The Spiritual Nature of Consciousness

In this episode I explore the idea that is advanced by many nondual teachers that the brain does not produce consciousness. They say that consciousness exists separate from the brain. One person compared the brain to a radio receiver that picks up the radio waves of Cosmic Consciousness. They use out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories as evidence that consciousness exists independent of body. Many think that when the body dies there is no significant change in consciousness. We continue to exist as we always have, only without a human body. 

I disagree. Consciousness is caused by the brain. That is the consensus of medical science, and I have no spiritual reason to challenge it. The human brain along with the central nervous system produces consciousness.  Out-of-body experiences, Near Death Experiences, and past life memories are simply the brain at work producing experiences. They say nothing about the independence of consciousness from the body.

The real questions that should be asked is what is the nature and origin of this consciousness that is produced by the human brain - and which is produced in other living creatures as well? Consciousness seems to be a characteristic of matter. As small as you can get into the microscopic world, you would find evidence of consciousness. Probably also at the atomic and subatomic level. I do not pretend of understand quantum physics, but it seems to me that the randomness and unpredictability at that level is an expression of consciousness. Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena can change the result. That seems to imply consciousness even at that level, which may be where all consciousness originates from. 

Rudimentary consciousness in the earliest one cell organisms did not appear by magic. It was somehow already present in the matter from which they emerged. To me that indicates that matter is consciousness. I would go so far as to say that the universe is conscious or that it is consciousness. 

Consciousness is the essence of existence. That consciousness is what we fundamentally are. We are consciousness expressing itself through a human organism. It is the nature of Reality to be conscious, and the universe evolves forms of life to produce that consciousness. That is what our human bodies are. They are consciousness producing organisms, which evolved self-consciousness-producing organs called brains. 

It is likely that consciousness is expressed in a nearly infinite number of ways in this universe beyond life on earth. Together it is one infinite consciousness. That infinite consciousness is our essential nature. As the Upanishads say, “That thou Art.” We are one with and identical to that Consciousness. This consciousness is Unitive Awareness, or nondual awareness, or Cosmic Consciousness.