Things Hidden #8- Consciousness

It is with a heavy heart that I bring you the eighth post of Things Hidden. Episode #8 of the Things Hidden podcast is out now.

You can watch the YouTube by clicking the link here-

The script I wrote for Episode #8 can be found below. This episode is about consciousness. You can’t talk about God without talking about a soul and you can’t talk about a soul without talking about consciousness. I do my best to try and tie all that together. The episode is equal parts science and faith.

Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday. The killer is still at large. So while we can take guesses at what the killer’s motives were, we don’t yet know for sure. What I can say is this - what happened yesterday was hardcore, in your face, good ole’ fashioned Christian martyrdom. Live and televised and blasted out to the entire planet. Blood geysering from the neck of man that just wanted to have a conversation. It is the most public display of Christian martyrdom in the history of humanity. Sit with that for second.

If you took a graph and put “power of voice for conservatism” on the X axis and “power of voice for Christ” on the Y axis, Charlie was out there where no one else is. He intertwined the two to a degree and in a way that basically no one else was.

Rest easy Charlie.

"Then I heard the Lord asking, 'Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?' I said, 'Here I am. Send me'." - Isaiah 6:8

- Travis

We ready? Let’s do this.

Welcome to Episode 8 of Things Hidden. Things Hidden is an exploration of the intersection of Faith and six factors that surround faith - Religion; Physics; Evolution; Consciousness; Philosophy; and Technological Innovation. The purpose of Things Hidden is to bring people into a closer relationship with God, and through that process coming into a closer relationship with God myself.

Episode 1 was the intro to Things Hidden. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 covered Faith from a bunch of different perspectives. Episode 5 was about religion. Episode 6 was about Physics. Episode 7 was about evolution. If you haven’t listened to those first seven episodes, I would strongly encourage you to do that before starting this one. We’re still at the very beginning of Things Hidden, and Episode 1 is definitely the best place to start.

Before we get started - do me a favor, if you are so inclined. Smash like and subscribe on this video. It helps Things Hidden get out to more people. Ok. Today we are going to talk about Consciousness - the weirdest of all the “petals” of Things Hidden. I say it’s the weirdest because it’s the one science knows the least about. And when I say 'least,' I mean consciousness science is basically stumbling around in the dark with its hands out, hoping to bump into something solid. How little does science know about consciousness? Well, there is no definition, to start. Seriously. Domain experts cannot come up with a generally accepted definition. Consciousness is weird because it’s trippy. You can’t talk about it without sounding trippy. Consciousness is weird because it’s recursive, self-referential - when you think about consciousness, you’re thinking about thinking…about thinking….about thinking. You get the point.

So I’m going to try and talk to you about something that people way smarter than me, that spend their whole lives on, can’t even DEFINE. Why would I bother doing that? Because Things Hidden is about God. And you can’t really talk about God for long at all before you start talking about a soul. And you can’t talk about a soul… without talking about consciousness.

You can’t talk about God without talking about religion. And religion, without exception, is focused on what happens after you die. And so, from a faith perspective, the core question about consciousness is a question about the continuity to an afterlife. Will a form of our existence continue on after we die? Does what we do here on Earth matter after we die? Do we get to take anything with us from this life into some subsequent existence? These are foundational questions to religion. And consciousness is right in the middle of it.

While there isn’t a commonly accepted definition of consciousness, there are plenty of definitions floating around out there. And I’m going to try to synthesize them and give you a definition for consciousness that I feel like works.

But first I want to give you a bunch of quotes from some titans in physics that can help set the stage for what we’re talking about when we try to talk about consciousness.

Three from Erwin Schrödinger, one of the fathers of quantum physics, who won the Nobel prize in 1933-

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”

"Quantum physics thus reveals the basic oneness of the Universe"

"The total number of minds in the Universe is one"

Two from David Bohm, one of the most prominent theoretical physicists of the 20th century -

"Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum, matter is one; and if we don’t see this, it’s because we are blinding ourselves to it."

