience; which means “capable of feeling.” This is what makes the distinction between humans and other sentient beings like animals – it is quite different to be conscious than only capable of feeling. When we’re talking about sentience, it is noteworthy that the meaning of sentience in Buddhism is far more sophisticated than in Western thought – it is described as the state of having senses, not limited to physical ones, but also including the subjective experience of the mind; sentience in Buddhism is awareness prior to the arising of Skandha*1 – thus, an animal, plants, trees, and even water qualifies as a sentient being.

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*1 Skandha in Buddhism, refers to the concept of five aggregates, which asserts five elements that constitute and explain a living being’s mental and physical existence: 1.) form or matter (rupa), 2.) sensation or feeling (vedana), 3.) perception (samjna), 4.) mental formations (sankhara), 5.) consciousness (vijnana).

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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~ ∞ ~ The Mystery of Consciousness 2/2 - Awaken the Living Awareness Within ~ ∞ ~

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By virtue of the aforementioned with regard to the nature of consciousness, one can pose a question: Do animals have consciousness? Do plants? To which the answer can be given: as the nature of consciousness is very much subjective, it can truly be known only through the aforementioned methods, you see? In so doing, one can arrive at the following conclusion: all living things have consciousness, and are inseparably linked to all other living things in this Great Cosmic Web of Life; even plants have consciousness – plant’s knowing of where to grow and how to turn to the light is evidence of this. Every living thing lives within the continuous cycle of birth and death where the remains of one become the nutrients for the other – nothing is ever wasted, everything just transforms into different forms at various times; everything shifts between different levels of existence or consciousness according to its vibrational frequency or awareness, you see?

Furthermore, upon deeper examination, one ultimately finds that inanimate objects are energy – like anything else, and contain trace amounts of consciousness, as all energy comes from a source of consciousness, you see? This understanding not only unites everything that happens in the visible outer world, but it also links the inner subjective world to the outer world. All things – both seen and unseen, are bound together by cause and effect, which goes on to say that nothing can exist in absolute independence of other things or arise of its own accord; everything in the world comes into existence in response to causes and conditions – meaning that all beings and phenomena exist or occur only because of their relationship with other things. Therefore, one can say that all things – both seen and unseen, share consciousness. You see, in a completely interconnected universe, consciousness anywhere means consciousness everywhere.

As the whole of humanity is a single being, having a collective consciousness – the sum total of all human life, each life being a link in a chain of lives, bound together by cause and effect, different, yet the same – it would mean that we are part of, and intimately connected to, absolutely everything in the universe. Now, if one sees the interconnected universe as a medium through which consciousness and information is communicated, shared and exchanged, they can also picture the universe as one enormously big, gigantic cell of consciousness containing all the information life needs to expand, develop and unfold. In this respect, life, therefore, in and of itself, is one gigantic process of passing down consciousness and information. From this perspective, all of life is essentially one gigantic ocean of life, one gigantic ocean of consciousness.

Underlying this consciousness, there is awareness – through which, and by which, we become aware of consciousness. In other words, there is the content of consciousness as well as the awareness of it. In this respect, consciousness does not shine by itself – it shines by a light beyond it; this light is awareness, you see? This is why the Buddhist likens consciousness to a lamp, which lights itself at the same time it lights up the objects around it. And so you see, awareness is like a light switch that turns on the lamp. From this, we can draw the conclusion that not only does all life have consciousness, but all life has awareness in varying degrees. More precisely, all Life is Awareness, and so it goes that to understand consciousness, one has to become more aware, you see?

Now, let us circle back to the problem with the “scientific attitude,” whose materialist approach and attempts to conceptualize consciousness is precisely what gives rise to confusion and keeps the vicious cycle alive, deepening the scientific dogma, and feeding scientism (the claim that science is the only source of knowledge; that science is the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth), which blinds us from seeing beyond self-imposed limits and illusion, preventing us from understanding consciousness.

When it comes to consciousness – our innate ability to experience or to feel – it remains a mystery to science, although many so-called “experts” have attempted to study, define and explain it. In our attempt to understand consciousness, we have chosen a stance of denial: if we cannot locate, measure, or see consciousness; if we cannot quantify or break down consciousness – it must be impossible; or at the very least – it must reside in the brain. It is, after all, our firm belief that the mind is in the brain – so therefore also consciousness must reside in the brain, as well. Yet, ironically enough, we cannot prove it to be so. We tend to think that what we see is all there is – that there is nothing we cannot see. Even though we know this is not true, we like to pretend otherwise. The investigation of our existence, and therefore of our sentience, of our consciousness, always seem to start with the presumption of things – the basic presumption of our being is based on the material reality. From this, the question arises: How could we ever possibly break down consciousness when it is the most concrete and fundamental of all things?

