Is the World “Awake?”
Have you heard of panpsychism? It sounds mysterious or a little on the ugga bugga side, but, in fact, panpsychism is simply the view that all things have consciousness as their essential nature. The word “panpsychism” was coined by Francesco Patrizi, an Italian philosopher in the 16th century. The word itself is derived from the Greek: pan meaning all and psychic meaning soul or mind.
Much of western philosophy is founded in the teachings of two of its fathers–Aristotle and Plato. As teachers in the Academy of Athens (which was founded by Plato at the end of the fourth century) they taught their views on science and philosophy, which included a shared belief in panpsychism. The Canadian philosopher William Seger wrote that “at a very basic level, the world is awake.“
While more conservative thinkers suggest that only humans and some of the animal Kingdom share inner wakefulness or consciousness, it is believed by many in today’s more broad-minded scientific community that consciousness is inherent in everything.
How can we know if the phenomenon of panpsychism is valid?
Whereas, traditionally, science has thought of consciousness as an expression and projection of the brain, panpsychism challenges the view that the brain gives rise to consciousness and asserts instead that it is consciousness that gives rise to the brain (and everything else!). All of the material universe, from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies, possesses intelligence, energy, and organizational power. This observation, along with more recent scientific research, gives more serious weight to the idea that consciousness is ubiquitous.
Science takes a look
Even the smallest single celled organisms exhibit responses to stimulation and have a decision-making quality. This implies consciousness within them.
In the behavior of subatomic particles, quantum physics detects the possibility that consciousness is embedded in the most ultimate building blocks of the universe, and that consciousness is influenced by quantum interactions. At the foundation of the universe is a universal field where all the forces and particles of nature are united as one—In the unified field theory, it is held that all manifest creation comes from an unlimited unified source—a field of pure infinite potential. The difference between that understanding and the vision of panpsychism is both subtle and astounding: in panpsychism the unified field is wakeful, aware.
Some cosmologists, in exploring the possibility of collective consciousness, are aligned in their theories and conclusions with religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Christian mysticism as well as some less-known indigenous traditions. The study of cosmology can reveal that there is a wholeness of consciousness and that this wholeness is expressed in its individual parts.
Subjective and objective approach to the truth
An electron microscope can magnify things over 500,000 times. A transmission electron microscope can be used to see nanoparticles and atoms. However, there is no tool powerful enough to reveal to our experience what transcends the subtlest strata of creation—the unified field—other than the human nervous system.
Uniquely, the Transcendental Meditation technique allows this to happen. During the TM technique, the nervous system settles into progressively finer and finer states of functioning. At this time, the meditator’s mind, retaining wakefulness, transcends to subtler and subtler levels of perception of matter. Arriving at the finest level of perception, matter itself is then transcended and consciousness remains awake within itself with no object of perception. Consciousness is awake to itself.
This experience of the transcendent through Transcendental Meditation provides a subjective means of verification of consciousness as the reality within oneself. It relies upon the human nervous system and mind as tools to allow the transcendent to be revealed.
Published scientific research on brain activity during the TM technique has objectively validated the subjective experiences of transcending and the transcendent. Brain researchers have found a signature for the experience of transcendental consciousness and even for the development of consciousness over time.
Society and the field effect of consciousness
Consciousness is a field, not bound. So if you create a wave in consciousness, or create an impulse or stimulation of some kind, the effects are found throughout anything in that field. Think about how when you drop a pebble into a pond, a wave moves throughout the entire pond. It’s the same idea. Consciousness is experienced as an unbounded field when one transcends thought. Unbounded means everywhere—so everything is in it, affected by it, composed of it. Dozens of published research studies on the TM technique show that the environment becomes increasingly more orderly and harmonious with growing numbers of people meditating in it. This suggests that everything studied has a foundation in consciousness—ie they are sitting in the pond.
Proving the reality of, and measuring, consciousness in non-biological systems and as a universally conscious transcendent reality within everything remains beyond scientific study.
A significant and growing minority of analytic philosophers have begun seriously to explore the potential of panpsychism, both to provide a satisfying account of the emergence of human consciousness and to give a positive account of the intrinsic nature of matter. This article provides only a simple summary of a complex philosophical field of thought.
About the Author
Janet Hoffman is the executive director of TM for Women Professionals, a division of TM for Women in the USA