“At a deeper level [matter and consciousness] are actually inseparable and interwoven, just as in the computer game the player and the screen are united by participation."

Niels Bohr, one of the most prominent physicists of the 20th century, who won the Nobel prize in 1922 -

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."

Two from Max Planck, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, who won the Nobel Prize in 1918 -

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter."

Freeman Dyson, one of the most prominent physicists of the 20th century -

"At the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is involved in the description of events. Our consciousness forces the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another."

Two from Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel prize in 1963 -

"It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness."

"The consciousness of the observer plays a decisive role in bringing about the result of the measurement."

And finally Sir Roger Penrose, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2020 -

"Consciousness seems to me to be such an important phenomenon that I simply cannot believe that it is something just 'accidentally' conjured up by a complicated computation."

The quotes I shared above are from physics-minded folks. You might be wondering - why am I starting with the physicists when we're talking about consciousness? Shouldn't we be hearing from the neuroscientists? The fascinating thing is, the physicists just stumbled into consciousness. They weren't looking for it at all. They were just trying to figure out how atoms work, and consciousness kept showing up uninvited. That's what makes their perspective so compelling.

Granted I could have included just as many quotes from domain experts in neuroscience, philosophy, cognitive science and psychology. And those quotes would have sounded pretty different in how they characterize consciousness. So therein lies part of the problem with getting a good definition for consciousness - it spans multiple fields of study and those fields of study have quite different approaches to the concept of consciousness. There are other concepts like this that are difficult to define - life; intelligence; art; information. All enormously important concepts, yet struggle to even be defined.

So we've got the physicists telling us consciousness might be fundamental to reality itself. But what happens when we turn consciousness off? What can we learn from its absence? One interesting vector of consciousness research is through anesthesiology. Anesthesiology provides a uniquely powerful perspective on consciousness because it routinely, reliably and reversibly eliminates consciousness. That’s a pretty impressive feat for something we can’t even define! This intersection of anesthesiology and consciousness research is pretty robust, so there are some tangible takeaways.

First, anesthesiology shows us that consciousness depends on complex, long-range communication between brain regions. Under anesthesia, the brain doesn’t shut down. Local regions remain active and even hyperactive, but those local regions stop talking to each other effectively. Second, consciousness is not monolithic - awareness, memory formation, responsive and subjective experience can be separated. Consciousness in humans is not an on/off switch. Third, the brain processes involved in going into unconsciousness and coming out of unconsciousness are different. The entry method is not the same as the exit. Fourth, different types of anesthesia work through fundamentally different molecular mechanisms, yet achieve the same end goal of unconsciousness. This suggests consciousness may depend on a more fundamental property. It’s kinda insane to say, but the scientific community does not actually understand how anesthesiology works. And through that NOT understanding, we can better understand what we do NOT understand about consciousness!

The study of consciousness from the perspective of comas is an equally fascinating and somewhat similar approach as anesthesia. Like anesthesia, this is a robust field of study that has yielded significant insights. First, what was once called “comas” are now differentiated into three states: coma proper - which means no arousal or awareness; vegetative - which means arousal without apparent awareness; and minimally conscious state - which means fluctuating, partial awareness. The discovery of minimally conscious states in 2002 was paradigm shifting - consciousness is not binary.

Second, comas showed us covert consciousness. People diagnosed as vegetative can follow commands by modulating brain activities. Researchers could ask yes or no questions, and then tell the vegetative patient to think about tennis for yes and navigating their house for no, and then measure the distinct differences in brain activity to ascertain the yes or no answer. Whoah. Third, coma research has given us unique temporal insights into the nature of consciousness. Some patients will be in a comatose state for weeks, months or even years, and then pull out of it. This extended timescale reveals a plasticity to consciousness; a reorganization ability. Patients recover through unexpected pathways, over timeframes that sometimes extend to years. The nature of consciousness revealed through the study of comas provides insights that often lead to even more question marks.

