Choose your stations carefully.
The vast majority of people (including very smart neurobiologists and physicists) go about life thinking that consciousness is located (somewhere) in the brain. Your brain generates…you.
But there is an increasing number* of people who think otherwise. That consciousness is non-local to the brain (this is sometimes referred to as ‘Mind at Large‘ amongst other things). How is that possible?
The best way to try to answer that is with an analogy.
A radio sits on a table. Until you turn it on, it does nothing. Turn it on and you hear music. If we ask, ‘Is the radio itself producing the music?’ of course the answer is no.
The radio is a transducer. It takes the waves that come through the radio frequency and transforms them into sound waves, and you hear the music.
So you can say the radio produces the music because if you break the radio you don’t get any music. But the radio is not the source of the music. The source is the waves.
The brain is a transducer of Consciousness. It can experience Consciousness. If you damage it, you will lose Consciousness and then you will not hear the music. But is the brain itself the creator of Consciousness? It is not.
Consciousness in its essential nature is beyond the brain and beyond individuality. It is unbounded pure being, the Self of everything and everyone, the Unified Field.
Furthermore, if consciousness is all there is, the neurons, with their networks are themselves patterns of consciousness within consciousness. In this case, the modification of those patterns of consciousness (physically described as damage to or alteration of neuronal activity), leads to a different experience in the awareness of the individual.
This would then be almost self-evident or even a truism.
Consciousness in its essential nature is beyond the brain and beyond individuality. It is unbounded pure being, the Self of everything and everyone, the Unified Field.
Dr Tony Nader
Now that you have considered this possibility….
….the surprise ending is that the radio itself not a thing.
The radio itself is also another part of this mind at large.
You probably want to change the station right about now.
I can’t say I blame you.
If you do want to dig deeper:
*A great many deep thinkers, philosophers and contemplatives over the ages have felt this way. The modern scientific community is just beginning to re-examine this possibility as they struggle to make sense of the latest research into quantum physics and neuroscience.
Photo credit: Stephen Andrews
shojiwax.com 
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