All current Western approaches for consciousness (at least all mainstream ones) are based on materialism – a philosophical stance which holds that the only thing that exists – is matter; that all things are composed of material, and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. Therefore, the basic question has always been: How does something come out of nothing, and furthermore: How does consciousness arise from matter? Scientifically oriented people often think that consciousness is an emergent biological phenomena – making no difference to physical systems; also psychologists often speak of the mind and the body as two separate entities for convenience – while many still acknowledge that they are intimately entwined. Both have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence; this has been done by assuming that brain produces consciousness – although it has never been verified. The only verifiable thing is that consciousness in human form is something that conceives, governs, constructs, and eventually becomes the activity of the body.

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Some materialist scientists even believe that consciousness is nothing more than a side effect of our brain moving towards a state of entropy; this must be one of the most preposterous ideas put forward because consciousness in and of itself is concentration of awareness – which is totally opposite of what is being suggested by those materialist scientists. When we really “tune in” to our own consciousness by using different mindfulness practices – one comes to realize that consciousness always arise from awareness – it doesn’t exist in itself; it is always relative to awareness. This is the main reason why science – as we know it today, cannot properly understand consciousness. You see, as things stand now, the so called “hard problem of consciousness” is deeply rooted in scientific materialism, which is based on the reductionist assumptions of various kinds. This means that modern science and medicine are essentially based on the reductionist view of the material world. Therefore, it also reduces human existence to our physical existence, in much the same way it reduces reality to what can be detected through sensory experience or can be analyzed with reason – leaving no room for intuition, insight and Inner Knowing.

Due to scientific materialism, we believe and assume that all phenomena in the universe, including time and consciousness, are governed by “eternal laws,” and that all phenomena are subject to the same physical laws, which can be discovered by the means of systematic observation and experimentation. Here we should ask ourselves: Are these so called “eternal laws” of nature really set, or could it be possible that they are still evolving? Who are we to say that the laws of nature are fixed? It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if the universe is expanding and evolving, then also the laws of nature may be evolving as well. The problem is that we are always looking for a physical explanation. Hence, it goes without saying that the known laws of physics are not only incomplete, but they are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of consciousness.

According to science, the universe is made of nothing, and we have no idea how we experience it; on top of that, we don’t exactly know where is the experience happening. Clearly, it is not happening in our brains, because the brain itself is experience in our consciousness, and our body is no different in that regard. And the amazing part is that we cannot find consciousness anywhere – we cannot touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, find it or localize it – but we can experience it. Intriguing, isn’t it? The ancient wisdom traditions have a simple answer to this problem: we are asking completely the wrong question. You see, “where” implies a location in space, and existence in time, and our consciousness is not in space-time. So, clearly, we would have to consider that it could be the other way around – that consciousness is fundamental, and what we experience as the mental and perceptual experience of the world is actually a modified form of consciousness.

In other words, there is only consciousness, and therefore the physical world and our mental experiences are simply modified aspects of consciousness. To stretch this even further, the entire universe is also an experience in our consciousness. This leads us to a staggering conclusion: all experience and phenomena happens in consciousness, and hence there is nowhere to go but in. In a broader sense, this means that in regard to space and time, matter and form – there really is no space “out there,” and no universal clock “anywhere” to keep time – rather, there is but an appearance of space and time, matter and form; and thus, it is all here – within the Innerverse, residing within each and every one of us. The mind creates the appearance of separation, you see?

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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~ ∞ ~ The Mystery of Consciousness 1/2 - Awaken the Living Awareness Within ~ ∞ ~

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In this section, we dive deeper into the topic of consciousness and its relation to awareness (which has its own dedicated section following this one). A good way to start would be to say that as we begin to shed the layers of the human condition that blinds our perception of our Infinite Being, we come across the idea of consciousness. It is something that underlies everything we know and everything we do, it is present in our daily life, and yet we know so little about it. And so it can be said that consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries there is. Indeed, if one takes a moment to investigate, one arrives at the conclusion that consciousness has been one of the most profound mysteries of our existence from the very beginning. We talk about it all the time, and we know about it through our experiences – and yet, nobody agrees on what consciousness is – be it science, philosophy, mysticism, or religion; there are as many answers as there are people, you see?