And because these question marks are so pervasive, consciousness research and philosophy of mind has unfolded in a way where domain experts have just come up with a series of well-known conundrums that serve to illuminate some of the key issues that have been identified in the field. These make up the bedrock of the field of study.

We must start with the so-called “Hard Problem of Consciousness”. Originally formed by David Chalmers in 1995, the hard problem is simply - why is there "something it is like" to have experiences? There seems to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between physical processes in the brain and subjective experience. No amount of objective, third-person scientific description seems capable of capturing what it's like to experience “redness” or pain.

Imagine you're a scientist who has been colorblind from birth. And you've studied everything about color - wavelengths, how the eye processes light, which neurons fire when people see red. You know that strawberries reflect light at 700 nanometers and that this triggers specific patterns in the visual cortex. But then one day your color blindness is healed and you see a red strawberry for the first time.

You suddenly know something you didn't before - what redness looks like. All your previous knowledge was about the "easy problems of consciousness" - the mechanisms, functions, and behaviors associated with color vision. But the "hard problem" is explaining why there's a subjective experience of redness at all, why there's "something it is like" to see red rather than just processing wavelength information like a camera would. This is the hard problem of consciousness and, as you can tell by the name, it’s a headline deal in consciousness research.

Next is the mind body problem. This is one of the oldest and most fundamental questions in philosophy of mind. What is the relationship between mental states (like thoughts, feelings, and consciousness) and physical states (like brain activity and neural processes)? Mental and physical states seem fundamentally different. And mental and physical states appear to interact - thoughts cause actions, brain damage affects consciousness, these sorts of things.

There are various philosophical positions expressed in response to the mind body problem. Dualism says that the mind and body are two distinct substances. Materialism says that everything is ultimately physical - mental states are either identical to brain states or they emerge from or are realized by brain states. Idealism says that everything is ultimately mental. Physical objects are constructions of the mind. Neutral monism says that all mental and physical states are actually aspects of a more fundamental reality that is neither purely mental nor purely physical.

Third, we have the “zombie problem”. The zombie problem is a thought experiment that goes like this - imagine a hypothetical being that is physically and functionally identical to a human in every way. The zombie behaves like a conscious human - has all the same brain states and neural processes. But it lacks any subjective conscious experience - there’s nothing “that it is like” to be a zombie. The point of this thought experiment is that this zombie is conceivable, and if it’s conceivable then it’s possible, and if it’s possible, then consciousness must involve something beyond a purely physical process - otherwise a physically identical being would be conscious.

Fourth we have the binding problem. The binding problem asks - how does the brain integrate distributed neural processing into a unique singular conscious experience? Color, shape, motion, location - these are all processed in different areas of the brain, yet we experience a single coherent object. What is the smallest unit of matter that has consciousness? If electrons are conscious, how do billions of electrons combine into unified human consciousness? Why don't we experience the individual consciousnesses of all our particles?

The hard problem of consciousness. The mind body problem. The zombie problem . The binding problem. Lots of problems! And that’s not even the whole list of these “headline” type issues that arise in philosophy of mind and consciousness research. I share them with you here to give you a flavor of how much is NOT understood in this area of study.

So with all that as a preface, here’s my definition of Consciousness. "Consciousness is the capacity for goal-directed behavior accompanied by some degree of integrated information processing, existing on a spectrum of complexity". Consciousness is the capacity for goal-directed behavior accompanied by some degree of integrated information processing, existing on a spectrum of complexity.

This is a definition that sits reasonably well with me. Maybe the first thing you notice about my definition is that it is inclusive of many other living things other than humans. And that is definitely how I think about consciousness. It would be crazy to me to say that a dog is not conscious. A dog seems very obviously conscious to me. Sure, the dog is probably not as conscious to the same DEGREE as a human, but that just goes to my definition - consciousness exists on a spectrum.

