There’s a "great insight" in the religious and spiritual traditions of the world which is that the Universe seems to be a kind of living or minded entity; a natural “intelligence” of some sort, which gives rise to the mystical experience of life and consciousness. Yet the prevailing view of modern science is that mind is a by-product of a certain structure of matter in a Central Nervous System, caused by “the ebb and flow of neural impulses”, as a sort of mechanical process. But I believe this dualism of Descartes, of the material body separate from the mind, has set an ontological mood in Western culture which blinds it from realizing that life and consciousness is a much more basic feature of the Universe than commonly thought.

Matter at its most fundamental level, below quarks and the elementary particles, isn't "matter" as we normally perceive it. Some believe it's vibrating 11-Dimensional Superstrings ,while others do not, but anyway it seems to be just energy. Non-local, timeless and formless energy. Non- local in the sense that you can’t say it's located at some definite point in 3-dimensional space. Timeless, for the concept of time ceases to have meaning in the quantum world, and formless because there is no structure or content to it; it's ethereal. We are huge beings roaming about in this multidimensional world of stuff that hardly can be said to have any consistency or spatial dimension at all, but after all, this is what we are made of! I find this very weird...
I think we have a species-specific interface with reality that prevents us from ever seeing its true form, and I believe this interface of ours has made our relationship with it overly emphasized with the macroscopic structures of matter and its casual relationship with itself (stars, planets, cells and such). While it appears like a cause and effect mechanism at large, at its subtlest levels, nothing could be farther from the truth. Down below is a realm of fields, probability waves, particles popping in and out of existence and strange phenomena like superposition and entanglement to mention a few. So what then, is the real world? The big one, or the small one? And since nothing is located where it appears to be, in the 3-dimensional world, what would it look like without a conscious observer to make sense of it?

I used to think that without the conscious observer it would just look like a formless mesh of energy (whatever that looks like), but when you think about it, it’s believed that this formless energy, the stuff we are made of, is also the basis of the structure of the brain and hence consciousness itself. But how can anything be separate from each other when it all is projected from this non-local field of energy? The very definition of non-locality implies wholeness, so do we actually have any evidence that anything in fact is separate from anything else, even in the world at large?
I think not, for how can you define a human without defining the air in which he breathes and the environment in which he lives? And how can you define the environment without defining the planets, the stars, the galaxies and the laws of the Universe itself? It is only through language that we label things as separate. We say "you", "I", "the dog", "the forest" and "the stars", when in fact they are all expressions of the same force, unable to exist on their own. So there is no "dead" things or "living" things in a Universe. These are just imaginary constructs of categorization practical to our intellectual understanding of the world. Rather, what emerges from the quantum sea, is different expressions and systems of complexity.
So we are not organisms separate from our environment, as nothing in nature is separate from anything else. The flower cannot exist without the bee, neither can the bee without the flower. They are, for all intents and purposes, one symbiotic organism. Only in language are they separate. Our own existence depends on an infinitely vast range of variables like these, ranging from microscopic bacteria and insects to cosmic radiation and the gravitational pull of black holes thousands of light years away. You can't define one single thing without defining the whole. I believe the biosphere of the earth is one huge organism which adapts itself and evolves creatures and plants over millions of years to maintain symbiosis and balance in the ongoing web of life. We see evidence of this as we continually engage in deteriorating certain variables, like the purity of the atmosphere, and see poles melting and deserts expanding elsewhere. If I torch off your legs with a flamethrower you would probably develop all sorts of unwanted effects on your general health...

But the web of life is even bigger than this, for the earth is dependent on the energy of the sun and the structures of the entire galaxy, so the next step would be to say that in fact the whole Universe behaves in an organic way. Obviously it's not green and it doesn't sprout leaves every year, but still, it has all the characteristics of being a huge organism; it grows, expands from within, complicates itself, creating a vast web of interconnection and symbiotic relationships of forces, and it's fractal by nature. It’s not some dead, random mechanism set to run itself to destruction through time 14 billion years ago like the Newtonian heritage would have us believe. It’s alive, like a tree!
Well this is at the large scale of things, but let’s analyze the world of the very small…

I believe the "quantum Universe" is one single, undivided, unified field. Like textures on a carpet looks different, the structures of the Universe look different but it is really one thing. I believe this quantum Universe (not the visible one) is a multidimensional, non-local entity which can’t be said to exist anywhere, or at any point in time. Neither can it be said to be “big” or “small” or of any size. In that way it is formless and beyond time. The visible 3- dimensional Universe can best be thought of as a holographic projection of this field, and time is but one of the dimensions within it, but unable to influence the entity as a whole.
Now for the strong stuff: I believe that this entity is consciousness itself. I don’t think conscious beings could self assemble out of an unconscious environment of non-local energy. Where would the border between your consciousness and the “external world” go, if they in fact derived from this one undivided field? In other words, I believe that the Universe is one multidimensional conscious being which grows and complicates itself, expressing itself in everything; you, I , the earth, stars and galaxies, but nothing is really separate. It is One wonderfully complex being exploring its own existence through life, and
our own mind is that non-local, ethereal, strange, intangible force, but it’s just too familiar to us to recognize. Try for example to locate your consciousness while looking in the mirror, or try to feel the borders of your mind. How big is it? How small? Is it inside your head? When you think about it consciousness has all the properties we've just described; it's non-local, its ethereal, and it isn't affected by time in the same way matter is. It seems to be multidimensional...

