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The Primacy of Consciousness

The fundamental nature of reality is actually consciousness. In his documentary Peter Russell explores the reasons why consciousness may be the fundamental essence of the Universe. Many have made such claims from metaphysical perspectives, but the possibility has always been ignored by the scientific community. In this talk, he discusses the problems the materialist scientific world view has with consciousness and proposes an alternative world view which, rather than contradicting science, makes new sense of much of modern physics. He presents a reasoned argument that shows how they are pointing towards the one thing science has always avoided considering – the primary nature of consciousness.

This documentary basically seeks answers for these questions: What is consciousness? How could consciousness arise from matter? Paradigm shifts in science. The materialist meta paradigm. A new meta paradigm. Consciousness is in everything. Everything is in consciousness. Matter is a mental construct. Relativity and light’s point of view. Light lies beyond space, time and matter. Photons and the quantum of action. Parallels between light and consciousness. Consciousness as the fundamental reality. The mystical experience of consciousness. Who am I? What is the self? The meeting of science and spirit.

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  1. well (deep)

    It’s a danger, a trap to consider that because you are god or consciousness you don’t need religion or spirituality. It is a danger to go in the direction of egoism and materalism. The danger or trap is also to make meditation an object, a product, a science. Beware of the plain consciousness ideas. Its another way to make you slaves, consumers again. Always promoted by the same liars working for darkness. They distort notions and words of sacred texts. They don’t have the level. They just deceive you. You listen to them and they control you, tell you what to do, what to think.

    Hindu teachings (sama veda changodya upanishad) say : Tat Twam Asi = You are that. They didn’t write : there is only that. And they continue worshiping. There is a You, there is an ego. you cannot destroy it without killing yourself. People without no ego are dead people, not super sages. People talk about plain consciousness, to be fully aware, fully conscious. they mistake consciousness with lack of attachments. Consciousness is life. there is no such thing as “full life”. You live ? you are totally conscious, period. With your ego, your gaps. You are even conscious of your ignorance.

    There is a That, there is a god. After understanding all teachings hindus cameme to a conclusion : everything is made by the grace of god. Some of them believe That has a form, others That has a form and ultimately no form and others something else. They are beliefs. But one thing is sure : if there is a god, a that, with a being or being-less, That is the source of light, joy and love,existence, space and void. Then we are on earth to pray and glorify That, nothing less has sense.
    Mahatma Gandhi is credited with a brilliantly acerbic remark
    A journalist asked: What do you think of western civilization ?
    the Mahatma posed and said ” Yes, it would be a good idea.
    By laughing and applauding you just showed you were consuming a product.

  2. Computer program is not nearly as complex as concousness, but gives basic comparisson:
    Program emerges out of parts that is made of – a long strings of commands – and ultimately from 0 and 1
    There is no esential idea of “program-ness” or “windows-ness” or “google-ness” in individual 0 and 1.
    Ones and zeros are just ones and zeros, on basic level they have no awernes of what they are doing. 
    Same goes for atom it is no more than wave function (or whatever scientist may discover it is) and is as indifferent to councusness as 0 and 1 are to your computer program.
    Concusnes is emergent property of matter.
    It is not there in individual atoms, but somehow emerges on bigger scale.
    Thinking that concousnes is somehow more basic than matter is logicaly wrong.

    • “I am God.”

      Your consciousness creates matter. My consciousness creates matter.
      together we magically created the same matter together, and this is
      probably why we live amongst each other, physically. Argue? go ahead. To
      draw on part of Peter Russel’s point, you can argue anything you wish
      to argue, but your scientific facts and evidence will be provided from
      our paradigm. Without consciousness present to detect it… there is no
      matter. We know this for certain.

      A huge problem in today’s
      world is a lack of consciousness for Consciousness. People make
      decisions based on physical value not to mention independent value.
      People aren’t working together to better our planet. Most people go to
      work for 8 hours a day so that they can make money and get by. Does this
      not seem corrupt? It should.

      Someone below mentions Lynn McTaggart’s “The Field.”

      This
      read demonstrates undeniable reason for the “mind,” being capable of
      manipulating its own “mood.” If you feel unhappy you are choosing to
      feel unhappy, (in a nutshell). So why can’t we all harmonize and simply put, “choose
      to be happy?” probably because some are starving, genocide’s happen…
      etc. All because of money and power. Money and Power are at the root of
      humanity’s mistake. As we perceive what is in front of us through media,
      education, medicinal organizations, etc… we are training our minds
      over and over to recreate what is happening. It is only through a wave
      of consciousness for Consciousness that we can truly overcome such
      global chaos as a whole. A global consciousness. One.

      Think of the earth as an atom itself,
      while observing it from the moon. 7 billion people… invisible to the
      naked eye. Perhaps they are the tiny glimmer of consciousness amongst
      that atom. In fact, we are.

      “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

      View
      the world how you choose to, and I suggest being somewhat careful
      whilst selecting different scientific facts to pose arguments of any
      shape or form, because without doubt… one day in the future, these
      facts may or may not be valid anymore. Consciousness is everything.