As you move down the complexity scale, I just see increasingly more dialed back forms of consciousness. A worm moves towards food only when it’s hungry. When the worm is full, it ignores additional food and goes and sits in the shade to digest. That strikes me as obviously conscious! Sounds a lot like how I act! Yeah a worm can’t sit there listening to a podcast with David Chalmers talking about consciousness while thinking about what the worm is going to write later about consciousness for his own podcast, but that is a matter of degree!

Plants bend towards light. Plant roots grow towards nutrients. Plants “choose” between the competing responses of growing vs defending. Plants have hormonal signaling networks. Plants anticipate the future with preemptive drought responses. Plants “remember” the winter cold and time their flowering based on that “memory”. This strikes me as obviously a form of consciousness. A very low form of consciousness, but non-zero consciousness nevertheless.

The same is true for single celled organisms like bacteria. Bacteria show clear goal directed behavior and they show clear integrated information processing. This strikes me as consciousness, just a drastically lesser extent than what we experience as humans.

That’s not to say humanity’s consciousness isn’t special. It is. But again, the research points to it being a matter of DEGREE. We think that us humans have this super special “mind’s eye”. But there’s a bunch of legit studies that show other animals have that same capability. Granted, mental imagery is a bit difficult to test for. It’s not like you can ask the chimp what he’s envisioning. But the testing is not impossible. Primates, dogs, rats, birds, dolphins - all have been shown to have mental imagery.

There are other things like this. Object permanence is another example. If you have children you’ll be familiar with object permanence. It is the basis for peek-a-boo. It is a big step towards consciousness because it implies some understanding of the concept of time. Mammals, birds and maybe other animals show object permanence.

A bird called a scrub jay will hide food. They will move the food from one hiding place to another if they see that other birds have been watching them. This shows theory of mind - the ability to think about what others are thinking. It is an advanced form of consciousness. So when you start to pick apart at the specifics of what makes human consciousness so special, what you see over and over again is a matter of DEGREE, albeit a significant degree. Not a binary step-change between humans and other advanced species.

So then that brings us to a rock. By my definition, a rock is not conscious. A rock does not have “the capacity for goal-directed behavior accompanied by some degree of integrated information processing”. So my line in the sand for consciousness ends up being drawn at the same spot the “alive” line is drawn. A bacteria is alive and it is conscious. A rock is not alive and it is not conscious.

My definition is at odds with panphysicism. Panphysicism is a metaphysical theory which states that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter itself - like mass or electrical charge. Panphysicism says that every particle has some minimal "what it's like" to be that particle. This panphysicism theory has been around in various forms for centuries, but its had a remarkable revival in the 21st century after being largely ignored the century prior.

At the core of panphysicism is the question of whether consciousness is fundamental or emergent. And that remains an unanswered question today. It goes back to the mind body problem that I mentioned earlier. Domain experts like neuroscientists, philosophers, cognitive scientists and physicists are quite divided over whether consciousness is fundamental or emergent. Typically, this is thought of as physicalism vs dualism, with dualism typically broken down between substance dualism and property dualism. Physicalism is basically what it sounds like - the view that everything in the universe, including the mind, is fundamentally physical. It’s mostly interchangeable with the term “materialism” that I mentioned earlier.

Substance dualism says the mind and matter are two distinct, independently existing substances. Famously, this was Descartes’ view. Substance dualism leaves open the possibility that the mind (or perhaps the soul) can exist separately from the body, potentially after death. Property dualism says the mind is not a separate substance, but instead emerges from the physical properties of the brain. The whole dualism thing gets a little confusing, so just remember - substance dualism separates the mind and body into different things. Property dualism separates mind and body into different properties of the same thing - the brain.

The majority of domain experts across relevant fields are physicalists. But over the last several decades, the amount of leading thinkers taking the stance that consciousness canNOT be explained by physical matter alone has grown considerably. Part of this is due to frustration with physicalism. After decades of neuroscience advances, the hard problem of consciousness is still front and center. Despite massive empirical progress, we still can’t explain why there’s “something it’s like” to experience things. And so some of the brightest minds have been starting to think we’re going about it wrong. That we’re missing something foundational.

