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 evidencethousands 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, isnt just realits totally necessary. It rescues physics and science
in general from a dead endthe total inability to create mind out of matterand gives it a fresh
avenue of investigation. The Higgs boson has gotten us a bit closer to a unified field theory
only a bitbut 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.
Where do they exist? Where is the exquisite mathematics that we have at our disposal to be
found? Some sort of real space? That of course makes no sense. The probability of an event
(even an event like winning the lottery or flying on the day a blizzard strikes) only exists as long
as there is someone to ask the question of what may happen and to measure the outcomes when
they occur. So probabilities and other mathematical expressions, which are the foundation of
modern quantum physics, imply the existence of observation. Countless acts of observation give
substance and reality to what would otherwise be ghosts of existence.
Such a conception is made less bizarre once you realize that consciousness operates the same
way. Babies are born with the potential to walk, speak, read, and do mathematics. Its possible to
locate which areas of the brain will eventually produce these abilities, but until then, they exist as
pure potentials. If you are wedded to materialism, there must be a molecule (DNA) that functions
as the source of speaking, walking, reading, and doing mathematics, but such an assumption falls
apart very quickly, since:
1) Its impossible to credit that DNA knows math, which would in essence give it a mind.

2) Can we really believe that Shakespeare, and all other producers of words, get their inspiration
from amino acids, enzymes, and proteins, which is what DNA actually produces?
It is more elegant and far easier to accept as a working hypothesis that sentience exists as a
potential at the source of creation, and the strongest evidence has already been put on the table:
Everything to be observed in the universe implies consciousness. Some theorists try to rescue
materialism by saying that information is encoded into all matter, but information is a mental
concept, and without the concept, theres no information in anything, since information by
definition must ultimately contain meaning (even if it is a sequence of 0s and 1s as in computer
language), and only minds grasp meaning. Does a tree falling in the forest make no sound if no
one is around to hear it? Obviously not. The crash vibrates air molecules, but sound needs
hearing in order for these vibrations to be transformed into perception.
The entire universe is a matter of transformation whereby something is available to be turned
into perception. Weve proposed that consciousness is that somethingif theres another
candidate, were not aware of one that can pass the acid test: Make it turn into thoughts, feelings,
images, and sensations. Science isnt remotely close to turning the sugar in a sugar bowl into the
music of Mozart or the plays of Shakespeare. Randomness will not give you any of that. Your
brain converts blood sugar into words and music, not by some trick of the molecules in the brain,
since they are in no way special or privileged. Rather, your consciousness is using the brain as a
processing device, moving the molecules where they are needed in order to create the sight,
sound, touch, taste, and smell of the world.
The old bugbear about subjectivity being too vague, personal, and unreliable in comparison to
the objectivity of facts and data needs to be squashed. Why cant consciousness be precise and
organized? It certainly is when the brain, which physically correlates to mind, is examined.
Science itself is an activity in consciousness; therefore, degrading consciousness as being
beneath science is a self-contradiction, and will lead nowhere. Another bugbear is the complexity
and arcane nature of modern science. As physics stands, we can safely conclude that the universe
is gushing out of the quantum vacuum right this moment with mathematical precision as
described by the probabilistic rules of quantum field theory and, ultimately, the probabilistic
rules of superstring theory and quantum gravity.
If thats Greek to the lay person, its not because consciousness cannot be precise and technical.
Whats at fault is simply that physics is highly specialized, and thats not enough to raise it above
everyday experience, which depends on the same mechanics of thought, perception, and
transforming raw data into the world around us. The way to comprehend modern physical theory
is with advanced mathematics which cannot be easily visualized. In fact, everyday experience
has an advantage over advanced physics. The activity of the quantum vacuum and superstrings,
the potential for creating a bubble universe out of nothing, the existence of a pre-created state
that isnt bound by space and time but can create space and time, the existence of dark matter
and energy as constituting 96% of post-Big Bang creationand much else in advanced
physicshas been accepted because a set of data (and sometimes not even that) and
mathematical theory both imply some hidden truth.
In everyday life, you get to experience the miracle of transformation that causes a threedimensional spatial world and one-dimensional temporal world to manifest before your very
eyes. The great advantage of experience is that it isnt theoretical. Reality is never wrong, and all

of us are embedded in reality, no matter what model we apply to explain it. Reality is waiting for
us to creep closer to understanding its mysteries. In the meantime, it wont falter or come to an
end. Reality will remain our home, our source, and the ground state of our being far beyond the
lifetime of the foreseeable universe.