  3. Computer program is not nearly as complex as concousness, but gives basic comparisson:
    Program emerges out of parts that is made of – a long strings of commands – and ultimately from 0 and 1
    There is no esential idea of “program-ness” or “windows-ness” or “google-ness” in individual 0 and 1.
    Ones and zeros are just ones and zeros, on basic level they have no awernes of what they are doing. 
    Same goes for atom it is no more than wave function (or whatever scientist may discover it is) and is as indifferent to councusness as 0 and 1 are to your computer program.
    Concusnes is emergent property of matter.
    It is not there in individual atoms, but somehow emerges on bigger scale.
    Thinking that concousnes is somehow more basic than matter is logicaly wrong.

  4. lol – esquimos do NOT have 20 different definitions/words for snow – its a well known MYTH!

  5. lol – esquimos do NOT have 20 different definitions/words for snow – its a well known MYTH!

  6. @ Bamboom. You are totally right. The audiance is just a mass of prick

  7. @ Bamboom. You are totally right. The audiance is just a mass of prick

  8. It
    is Interesting in the middle part trying to define what
    consciousness/life is and there is some good stuff in there… But it
    drastically falls apart near the end. Provides again a very geocentric
    view; people have a really hard time letting
    go and realizing that we are not special, nor are our ancient
    superstitions. As much as we’d like it to, the incomprehensible vastness
    of the universe just does not revolve around us or our insignificant
    “minds”.

  9. It
    is Interesting in the middle part trying to define what
    consciousness/life is and there is some good stuff in there… But it
    drastically falls apart near the end. Provides again a very geocentric
    view; people have a really hard time letting
    go and realizing that we are not special, nor are our ancient
    superstitions. As much as we’d like it to, the incomprehensible vastness
    of the universe just does not revolve around us or our insignificant
    “minds”.

  10. It
    is Interesting in the middle part trying to define what
    consciousness/life is and there is some good stuff in there… But it
    drastically falls apart near the end. Provides again a very geocentric
    view; people have a really hard time letting
    go and realizing that we are not special, nor are our ancient
    superstitions. As much as we’d like it to, the incomprehensible vastness
    of the universe just does not revolve around us or our insignificant
    “minds”.

  11. It
    is Interesting in the middle part trying to define what
    consciousness/life is and there is some good stuff in there… But it
    drastically falls apart near the end. Provides again a very geocentric
    view; people have a really hard time letting
    go and realizing that we are not special, nor are our ancient
    superstitions. As much as we’d like it to, the incomprehensible vastness
    of the universe just does not revolve around us or our insignificant
    “minds”.

  12. I really enjoyed this and can buy into a lot of it.

    The only irritating thing was the audience, who seem to be laughing quite often out of a sense of superiority, as if to say ‘yeah we knew this already’. Sometimes their laughter is mocking, like when certain scientists are quoted, although it’s doubtful if any one in that room has made any useful contributions to knowledge comparable to those scientists or understands physics as well.

    The purely materialist scientists quoted may well have been wrong in their assumptions about mind and matter, who knows, but it’s ugly to hear them mocked by an audience that sounds so condescending. In fact, so condescending and self-satisfied is their laughter sometimes that it actually runs counter to the spirit of the suggestion in the talk that we are all one consciousness.

    • Yes there was a degree of mockery in that laughter … also disappointing that the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, or anatman, is not discussed as a further development of the ideas of the Upanishads … alongside a failure to mention Hegel as a further development of the ideas of Kant?!?!?!

  13. Very good speech, thanks for sharing it with us. I really enjoyed the historical part of it, especially the Planck’s quote. I didn’t know it, but unfortunately, it’s still quite an accurate description of how science is done. Of course things change now with internet and servers like arxiv.org, but not without the help of Nature, as bad as it sounds.
    As for light – it is electromagnetic radiation – so even if in its own frame of reference the proper time is zero, in our frame of reference, which is important to us, that proper time is not zero. It is important part of many physical processes, so we shouldn’t forget about its very practical value.
    And I really failed to understand the connection between light and consciousness. Even if I share most of the beliefs in the talk, still, this was kind of unclear to me.

    But the talk was very good, especially the last 5 minutes. I second them completely.
    P.S. I’m kind of surprised on the places people laughed at.

  14. Very interesting speech! We are consciousness. 🙂

  15. I didn’t have a problem yet with him mentioning reincarnation & remote viewing, they’re neither proven nor ruled out in my book. Skepticism is not out of place anyway… he said much of what I feel to be true about consciousness but had trouble to express, that it is more fundamental than anything in the universe. Brilliant, for the most part… up to the final 5 minutes or so when he comes to “god”. Over one hour: a great, insightful lecture. The final few minutes: simply BS.

  16. As soon as he said that remote viewing, reincarnation and healing are all problems/anomalies that science has not explained, and are on the same level as the ‘anomaly’ of consciousness…. my Baloney Detection Kit went off. Watch it… but keep in mind Peter Russell ‘studied’ with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India. This is not where the forefront of consciousness science research is at the moment, so watch with skepticism.

    • Both remote viewing and healing have been studied in scientific trials, by scientists, a couple decades ago. Both studies got very promising results.

      I would recommend the book ‘The Field’ by Lynne McTaggart. She outlines many different studies that have been done under rigorous scientific protocol, looking at the abilities of our individual consciousness to alter and interact with the world around us (telepathy, remote viewing, healing, etc). All the scientists looking at this got excellent results, but have been shunned by the scientific community at large. And these studies were being done decades ago.