That feeling that we’re going about it wrong, that we’re missing something foundational. It is fueled by quantum mechanics and specifically “the observer effect”. This concept is at the heart of the intersection of consciousness and quantum mechanics and it’s one of the main reasons consciousness gets such star treatment amongst domain experts. You may be familiar with Schrodinger’s cat and the double slit experiment. They are directly related to the observer effect. Most of the quotes I gave you earlier from the physicists are referring to this crucially important aspect of consciousness.

Schrodinger’s cat is the most famous thing to ever come out of quantum physics. It is a thought experiment that illustrates the concept of superposition, which is foundational to the observer effect. There is a hypothetical cat in a sealed box, along with a radioactive atom and a mechanism that could release that radioactive atom, killing the cat. There is a 50% chance the radioactive atom is released, and you don’t know whether it will happen or not. At the moment before the box is opened, the conventional view is that the cat is either alive or dead. Makes sense, right? Pretty straightforward. Quantum mechanics says that, no. Until the box is opened, the cat is both alive and dead, in equal parts. The cat is a blur of probability - half one outcome, and half the other. The past becomes definite ONLY when observed. How weird is that? It’s so weird, that after Schrodinger discovered it, he gave up working on it to focus on biology. Seriously. Look that up. Schrodinger was so weirded out by quantum mechanics that he rage quit the field.

The double slit experiment is even weirder. Frankly, the double slit experiment is maybe the weirdest thing humanity has ever discovered. It’s really simple yet completely mindblowing. It goes like this. You shoot individual particles (like electrons or photons) at a wall with two slits in it, and then you watch where they land on a screen behind the wall, to see which slit the particle went through. And here’s where it gets insanely weird - when you're not watching which slit the particles go through, they somehow all go through BOTH slits at once and create an interference pattern, like two waves crossing over each other. But when you set up a detector to see which slit each particle goes through, each particle acts normal and apparently picks just one slit, and the interference pattern disappears.

If you’re familiar with this experiment, you’re probably shaking your head up and down right now going “yup it’s one of the weirdest things of all time”. If you’re not familiar with this experiment, you probably feel like you misunderstood what I just said. But you didn’t. It’s not a quirk in the measurement tools - it appears to be a fundamental feature of reality at the quantum level. If you’ve ever heard the term “wave particle duality” - this is precisely what is being referenced there. A particle exists in a “superposition” of states (meaning it goes through both slits simultaneously) until the particle is observed. At the moment of observation, the particle "chooses" a definite path. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes you think our perception of reality is, as I've been saying in previous episodes, a mirage built on top of other mirages. And if you’re being honest with yourself, it should make everyone a little more humble about what we think we "know" about how this universe actually works. Things are truly not as they seem.

And so, this is why, in my opinion, consciousness is such a big deal. An enormously big deal. On the other hand, I can think about my consciousness relative to the consciousness of a dog or a worm or a plant or a bacteria, and I can see how consciousness would just be something that emerged from natural selection. And that kinda makes me think consciousness isn’t such a big deal. It just emerged from the pressures of natural selection. The bacteria that moves towards nutrients lives on and reproduces, the one that doesn’t, doesn’t live on and reproduce. The plant that bends towards light lives on and reproduces, the plant that doesn’t, doesn’t live on and reproduce.

You can run that concept all the way up the evolutionary flagpole to humans and I can imagine how our advanced form of consciousness would emerge from evolutionary pressures. I really can imagine that. And that would make you think consciousness isn’t THAT big of a deal. It’s like our ability to see or walk upright. Sure, it’s impressive. But at the end of the day it’s just an adaptive trait.

But that begs the question, how would natural selection evolve consciousness to the degree that humans now have it? As it turns out, this is a topic of much discussion. One side says that consciousness is an adaptive trait, and the other side says consciousness emerges as a byproduct of other adaptive traits. There are domain experts on both sides.

