“What Is Consciousness & Where Is It?” – a panel conversation recorded at Science and Nonduality Conference 2013 with Rudolph Tanzi, Menas Kafatos and Lothar Schäfer facilitated by Deepak Chopra

 

[youtube]http://youtu.be/scI9ZFImN8o[/youtube]

What is the fundamental activity in the universe? Although neuroscience has made enormous progress in looking at the brain correlates of subjective and objective experience, there is still no theory on how we experience mental or perceptual reality. Where our memories are stored? Is there a scientifically viable way to explain consciousness? Does mainstream science have the methodologies to address this question? Are there states of consciousness that go beyond waking, dreaming and sleeping? Is our current science which is based on a subject/object split equipped to answer these mysteries? What is the nature of the universe? What is the of nature awareness that makes it possible for us to experience the universe?

Hosted by Science and Nonduality Conference

What Would God Think of the God Particle? (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

 

The “God particle” seems to be well and truly with us. The award on October 3 of the Nobel Prize in physics that focused on the Higgs boson – the technical term for the God particle – capped a decades-long search that has cost billions of dollars. In the first post we discussed why the discovery of the elusive, fleeting Higgs boson is two-edged. It represents a triumph in human curiosity and our drive to understand the universe. At the same time, however, a huge stumbling block hasn’t been overcome. In fact, the Higgs boson may indicate that creation (whether God exists or not) is becoming ever more mysterious.

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What Would God Think of the God Particle?- Part 1

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP and Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University

(Published by The San Francisco Chronicle)

The award of the Nobel Prize in physics generally creates a mental blur for most people, since no one can comprehend the current state of physics without training in advanced mathematics.  This year was somewhat different, thanks to a nickname.

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Thinking Outside the (Skull) Box – Part 7

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Neil Theise, MD, Professor, Pathology and Medicine, (Division of Digestive Diseases) Beth Israel Medical Center — Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York

 In our prior post we reconstructed the concept of “you”, which we all typically, think of as bounded by the skin and the body it encloses.  But a hallmark of 21st-century science is to tear down boundaries.  A limitless universe that springs from the quantum vacuum, (along with possibly multiple universes) is the setting for an unbounded “you” – a self that merges with creation. The bond that unites you with the universe isn’t simply physical, although every atom in your body comes from stardust, much of it the residue of exploding supernovas in intergalactic space.  Far more importantly, “you” are a mental construct, and therefore the bond that weaves your life into cosmic life is invisible. (more…)

Thinking Outside the (Skull) Box – Part 6

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, Menas C. Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Neil Theise, MD, Professor, Pathology and Medicine, (Division of Digestive Diseases) Beth Israel Medical Center — Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York

 

 In our last post we explored how your body and brain are not just your body and brain – from a 21st-century scientific perspective, you are also a teeming community composed of single-cell organisms. A  tiny portion of the body are human cells (yours) while perhaps a hundred times more are mostly bacteria and archaea, known all together as the microbiome.   Let’s go several steps further into this scientific re-examination of this thing you call your body.

 

Intellectually you know that your body today isn’t the same as the body you had in the past. But if you tune in, you generally feel the present you in continuity with yesterday’s, you and all the others going back to childhood.  You can imagine even going back to a fetus in the womb and the fertilized ovum from which the fetus grew.  That first egg and sperm are derived without interruption from your parents’ living bodies.  There is no gap where the life of your mother and father stopped and yours began.  The flow of life is seamless back to your mother’s womb, and further back as far as human ancestry can go.

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