In the previous sections, through many chapters, we have already discussed a fair amount about this topic. As such, the purpose of this section is to crystallize some of the main aspects of it, and pose questions more than give answers. Among some of the deep questions we ask in this section are: What is consciousness? Is it dependent on, independent of, or interdependent with physical reality? Why do non-Western wisdom traditions and Western scientific perspectives disagree so completely in their ideas about it? Do animals have consciousness? Do plants? What do experiences such as dreams, intuition, creativity, spiritual and near-death events tell us about the malleability and the range of consciousness, its elusiveness and transcendental nature? How does one study consciousness? How does one better understand consciousness?

When we ask the question: What is consciousness, we arrive at the conclusion that there is no definitive, all-encompassing definition or description about consciousness, although the emerging field of consciousness studies seeks to arrive at one. One such definition, favored by Western science, relies on materialist theories which argue that consciousness is constituted by the physiological structure of the brain, and hence it can be reduced to its neural activity, or that it is an emergent product of complex neural networks. Mainstream scientists like to say, argue – and even insist, that the brain creates consciousness and that consciousness cannot survive without the brain. But if one looks deeper, utilizing the very tools provided by the science itself, namely Quantum Mechanics, it is just as plausible to argue that consciousness exists before the formation of the brain, and therefore consciousness can exist after the death of the brain. What an astonishing dichotomy, isn’t it? By contrast, non-Western traditions see consciousness as ontologically primary to physical matter, an idea that underlies most of the world’s wisdom traditions, including Zen, Taoism, Buddhism, Vedanta, and Yoga.

From the previous, we can see that the idea of consciousness has been used in many ways throughout the history of humanity. The Western approach with its materialist ideas, definitions and descriptions being the youngest, and hence the most partial and incomplete. Considering how far we have come as a species, with all the discoveries in science, engineering and technology – including astronomy, biology, chemistry, medicine, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, among many other fields, it is simply astonishing how little we have discovered about consciousness. Although we don’t understand what consciousness is, we have some thoughts on what it might be, and hence there are a plethora of theories and hypothesis around it. Interestingly, none of these theories really answers to the primary question of what consciousness is, but rather, most, if not all, focus explaining what consciousness does.

Consciousness is generally described to be a state or quality of awareness; besides being an aspect or quality of awareness, sometimes it has been defined also as qualia, sentience, subjectivity, or the ability to experience or to feel. Other descriptions of consciousness include wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind; some go even so far as to say that consciousness is the same as life; ancient wisdom traditions all over the world has called it simply Spirit. All the above-mentioned descriptions mean that consciousness in human form is something that conceives, governs, constructs, and eventually becomes the activity of the body. When we investigate consciousness more deeply by utilizing our innate ability of being aware of our own consciousness, we can find that consciousness is also something bigger than us – something much more than just the quality of our awareness, and the ability of being aware of our individuated self.

Isn’t it intriguing that everyone seems to have their opinions about consciousness, but so little true understanding about it; isn’t it intriguing that we sure do like to speculate, but we put very little, if any, effort in understanding consciousness better. It goes without saying that understanding both consciousness and awareness – defining characteristics of sentience, should be our primary goal above all else, or at the very least, considered as being of great importance as they are playing a key role in determining the course of human happiness and suffering. These varying opinions about consciousness comes from the individual perspective of one’s own subjective experience of life, and yet we have no agreement on what consciousness truly and really is. As such, it can be said that understanding consciousness appears to be more difficult than anything we have ever encountered to this day.

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The biggest problems in answering the many questions about consciousness, its nature and its extent arises out of the fact that humans have always started their explorations from the external world, rather than within the inner world, you see? One of these problems is deeply rooted in the way in which we acquire information – the importance is often placed on the mind and the linear, rational, and logical thinking; this type of information gathering and processing is valued over the heart-based wisdom (science vs. intuition). For some reason, it is difficult for us to appreciate anything that goes against the norm, that is, logic and reason as we know and practice them today.