The Adaptive Camp says consciousness evolved directly to give us Social intelligence - things like tracking relationships, detecting deception and building coalitions. Robin Dunbar, of Dunbar’s Number fame, argues our large brains correlate with social group size. The adaptive camp says consciousness evolved to give us predictive processing - the ability to create unified world-models that help predict future states better than unconscious processing. The adaptive camp says consciousness evolved to give us a “global flexible workspace” - a mental whiteboard where information integration across brain modules occurs. The adaptive camp says consciousness gives us meta-cognition advantages - the awareness of your own mental states that allows for better planning, and error correction.

The skeptical camp thinks consciousness is an epiphenomenon - a mental event caused by physical processes that has no causal effect on those processes. Biologist Thomas Huxley compared consciousness to the steam whistle on a train. Spandrel hypothesis says that some traits, and in this case consciousness, is a byproduct of other adaptive traits that have no adaptive value themselves. So there’s this whole approach to the concept of consciousness that tries to nail it down as a simple adaptive process, either directly or indirectly as a byproduct.

But THEN. You come at consciousness from the quantum perspective. And now you have consciousness being INSANELY important. This is not the view of ALL domain experts, but it’s the view of quite a meaningful amount, and that amount has been growing considerably. It’s like that old thought experiment - if a tree falls in the woods and no ones around to hear it, does it make a sound? So as it turns out, quantum mechanics would tell you this is like, the single most important question in all of existence. How nuts is that?

Consciousness is what collapses the wave function. Consciousness is what RENDERS the universe right in front of us. The universe is just an endless ocean of probabilities until you consciously OBSERVE, and then the probabilities instantaneously disappear and the universe snaps into absolute being.

Consciousness is the user interface for the universe to bring itself into existence and then experience that existence. Consciousness transforms quantum possibilities into classical realties, via experience. Without a conscious observer, reality doesn’t exist… Whoah. So then, if that’s true, consciousness must be one of, if not THE single most important thing in the entire universe.

Which brings us to the soul. Which is kinda why we’re here today. Because, ya know, what is it that all major world religions hold up as the thing that REALLY matters in this universe? It’s the soul. So at first glance, there seems to be remarkable continuity between how important quantum physics says consciousness is, and how important religion says the soul is. I find that absolutely compelling.

Despite this, a chasm exists between the domain experts that examine the soul and the domain experts that examine consciousness. The former is the realm of theology, while the latter is the realm of neuroscience and philosophy of mind and cognitive science and physics. Is there anything we can glean from what consciousness experts say about the soul, or what theology experts say about consciousness?

It is difficult, but not impossible, to get consciousness experts to weigh in on the soul, because most are secularists and take the stance that the soul doesn’t exist. Famed Philosopher and Orthodox Christian Richard Swinburne says that consciousness is a property or activity of the soul. The soul is the essential “I” that has conscious experience. Mental properties like consciousness require a non-physical substance, the soul, to exist. The soul explains personal identity over time despite changing states of consciousness.

Neuroscientist and seminary professor Warren Brown promotes nonreductive physicalism - the view that humans are entirely physical but with complex neural networks that produce emergent properties we call the soul. Brown believes spiritual experiences are mediated through brain processes, but that this proves humans are purpose built with the neural capacity to experience the divine.

Philosopher and theologian J.P. Moreland says the soul is the substance and consciousness is a property of that substance. The soul has capacities beyond consciousness like disposition and character.

Philosopher and theologian William Hasker is a proponent of a view called emergent dualism. Hasker says consciousness emerges from brain activity but generates a distinct soul, and this soul is the “emergent individual”. Once emerged, the soul can potentially survive bodily death, but that survival requires intervention from God. The soul is the agent performing the activity that is consciousness.

So that’s a flavor of what consciousness experts say about the soul. Let’s go the other way around. What do major world religions say about consciousness? Turns out, they say a lot.

Islam has the Ruh and Nafs. Ruh is the soul or spirit. It is eternal and immaterial. It is pure and directly connected to Allah. It distinguishes humans from all other creatures. Nafs is the ego, or the lower self. It encompasses desires and emotions.

