The Universe Is NOT Conscious

In this post I would like to keep addressing one of the main assumption that most of people are taking for granted, that is, that the Universe is made out of some-thing such as matter, energy or whatever else you think of. This discussion should not be held as a philosophical entertainment but as a direct prove that your entire life as a human being is based on a belief that is causing a lot of suffering at the individual and at the collective level.

Picture Credit: Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

"Try to explain the complex consciousness of humans and other animals in terms of simpler forms of consciousness which are postulated to exist in simpler forms of matter, such as atoms or their sub-atomic components"

- From Mind Matter News -

"The Universe shock: The Cosmos is alive and existing through human consciousness"

- From Express-uk -

All these statements reflect a huge misunderstanding about Consciousness. Neuroscientists and cognitive scientists do not get that we are not human beings having consciousness but rather Consciousness thinking to be a human being as Deepak Chopra once said. The mistake that is being done is believing that matter comes first and that therefore Consciousness must be a by-product of the brain. Scientists are trying to model reality starting from an assumption that does not reflect at all our direct experiences. This belief does not only slow down science in understanding reality but it prevents you to live a more conscious human's life.

The assumption that Consciousness comes from matter makes you believe that you were physically born and that one day you will die. It pushes you to live life on a survival mode and it is making you fear anything that is threatening whatever identity you are holding on. The "hard problem of Consciousness" is not a philosophical or a scientific problem. It is not a theory that has to be proved. Consciousness is the only "thing" present right now and your aim as a human is to remove all the limitations your mind has put over you to finally breath and enjoy the wholeness of your being.

Awakening is not a state you need to obtain. It is not a place that you find somewhere in the world. It is not a hidden knowledge present in some holy book as the Bible. It is a process of remembering what you have forgotten. Awakening is already here, you simply cannot be It because you are too focus to look outside ("Look Within You", "No-Self: The First Step Towards You").

Most of us believe that we are physical bodies that are aware or conscious of the world that is standing out there independent from our perceptions. This is a relative way of seeing reality but it does not represent what it is actually seen. As I have discussed in my previous post "From The Illusion of Matter To The Reality of Consciousness", all we know about our daily experiences is mind, that is, thoughts, feelings, emotions and the perceptions of seeing, tasting, hearing, smelling and touching.

I have already discussed the reason why Consciousness is primordial to brain ("Brain And Consciousness: What Comes First?") but I would like to add an additional point. Our experiences are always qualitative, not quantitative. The idea that qualities (subjective faculties) derives from quantities (brain) is non-sense: weight, length, height, ratio are still just subjective and personal sensations! Every experience we have should be phrased in term of subjective faculties, because that is all we can experience. And the brain is not immune to this rule.

What we call brain is a set of qualities and there is nothing quantitative about it. As a scientist I have always overlooked this point, that is, whatever measurement and quantity I had done was in reality qualitative not quantitative. I could have zoomed within a cell forever and I will have never reached the bottom because there is no physical and quantitative bottom. It is all mind.....

I would like you to become directly aware of the fact that you know nothing about hypothetical objects exiting outside and independent of you. You do not know anything about the screen in front of your eyes but the sight of the screen. You do not know anything about a physical liquid coffee but the taste and the smell of it. You are not aware of objects, you are aware of the perceptions of the objects. More accurately you are simply aware of perceptions because in your direct daily experience you have never encountered an independent object. It is quite obvious if you just rely on your direct experience.

Try now! Take a book and spend few minutes in contact with it. What is it truly there? Is there really some-thing? Remove all the concepts about the book, do not even call it a book and do not call your hand a hand. Get rid of all the concepts you have learnt about your experiences and stay with whatever is there. You can already notice that by removing all concepts the book becomes lighter, in the sense that you start removing assumptions that are not representing what is truly there. Your mind will try to rationalize this exercise, but always get your mind out of it. Get closer and closer to the experience of holding the book without labeling the experience as a book held by an hand. What is there? Close your eyes to make it more effective.

We could look for matter and objects as much as we want but it would be like chasing a ghost: you cannot find it. All you have about reality is your subjective faculties.

Already this realization, if fully grasped, will change your way of relating to life as a human being because it will oblige you to take full responsibility in the way you feel and act in life since everything hinges upon your way of relating to the world. No more blaming others or the world, no more judging, no more scapegoating, no more targeting, no more pointing fingers and no more victimization. It is all about you.

Can you imagine a world in which the entire population of 7.7 billion people living on earth would take responsibility of their own life? What would politic look like? What about the environment? What about poverty? It would be a total transformation. Collective transformation can only originate from your single and individual contribution in being more conscious about how you project your own shit towards something or someone of which you have zero direct evidence of its physical existence. It all boils down to subjective, personal and relative faculties.