This brings us face to face with the difficulty on studying consciousness – our modern contemporary methods of studying consciousness are linear, whereas consciousness is very much a non-linear phenomenon. Also the modern science has its very own core problems (assumptions of and about the world) in their scientific methods – the biggest being the way of seeing the world: as if everything would be separate from ourselves. As such, understanding the nature of consciousness is one of the grand outstanding scientific challenges. The fundamental methodological problem is how phenomenal first person experience can be accounted for in a third person verifiable form, while the conceptual challenge is to both define its function and physical realization. Consciousness is something that cannot be observed in the way that material objects can – it cannot be weighed, measured, or otherwise pinned down. From this, it becomes clear that science can only go so far – or at least the science we know today, which means that the only viable way to study consciousness is through direct experience, exploring and sharing these experiences by discussing about them, and in so doing learning about them – see?

Many ancient wisdom traditions explore consciousness through direct experience, which is achieved through contemplative practices such as Qi-gong, Zen meditation, and Yoga; these practices teach the practitioner to achieve a state of mental quiescence or stillness in order to comprehend reality in its non-physical manifestations, and in so doing, achieve a state of unity with the ultimate ground of being. There are three classical paths that lead towards being more aware, towards higher consciousness, towards better understanding of consciousness: meditation, concentration, and contemplation. Even though each path is different, each of them can help one to better understand consciousness; when followed and practiced consistently, they all lead to the same final goal or destination – absorption of Self into the Ultimate Reality.

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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~ ∞ ~ Awaken the Living Awareness Within: Virtual Reality (VR) ~ ∞ ~

Awaken the Living Awareness Within Glossary

Virtual reality or virtual realities (VR), which can be referred to as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality, replicates an environment that simulates a physical presence in places in the real world or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact in that world. Virtual realities artificially create sensory experiences, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell.

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~ ∞ ~ The New View of Time – Time Equals Life (Quantum Nonlocality) ~ ∞ ~

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This chapter takes pretty much every idea and concept we have encountered thus far in this section and puts them to creative use. The purpose is of course to continue to expand one’s thinking, to open up new perspectives and ways of seeing. In so doing, Life – emphasis on the capital letter, or Living Life, in short – gets a little more clarification.

As you have lived your life, you must have realized that all time is always now – everything happens now, does it not? This means that in actuality, there is no distance between past, present, and future. Every moment is therefore this very same moment that happens now but with a completely different perspective, which makes it a different experience altogether, you see? When we are talking about the events that occur in our lives we need a way to talk about them, and therefore we have collectively agreed upon the idea of time which represents the distance between events – it is a way of describing a process, you see? Without the concept of time, there would not be memories – otherwise we would perceive those events as experience rather than memory.

The concept of time, in and of itself, is one of the parameters which defines the idea of physical reality, in which the concept of time is experienced. Physical reality, in turn, is a function of creation of time, you see? All physical reality is therefore an extension of the concept of time, which goes on to say that every concept that comes from the idea of physical reality, or is within physical reality – is therefore an extension or offshoot of the original idea of creating time – which is also the same as creating space, you see? Furthermore, the concept of energy is logically created after the idea of time – in which to experience the concept of energy changing into matter. And so you see, matter is formed from energy, which is formed from time. This goes on to suggest that not only is the physical reality created from time, but so is life as we know life to exist, you see? So now the question becomes: What creates time? Well, let us come back to that later, shall we?

You might get a handle on this new paradigm changing view, if you imagine the following: picture a car speeding down the road; now, speed up the image infinitely, and you can see that the car disappears – so, do we have any proof of its existence? Time gives legitimacy to its existence – in other words, time gives proof to the existence of matter; and this means that without time we don’t exist in a physical form – state of movement in the universe is equal to our existence. When we die, there is no movement and everything comes to a stop – frozen in time, as it were. Our physical existence is equal to the movement of the car, and beyond our physical existence – in death, is when the car stops; but the peculiar thing is that the car never actually really stops – it only divides, breaks up into smaller bits and pieces, elementary particles, protons, neutrons, electrons, wavelengths. And so you see, every living thing lives within the continuous cycle of birth and death, where the remains of one become the nutrients for the other – nothing is ever wasted, everything just transforms into different forms at various times.