Buddhism has Annata; Skandhas; Buddha-nature; Sati and Nirvana. Annata means no-self. It is the recognition that the feeling of a permanent self, an “I”, is an illusion. And clinging to the allusion of the self is the root of all suffering. Skandhas means the five aggregates. These are the five components of a person - form, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. What we call the “self” is just the aggregate of these five components.The Buddha-nature says that all sentient beings possess the potential for enlightenment, the same fundamental awakened nature as Buddha himself. Sati translates to mindfulness. This concept has been widely adopted by western culture. Sati is the practice of maintaining clear, non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. Nirvana literally means blowing out, like a candle, or extinguishing. It is the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice - the cessation of suffering and liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Hinduism has Brahman, Atman, Maya, Turiya, Chakras and Moksha. Brahman is ultimate, absolute reality. It is the infinite, eternal, formless, divine essence that underlies and pervades all existence. Atman is the eternal, unchanging self, or soul. It transcends body, mind, ego and death. Atman is pure consciousness itself. Maya is often translated as illusion, but more accurately, it is the creative power that makes the singular appear as many. Maya creates the sense of separation and individuality that must be transcended to realize Brahman. Turiya literally means “the fourth” and refers to a state of pure consciousness that transcends waking, dreaming and deep sleep. It is the “stateless state”. Chakras are energy centers in the body that serve as focal points for the flow of life force and consciousness. Each chakra is associated with specific physical, emotional and spiritual qualities. Moving energy through these chakras leads to expanded consciousness. Moksha means goal. It is the liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth through the realization that the personal Atman is actually the same as the universal Brahman.

Judaism has Neshamah, Yechidah, Teshuvah, Kavanah and Olam HaBa. In Jewish mysticism, there are five levels to the soul and Neshamah is one of them. It is translated as breath of life. It is the intellectual and spiritual dimension that distinguishes humans from animals - enabling moral choice, spiritual awareness and connection to the divine. Yechidah is the highest level of the soul. It is totally unified with God, to the point that it doesn’t actually descend into a human body, but sits above the body in perfect unity with the divine. Teshuvah means return. It refers to the return to divine consciousness through repentance for wrongdoing. Kavanah means direction of the heart. It is the mindfulness and spiritual focus that comes along with prayer, ritual observance and religious actions. Olam HaBa means “the world to come”. It is the eternal spiritual realm where souls experience ultimate divine reward. It is where consciousness persists to after death.

Christianity, which I know far and away the most about, draws on a mix of Hebrew and Greek concepts. Actually, in a lot of ways, Christianity is a mix of Hebrew and Greek concepts. But that’s particularly true when it comes to talking about the soul and consciousness. So keep in mind all the Jewish concepts I just mentioned. And then layer on Greek concepts like psyche, pneuma which means spirit, nous which means rational understanding, kardia which means heart and is the center of consciousness in Greek philosophy, and syneidesis which is moral consciousness. Christianity is a mashup of those Jewish and Greek concepts with a layer of Jesus Christ on top. Christianity gives you Imago Dei - image of God. Our own consciousness reflects God’s consciousness. Christianity gives you the renewal of your mind in order to perceive God’s will.

Christianity gives you the Holy Spirit. And that’s a big one. If you’re sitting in a Western nation right now, the Holy Spirit is a big one for you. Regardless of what you think about the Holy Spirit, this is a concept that has objectively, RADICALLY altered the course of human history. And it dovetails right into consciousness. The Holy Spirit is a concept that crosses the chasm between consciousness and the divine. The Holy Spirit IS the bridge across that chasm. The Holy Spirit is the mechanism by which believers in Jesus Christ are “born again”. What is being “born again”, is a new form of consciousness. A mind that was darkened, unable to perceive the divine, is born again with a new consciousness that is illuminated by the divine light of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the translator that stands between us, the feeble human, and the divine, God. In Romans 8, Paul says “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”. The Holy Spirit operates at a level of consciousness deeper than words, deeper than conceptual thought. It transcends and it transforms. It transcends ordinary cognition. And it transforms our consciousness into “the mind of Christ”. Through the Holy Spirit we are able to participate in Christ’s own mode of consciousness. And the Bible tells us that that mode has fruits. The fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

