Okay, here we go again on the
uh the mystery of death, the mystery of death.
So, my friends,
we've been talking a lot have come a long way in this series on the mystery of death.
And I want to take a short break today to actually go
into some science um or what my critics would call "pseudoscience".
So, I am going to read a bit from my notes as well, and then tell you
how we can go from here from here to here,
A journey without distance from the beginning, and also the end,
going back to that famous poem from T.S. Eliot,
we shall not cease from exploration.
And the end of our exploring is to arrive
where we started from and know the place for the first time.
So, I've already spoken a lot about naive-realism, subject-object split,
matter as the ontological primitive, which are the basis of current science.
And also, um the fact that the look of the world, it depends on what's looking.
There's no such thing as the look of the world.
Okay, now, a little
more on this.
So, I'm reading from my notes, um and also from articles done before,
even as modern society turns away more and more from organized religion,
Spiritual questions linger
the most universal question
after asking if God exists,
consists concerns life after so called physical death.
As complicated as this
issue seems to be, it can be broken down into three perspectives
that in themselves are actually quite easy to understand.
The perspective of a believer supports life after death.
The skeptical perspective,
you know, usually also a scientific perspective denies it.
The undecided started in the middle.
Yet even where militant skeptics and devout believers declared their certainty,
everyone bases their position second hand.
The lack of direct proof renders the afterlife in non questions.
It has been
it has been
a non question for as long as recorded history.
Therefore,
the fundamental issue is actually whether the afterlife
can be transformed into a viable question.
I believe it can,
but it requires an open mind that has discarded the received wisdom
that skeptics and believers both cling to
turning the afterlife into a valid question must return to basics,
which means clearly defining our terms.
The most basic term in this case is
consciousness because without consciousness, we can't even ask these questions
because if you don't specify what consciousness actually is,
you wind up worrying about the survival of the
soul or of me and the individual ego personality.
Even if these pitfalls are avoided.
Eastern traditions are filled with equally confusing notions of Jiva,
Ahtman, brahman,
Nirvana
satori.
If there's a definition of consciousness in the absence of bias,
predisposition received wisdom, myth, group pressure, wishful thinking, fear,
apprehension and mental figments of every sort,
then life after death will become a viable question.
So what can we actually truthfully say about consciousness,
that no reasonable person will disagree with
Here I relate a few things that I've been able to explain to people over the years
or at least I think I've been able to.
There is only one consciousness
to subdivide consciousness makes no sense.
The point is lifted almost verbatim from Erwin Schrödinger
the eminent quantum physics pioneer,
I think he said something like to divide his
consciousness is a mistake or words to that effect.
But you know, one consciousness
so philosophically the one consciousness position is
common to what we call monistic schools,
non dual schools
because because they repudiate any true difference entologically
between the one and the perceived many.
Yet when dealing with everyday people, it is obvious that we all cling fervently
to separate individuals outfitted with my family, my house, my body, my mind,
my soul
to crack this allegiance requires arguments like the following.
Now
listen carefully
when you get wet.
Do you call it
my wetness
If you sing the star spangled banner or any other, you know,
song as you walk down the street.
Did the song
work with you?
If you imagine your mother's face, where is that mental image located?
The brain has no pictures in it and no light.
When you imagine your mother's face, you simply call up what you wish to see
in all these examples.
The experience seems personal,
but it is actually rooted in shared consciousness that is applicable
to everyone. All of us
have access to this experience.
The second point reasonable people can accept is that this one
Consciousness cannot be located.
I made this point many times
that consciousness has no location because form less than being formless.
It must be
infinite.
This point sounds like a hard sell, But in everyday life,
the argument is easily based upon physics.
Sorry, I should have cleared my thought before or drank some water,
but I was keen to share this with you.
So
I didn't drink enough water. Big deal.
Cosmologists and quantum physics physicists agreed that
spacetime originated in a domain variously referred to
as the zero point.
The quantum vacuum state or the realm of pure mathematics
that isn't in time and space,
The entire universe as well as individual subatomic
particles emerged from this pre created state,
a proto state
before creation,
which has no qualities we would recognize, such as linear time, dimensionality,
solidity, energy, etcetera.
Anything conceivable or perceivable.
At the very least, all creation stories, scientific or not,
converge on the creation of something out of nothing
beyond our experience of reality.
In space time, there's a field of infinite potential
and
unbounded possibilities.
This pre created state is therefore always
and now here and everywhere
it is in time, it is not in time,
it is local and non local at the same time
Point. Number three.
The next point is that the field of all possibilities is conscious.
It's consciousness itself.
There is no doubt that the existence of consciousness must be accounted for.
There are only two viable possibilities
that can be taken seriously.
The matter first. First, there was matter and everything else came afterwards.