To continue with this analogy: our bodies are vehicles in which we travel, but it is the traveller that is the “I,” and not the vehicle in which the road is travelled, which goes on to say that even though our physical form will eventually come to the end of its lifespan, the Spirit that dwells within will continue. Even though our physical being is gradually decaying, our spiritual being can be renewed day after day, week after week, year after year, and even century after century, millenia after millenia – into eternity and beyond, you see? From this, we can clearly draw the conclusion that time is the only true unit of measure, and that time is what gives birth to matter and energy, and furthermore gives rise to physical reality, you see? Therefore, one can say that time equates life – time is unity. If one seeks to unify quantum theory with space, time, gravity, and cosmology, they would ask themselves: What is the common denominator? As time seems to be the key, equating to life, it links both time and life to consciousness and its inherent awareness. And so you see, beyond time, the common denominator is awareness – all life has awareness in varying degrees, or more aptly, all Life is Awareness – Living Awareness that comes from Spirit.

So, let us entertain this idea a little more and push it even further, if not for any other reason than to stimulate and expand our thinking. As mentioned earlier, the creation of time is also the creation of space. When we stretch the aforementioned a little further, we can realize that time in its fine-tuned structure could very well be considered as being information that is distributed across the space. Now, let us introduce a contemporary tool by which we can understand this further. By now, many of us are familiar with the blockchain technology. Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and raw data. A blockchain database is managed autonomously using a peer-to-peer network. If you think about it, time itself can be considered to be the original blockchain technology. You see, everything that has ever happened, happens, and will happen – is being recorded and stored in the very fabric of space-time. So in this sense, space-time is life’s own blockchain, as it were.

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Because time(life) in its very core is information stored in the fabric of space-time, the event(s) that are recorded into this life’s very own blockchain, could easily be re-created based on that information. You see, everything we touch upon is imprinted with our energy signature, which is the extension of our own consciousness. And so you see, that very energy signature contains not only the original intention(s) behind activities in that particular point in space-time, but also every thought and feeling that was present in that moment. In other words, it is the overall blueprint of that exact experience in that moment of time(life). Now, one might ask: What does that even mean? Well, if that is not obvious, let that remain a mystery for a while; maybe the mystery will reveal itself in the next chapter.

~ ∞ ~
~ Linear vs. Nonlinear ~
~ Space-Time vs. Time-Space ~
~ ∞ ~

The previous realization is quite easily explained in the scientific terms by using the analogy of a Quantum Bit (Qubit) that is used in Quantum Computing. Quantum Mechanical principles that are derived from the Quantum Physics, can easily be utilized in Quantum Computing. Qubits are more versatile than standard bits, because they can exist in three states instead of just two; they allow us to put bits of infromation into their ‘0’ and ‘1’ states at the same time.

These same principles can also be utilized when we talk about the nature of time itself. When the analogy of a Quantum Bit is used: the state ‘0’ would represent the past, the state ‘1’ the future, and the entangled state naturally would represent both at the same time. In other words, the entangled state is the Quantum Wave Function that can be equated to Living Vibrating Life itself, you see?

Because the Qubit can be in both states at once – it means that also time can be observed as this type of combination of states: past, present, and future can therefore be viewed as the properties of a Time(Life) function. It is only through the collapse of the Quantum Wave Function (resulting from the action of focused attention on observation) when the Infinite becomes seemingly Finite.

Quantum Entanglement acts as a nonlocal bridge – uniting the small and large-scale happenings, which means that events are not localized to any specific points in space or in time. Nonlocal events are unmediated, and thus they require no energetic signal to “carry” them; they are unmitigated, so they don’t become weaker with increasing distance. Nonlocal phenomena are omnipresent, so they are everywhere at once – meaning that there is no necessity for them to go anywhere, simply because they are already there. This makes nonlocal events immediate, so they require no travel time; nonlocal events are infinite in time, present at all moments – past, present, and future at once; ultimately meaning that they are eternal.

The fascinating thing about this is that if time is observed in three dimensions, and this triplet is seen as the property of a wave function – it changes everything, making time and life to be exactly the very same thing. This realization will be the most significant “new discovery” in the scientific community, when people really start to get it. There are already a few scientists who have understood this in some way – one of them being Lee Smolin, who has written a book called Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe. [Ed. note: Video about this can be found on the bottom of this page.]

