Being conscious is easy; it is a natural state. It is the intimate relationship between the flow of the subject and the object that occurs primarily during the waking state, where the subject feels somewhat as the center, a self, inhabiting an environment of experience. We take this overall experience for granted, hardly ever investigating the dynamics of being conscious.
Understanding consciousness, the fundamental yet mysterious nature of being conscious for many, is impossible due to a lack of an accurate innate perspective and a direct experience of the pure, essential nature of consciousness. However, intellectual theories from mainstream science and long-standing philosophical inquiry have influenced popular thinking, mainly to align more with the scientific camp.
Current scientific thinking suggests that consciousness emerges from the integration of information within a system. Consciousness arises when information is broadcast across the brain as a relativistic phenomenon, like velocity. Further, consciousness is observer-dependent: what appears as neural activity to one observer may be experienced as consciousness itself to another.
More recently, Cell-based Consciousness Theory proposes that consciousness is a property of all life, not just brains. Even single-celled amoebas show signs of sentience. Consciousness and life emerged simultaneously, making it a biological universal. Scientific thinking has come a long way from a hundred years ago, when consciousness was rarely discussed, overshadowed by observable human behaviours and how environmental stimuli shaped them. Even with the current Cell-based Consciousness Theory, it is just that: brilliant intellectual speculation without rigorous experimental support verification.
Philosophy, on the other hand, has, even without scientific validation, long alleged that consciousness is primary and fundamental, dating back to Greek civilization and likely before. It posits that consciousness is the foundation of all existence, and the physical world arises from it. Suggest that mind and matter are two aspects of a deeper, unknown reality related to pure consciousness. Consciousness isn’t separate from the physical; it is a different expression of the same underlying and pervading substance.
With today’s collaboration between science and philosophy, the field is moving toward multi-perspective models, acknowledging that no single framework may capture the whole mystery.
Following is the latest thinking on consciousness from meditating scientists (Transcendental Meditation) who study consciousness from both theoretical and practical viewpoints, incorporating direct experience and comparative field analysis from all scientific disciplines:
This one pure consciousness is always equal to itself. This is the established law of energy conservation. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed. From unmanifest to manifest, universal energy remains a balanced whole of zero within the expressions of manifestation. With the ever-changing process of manifestation, the evolution of energy transfer remains equal. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.
Consciousness refers to itself within all possibilities of modes, ultimately expressed as relativity. If this one consciousness is always equal to itself, then on one level, nothing has ever happened. The speed of attention within the field of infinite consciousness produces a seeming causality, and the appearance of space/time reality emerges. The physical laws governing our universe place causation, the initial manifestation of physicality, at the speed of light, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second. This upward speed of attention is the frequency of vibrations of consciousness that express or become existential reality.
As one approaches the speed of light and beyond, time and space expand, and these two opposite values cease to exist. Infinite speed equals nothingness. Once you slow the speed of attention, the material physicality of objects appears, revealing a conceptual reality where all possibilities emerge and disappear simultaneously within every changing moment. There is a freedom that exists in space and time, the nature of causality. Ultimately, it is an illusion; nevertheless, a physical reality appears to be so. It is just an appearance in the levels of freedom within the energy strata of consciousness.
Dimensions of consciousness frequency determine the levels of freedom one consciously appreciates. Higher states of consciousness equal higher states of freedom. The more the expansion of consciousness, the more the expansion of freedom. The speed of light holds the balance between the speed of attention of consciousness, the bits of consciousness emerging as manifested pairs of physical opposites, and the nothingness of infinite speed or annihilation. This balance between the speed of attention and endless speed is a holistic value of opposites, the plus/minus pairing of opposites that, in reality, only appears to exist.
This conceptual framework of consciousness is far-reaching and ahead of popular scientific thinking. It is seamlessly integrated with the age-old philosophy of Vedic Science, where the initial concept of Nonduality, or Advaita, originates. One unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion. Consciousness is all there is.