That position holds that mind has its origins in matter and energy
to which some theorists now add information.
The mind first position holds the consciousness of the source of everything,
including what we call the experience of matter and energy.
If there are only these two positions, how do we decide between them?
The two explanations are incompatible and more critically,
totally self
consistent.
It isn't possible to step outside the frame framework of mind first,
or matter first to gather evidence
in deciding between mind first and matter first, the crux is a single question.
Is it more probable that matter somehow learn to think
and that mind
can create matter?
It seems astonishing to me
that more than 90% of scientists are so
conditioned to reduce every issue to matter and energy
to use the favorite term. Nowadays, they're called "physicalists".
They accept without investigation
that the assumption they accept without investigation,
the assumption that sugar and the sugar cube, once ingested,
can travel past the blood brain barrier and suddenly think feel, wish, dream,
and do science itself. No one has
remotely come close to assuring
the point in evolutionary history
where ordinary molecules acquired consciousness.
Therefore, the very notion
that the brain is the only thing in creation
that has consciousness
is untenable, in my view.
The brain is composed of ordinary atoms and molecules.
It didn't become conscious through the
random combination of complex organic molecules
Think about this.
If the brain evolved through random mutations and natural selection,
how did it end up being so rational?
How did it?
And even our rationality should say that that's a false
premise that Darwinian evolution may be a useful construct,
but it's not, it's not real.
The argument for mind first is much stronger.
The simplest argument is the impossibility of
the matter first position, which leaves only one viewpoint that can be true.
In fact, as I have said,
matter is a human construct for perceptual activity in consciousness,
which is actually therefore consciousness.
Today, people are talking about "panpsychism"
become very popular amongst cosmologists,
but panpsychism also
assumes the existence of matter.
Um, you know, according to panpsychists, consciousness is organized. Matter.
What I'm saying is actually matter is
organized consciousness and it's a construct.
Okay, for perceptual activity.
Okay, now,
let's um
see this other viewpoint
that I think
is true
is true.
Most people,
the argument that mind created matter,
think this argument feels like slight of hand.
So let's point to the brain itself, the human brain
where every sensation, image, feeling and thought pushes brain chemicals around,
redirects them to various parts of the body causes vital
signs to change either slowly or abruptly and actually produces
some chemicals such as neurotransmitters,
simply through experiences in consciousness.
In physics,
the creation of something out of nothing has
been lurking in the background as the ultimate question
yet with reference to everyday experience, the mystery becomes both personal
and self evident.
If someone whispers to you, I love you in your ear,
the mind, body system will display hundreds of changes
dissimilar to what occurs if the words were "I have a gun pointed to your heart".
A deciding factor isn't material in the slightest. It consists of mental activity,
the continual production of thoughts, words meaning purpose, direction,
intention,
and so on.
It is far from impossible to convince reasonable people
that these points are true. They stem from defining consciousness
in the most basic, intuitively validated way.
Now, consider how the argument can be applied to life after death.
one
consciousness being non local is not subject to birth or death.
Two even in physical ist terms, there must be a pre created space
beyond time and space.
Don Hoffman, my friend, says
space-time fundamental
is doomed in physics.
Birth and death being aspects of linear time are not present in this state
of pure consciousness.
Three.
An argument can be made that certain abstract experiences
such as mathematics and information have an indestructible aspect.
Again, immune to birth and death
information can neither be created or destroyed.
Well, information is constantly created, but it cannot be destroyed.
Mathematics is constantly refined, but it cannot be destroyed
Four, body mind and the world out there cannot be divorced from our experience.
The only reasonable location for body mind and the world
is in consciousness itself
again. Lord Krishna, I'm not in the world, the world is in me. I'm not in the body,
the body is in me.
I'm not in the mind. The mind isn't me.
curving back within myself. I create again and again.
So
Five.
If all these statements that have just made are true,
then nothing exists except a modified state of consciousness.
Some of these states we identify as matter or call matter
energy. But this is simply a habit built for cultural reasons.
There have been societies where mind first was just as
self evident as matter first. To us
having laid out in truncated form, the argument for consciousness
as the basis of reality.
Not everyone may be willing to follow the clues that lead to
what happens after death, but that isn't as important as realizing
that we've been asking the wrong questions all along.
And what made them wrong was the exclusion of consciousness.
Until we are willing to think fresh thoughts instead of flogging
received opinions,
religious, scientific or otherwise,
consciousness won't rescue us from an age old dilemma.
If consciousness begins to expand on an individual basis,
there is hope for clarity.
More importantly,
we can begin to bring centuries of baseless fear and superstition
to an end.
I suggest that ending the superstition of materialism
or matter would be a good start.
So I'll
leave you now to reflect on this.
I'll continue if you want me to thank you, have a blissful day.