Further I think that the material Universe, in a way, exists within consciousness. You are not only a part of this space, you are it and it is you. Consciousness isn't some epiphenomena of the brain (it’s not secondary), but rather the basic stuff of existence. You're not really a "human organism" more than you are that non-local conscious entity experiencing the body of nature through a Central Nervous System, with sensory organs effectively creating an imaginary center of perception. The experiencer and the experienced seems inseparable, therefore one also has to conclude that consciousness can never "die", or fade away, for it is one with Nature. I believe this is why people who have near-death experiences are forever changed by them and report fantastic feelings of oneness and love. Several persons has described their near death experience as "peering through the eyes of God". Also this would explain a vast range of mysteries, like Out of body experiences, religious and mystical experiences, schizophrenia and so on (more on this later). The point is; there is no "out there " objective reality, there is only conscious awareness of existence. Only awareness is aware. Nothing else is aware but awareness, and without awareness nothing else is. It’s also quite possible to experience this nature of consciousness, or induce a "mystical experience", through the use of consciousness altering compounds like Psilocybin, DMT, LSD, Muscimol (Soma) and others...
So we grow out of the Universe, we don't "come into it", we're not created by it, we are the apples of the tree and the tree itself. We're not accidents in some clock-work mechanism of cause and effect. Cosmos is an interconnected, multidimensional, self aware organism expanding from within, and we are that organism.

I believe this is why the parameters of the Natural forces (Gravity, Electro-Magnetic, Weak and Strong force) are so mysteriously finely tuned for the creation of conscious life. The "anthropic principle" is a weak attempt to solve this mystery but as it assumes the existence of multiple Universes it seems very ad-hoc. I think the problem is that this awareness is just too familiar to us and Western culture is too preoccupied with bogging ourselves down as unimportant to realize this. Even Einstein confirmed that, due to the curvature of space, the observer is always at the center of the Universe and the space-time continuum is always relative to him, so undoubtedly, the observer plays an tremendously important role when describing reality, in fact describing it without him seems entirely meaningless...

I also believe that the ancient religions of Hinduism and Buddhism are actually founded on experiences in altered states of consciousness. The Vedic traditions had a long history of rituals including the use of "Soma" (Amanita Muscaria), a semi-dangerous hallucinogenic mushroom known to have intense consciousness-altering effects. The Vedas again have their roots from Shamanism, which was practised by all tribes in the ancient times of Man, maybe as much as 30.000 years ago, and from there it sprouted out into the religions of the world. Almost every ancient civilisation on earth has had an intimate history with entheogens; the Mayas,the Aztecs,the Egyptians and the Ancient Greeks all had rituals where the imbibing of certain psychoactive compounds was central to their world philosophy. Even philosophers like Plato and Aristotle partook in drinking LSD-like mixtures of the ergot fungus (the "Kykeon") in the holy initiation rituals of the Elusian Mysteries. In eastern philosophy the science of consciousness was often called the Supreme Science, for they had long realized that existence can only be explored through conscious experience. Words can never justify or "explain" the glorious complexity of the Universe and its nature of self awareness.
So looking at the starry night is really looking at your Self; all of nature is an extension of your own body, manifested by consciousness. It is alive and through us it's self-aware. It's beyond time and space and it continually expresses itself from the formless potentia of the quantum sea and it appears to be looking through your eyes, and observing your thoughts. But consciousness, you, is not the wiring of your brain or your conditioned personality, just as "a tree" is not the structure of one specific tree. In the Hindu philosophy of Advaita a core saying is “Tat TvaMasi” which means Thou Art That or "you are it", meaning consciousness is it and deep inside yourself, you are the Universe, or consciousness itself.
It seems this realization often comes through an experience which by eastern cultures is called "enlightenment" or a "satori moment".

I also believe modern physics is about to discover the role of the observer and consciousness, but also the limitations of reductionistic science, for ultimately we cannot observe ourselves. There is no dualism! The observer is the observed, and the whole thing is known only through experience. Reality cannot exist without consciousness, for it is reality itself...

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thought and feelings, as something separated from the rest as a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all life and the whole of Nature in its beauty." - Einstein

Explore the Universe. Explore your mind...

We are One

Peace

I think you would enjoy this book.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORGANIC AND INERT MATTER?

IN SOME WAY WE CAN SAY THE UNIVERSE IS ALIVE.

AS JOHN WHEELER HAS SAID: THE UNIVERSE FLIES.

MITCH RAEMSCH -- LIGHT FALL --