What is consciousness? What is Consciousness (with a big C)?

And are they the same thing? I now — surprising myself — think they are

The Universe is made of Consciousness (with a big C) and that Consciousness is the same as this consciousness (with a small c) that I find inside myself. There I said it. This insight or belief or knowing — call it what you will — is hard earned. Trust me. More than 30 years of inner-exploration, study, and dialogues with fellow seekers. Here’s how I arrived at this conclusion.

In a way, we all know what consciousness is. It’s that sense of being alive. It’s that place you go when people ask you, how old do you feel inwardly. You go quiet for a second, feel, and say something like 21 or 25. And you realise that there is something inside that doesn’t change even though everything else changes: thoughts, feelings, emotions, body, circumstances.

There are about 30 trillion cells (that’s 30 with 12 zeros) in the human body. It is estimated that all are replaced every 7 to 10 years. And yet, something remains that is us.

This I say is consciousness. Some call it awareness. Others I think call it soul or self. But let’s call it consciousness.

So that’s consciousness — with a small c.

What about Consciousness with a big C. Not everybody thinks this is a thing. But what I mean by this is I guess what some people refer to as God or Spirit or Self or Big Mind.

I call it Consciousness and it is — as I see it now — the primary or fundamental nature of the Universe. In other words, it is what the Universe is made of.

What really brought this home as a potential reality for me was when I heard cutting edge theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed say:

Spacetime is Doomed

What he meant is that for the entire history of physics up to now, we have made the assumption that spacetime is the fundamental reality — you can’t go underneath it. But, now, he says — this is no longer the case. There is something — he maintains — that is more fundamental.

He didn’t say it is Consciousness or God or anything like that — but for me, Spacetime is Doomed is enough to let in the idea that Consciousness is fundamental — that the Universe is made of Consciousness.

As Nobel Prize winner and one of the fathers of quantum physics, Werner Heisenberg, said:

The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.

So now we have consciousness with a small c and Consciousness with a big C. The big question for me was then: Are they the same thing? Is the consciousness that we medium-sized human mammals experience inwardly the same thing as what the Universe is made of?

This I struggled with for a long time. How can it be? Why should it be? In my younger years, I had swallowed a lot of spiritual ideas whole. But then — about 7 years ago — I read Robert Saltzman’s The Ten Thousand Things and subsequent book Depending on No-Thing — and all of those ideas came crashing down. Leaving me a bit naked and vulnerable and staring reality straight in the face. On the rebound, I became a bit of a materialist. It was a necessary step. To go back to basics. To be a bit of a sceptic. I had to, as the Buddha purportedly said, be a light unto myself:

Be a light unto yourself; betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.

By now, I had eliminated Materialism (consciousness is produced by brains), Eliminative Materialism (there is no such thing as consciousness), Atheism (there is no such thing as Consciousness), and Solipsism (only consciousness is real).

But plenty of options remained:

Animism: Everything, including inanimate things, has a unique spirit

Panpsychism: Everything contains a piece of consciousness

Theism: Consciousness is outside nature and controlling it

Deism: Consciousness is transcendent but only acts at the beginning

Pantheism: The Universe is a conscious being

Panentheism: Consciousness is in nature and nature is in Consciousness

Eventually, I landed on the last one, Panentheism.

Rather strangely, this was after listening to American cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman talk about the Planck length — proposed by physicist Max Planck and equal to 1.6 x 10^-35 meters. It is the number 16 preceded by 34 zeros and a decimal point and is thought to represent the theoretical limit of the shortest measurable length. Apparently, this length corresponds to the distance where the gravitational field is so strong that it can start to do things like make black holes out of the energy of the field.

Now I am not a physicist so I don’t get this fully — but as Hoffman relayed this tale, I got the image of scientists looking deeper and deeper into particles — in and in — and finally as they go smaller and smaller and in and in — they come to nothingness. Empty space. Not even space.

Just Consciousness looking back at itself

This is just an image that I saw inwardly. It probably has no scientific validity. But it was a vivid image and had a strong effect on me. It was enough to convince me that…

This consciousness inside here is made of the same stuff that the Universe is made of. Or, as they say in Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism), one of the schools of Hindu Vedantic philosophy:

Atman is Brahman

Atman being the true self or consciousness with a small c and Brahman being Absolute Reality or Consciousness with a big C.

Or as Meister Eckhart, 13th Century German theologian, philosopher, and mystic wrote:

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

So that’s where I have landed. And, to be honest, it is quite a relief. When I settled on so-called Panentheism, I felt a palpable sense of relaxation. Not that the search has come to an end or anything — this place is just another beginning. But I feel happy and content with this position. I feel connected and a part of something greater. I wonder why stubborn me had to resist this seeing for so long. Perhaps it is as a friend of mine told me: You are a rational being, so you need to understand with the mind.

Donald Hoffman is a fascinating character by the way. He talks about conscious agents and our Mind being like a 3D Headset, and is trying to prove mathematically that Consciousness is the fundamental nature of the Universe. Listen to some of his talks on YouTube or his interview with Sam Harris on Making Sense.

So there it is. I find it a bit funny and ironic that two insights from the world of physics pushed me over the edge — but there you go.

Let’s wrap this up. Let me finish with this quote from Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi and considered by yoga experts as the “Father of Yoga in the West”.

The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.