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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Extra Material 1: Video A New Theory of Time - Lee Smolin. Video description: "Is it possible that time is real, and that the laws of physics are not fixed? Lee Smolin, A C Grayling, Gillian Tett, and Bronwen Maddox explore the implications of such a profound re-think of the natural and social sciences, and consider how it might impact the way we think about surviving the future."

Extra Material 2: Video: Alan Watts - Mystery of Time. Video description: "Alan Watts talks about the nature of time, being in the now, cause and effect."

~ ∞ ~ Quantum Nonlocality - The Nature of Time - Awaken the Living Awareness Within ~ ∞ ~

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In the previous chapters, we explored the mysteries of the Quantum World, and learned something about the phenomenon of Quantum Entanglement, which brought us quite nicely to something called Quantum Nonlocality, which in turn brings us now to the very nature of time itself. It is impossible to talk about time without referring to the laws of nature, or scientific laws – which are statements based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. And so it goes that all the mysteries physicists and cosmologists face, from the “Big Bang” to the future of our universe, from the puzzles of quantum physics to the unification of the forces and particles – eventually come down to the nature of time. That is to say, it seems that time appears to be the key to the meaning of quantum theory and its eventual unification with space, time, gravity, and cosmology; and because time seems to be the key, equating to life – as we come to see later, it links both time and life to consciousness and its inherent awareness.

In this context, it is once again worth mentioning that beyond the surface, there is yet another, more important component, that of consciousness and its inherent awareness, you see? The importance of it should have become clear by now, but if it hasn’t, it should. Not only because they play an essential role in the aforementioned unification, but also because the coming new synthesis of science, ancient mysticism and spirituality recognizes matter and Spirit to be one unified energy in different stages of manifestation – awareness being the core of it all, matter being its manifestation in physical reality, and consciousness the medium against which and through which we perceive and measure time. And so you see, just as we are now discovering that consciousness is distributed through every cell of the body, soon we may discover that it is distributed in every photon or particle of light throughout the universe – making it essential to incorporate consciousness and its inherent awareness as the cornerstone of this new science. Hence, it goes without saying that if we hope to someday master the mysteries of the universe, including not only the Quantum World, but also the nature of time, we would need to include consciousness and its inherent awareness to the equation.

Time as we know time to exist, is, in many ways, a construct, a tool by which we make sense of the events that occur in our lives. Together with another tool, that of storytelling, we can communicate not only about daily events, but also more complex topics that are essential for our growth, development and evolvement as human beings. Many have treated time as an illusion – and yet, they do age – quite a dichotomy, don’t you think? It is evident that time is very much real, isn’t it? So, what is this thing we call time – this thing we so easily waste yet never have enough of? Is it really a thing? We cannot hold it in our hands, nor see it with our eyes – it is completely intangible, yet extraordinarily real.

Now, what is time, exactly? Time is something that is very much intangible, often thought to be non-recurring, unstoppable and unpreserved. Hence, time is considered by many to be one of the most valued commodities in life, and hence time is something that most people don’t want to waste. Therefore, it can be said that the greatest gift we can give to someone – is our time. You see, when we give our time, we are giving away a portion of our life that we will never get back. Yet, people tend to value money over time, until time is almost up; always rushing from one thing to another with the mantra: “time is money,” and yet constantly searching for more time, complaining about working too hard. There is not only irony here, but also an astonishing dichotomy, don’t you think?

In our culture, we have viewed time as the ‘thing’ that we must work against, or works against us, which goes on to say that we are in competition with time. This, in turn, has led to excessive time management, which means that people are always in hurry; rushing everywhere all the time. There is a downside to this kind of excessive time management, for you see, the quality of life decreases when life is full of hurry. Individuals who are obsessed with time, more often than not, get stressed and uptight; it is not unsurprising, then, that these individuals also seem to be the ones who fear death more than anything else. The truth is, though, that not every minute of every day can always be planned – sometimes we just have to go with the flow, you see? And this brings us to the nature of time itself.

When we are talking about the nature of time, we can realize that time has traditionally been misunderstood to be a purely physical phenomena, and therefore we generally see it as a continuum; and hence it goes that time is understood to be a perception of movement and seen as an arrow, moving on a single straight line – from the past to the future. This is the way in which we as the collective human species have agreed to view time, but it could very well be the other way around, as well – time moving from the future into the past, you see? Further examination reveals that from the human perspective, time seems to be moving in a linear fashion. In other words, something happens in sequence – series of events taking place in space. This is how we have agreed to perceive reality, but how would you know if the event you are experiencing and witnessing to take place was actually set in motion in the future?

