What Is Cosmic Consciousness? The Quest for Hidden Reality (Part 3)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D, FACP, and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D.

Copyright Alex Grey
Copyright Alex Grey

We are so used to assigning consciousness only to human thought that it takes some adjustment to see it as universal, or cosmic, applying at all levels. But the label applied to mystics, saints, and sages, both East and West, really denotes those who have escaped the limitations of everyday perception. Their experiences supply abundant evidence – thousands of years’ worth – that the mind can look at itself and experience what consciousness is.

 

If you strip away all religious associations, higher consciousness is observational and experiential; the mind looks directly at itself rather than outward at things. Things constitute Maya in the Indian tradition, a word somewhat misleadingly translated as “illusion” but which works better if understood as “appearance” or “distraction.” It also implies impermanence.  The world “out there” appears to be self-sustained, distracting us from the truth: Without consciousness, nothing is experienced, either “in here” or “out there.”

 

Cosmic consciousness, then, isn’t just real – it’s totally necessary. It rescues physics and science in general from a dead end – the total inability to create mind out of matter – and gives it a fresh avenue of investigation. The Higgs boson has gotten us a bit closer to a unified field theory – only a bit – but we are still far away from a full theory of quantum gravity. In many versions of superstring theories, the so-called M-theories, it is deduced that a vast number of parallel universes exist, all forming what is called the multiverse. But the multiverse cannot be an explanation of why this particular universe of ours is what it is. Having a vast number of universes emerging from empty space still does not explain why consciousness is what it is in our universe.

 

Quantum theory has reached the point where the source of all matter and energy is a vacuum, a nothingness that contains all the possibilities of everything that has ever existed or could exist. These possibilities then emerge as probabilities before “collapsing” into localized quanta, manifesting as the particles in space and time that are the building blocks of atoms and molecules. (more…)

What Is Cosmic Consciousness? The Quest for Hidden Reality (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D.

The question at hand is whether there is such a thing as higher consciousness? We are using the term “cosmic consciousness” to denote a state of awareness that knows itself completely, a state of inner silence that is in direct contact with existence. Such a state would be free, without suffering or limitation. If there is such a state, then human evolution has a goal to aim for one that is natural and credible rather than supernatural and faith-based. (more…)

What Is Cosmic Consciousness? The Quest for Hidden Reality

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D.

 

Is there such a thing as higher consciousness?  For a tiny fraction of the population, who believe they have experienced God directly, this is a spiritual question with a definite answer. But for most people the question is hypothetical.  Every spiritual tradition has asserted that there is a hidden reality which can be uncovered through transcending – or going beyond – the five senses. There are elaborate directions for accomplishing this leap, in the form of prayer, meditation, renunciation, and faith – the religious history of humankind has never stopped directing its aspirations to a higher plane. But everyday life consumes our attention, and in a skeptical age the erosion of belief makes higher consciousness seem very far away if not irrelevant.

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Sleep: A mystery at the crossroads of neuroscience (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

 

In the last post we saw how essential sleep is for the physiological needs of  almost all animals, but sleep would seem to be a poor survival trait as far as evolution goes.  Because sleep put our ancestors (and other living creatures) at risk from predators, the benefits must outweigh the risks –that’s all that scientists can manage to agree on. Unlike humans, some animals (e.g., newborn dolphins) can survive sleep deprivation for a couple of weeks without apparent harm.  However, in most species, after extended sleep deprivation their body temperature and metabolism becomes unstable and they die.  The longest period a human has survived sleep deprivation is believed to be about two weeks, but many physical and mental deficits occur long before that; driving ability is significantly impaired after one night’s bad sleep. (more…)

Sleep: A mystery at the crossroads of neuroscience (Part 1)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

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Sleep crops up in unexpected places medically, as in the recent finding that for people suffering from bouts of depression, irregular sleep is often the first sign of an attack, and conversely, getting a good night’s sleep can help prevent the onset of depression. But the importance of sleep has become more global in recent years, involving it in obesity, for example, where bad sleep throws off the hormonal balance that tells the body when it’s hungry. (more…)