As you can see, all major world religions address consciousness in various but similar ways. It goes by different names and the minutiae may be different, but the consciousness piece ends up as a major factor in every major religion. Altering your consciousness. Aligning your consciousness. Transcending lower forms of consciousness to achieve higher forms of consciousness. Recognizing the divine consciousness all around us and in each of us. Connecting to the divine, ultimate singular consciousness. Motif after motif after motif across all religions. Thousands of years old. Waaay before any kind of neuroscience or quantum mechanics was known. Why is that? Why is consciousness treated like such a big deal in every world religion?

It would make sense to me that consciousness gets treated like a big deal by both religion and quantum mechanics because it is, in fact, a big deal. Maybe the biggest deal. Consciousness drives free will. And free will is what decides “what question to ask”, or said differently, what do you want to observe, to experience? Asking questions is what collapses the wave function and produces reality, going back to Schrodinger’s cat and the double split experiment. The reality that is produced in turn impacts our consciousness and then you start again. This is the underpinnings of how this universe works.

Humanity can connect to a higher power and it will alter our consciousness. Call it whatever you want - Holy Spirit, Brahman, Annata, Yechidah. Humanity can connect to a higher power and it will alter our consciousness. That altered consciousness will in turn alter free will, which will in turn alter what questions we ask, what we choose to observe, which will in turn alter which wave functions collapse which will in turn alter which reality is produced.

This could be an explanation for the soul, and the persistence of belief in the soul across religions and across time. The soul is what we call that slice of consciousness that CAN be in touch with the divine. And you could imagine how that particular slice of consciousness we call the soul could transcend our physical bodies and continue on in a different form after our bodily death. As Carl Sagan said, consciousness is the universe experiencing itself. The universe experiences itself through that soul slice of consciousness in this physical body for 80 years or so, and then moves on to a different experience.

This could also explain why prophets, sages and gurus are also ubiquitous features across religions. These are divine or enlightened people who have the ability to predict the future. This is a spirit-led ability. The Holy Spirit alters the consciousness of the prophet by showing them the quantum field of possibilities of some future state. Then through that altered consciousness a specific outcome is prophesied. The action of prophesy then actually causes the collapse of all future possibilities into the divinely-ordained outcome - God’s intended plan.

Again, call it whatever you want. The Holy Spirit, divine consciousness, knows the mind of God. And it guides human consciousness to ask the questions that will collapse quantum potentials in alignment with divine purpose. When your consciousness is spirit-led, you're asking questions that pull reality towards truth, towards beauty, towards goodness, towards growth. And when you're not, you might be asking questions that create chaos, confusion, stagnation. A quantum explanation for spiritual discernment.

So what does all this mean, for you, watching this right now? If consciousness really does participate in creating reality through observation and choice, then your attention matters. What you choose to observe. What questions you ask. That literally shapes the world. And if the Holy Spirit guides that process - well, then prayer isn't just talking to God. It’s collaborating with God in the ongoing creation of reality. How cool is that?

Ok. That’s it. We covered a lot here. Consciousness is a weird one, which makes it hard to talk about. But consciousness seems to be enormously important, which makes it necessary to talk about. I don’t know about you, but I see little glimpses of a Creator all over this topic. To me, the crucial role that consciousness appears to play in the formation of our discrete reality from an infinite field of quantum possibilities strongly implies creation. It strikes me as very obviously “created”. And if this universe was created, there is a Creator. Reaching for that creator is the entire point of Things Hidden.

The next episode will be about Philosophy. If you enjoyed this, hit like and subscribe. If you want to sign up for the blog, it’s in the description. If you’re looking for the online community, it’s coming soon. If you know someone that would be interested in Things Hidden, send this to them. I really appreciate your time, and I wish you the best.