Because of the way in which we humans have used to perceive time, we like to translate time into blocks for our convenience – these blocks are treated as a triplet: past, present, future. This means that time is considered to be a purely one dimensional phenomenon – a continuum, consisting of a past, a future, and with the present as the boundary between the two. The way in which we view time can most certainly be useful in our daily lives, but it is reasonable to ask ourselves: Is it an accurate view? Could it be possible that in much the same way as life is cyclical, so is time? And if time is indeed cyclical, would it not then mean that every action truly has its reaction, in both ways – not only the past and the present affecting the future, but also the future affecting both the present and the past – see? Every choice we make has its affect on the future whose particular nature we cannot foresee – everything and everyone is interconnected, and therefore every action affects the whole and vice versa; and so it goes that in this sense, we are the sum of our choices, you see? Indeed, everything we do has a ripple effect on everything else – every action activates a cause, which in turn triggers an effect.

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As both life and time are cyclical, it means that the future affects the past as much as the past affects the future – this happens only if a certain condition is met. You see, the energy signature of the past or the future must be stronger than your present for it to manifest in such a way that it can be said to be a change – eventually, it all comes down to free will and how strong our will is. This goes on to say that the present moment is the Nexus Point in which the choice is made, and its effects are felt and experienced; it is the Nexus Point from which the ripples of that choice travel through time. Here it is important to remember that change can be initiated in any of these points we term as past, present, future; but it is always the present in which change is experienced, you see? If one utilizes their free will to initiate a conscious transformation – self-directed, mindful process of self-exploration that can transform one’s life – one changes not only their past, but also their future; one changes their history, their story – if you will, their whole being – becoming a whole new person.

The aforementioned brings us inexorably here – to make the following conclusion: our universe appears to be bound by a finite set of laws – or so do we think, despite any evidence to prove it to be so. Due to scientific materialism, we believe and assume that all phenomena in the universe, including time, is governed by these “eternal laws,” and that all phenomena are subject to the same physical laws, which can be discovered by the means of systematic observation and experimentation. This goes a long way to demonstrating how deep our willful blindness and ignorance of the obvious really goes. Here we should ask ourselves: Are these so called “eternal laws” of nature really set, or could it be possible that they are still evolving? Who are we to say that the laws of nature are fixed? It doesn’t take a genius to understand that if the universe is expanding and evolving, then also the laws of nature may be evolving as well.

When we take the previous into consideration, the very idea of the laws of nature may not even be appropriate – it may be better to think of the evolving patterns of nature; self-organizing patterns through which the Living Intelligence of Life expresses itself – constantly finding the best and the most efficient ways for life to grow, flourish and thrive. It is, after all, the very nature of life to intelligently seek to expand, develop and unfold – often in surprising and novel ways, is it not? In other words, out of chaos comes order, and out of randomness emerges beauty, structure and form. What we humans perceive as randomness, may instead reflect a degree of complexity of order that we have yet to decode in understandable form; what we classify as being mere randomness, may indeed be Intelligence so far beyond our current level of understanding and comprehension that we disregard it altogether. This goes a long way to show that also time may be something that we have only scratched the surface of – something deeper, something more profound, you see?

Against this backdrop, we should ask ourselves: Could it actually be possible that we have viewed time wrongly all of these years? Could it also be that time as we know time to exist, may actually be life itself? You see, because of the simultaneous nature of life – time may actually equate to life in a multidimensional fashion, and therefore time may not be separable from life itself. And because we have separated time and life from each other, we age? Let us end this chapter with the following question: What would life be like if we could live our lives without obsessing about time?

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~ ॐ ~ Sambodhi Padmasamadhi ~ ∞ ~

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[ Click » here « to read the next part: The New View of Time – Time Equals Life ]

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Extra Material 1: Video A New Theory of Time - Lee Smolin. Video description: "Is it possible that time is real, and that the laws of physics are not fixed? Lee Smolin, A C Grayling, Gillian Tett, and Bronwen Maddox explore the implications of such a profound re-think of the natural and social sciences, and consider how it might impact the way we think about surviving the future."

Extra Material 2: Video: Alan Watts - Mystery of Time. Video description: "Alan Watts talks about the nature of time, being in the now, cause and effect."