The next necessary step to fully grasp your true nature and the nature of the entire Universe is to realize that all your subjective faculties, and therefore all your thoughts, emotions, feelings and perceptions are known. You are That which is aware of all of them ("Neti-Neti: Who Am I?","Who Is Behind The Scene?"). The knowing or the being aware is prior to every subjective experiences you are experiencing right now.

As Rupert Spira once said. "No one has ever and will never experience anything else than Consciousness, anything that stands out or ex-ist independent of Consciousness". The knowing is the only real fact existing in your experience, the knowing of is an illusion. Therefore, also your perceptions that seem to arise as something independent from Consciousness are ultimately an illusory, a misinterpretation of reality. Without the knowing factor you could not experience anything in life. I am not talking about an intellectual knowledge. I am referring to That which is conscious, You.

There is no-thing that exists or appears outside and independent of your Consciousness, subjective faculties included. Whatever appears within Consciousness must be made out of It. What appears to exist other than Consciousness is a mind trick. It is a distinction within Consciousness that has been created in order to experience Itself as something different than Itself. It is an illusion that makes multidimensional something that has no dimension.

The problems about Consciousness arise when we take as true the assumption that it is the physical body that is conscious of something else. This is an mere assumption and it does not come from your direct experience. It is a belief of which you have no direct prove. It is a mental and cultural conditioning that represents the virus of all our individual and social problems. Have you ever realized that what you call "your physical body" is actually a mix of feelings, emotions, sensations, perception and thoughts and that physicality is an abstract concept? ("The Vipassana Meditation Technique").

We tend to believe that the only thing that is ever experienced, that is, mind and ultimately Consciousness, is derived from something that has never been experienced, that is matter. Total craziness.

By taking the assumption that we humans are conscious we create a snowball of other assumptions that are not validated by own direct experience. From this way of reasoning, scientists (I am referring to the first quote at the beginning of my post) make the assumption that other animals are conscious, that bacteria are conscious, that atoms are conscious and that therefore the whole Universe is conscious. The boundary between what is conscious and what is not conscious got thinner and thinner in the time being and now we came to the conclusion that some degree of consciousness is present in everything.

Scientists do not get that there is not "every-thing". The every-thing on which all the attention is focused on has never existed. There is only Consciousness.

This way of reasoning is the materialistic attempt to fit Consciousness within matter. Atoms are not conscious, bacteria are not conscious, animals are not conscious, humans are not conscious. When you dream at night, everything within the dream is made out of mind but that does not imply that each element within the dream has its own independent conscious point of view! Only Consciousness is conscious.

However, Consciousness cannot know Itself as a separated object because Consciousness is all there is. Consciousness to know something other than Itself has to veil Itself, It has to rise in the form of subjective faculties and pretend that out there exist a Universe made out of objects. To be able to know Itself as something else than Itself, to be able to say "I Am", Consciousness has taken the shape of an ego, a limited point of view. Humans are nothing else than Consciousness that has created an ego within Itself to be able to know to exist. Therefore the ego is a natural beautiful process of evolution and it should not be neglected. Without your human form, Consciousness (or God in religious terminology) could not say "I Am". Awakening is the process through which the apparent finite form realizes to be Consciousness.

How is possible that something comes out of nothing? How is possible that forms come out of the Formless? How is possible that Consciousness comes out of brains? It is not! There was never some-thing physical and material in the first place, it only seems to be that way ("Before the Big Bang").

I have been always fascinated by the Zen riddle: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" or "If I close my eyes, the world is still there?". And finally I can answer that there is no tree, no forest, no world unless you think there is. All there is, it is Consciousness pretending to be multiple rather than One by making distinctions within Itself.

This realization for how far-fetched might appear to be, it directly influences your life as a human being in endless ways. I have started to talk about some implications of this realization in my previous post ("Awakening: The Endless Holiday"), and here I would like to simply invite you to take a serious commitment in contemplating over these insights I am sharing with you because your contribution and your daily actions within society will be much more powerful by being in line with this understanding.

Awakening does not tell you to live in a cave, it does not tell you to dismiss what seems physical or to restrain yourself from the pleasures of life. Awakening simply gives you the right frame and context from which to live your human life. The quality of your actions will be directly influenced by the level of your understanding of reality or by the level of your brainwashing. The first comes from direct experience, the second comes from assumptions you have never questioned. Chose what to follow and be your own authority.

Thanks for reading.