Live the questions now. Maybe in the future, gradually, without noticing, one day away, you will live the answers.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Be Patient’
I am a huge fan of the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup.
His stance is that the world as we perceive it is not made of solid material ‘stuff’ existing out there whilst we reside inside our heads, a product of neurological activity.
Instead, we and everything we experience are part of a fundamental, universal consciousness. In philosophy, this theory is known as idealism.
Each individual consciousness is a ‘dissociated’ localised formation within that flow, analogous to a whirlpool in a stream.
The brain doesn’t generate mind in the same way that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water.
It is the brain that is in mind, not mind in the brain.
Idealism is not just some hippy-dippy philosophical thought experiment. It is becoming a more and more popular belief amongst serious academics and physicists and neuroscientists (not to mention contemplatives).
If you want to know more about this topic I can highly recommend the following book (or you can tackle the video interview at the bottom of this post.)
There are now two new books covering or adjacent to this topic that I can also recommend.
Federico Faggio is a physicist (he was the original inventor of the microprocessor). In this book (which I have only just started reading) he looks at the origins of consciousness and its relationship to quantum science artificial intelligence and spiritual contemplation. Like Bernardo, he believes consciousness to be an irreducible property of matter, energy, space and time.
Christof Koch is a neuroscientist who has worked most of his life searching for the neural correlates of consciousness.
More recently he has been working on integrated-information theory (IIT)
In this book he delivers a summary of IIT as well as exploring his own transformative ‘mystical’ experiences. He discusses the roles of meditation, psychedelics and near death experiences in better understanding reality.
And if you really want to dive into the deep end of the pool. I would say this massive two volume masterpiece covering ‘life the universe and everything’ is well worth your efforts. It is a big commitment. Think war and peace.
I rate ‘The Matter With Things’ in the top 3 books I have ever read.
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