Your Brain Does Not Create Consciousness

It is a receiver of consciousness . . .

Consciousness is primary. Everything that we see, hear, feel, and experience derives from consciousness. This includes the material world of space and time, and the hidden spiritual dimensions of creation and connection. It is all consciousness.

What is consciousness? One simple definition would be an awareness. An awareness that commands both energy and free will. You can run a simple experiment to prove this for yourself right now. Close your eyes and just breathe. Did a thought pop into your mind after a while? It probably did unless you are an experienced meditator. You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. You are the experiencer, the awareness of these thoughts and emotions. When the mind quiets, and the thoughts dissipate, your awareness is all that is left. This is your consciousness.

Your consciousness—your awareness and free will—exists quite separately from your brain. There is abundant evidence for this. Near death experiences, paranormal experiences, and even quantum physics point toward consciousness as the primary substrate of the Universe.  

Consider, if you will, that your brain is more like a television. A television is a very sophisticated and complicated instrument. There are circuits and wires and microprocessors. No one would doubt its complexity. But a television is nothing without an incoming signal. If there is no signal, there is no picture. You can try to look for the picture inside of the television—maybe it’s here in this processor or maybe in that complex bit of wiring. You can look, but you will not find the picture. The signal is what truly animates the television. Just as your soul—your consciousness—is what animates your brain and you.

A scientific materialist would argue that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is, due to the complexity of connections in the brain, what we perceive as awareness and freewill is nothing more than a trick of the physical brain. There is no evidence for this whatsoever! The materialists have never been able to show or prove how this might occur. This problem is so difficult for them, that they have even given the problem a name: The Hard Problem of Consciousness.

In fact, when I examine various lines of evidence, I come to the exact opposite conclusion. I conclude that consciousness is primary and that all of creation stems from a primordial base layer of consciousness. If we carry this hypothesis to an extreme, it would argue that everything has some degree of consciousness. People, animals, trees, and even rocks have varying degrees of consciousness.

This is not just wild speculation. There are serious scientists and academics who posit that our world is indeed derived from consciousness. First and foremost is the cognitive psychologist, Donald Hoffman. Hoffman contends that we are all “conscious agents” interacting in a field of consciousness. For those that are inclined, check out his book, The Case Against Reality. I found it fascinating and quite compelling.

Why is the subject of consciousness important? One reason, for me, is the basic question of what happens when we die. A scientific materialist would argue that when you die, and your brain is no longer living, then that’s it. That’s all there is. The “you” that you were, is now gone along with your brain.

This is not what our great spiritual teachers tell us. This is not what empirical evidence implies. (I think that the best empirical evidence for the existence of your soul is the evidence for reincarnation. Check out Dr. Ian Stevenson and his research involving small children who have eerily accurate past life memories.)

I believe that when you die, that your soul lives on. It carries all of the knowledge and learning from a given life to its next lifetime. Your soul is the embodiment of your consciousness. Your soul can be thought of as sentience and energy. If this is true, consider what we know from mainstream science about energy and information. From the field of thermodynamics, we are taught that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Einstein later expanded this stating that energy and matter are essentially interchangeable. Additionally, quantum physics argues that information is never destroyed. Therefore, all of your life lessons are carried forward with your soul and this information is never lost.

And since your soul was born from an ocean of infinite consciousness, your birthright is nothing less than divine intelligence. Your consciousness is not separate from the Universe—it is a fantastic part of the whole. This is true whether you (the person) remember this or not. Your soul is the repository for all of your memories, knowledge, and learned information. Your soul—your consciousness—is what survives death and carries on from life to life.

Seen from this perspective, what a fantastic life we are all living! This lifetime offers many opportunities for learning and growth—with your soul gently nudging you toward your highest good. When you die, you will get a chance to review the lessons from this lifetime, and then plan out your next life containing new or unlearned lessons. There is a system and a structure to all of this. And beautifully, the underlying feature of this system is love and compassion. We get to learn against a backdrop of a compassionate and wise Universe.

So, the next time you meet a fellow spiritual traveler, quietly acknowledge his or her soul—their embodied consciousness. Look for their inner light within. Realize that they too are on a spiritual journey, just like you. Maybe you have something to learn from them? Or maybe they have something to learn from you? Stay present and quietly acknowledge their inner light.

And always let your light shine!

Sean