or
HE COULD BE
light-years ahead of the mob. It’s hard to tell. I use to dismiss rubbish like this out of hand—
“Consciousness, once thought to be only the product of brain chemistry, is now viewed as the eternal driving force for all that exists, and through physical form, manifests itself in order to experience”
—read more: LINK
—but these days I can’t be so dogmatic, regardless of how offensive my once-was-rationality finds it. I find myself mentally shrieking at the screen: “Oh, yeah? Says who, Bub? Other than you, that is!” and dread the answer to my question.
WHEN YOU STOP AND THINK ABOUT IT
his glib “all that exists’ covers a fair bit of ground. And sky. And space, out to infinity and beyond. That’s a lot.
AND WHAT DOES HE MEAN
by “manifests itself in order to experience“?
DON’T ASK ME
I’m just a messenger here, as confused by that message as any other rational being. (A real pity, I’m halfway through one of his books right now and finding it excellent.)
WHAT DOES RING MY BELL
is that he seems to think there’s more to consciousness than mere “brain chemistry”. But if ever science converges with the quote often attributed to Someone Or Other, words to the effect of “It seems the universe is one giant thought” … I may have to bite my own tail. Again.
JUST LOOKED IT UP
on Google, and surfaced with too much to plough through; but this bit relates—
“Two of the most prominent and accomplished astrophysicists of the last century were Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington. Both espoused the view that consciousness was likely the foundation of the universe itself. Jeans wrote in his The Mysterious Universe: “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.” Even Max Planck, the discoverer of the quantum, wrote in The Universe in Light of Modern Physics that “there are realities existing apart from our sense perceptions.” And exceptional human experiences and accounts of mystics throughout the ages point in the same direction of a fundamental underlying consciousness. There is indeed mounting evidence from the opposite side of physics — the microscopic realm of quantum mechanics — that this view of consciousness as the basis of reality is correct”
—read more: LINK
SUFFICE IT TO SAY
that now I have a heap more reading to do. Bugger, I was hoping for an early night …
.
KISMET
.
THE BARKING CAVALIER 
So if (okay … when ) I die the entire universe dies with me? Ooooops …
Your version of the universe does not die, your conscious focus just shifts. Does that answer your question?[grinning]
What has just occurred to me is that when I read the article that you’ve linked, it all made perfect sense to me – it’s only now that I’m thinking that might be a little bit odd. I remember once, in another lifetime it seems almost (when I was much much younger), when I was a lot more skeptical and entrenched in popular reality. Such things I remember spooked me too, made me feel as unsettled as they did excited at the novelty of this kind of theorising.
Have I matured? I don’t know if I can say it’s that. I have changed because of what I now know, but it took me a long time to truly get here. Many years of wrangling with beliefs; reading umpteen books on pretty much everything, debating with objectors and like-minded souls, and having some uncannily weird and wonderful experiences along the way that managed to cement a semblance of this new way of thinking in me. I would not change it for a gazillion pounds, I might do it slightly differently the next time around, but as long as I ended up knowing and understanding reality as I do now, I should say that I could die happy, and so could my universe.
I just wanted to add, the moment you ask any pertinent question you begin to change indelibly. It’s an inevitability. Not that I’m telling you anything here really 😉
Weird things seem to be happening to your comments, so if they aren’t publishing it’s through no action of my own. (I just refreshed that post and your comments aren’t there although they came up in notifications will try again …)
Aaah. It seems they have to be approved first … funny, I thought that after the initial approval of a correspondent it was free access? Live and learn …
Maybe because this is the first time I’ve commented here?
Hah! That might explain it! (Dumb dog …)
Don’t eat too many cats before bedtime, it’ll give you nightmares poochy!
Actually I didn’t even notification of your comment until I checked the inbox… weird